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Whole Food Vitamin C, Copper, Iron, and Morley Robbins
I just listened to another Morley Robbins interview and he mentioned that excessive amounts of ascorbic acid are converted to hydrogen peroxide, and that retinol is used to "neutralize" the hydrogen peroxide. Has anyone here read anything about retinol interacting with hydrogen peroxide in the body, especially as a consequence of high ascorbic acid intake? It would be interesting if that was a pathway to "use up" retinol in the body, although the "neutralizing" action may very well convert retinol to retinoic acid or something else that's more reactive than retinol, which might not be desirable...
Hm. I remember that during infections, the body produces hydrogen peroxide to neutralize pathogens. Maybe that's why vitamin A is depleted so quickly during infections?
I remembered that here, in Russia, there was such a professor Neumyvakin, a doctor from alternative medicine, a scientist in the past. He recommended taking hydrogen peroxide for life. If I remember correctly, 3 times a day, 2-3 drops 3% with water. However, I don't think he associated it with retinol.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on May 30, 2021, 3:24 pm
If Morley is correct in concluding that (1) Tyrosinase, and not ascorbic acid, is the important component of whole food Vitamin C, which promotes proper copper metabolism; (2) that copper metabolism is essential for iron metabolism; and (3) that poor iron metabolism results in poor liver function; then I see a potential reason as to why a frutarian diet might resolve Vitamin A and other toxicities (see the recent posts by @michele), and why vegetarians who eat a lot of beta carotene might also avoid toxicity. By simultaneously consuming lots of whole food Vitamin C (tyrosinase), a high copper:zinc ratio, and barely any iron, they should be free of problems with excess iron, which would enable their liver to function at a higher level when it comes to processing other toxins and waste elements of the body, including a lot of Vitamin A.
I've been suspecting more and more that I have copper problems that are becoming worse on a muscle meat and fat carnivore diet. After digging into the subject a bit, it sounds as though it is not uncommon for carnivore dieters to run into copper problems that appear to manifest as deficiency. Given that most carnivore diets are known to be very low in Vitamin C, I wonder if it's not a lack of copper in the diet but rather a lack of Tyrosinase and the cofactors needed to maintain copper metabolism, combined with a constant intake of iron, that is the real problem. Too much non-functional iron in the tissues, including the liver, due to non-functional copper.
I'm starting to add low-sugar, high-Vitamin C fruits back into my otherwise carnivore diet and will try to report my findings in this thread. If my thinking is correct, the Vitamin C complex should improve not only my liver and adrenal function (and thereby improve Vitamin A and fatigue problems), but also my worsening gastrointestinal problems (nightly gas and frequent diarrhea) by improving iron absorption and metabolism and reducing potential gut flora problems resulting from unabsorbed iron in the intestines. I will also be increasing my fat intake (primarily grass-finished bison tallow) and lowering my lean protein intake to avoid excessive iron in the gut for the time being.
Hey how did this end up going for you? It sums up my case too, on Low VA I become completely intolerant to high iron foods so red meat, grains like sourdough bread, oat bran without getting diabetes symptoms and also felt like my gut was rotting from all that non functional iron causing pathogens to thrive, but when I start eating beta carotene and vitamin c stuff like carrots or orange juice my iron metabolism becomes restored and I can eat red meat no issues and I also crave it again. The Low VA veg like parsnips, celeriac don't help me tolerate Red meat.
Obviously with the carrots I run into issues after a few days as they're too high in VA, but unpasturized orange juice did work better, however that has its issues too like being too high in sugar. It seems high beta carotene foods like carrots, oranges now give me an excess adrenaline response (like if I were to take copper) which I didn't have before the VA detox or the first month I started the detox and it seems to be because they enable they activate the copper in my body so its bioavailable. I do not get this same reaction from other high sugar things like milk chocolate.
It is clear copper is getting dumped when I go low VA and the cholestasis is reversed as I get copper toxicity symptoms like depersonalisation, autistic symptoms, low energy, low libido, brain fog and molybdenum can help some of the symptoms, but it seems the copper getting released isn't bioavailable at all as I have 0 tolerance for foods higher in iron so my guess is my ceruloplasmin is low, and when I have things to boost it like beta carotene foods and whole food vitamin c, then my copper metabolism is restored and my motivation comes back, tolerance for iron foods restored, just I have the issue of too much adrenaline so I feel somewhat manic and anxious.
Taking the copper antagonists like zinc, selenium, molybdenum in tiny amounts based on tolerance also made my iron metabolism/tolerance a lot worse even with the molybdenum being helpful for some of the copper toxicity symptoms.
I did donate blood a week ago as my ferritin levels have been at 300 twice now in the tests I did this year, I didn't seem to feel much benefits from the blood donation afterwards and I did feel a bit faint at the time they were drawing blood. They did only take 250ml as it was a research center so they take random amounts but it's probably better they took less considering I felt a bit faint and it was my first time donating.
So interesting @alexm thanks for posting your observations and thoughts.
On the vA detox my iron results got more dysregulated not better as predicted. Higher ferritin, higher TIBC. Never really understood what was going on. Not had testing done in last couple of years though. Removing much of my high whole food vC could explain it. Recently I’ve been putting my food into Cronometer and realising how low my vC intake really is. I’ve always kept in fruit and vegetables but not high vC ones. I’m not hitting RDA for vC. I’ve started buying more high vC fruit this last couple of weeks. Food for thought.
Grant found lowering vA led to a higher vC levels in his body. Maybe lowering vA does help. Idk. However, during detox often these things need to be supported until vA low enough, if that does indeed lead to naturally higher vC levels.
Just emphasises how supplements and foods are not the same and there can be unintended consequences of limited diets. A realisation I’m having more each day. I knew it but now I really KNOW it!!
I never found any consistent relief from my symptoms by either eating fruit or supplementing ascorbic acid. I now think Morley Robbins is a crackpot just like Smith...a misfit who created his own little world by interpreting the scientific literature largely in the absence of discussion with the community of scientists that generated that literature in the first place.
In my searches to learn more about Tyrosinase, I could never really track down information about where it comes from...either endogenously or exogenously. Based on the name, Tyrosinase is an enzyme that presumably deals with the protein Tyrosine, of which there is a lot in meat. I'm pretty sure the body makes its own Tyrosinase as needed and you don't need to get it from food. You certainly don't need to get it from plant food. I'm also pretty sure your body doesn't even use enzymes ingested from food because they should be denatured by your stomach acid and your own digestive enzymes, so whatever Tyrosinase you might ingest from either meat or plant foods is probably destroyed and never actually makes it into your bloodstream intact.
The other idiotic thing about Morley's claim is that virtually every animal except humans produces its own ascorbic acid endogenously (as it probably does with Tyrosinase, whatever the actual role of Tyrosinase might be in the body). Ascorbic acid is most certainly the "active" element in Vitamin C, and you can get sufficient amounts from meat alone if you aren't eating a ton of carbohydrates.
The body should regulate the uptake of dietary iron via hepcidin, and there is no way even elite athletes like Shawn Baker need all the iron they consume from meat, so pretty much everyone should be shunting some iron to the colon for elimination. Yet most people on carnivore don't have GI problems, and any they had prior to carnivore tend to quickly resolve. The extra iron could still be exacerbating intestinal dysbiosis in some people, but there's got to be another reason for the dysbiosis in the first place. In my case, I think my GI symptoms stem from excessive amounts of mucus, taurine, and glucuronide deconjugation in my colon as a result of Vitamin A elimination. I'm back to trying a combination of bentonite clay, psyllium husk, and a tiny bit of charcoal to see if I can shift the balance.
I don't know what became of @michele, but since writing that post I've come to think that larger amounts of ascorbic acid actually promote oxidation of Vitamin A, which leads to faster elimination of Vitamin A from the body as retinol gets converted to retinaldehyde and retinoic acid. It's possible that having low levels of iron in the body does mitigate symptoms resulting from Vitamin A toxicity, and that @michele was alleviating symptoms by maintaining low levels of iron while simultaneously promoting elimination of Vitamin A with large loads of Vitamin C. Or it could be that she didn't have Vitamin A toxicity at all, which I think is probably most likely, although it's been a very long time since I read about her case. As @jiri has been saying lately, I question whether Grant's illness actually resulted from Vitamin A as well...he seems to have changed a lot of variables at once by choosing the diet he's been on.
Thanks for your update @wavygravygadzooks
I really don’t know what I think about iron, copper and vitamin C or ascorbic acid. I don’t like Morley’s group as it’s one of these ‘my way or the highway’ groups, that Garrett Smith’s has turned into too. I would like to understand why my ferritin got higher and also my TIBC while detoxing vA. Lots of people seem to have copper issues too. I think there is something being missed. Maybe it’s the choline issue that’s affecting these things too. I’ve been doing something wrong. I’m now addressing choline deficiency so time will tell if things improve.
I do believe that Grant had vA toxicity. Mine was such a clear cut case that I have no doubt about mine. However, I think while removing excess vA we need to be very careful to supply all the supporting nutrients. I think a high meat diet probably does this better than most. I didn’t eat a high meat diet.
The only time I've ever had my ferritin checked was January of this year when it was 323 ng/dL (range: 38-380)...so, after 1.5 years of low Vitamin A diet, ferritin was kind of high but not above the range.
I don't have any clear answers about the relationship between iron, copper, and Vitamin C when dealing with Vitamin A toxicity, but my impression at this point is simply that there is going to be disturbance in the homeostasis of these nutrients while the body relieves itself of the excess Vitamin A. The longer and more intense that process is, the worse the imbalance. Hopefully I'm not doing too much permanent damage with the route I've chosen, but I am thoroughly convinced that the best method of healing is putting the body back in the environment to which it is best adapted, which to me means feeding it as much meat and animal fat as it asks for while minimizing all the physical and mental stressors of modernity.
I entirely agree that reducing stressors is key.
I’m beginning to think that a high meat diet avoids some of the holes I’ve fallen into - choline deficiency, maybe NAD deficiency. I don’t digest meat well (low stomach acid) and therefore too much could putrefy in gut, which would be unhelpful. Also, I don’t really like eating meat. Therefore I would never go this route. However, I can see it’s actually quite a good idea for this detox for a number of reasons.
Have you tried Betaine HCl or anything to help bring stomach acid up? That seems like something that's relatively easy to fix in the short-term with supplements until your body corrects the problem. Seems like one of those vicious cycles where an absence of nutrients from meat leads to low stomach acid, which then makes it even harder to digest meat. Maybe if you can supplement temporarily, increasing meat intake will eventually right the balance.
It's possible you have an aversion to the taste of meat because you associate it with digestive upset, and if you get your stomach acid back up to par the aversion will eventually go away. I always hated vegetables since I was a kid, but once I convinced myself they were good for me and I forced myself to eat them regularly, I adapted to the taste. That was a terrible mistake, looking back, but the point is that you can probably overcome your aversion to the flavor of meat both physically and psychologically if you choose to. Think of all the weird foods different cultures consume that have offensive smells and tastes to people outside of those cultures, yet outsiders manage to overcome those aversions if they decide to.
My long-time friend has been a vegetarian since he was a kid. He told me he tried eating meat when he visited Africa because that's what the locals were serving him and he wanted to be polite. He had an aversion to the flavor as well. I think it's largely rooted in the psychology of either believing that it's harmful to you, or that it's unethical to eat it, as well as the basic fact that things you didn't eat regularly as a child or young adult often taste strange or unappealing until you make it a regular part of the diet. I can totally convince myself that something I'm eating has gone bad and cause myself to feel nauseous even though it hasn't actually gone bad (the nausea always passes soon after I stop eating whatever it is and therefore believe that I have saved myself from harm).