I needed to disable self sign-ups because I’ve been getting too many spam-type accounts. Thanks.
Why I don’t think that this is a legit theory anymore
Quote from clare on October 29, 2021, 6:56 amI generally don't recommend Wikipedia as a source of truth. "For some reason" it is not unbiased...
Clare, I trust you more than Wikipedia. And I would like to note that Gerson's views contradict not only Grant's theory, but also a lot of things what I learned from official medical science about the benefits of protein, salt, etc. So I'm experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance from this. But I was interested in it, because Gerson's views are easily explained.. scurvy and some of my other observations.
The fact that Charlotte has lived for almost a hundred years definitely deserves attention.
Yeah Gerson therapy is interesting because there are a lot of positive anecdotes for it and the diet is high in both beta carotene and retinol. My initial thought would be that its success is due to high levels of retinoic acid acting as chemotherapy given that retinoic acid is used as a chemotherapy drug. Maybe other nutrients in the diet help the liver deal with the onslaught of vitamin A. I doubt it's due to the raw food/enzyme element but who knows. I think it's important that we try to understand how it works otherwise there's going to be some cognitive dissonance with it here.
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on October 28, 2021, 12:07 pmEnemas shouldn't reach the small intestine unless you've got a serious problem with your ileocecal valve. Ff the main site of VA reabsorption is the small intestine, enemas aren't going to do anything to help.
Coffee retention enemas are unique and they are supposed to "work" in many ways. It has been years since my mom told me about why they were part of the therapy, but I remember that they stimulate gall bladder emptying, which is important for detox and for people on a very lowfat diet like Gerson. They also stimulate the liver to produce much higher levels of enzymes such as glutathione transferase. The caffeine is important but coffee also contains many other organic compounds that work on the liver. The point is not to clean the intestines. Because you are right, they only reach the very last part of the colon. The Merck Manual listed coffee enemas as a pain remedy until 1977
I've posted this before but it was a long time ago. The whole of this article is an important read for anyone doubting the essentiality of vitamin A.
The Experimental Induction of Vitamin A Deficiency in Humans
Vitamin A deficiency was induced in humans by several researchers with the important aim to determine the daily requirement of the vitamin for healthy adults. This proved to be unexpectedly difficult because of the large but variable reserves of the vitamin stored in the livers of healthy persons. Moore (18), by analysis of livers of accident victims in England, found a median value of liver reserves of ∼324 iu/g for a healthy British adult, with the enormous variability of 10 iu to 1500 iu/g liver.
........
The Sheffield Experiment
A most extensive and elaborate human experiment was carried out by Hume and Krebs (27) at the height of the Second World War in Sheffield, England from 1942 to 1944, at the request of the Ministry of Food, to provide information on the human requirement of vitamin A or carotene “more accurate than was then available.” As subjects, 20 men and 3 women were recruited, aged between 19 and 34 y. They were conscientious objectors to military service and, therefore, highly motivated to cooperate as experimental subjects. Sixteen subjects received a vitamin A and carotene-deficient diet, analyzed for adequacy in nitrogen, fat, carbohydrate, calcium, phosphate, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, nicotinic acid and ascorbic acid. Vitamin D was given as a supplement. Analyses of 12 different foods and of quantities of each food consumed in 2 sample weeks were carried out in five laboratories specializing in vitamins and nutrition (Universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Liverpool, Reading and Sheffield). In particular, total carotenoids and α- and β-carotene and vitamin A were determined in the deficient diet. Unavoidable total carotene was found to be ∼70 iu/d consumed. Even this was suppressed during 4 mo in 1943, when all fruits and vegetables were withheld. The deficient diet was tested in rats to ensure that it was biologically deficient in vitamin A activity. Plasma concentrations of carotene and vitamin A were measured simultaneously in two laboratories and checked against each other.
As controls, 2 subjects received the deficient diet with 2500 iu vitamin A/d (as esters) in oil; 5 subjects received 5000 iu of β-carotene, either as pure carotene in oil, or in previously analyzed carrots or spinach per day.
The first observed change was a rapid drop in the plasma level of carotene after 3 mo from 1500 iu to 120–400 iu/L. Vitamin A began a slow decline after 8 mo but decreased to ≤300 iu/L in only 2 of the 17 subjects by 1 y and one other after 1.5 y. Dark adaptation began to deteriorate slightly after 5 mo, with an increase in the transition time from cone to rod vision (Fig. 4), although a substantial impairment in dark adaptation occurred in only three subjects, preceded by the drop in plasma vitamin A level to 300 iu/L in 1–1.5 y. The three other subjects of the six remaining after 1.5 y showed no ill effects except a slight decline in plasma vitamin A.
Audiometry tests showed a loss of hearing in three of the deprived subjects and an improvement after dosing with the vitamin. They also exhibited slight hyperkeratosis of hair follicles. Hematologic tests could not confirm the steep decline of blood platelets reported by Wagner (26).
A curious seasonal oscillation was observed in dark adaptation, which deteriorated after 5 mo in the subjects fed the deficient diet (Fig. 5), coinciding with the winter months (November to February), and showed recovery during the following summer months. This seasonal effect, which was observed again during a second winter, could not have been caused by seasonal changes in carotene content of the diet because that was rigorously controlled. Furthermore, the deterioration was not accelerated when fruit and vegetables were completely eliminated from the depleted diet for four summer months. Hume and Krebs (27) suggested that the effect may have been due to changes in temperature (Fig. 5), although why cold should lower plasma vitamin A level remains unexplained.
These seasonal changes are reminiscent of the observations of Bloch (4) referred to above, reporting that all children in the Children's Home consuming the fat-free milk diet came down with xerophthalmia during March, April and May. Of course, these months differ from those in the Sheffield experiment. Perhaps xerophthalmia follows a seasonal decline of plasma vitamin A in winter by a few months.
Therapeutic tests were undertaken in the Sheffield study with the three subjects who showed the significant impairment in dark adaptation. One subject was given vitamin A orally as esters in oil (1300 iu/d) and showed the first improvement in dark adaptation in 2 wk. Two subjects were dosed with 2500 iu of β-carotene in oil. One recovered normal vision within 3 wk; complete recovery took 5.5 mo for the other. Subjects consuming cooked vegetables were found to excrete 59–76% of the food's carotene in their feces. The investigators found that, among the control volunteers who ate the depleted diet together with different amounts of carotene supplements, the dose of 5000 iu/d taken from various sources over 14–17 mo was just sufficient to maintain health and vision, although blood levels of vitamin A were somewhat lower than normal.
In their final summary, Hume and Krebs (27) recommended 2500 iu/d of vitamin A as the daily requirement. They considered this to be “an estimate … to cover individual variations and to leave a margin of safety.” For carotene, taking account of individual variation, Hume and Krebs proposed 3000 iu daily as a “minimum effective dose.” However, if supplied in cooked vegetables, because of losses in feces, they recommended 7500 iu/d “as being a figure roughly representative of the different sources of carotene in the diet.”
I've seen a study that shows significant gallbladder emptying when consuming coffee orally. Are you sure there's proof of gallbladder emptying with enemas?
Both the gallbladder and glutathione response to coffee consumption seem to me to be a direct action to eliminate the "many other organic compounds that work on the liver", and possibly to eliminate the caffeine.
I've mentioned this repeatedly in the past...if xenobiotic plant compounds, like those from coffee, get absorbed through the intestines, then the body has to mount an antioxidant response (glutathione) to mitigate the potential harm from those compounds, and it has to get rid of them via the liver, which is likely to happen by excreting them in bile. The main question is, is there a net gain by "forcing" your body to increase glutathione and liver action in response to plant toxins? I doubt it. If your body has the ability to increase glutathione and liver action in response to plant toxins, why wouldn't it have already increased those actions if it needed to take care of existing waste/toxins? You're basically suggesting that your body does not know when it needs glutathione or to dump waste/toxins in bile, and that it needs you to feed it plant toxins in order to accomplish that. Makes no sense to me...
@tim-2 I can't find where you said something about lactoferrin that it's bad? G.S. has new video where he talks about it.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkVnB0wtakE I really hope that my experiment with goat kefir will work. Detoxing iron, copper, lowering pathogenic bacteria, candida etc.. and fixing my microbiome. I also started with some apples and I would love to eat some legumes here and there.. I was eating low FODMAP for years and it doesn't work without pectin... I can poop at all on low FODMAP diet..
Quote from wavygravygadzooks on October 29, 2021, 11:32 amI've seen a study that shows significant gallbladder emptying when consuming coffee orally. Are you sure there's proof of gallbladder emptying with enemas?
Both the gallbladder and glutathione response to coffee consumption seem to me to be a direct action to eliminate the "many other organic compounds that work on the liver", and possibly to eliminate the caffeine.
I've mentioned this repeatedly in the past...if xenobiotic plant compounds, like those from coffee, get absorbed through the intestines, then the body has to mount an antioxidant response (glutathione) to mitigate the potential harm from those compounds, and it has to get rid of them via the liver, which is likely to happen by excreting them in bile. The main question is, is there a net gain by "forcing" your body to increase glutathione and liver action in response to plant toxins? I doubt it. If your body has the ability to increase glutathione and liver action in response to plant toxins, why wouldn't it have already increased those actions if it needed to take care of existing waste/toxins? You're basically suggesting that your body does not know when it needs glutathione or to dump waste/toxins in bile, and that it needs you to feed it plant toxins in order to accomplish that. Makes no sense to me...
You're right, it doesn't make sense. It seems like such a strange thing and Dr. Gerson didn't invent it - the military used them when there was nothing else and the soldiers were so grateful for the pain relief that they realized there was something to it. I certainly don't have detailed info on it. But Dr. Gerson said that his cancer patients would seem to improve and then were dying of hepatic comas before he added the enemas in. Their livers simply were overwhelmed with the breakdown products of the tumors. He didn't think they were necessary for other diseases but definitely for cancer. My mom was always able to stop a migraine in its tracks with one, both when she had the cancer and when it was gone and she was off the program, where drinking coffee wasn't even a close second. Charlotte had one every day into her fifties, and then increased to two a day. Do you think drinking coffee might also help with A mobilization?
I can't remember sorry. Anything not a vitamin that I saw benefit in I would try to work out how to avoid roadblocks to endogenous production rather than start supplementing. You know anything with "lacto" triggers me though... jk
My gut health was so poor in 2019 when I started a low vitamin A diet. Nothing changed after being on a low vitamin A diet for some time but taking SIBO herbs made a massive permanent difference. Since then my gut health has kept improving slowly and I haven't been been taking any herbs. I think depleting vitamin A has really helped. For me SIBO herbs + a low vitamin A diet have been the answer. I couldn't eat any whole grain, legume or fruit without massive problems but now these foods don't affect me when eaten in normal amounts. When I tried probiotics it was a disaster, they made my condition worse. I naively tried them without doing much research on SIBO. Probiotics are not even close to replicating the extremely diverse gut microbiome anyway.
My argument is simple:
(A) Saladino was on a vegan diet that was high in plant defensive compounds, and it contained some amount of beta-carotene, probably a fairly high amount.
(B) Saladino then switched to a carnivore diet for over a year that was high in retinoids from liver, and still contained some amount of beta-carotene from animal fat and honey, but probably far less than the amounts he was ingesting on a vegan diet.
(C) Saladino's skin problems disappeared on a carnivore diet high in retinoids and some beta-carotene. This is the first indication that plant defensive compounds are implicated in his skin problems and not Vitamin A.
(D) Saladino then tries reintroducing plant foods one by one to test for reactions while otherwise eating a carnivore diet still high in retinoids and still containing some beta-carotene.
(E) Saladino finds that he reacts to some plant foods and not others, with no correlation between beta-carotene content and symptoms.
(F) The most obvious conclusion is that Saladino's skin problems are the result of an immune response to particular plant compounds found in only certain plant foods, and is not the result of Vitamin A consumption in the form of either retinoids or carotenoids.
With regards to proving Vitamin A isn't a vitamin...are you sure I am setting the bar too high, or are you setting the bar too low? You are betting against hundreds of peer-reviewed studies conducted by hundreds of different researchers over many decades, and betting in favor of a single person with an n=1 experiment who is hellbent on proving Vitamin A in all its forms is purely toxic. You are suggesting that none of those researchers were critical scientists approaching their work objectively, who would have called out errors in previously published conclusions if they had found any, which is ridiculous because academics are constantly finding ways to refute the work of others and argue that their own hypothesis is correct. Academics in the modern era are cutthroat, largely due to stiff competition for research funding and faculty positions, but you think they're all collectively just playing into some delusion about Vitamin A being a vitamin?
Scientific conclusions are built around statistics. Statistics are used to judge the likelihood of given outcomes. If you want to approach the topic of Vitamin A scientifically, then you have to acknowledge that the likelihood of it not being a vitamin is minuscule, given the existing knowledge. Is it possible? Sure, in science, almost anything is technically possible, even if the likelihood is practically zero. But the evidence is heavily stacked against Vitamin A not being a nutrient. Don't forget that there are numerous nutrients we ingest in trace amounts that become toxic if consumed in excess, and that anything consumed in excess is toxic, which means there could be a fine line between amounts that are beneficial and those that are toxic depending on an individual's ability to eliminate excess.
If Vitamin A is a toxin, I am yet to hear anyone provide a good reason for why so many animals would store such large amounts of it, risking death, when they don't regularly store large amounts of anything else that is toxic, unless it is something like venom that is well-contained and has obvious deployment mechanisms and purposes.
To be clear, I'm not saying there isn't some potential medicinal benefit from coffee or coffee enemas that I don't understand. I'm just saying that the avenue of benefits is probably not coming from increased glutathione and liver/gallbladder activity. Then again, I suppose there could be some convoluted knock-on effect whereby coffee enables the body to produce more glutathione if, for example, the coffee is suppressing inflammation by killing cancer cells, freeing the body to due its normal business more effectively.