I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Viktor's progress
I ate at least one carrot per day for years and I was kind of orange for years. I can't say that trying to eat one now or eating some broth with carrot juice would cause the problems you are experiencing but beta carotene is a big problem if you want to avoid vitamin A. Try to find a soup that doesn't include carrots.
So many foods are bright orange now that weren't before.
I've been feeling pretty awful lately - fatigue, dizziness, sense of full GI inflammation, lots of food sensitivities, baking soda being one of the worst (found in many baked goods and seems to screw with my stomach acidity, which takes me full couple days to somewhat get back to normal). I've been eating 2-3 eggs a day for the past several weeks after not eating too many. At first I felt great on eggs again (probably due to their high biotin content as I have a heterozygous biotinidaze deficiency SNP) but then it reversed back. I also started having bad reactions to even small amounts of liver somewhere at the end of the last year and haven't had any liver for months because of that. My serum iron tested high once over the past month (I'd been eating beef almost every day before the test) but went back to normal after limiting my red meat intake. Ferritin is ~ 30 and has been that way for the last couple years even when I felt great.
It seems that when I'm having a stomach/colon flare up, the vagus nerve gets irritated, which in turn makes be fatigue, very dizzy and sad. When the flare passes, I no longer feel that bad. Diaphragmatic breathing does seem to help occasionally but to an extent and not always.
Anyway, if we are to assume I'm somehow again sensitive to vitamin A given my bad reactions to any amount of liver, can it be that eating 2-3 eggs a day leads to the same accumulation of retinol, only it being more prolonged (and thus harder to pinpoint as the cause)?
I have taken myself to one egg a day. I keep trying to get my husband to go lower in eggs, but he won't budge from his 3 per day habit. And his rosacea is bad and his weight isn't budging. Gosh he loves them. He says we are still "even" because he does no dairy and I do some. We definitely aren't "even" in the veggie department, he still hangs onto the thought that veggies can't be bad :). I pick colored veggies out of any meal I am served, and avoid colored veggies like the plague when I'm the cook.
I do think eggs are good (at least in theory) but have upper limits that we need to be aware of. I think feeds are part of the problem. I think eggs are more problematic than they should be... because of fiddling with feeds.
I'm pretty scared of liver myself. I haven't knowingly touched it in my 6 years of lowered VA.
I think it is important to realize we aren't going to be perfect and that times are going to come and go when we aren't feeling well. Sometimes I think we make a mistake trying to achieve perfect and it can get us into trouble. It isn't any fun, though.
Hi Viktor,
My experience with eggs is much the same as yours. Fine at first, but if I consume for a long period of time I become intolerant of them. Beginning of 2023 I started on 2 eggs per day and carried on to the beginning of this year, when I cut down to once a week or once a fortnight. I can tell I react to them now, not drastically, but I don't want to go back to eating them every day. This has happened to me before, years ago before I knew anything about vit A toxicity. In Hal Huggin's book, he recommends eating 2 eggs per day for mercury detoxification after amalgam removal. I had my amalgams removed 2003 to 2004, and consumed 3 eggs per day for a long period after. Then I became sick of the sight of them and didn't touch them again for several years. At the moment I seem to be suffering some quite bad vit A dumping symptoms, which is disappointing at this stage because I have been doing low vit A for just over 5 years. Whether it has anything to do with me consuming and then stopping eggs I don't know, but eggs have been my only significant source of vit A in the last 5 years. I haven't consumed any dairy (at home) for around 7 years and I will probably never eat liver again.
Quote from Viktor on April 26, 2025, 3:33 amHi! Need some advice. I've been feeling a little off lately and not able to pinpoint exactly what I've been doing wrong. The issues are the usual stuff, like fatigue, slow digestion, brain fog. However, I've been eating store bought chicken noodled soup for a couple weeks. The ingredients are water, chicken, noodles, carrots (!), onions, salt, some pepper. Photos are attached. Is it possible I'm reacting to the high carotene from carrots? Especially given they are boiled and the soup itself contains fats. Would you personally have a bad reaction to a soup with such an orange color from carrots?
Can you avoid carrots and eggs? Can you find chicken soup without carrots?
Thanks everyone! Very much appreciated.
I think part of my problem may be that I've also been eating whole-wheat bread for several weeks, which can be pretty rough on the colon. When I'm flaring and all my GI tract isn't well, some foods only make it worse. Once again, the whole issue with sensitive digestion, feeling of gut inflammation and vagus nerve only started after having the initial vitamin A overload from liver. My bloodwork, SIBO breath test and fecal calprotectin have been alright though, and I've tested negative for celiac and lactose intolerance (in fact, the friend who viewed my 23andme raw data for a DNA report said I had pretty good gluten and lactose tolerance compared to other people whose reports she's compiled too. I'm heterozygous for iron overload, carotene-retinol conversion (slow in my case), have MTHFR, low folate and low vitamin D mutations (all confirmed through blood levels).
I've also been eating more red meat than a year before and more zinc means more vitamin A absorption and transport from the liver to tissues. My blood zinc levels have risen from lowish to middle range and that's probbaly part of why I need to limit my intake of vitamin A in general.
Quote from Joe2 on May 6, 2025, 9:58 pmQuote from Viktor on April 26, 2025, 3:33 amHi! Need some advice. I've been feeling a little off lately and not able to pinpoint exactly what I've been doing wrong. The issues are the usual stuff, like fatigue, slow digestion, brain fog. However, I've been eating store bought chicken noodled soup for a couple weeks. The ingredients are water, chicken, noodles, carrots (!), onions, salt, some pepper. Photos are attached. Is it possible I'm reacting to the high carotene from carrots? Especially given they are boiled and the soup itself contains fats. Would you personally have a bad reaction to a soup with such an orange color from carrots?
Can you avoid carrots and eggs? Can you find chicken soup without carrots?
I surely can for the most part but sometimes I just want to grab some soup at the store and those usually have carrots in them. Can't blame the cooks though, vitamin A overload is pretty rare for them to have concerns about lol
Hi everyone!
A couple updates.
Had mold issue in my room due to half-assedly laid laminate over an old parquet floor and linoleum. I had all the floor removed, cleaned out and replaced.
On a more Vitamin A-related note, I've started eating some dried and fresh mangoes. They give me a huge energy boost when taken in small amounts and cause fatigue if I overdo them. I think I'm vitamin A deficient at the moment but my thyroid and overall metabolism ain't good at handling large quantities of either retinol or carotene (liver also causes issues when eaten 2 days in a row. The first day was awesome). Also, the b-carotene in mangoes is extremely (!) bioavailable (source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814612011478 ) even despite the fact they are lower in it than carrots. Basically, it's already being provided with fat lipids for absorption, and that's why mangoes are a much much more potent vitamin A source than a carrot. That was news to me lol.
"Mangos and poison ivy both belong to the Anacardiaceae family, also known as the cashew family. This botanical relationship means mangoes, like poison ivy, poison oak, and sumac, contain urushiol, an oily compound that can cause an itchy, blistering rash in sensitive individuals. While the fruit's flesh is generally safe, the urushiol is concentrated in the skin and sap, making handling the fruit a potential trigger for allergic reactions in those with a known poison ivy allergy."
Grant has spoken about how close the poison ivy molecule is to carotene.
It seems to me my reactions to poison ivy increased as I became more VA overloaded.
Quote from lil chick on September 15, 2025, 10:41 am"Mangos and poison ivy both belong to the Anacardiaceae family, also known as the cashew family. This botanical relationship means mangoes, like poison ivy, poison oak, and sumac, contain urushiol, an oily compound that can cause an itchy, blistering rash in sensitive individuals. While the fruit's flesh is generally safe, the urushiol is concentrated in the skin and sap, making handling the fruit a potential trigger for allergic reactions in those with a known poison ivy allergy."
Grant has spoken about how close the poison ivy molecule is to carotene.
It seems to me my reactions to poison ivy increased as I became more VA overloaded.
Similar long experience here with urushiol / retinoids. Found easy method for healing itchy rash quickly instead of the usual week or three.