180DegreeHealth, from the beginning, has been about two primary things:
- Slaying widely-held nutritional myths
- Figuring out what the hell is causing an accelerated increase in nearly all health problems worldwide over the past century, the last 40 years in particular, and determine how best to turn those trends “180 degrees.”
Admittedly, 180D has done a lot more of #1 than #2. In fact, because the pursuit of #2 attracted so many extreme health fanatics and disordered eaters, I felt obligated to mostly drop the latter and shout “EAT AN EFFING SLICE OF PIZZA AND RELAX” from the rooftops.
But it’s scary out there people. For example, in just 40 years, the Alzheimer’s rate in 75-85 year olds in North America increased by 4,000%. Many other inflammatory and degenerative diseases have seen increases nearly as scary in that time period. We can’t just give up because some of our failed extreme diet experiments didn’t work out. We’ve got to figure this out.
And so, I present to you today a really great lead about what might be causing all this, something that might possibly slay THE most sacred nutritional cow, and something that might have real potential to reverse the horrifying recent health trends.
Keep in mind, this is mostly just a theory. Most theories are completely wrong. A very few are even partially correct. I’m not 100% convinced about it, and you shouldn’t be either. You shouldn’t be 100% convinced about anything in science. Nothing is ever set in stone, and one new discovery can dramatically upend everything that has come before it.
What’s the theory?
The theory is that excess accumulation of Vitamin A in the body is the primary cause of body-wide inflammation. This inflammation is invoking an immune response, and the immune response itself is doing even more damage on top of it (via autoimmunity, basically).
Sounds pretty preposterous upon first glance. I mean, we’re talking about Vitamin A here. You know, the FIRST VITAMIN ever discovered. It’s a substance found in almost every food. The most common form of vitamin A is retinol, and is used on the eye, hence the name (retinol as in retina).
But it starts to sound a lot less preposterous when you think of it like this…
There has been a huge increase in most inflammatory and immune conditions over the last 40 years. So what changed significantly 40 years ago and continued to get worse?
Well, there’s the low-fat diet craze. There’s the switch to high fructose corn syrup. We started playing video games and using computers. We started using a hell of a lot more chemicals, additives, and flavor enhancers in food.
Those sound bad, and most pin the blame such things without needing to see much evidence, but there’s not really much of a theory that one can build about how those things cause such a tidal wave of inflammation and the immune system basically going apeshit to boot.
The increase in vitamin A consumption, however, is much more compelling. Right in line with the dramatic rise in illness was a dramatic rise in vitamin A consumption.
- Right around 1980 the U.S. started pumping supplemental vitamin A into milk, breakfast cereal, infant formula, margarine, and other foods. Other nations followed suit.
- The use of vitamin A-loaded multivitamins absolutely skyrocketed (over 50% of U.S. citizens take a vitamin A-laden multivitamin daily)
- The skin cancer scare started, and everyone began lathering themselves with sunscreen–rich in vitamin A palmitate.
- Acne creams chock full of vitamin A (I used to use prescription Retin-A) were squirted on every pimpled face, later followed by the notorious vitamin A-based Accutane
But that’s not all!
The consumption of foods rich in plant-sourced vitamin A (as carotenoids) went wild! Global tomato consumption more than doubled. Year-round fresh fruit and vegetable availability increased dramatically. The boon in healthy nutrition (attempts at it, at least) increased wildly. Fruit and vegetable juice consumption skyrocketed. I mean, hardly anyone knew what a smoothie was in 1980. In 2005 I heard a kid once say, “Who the hell eats a smoothie for breakfast?” The 2018 answer to that question is of course, “EVERYONE!”
And then of course there’s salads. And kale. KALE! Yes, humans have actually been trying to eat it for years now.
Okay, I think we can all agree that the consumption of vitamin A has gone way up over the past 40 years. Now, why the hell is that a bad thing?
So, certainly you’ve heard something along the lines of “taking too many vitamins can be bad.” Yeah, REAL bad. Vitamin A is by far the vitamin with the worst reputation when it comes to getting too much of it. The list of symptoms you can get from taking too much vitamin A is a mile long, and doesn’t sound very pleasant.
That’s an acute condition, and can be easily and quickly fixed by going back to relatively normal vitamin A consumption levels.
The theory put forward by Grant Genereux is that vitamin A, a fat soluble vitamin, is stored away in the liver. The liver does NOT have unlimited storage capacity for vitamin A, so when the liver becomes saturated with it, it gets stored as retinoic acid (a nasty, inflammation-inducing substance used for chemotherapy and acid peels and the like) all over the body–where it becomes a trigger for inflammation and a belligerent response from the immune system.
Once you reach that point of saturation, all of the vitamin A you ingest is a potent “poison.” Grant believes that the disease patterns seen worldwide, and the sudden rise, has all the markings of a poisoning, not of a degenerative disease process:
Does it not make some intuitive sense that whatever is causing these diseases; it just has to be something pervasive, yet subtle, in our environment? Something that is so obvious that it’s being ignored and overlooked. Something so little and almost trivial, that it’s never too much of a suspect. Something that is right under our noses. Something we’ve been told, and we assume, is good for us. Yet, it’s something that can have a profound, and devastating effect on the human body.
Additionally, once you understand that the root cause of the autoimmune diseases, and many of the mental health disorders, is a poisoning, you’ll understand why all the various drugs are utterly useless. Or maybe this vitamin A subclinical toxicity is not obvious? After all, this is a very subtle and tricky situation that develops slowly over a long period. It’s more or less documented to be hugely unlikely to happen on as wide a scale as it is. But it is happening, just with mostly small or subclinical amounts of this potential toxin accumulating in the wrong places in the human body.
Just to be clear here, this is not at all classic hypervitaminosis A. No, it’s far worse because the saturation levels are higher. I think it’s insidious Vitaminosis A. This is a very slow build up to near saturation and thereafter remaining in a state of chronic subtle overflow of what now becomes a toxin. This process is so well documented and clinically proven, that I think we can consider it to be an absolute fact. Earlier on I asked what could possibly cause the head to toe self-destruction of the human body that we see with the autoimmune diseases. Now we know; it’s actually a well-proven, and well-documented fact too. It’s retinoic acid.
How could a “vitamin” be causing all of this?
Well, in Grant’s second book, Poisoning for Profit, he does a pretty damn good job of breaking down the flaws in the original experiments that identified this substance as the very first “vitamin.” It may not actually be a vitamin at all, but simply a common toxic substance found in food that our livers normally keep under containment, and that our bodies have learned how to use over generations (for example, vitamin A is released from the liver to fight infections. It works since, you know, it’s poison!). As most of you nutrition nerds know, liver is by far the most concentrated source of vitamin A, and is considered by most nutritionists to be a superfood. (Cod liver oil has almost a religious following in circles like The Weston A. Price Foundation, but many have gotten burned by consuming too much of it. Like, literally burned.)
Grant also bought some gerbils and fed them a zero vitamin A diet with no ill effect. Quite the contrary. Awww, look at those cute lil’ fuckers! Reminds me of my two gerbils back in the day, which I named Koko B. Ware and Leapin’ Lanny Poffo, because I’m the awesomest at naming stuff.
Some frisky gerbils that outlived the supposed vitamin A deficient lab animals in experiments nearly 100 years ago is mildly reassuring at best though. What about humans?
Grant has been avoiding all sources of vitamin A 100% for nearly four years I believe. Still kicking. Still able to see. In fact, he reversed a mile-long laundry list of serious, debilitating health problems doing so (eczema, weight gain, and dementia most notably), and even had most of his gray hair turn back to brown in his 50’s.
The Andersen family has avoided vitamin A for 17 years as of this photo (parents aged 44 and 57 in the photo). Even the kids have hardly had a trace of vitamin A in their entire lives. Man, they’re really in rough shape! They have no eyes! :)
Vitamin A is supposed to be a key nutrient for skin health. Sorry lady, I want to see more of your skin. For science of course!
Note, Charlene “lizard skin” Andersen has noted her health problems (asthma, eczema, Lyme disease, and others) are rekindled by consuming liver, which she grew up eating frequently and having a strong affinity for.
Enough of that. Suffice it to say that there’s a LOT more to the vitamin A story.
While most will just assume that Grant healed himself of his problems by removing all allergens (since he whittled his diet down to just a few foods), or PUFA (he consumed hardly any in his diet as well)–or just flat out dismiss it because he’s an engineer so therefore couldn’t possibly know his ass from a hole in the wall–I assure you there is more here than that. Again, the theory shouldn’t sweep you off your feet and turn you into a zealot overnight. But it’s something to be open to.
As Grant states at the end of his first book, Extinguishing the Fires of Hell:
However, even with all this evidence, I’m not asking you to simply believe that this theory is correct. I’m only asking you to believe that it is quite possible for it to be correct. Whether it is correct or not is still an open question. The responsible answer to that question is that we really don’t know just yet. The great part of this investigation is that you now have an opportunity to help prove it one way or the other. We need more evidence, and a lot more results to prove it correct or not. The quickest way to get that evidence is for more people to apply this simple little diet experiment and report their results. I wish I could say the results will be fast and easy, but they will not be. This process will take time. I expect somewhere around three to twelve months, or longer for most adults. Therefore, we need to be both patient and diligent. Additionally, we need to be very careful not to jump to conclusions. This is serious business, deadly serious business. Please don’t report false results. Don’t report wishful thinking. I’d view doing so to be completely amoral and regarded as fraudulent. Also, please report all results. Both failures and successes need to be reported. For eczema, psoriasis, lupus, and most other autoimmune diseases, please post both before and after pictures.
So what should you do with this information??
Well, for starters I think it would be safer to avoid vitamin A-laden supplements, including cod liver oil, and fortified foods (milk and breakfast cereal being the worst), until we have more information. We need to be SURE that these things are beneficial and not harmful before consuming them willy nilly. Thanks but no thanks for not diligently doing your homework before implementing nation-wide dietary changes, government! (grumbles, feels slight remorse over burning that Ron Paul poster a few years back).
Also, like I have recommended since always, you should use shirts and hats as sunscreen, not white goop full of vitamin A. Vitamin A makes the skin super sensitive to sunlight. I stopped using it because I got tired of getting horribly burned in minutes when I forgot to put it on, even with a dark tan. As Grant points out in his book, slathering vitamin A cream on rodents causes skin cancer. Not an INCREASE in cancer rates. 100%. Every. Single. One. Even without sunlight.
That’s what you should do if you’re healthy. That will keep your vitamin A intake likely within the boundaries of what your liver can deal with, and hopefully you won’t run into long-term problems.
You should also keep your liver healthy and highly metabolically active. There are many factors involved in liver health and function, but a couple no brainers are preferentially opting for saturated fat over unsaturated fat (to help avoid fatty liver disease), and keep your metabolism high. The liver is among the most metabolically active tissues in the body, and its metabolic activity slows dramatically to lower metabolic rate when you are overstressed and/or undernourished (calorically). This is perhaps why stress and a lowered metabolism can cause autoimmune flareups, and interventions that raise metabolism and alleviate stress are so effective. For a while at least.
If you’re ill and overrun with an autoimmune disease or other inflammatory, supposedly “incurable” condition, well hell, give a Vitamin A-depleted diet a whirl. What have you got to lose, really? I think this “Villain A” theory is promising enough to explore.
How does one deplete themselves of vitamin A? Eating none of it for 7 months or so should do the trick, if Grant’s estimates are correct. The diet is brutally restrictive, limited mostly to grains (he used rice), white vegetables (think peeled white potatoes, turnips, celeriac, parsnips, jicama, cauliflower), beef, and raisins and grape juice. But it beats eating only beef, which seems to be all the rage these days when it comes to toppling autoimmune conditions and mental disorders.
Note, a diet of beef and water only contains no vitamin A. Coincidence? Decide for yourself.
We’ll discuss this more on an ongoing basis for sure. To best participate in discussions, I recommend reading Grant’s two books HERE and HERE.
And also reading through the lengthy and highly contentious thread on the Ray Peat forum about it HERE. Franko answers questions about it and debates with more energy than I could ever muster, so I would definitely check that out.
And of course read the comments here! I’m sure there will be at least a few hundred.
Chart put together by 180D reader Jeanne of vitamin A content of common foods.
First! (Sorry, Carl)
Poor Carl. Congrats Turtlegurl. This is YOUR time to shine!
:-( I’m going to drink a bottle of cod liver oil. )-:
Sally Fallon would be so proud!
I have at least one interesting anecdote. A client, everytime she tries any vitamin A (per my recommendation…). She feels horrible and needs to stop…
You are obviously so confused. Are you talking A1 or A2? A1 for coagulation found in plant foods or A2 found in nato and fat of meat eating grass and cheese. The world is difficient in A1 but not A2. Don’t confuse people.
This is pretty stupid, you’re talking about vitamin K, not A.
An interesting theory but there are possible explanations. Chris Masterjohn had written a while ago about the need for balance among the fat soluble vitamins. If you have too much of one and too little of the others, then yes it will have a toxic effect. Vitamin A needs to be balanced by vitamin D in a certain ratio.
Regarding the theory about the liver excess of vitamin A, perhaps the person is not eating enough protein with the vitamin A in order to create retinol binding protein to transport the vitamin from the liver to the tissues? Perhaps they are deficient in copper? (This also affects transport of vitamin A from liver to serum).
Basically, I think a person who experiences vitamin A toxicity from the natural sources of it is deficient in a a lot of the other vitamins/minerals and that is the problem.
There are unique problems caused by vitamin A deficiency. It’s necessary for the urea cycle in protein metabolism (without vitamin A there is a significant decrease in ornithine transcarbamoylase enzyme for processing protein). Without a proper functioning urea cycle, you can have ammonia toxicity and that leads to neurological illness and potential death.
There is so much research on vitamin A in PubMed if you look for it. Then there is also the history of humankind going back many, many years eating natural sources of vitamin A and not being harmed by it. Great grandparents and ancestors ate liver and were not suffering from the chronic health epidemics we have today. It is not a poison in my opinion, unless you are taking it from unnatural sources and not balancing it with other nutrients.
DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Grassfed beef has vitamin A in the fat.
Yes, grassfed beef has vitamin A in the fat. The woman shown in the post tried eating it but it aggravated her symptoms so she has stuck with grain fed beef ever since.
Still wondering why I didn’t wake up in a cold sweat after I read that. I don’t know if Wonderland is for me, Matty Hatter….
?:^(
Yours truly,
Guy who’s been reading your blogs for like 10 years and who laughed Thundercats loud at the no eyes thing (standard email footer)
Grain fed beef, high in PUFAs.
Grain fed beef – NOT high in PUFA. At all.
Maybe you’re thinking of pork?
Beef fat only has like 2% PUFAs based on nutrition data.. Probably grain fed. How is that high? Grass fed has more PUFAs. Cows have desaturate enzymes and naturally hydrogenate most of the PUFAs.
Ok, that’s already a major red flag for me. I took a course on cows some years ago. They are just not biologically made to eat grain. It causes serious problems for them. So, cows are made to eat grass, and it produces vitamin A. The only thing you could argue at this point is that we either shouldn’t eat meat or shouldn’t eat the fat at least.
Anyway, hello, Matt, I’m wondering what you think of my situation:
I had my vitamin D tested in late 2015 (as part of trying to solve my chronic insomnia), and it was at 18, very low. The doctor told me to take 10,000 IU daily–that this was the dose he had seen was necessary to keep his patients up to 80, to so-called “ideal.” So I began doing this and also in early 2016 went to work on a farm for three months, where I was getting exposure principally on my arms. In March or April my level was in the 70s. I continued the supplement. I was on a kind of WAPF diet, but without the cod liver oil or even frequent liver consumption. None of those processed sources of vitamin A, just raw milk, eggs and butter.
In late 2016, I noticed my keratosis pilaris was spreading. I’d had it on my upper arms since being a teenager. Suddenly it was on my shoulders, back, etc… I didn’t make any connection with the D. Whenever I did tests my level was still “good”–once I stopped taking it for a couple weeks and my level dropped to the 50s, so a NP told me I needed it.
Mid/late 2017, my lips were suddenly constantly chapped. It was awful. They were always peeling. I read about the vitamin D, A, and K2 connection and dropped the D. I started retinol at 5,000 IU and one K2 drop of 200 mcg daily. My skin immediately dramatically improved. So I’ve been convinced that the D exacerbated a vitamin A deficiency. My KP has not totally disappeared: it flares up a tiny bit at some point almost every day (I don’t take the A at a consistent time of day). I’ve thought that I could use MORE.
I’m 25 and pregnant with my first child. Given the work of Dr. Price I figured I would be at a much higher risk of gingivitus and such ills without taking the A. I hate all this nutrition garbage but I wasn’t doing well without supplements anyway.
Need to add:
In fact I had already lowered my D dosage in late 2017 to 5,000 IU. In the winter of 2017-18 I had an almost constant cold. It was crazy–I had never experienced that and in fact was rarely ever sick. I dropped the D, took A, etc. just before the end of winter and the colds immediately vanished and my lips totally healed.
I’m not at all convinced that vitamin A is bad.
No one is saying that vitamin A is bad. All that Grant is saying is that once your liver is saturated with vitamin A, all sources of vitamin A that you consume become extremely inflammatory. That’s all. No one is saying it’s bad. It’s just that too much is bad, and if you’ve consumed too much and gotten ill from it, the solution is to eat NONE for a while. Like a 8 months or so.
My impression after reading all 3 of Genereux’s books was that *he* is saying Vitamin A is bad. He repeatedly refers to it as a poison. But I agree with Matt. It seems more likely that the problem only begins when the liver is saturated. The thing I just can’t seem to wrap my head around is why only vitamin A? Hypothetically, couldn’t a person have virtually no Vitamin A in their diet, but have a liver that is saturated with chemicals and other toxins, and then have a severe reaction to even the tiniest amount of A? Wouldn’t the solution then be to try to rid the body of the other toxins and not worry so much about vitamin A? I’ve never bought into “liver cleanses” but if that’s possible wouldn’t that help?
I believe vitamin a caused defective tooth enamel in my youngest child. There is plenty of evidence to support the vitamin a inoregnsncy causes problems. I’d suggest you read the Ebooks to understand best. My gingivitis and many other things have been completely cured by resolving a longstanding vitamin c deficit by taking up to 1.5 teaspoons/day of sodium ascorbate.
You’re not thinking about this correctly at all. Humans can eat TONS of vitamin A without ill effect. We’re built to eat vitamin A and store it safely in the liver. But once you exceed your limit, vitamin A starts acting like a potent toxin, and must be avoided completely for an extended period of time.
Interesting..I’ve had Keratosis Pilaris most of my life. In the more recent years I’ve notice it dissapear with sufficient sun exposure.
I was a thin, pasty kid, grew up eating a lot of shitty processed food. So I chalked it up to being nutritionally deficient, but all that processed food is enriched. I guess it could be due to an excess.
Do you think there is a difference in synthetic vitamins opposed to the naturally occurring?
Yeah, I think it would be foolish to equate synthetic and natural substances of any kind. But there are also a lot of foolish people thinking anything natural can’t possibly be harmful, and that’s DEFINITELY not true.
WHITE kernel corn varieties contain little to no beta carotene. Grasses such as fescue and legumes such as alfala contain MUCH greater amounts of beta carotene than a grain such as corn. So, grain fed animals should have much less vitamin A in their fat than grassfed animals…… especially if the grains they are fed are white in color.
Same thing with white fleshed sweet potatoes vs yellow fleshed sweet potatoes or white fleshed peaches vs yellow fleshed peaches and etc..
It has A2 in the fat so cheese as well
Nice synopsis and intro to Grant’s work – thank-you! Thanks also for the links to extra informations.
Read anything about lowered basal body temperature over generations?
I’m pretty sure that’s caused by metabolism-suppressing food and lifestyle factors (PUFA, stress, etc.) in the parents affecting the metabolic rate of the offspring. Then it continues again and again and again, getting worse each generation.
I’ve heard a theory that central heating (usually blasted way too hot) has a hand in that.
I disagree. Dr. William Donald Kelley and the late Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez had a93% cure rate in Cancer patients. They gave Vit A to those patients who were Parasympathetic dominant. But it was just one vitamin of many vitamins and minerals and enzymes in a collective and personalized protocol.
I believe that any vitamin and mineral taken in isolation or in extreme, can be harmful. Metabolic type is also important. If one is a Sympathetic dominant they require Vit D, and not Vit A. So, it also comes down to what type you are, including animals. Not everybody is the same and not everybody needs the same nutrients.
Doubtful they actually had a 93% cure rate.
Quickly disagree if you like. I think Grant has done a pretty good job showing that vitamin A isn’t a nutrient at all.
Yes, ratios of vitamin D and A matter. A lot. Grant has gone so far as to say that the primary benefits attributed to vitamin D are because it interferes with the effects of vitamin A.
Vitamin A may have some purpose/benefits, but instantly shooting down everything Grant has presented because of one supposedly effective protocol that used vitamin A for some patients is being overly quick to judge.
Oh Matt, if you only knew.. I would say to you the same thing, as don’t be so quick to shoot down the Kelley protocol without knowing anything about it. If there is one thing I have learned is that ‘new’ information does not mean, it is better or true.
All hyped up health protocols are shams until proven worthy, including Genereux’s vitamin A theory.
I had a dear friend, pt of Dr Gonzalez, who had two large breasts full of golf ball sized tumors and a prepare to die prognosis. She was then treated without surgery or chemo by Dr G. She had five wonderful years of life and died in her late 60s.
…. and yet everyone still refers to hormone D as a vitamin.
Matt,
What then describes the benefit of adding vitamin A to rice for certain impoverished regions in Africa where vitamin A deficiencies are said to cause blindness? I’m with ya on the fact that the government should not be adding any vitamins or minerals to our foods (i.e. adding iron was a huge mistake), but I think more information is needed to completely discount vitamin A as an essential nutrient. Some of it is probably needed, just not as much as people claim. I can’t believe people following Peat who are taking 50-100,000ius of vitamin A per day.
All I can say is OMG!!! Going through that list (thanks, Jeanne) of Vit A levels in my FAVORITE FOODS and seeing how much of that stuff is in it is horrifying! (that is IF this theory is correct). If it’s true, all Ray Peat followers are doomed!
And again it comes down to this: how much are you willing to give up to have a perfect body? But the thought of getting Alzheimer’s disease (just shoot me please!) will make me think twice about what I’m eating.
There are claims that certain treatments can be “liver cleanses”. Matt- can you “cleanse” your liver (or gallbladder, or anything else in your body?)? If I’m polluted with Vit A in my 60’s, is there any hope? (at least my skin still looks great from the retinol-LOL).
Lianda — I posted about this before, but I wonder if the benefits people report from those liver & gall bladder flushes are because they reduce Vit A stores?
Personally, I wouldn’t do one unless you’ve had a recent ultrasound verifying that you don’t have any real stones. Getting one lodged in a duct would mean emergency surgery.
Good guess. But I suspect Hidden Iron Toxicty is the bigger issue. It’s in everything now. Cultures that eat less iron and eat (or drink) natural herbs that chelate iron, life longer and with less rampant degenerative diseases. That simple.
Huh, everyone curing themselves avoiding vitamin A are eating shitloads of iron. Also, how does iron cause giant skin rashes and asthma?
The iron debate is too long winded to get into here, but knowing some of the sources you’ve read, you know all the answers I’d likely spout off anyway. So I’m sure you are familiar with iron toxicty as a theory for a lot of disease states.
Now I’m not defending vitamin A, and I admit this theory is super interesting, but what about the scores of people who cured themselves of all kinds of diseases while eating copious amounts of vitamin A and/or beta-carotene? Some of those restorative diets intentionally included massive amounts of things like carrot juice. You know this. You’ve undoubtedly seen and read about all kinds disease states that benefitted from it, including liver disease.
One man’s poison, as they say. There isn’t one cure for everyone. And maybe there’s rare cases where vitamin A and carotenoids are bad for some.
IMO, like the people feeling good on beef on water, these are just cases of extreme food sensitivity.
I’ll be very happy to be wrong and see a bunch of your readers start healing off a low-vitamin-a diet. Nothing would make me happier.
We’ll see.
I’ve heard of people curing themselves from virtually every disease with virtually every diet. You’re right about that.
I do think it’s probably more likely to be food sensitivities. But that still doesn’t answer what is causing all these food sensitivities. That’s the real disease, the root of which being much more important than the various palliatives that prevent symptoms from occurring.
It is only too common that most have a weak and faulty digestion, parasites, and a lack of enzymes and amino acids.
Food is contaminated, and doesn’t provide the nutrition it once had. They say the gut is our 2nd brain.
Gone through more of his book and the posts on raypeatforum, one striking thing to me is that he hasn’t even tested if vitamin A makes his eczema worse. After all this research and he just assumes it’s vitamin from foods rather than testing the isolated vitamin.
Another thing that would support that all of this is food intolerance, which I feel certain it is, is that he flares with coconut oil, and claims it liberates vitamin A from the tissues or something like that.
Okay.
Well then how come the poster on ray peat forum uses coconut oil exclusively.
Maybe they have different food intolerances, like pretty much everyone?
I mean look. He comes up with grand theory and then his solution is cut out like 99% of foods. He doesn’t even eat more than a tsp of olive oil a day. He’s on an extreme food intolerance diet, same as the beef and water eaters, same as the ray peat poster.
I agree with you, vitamin a villainy is an interesting theory and a lot of his research is facisnating, but this is a CLASSIC case of correlation does not equal causation.
He simply hasn’t even tested his own theory!
(Or he has and just doesn’t want to admit he was wrong.)
“But that still doesn’t answer what is causing all these food sensitivities. That’s the real disease,”
Exactly. Food sensitivity means that your immune system is mistakenly treating harmless things as pathogens, so the root of all this is a confused and overly aggressive immune system.
I’m surprised you don’t really seem to consider the microbiome in your discussions. I haven’t followed your work for that long so I’m not sure if you have in the past. But what has changed most in the last 40 years is our microbiome and we know that this is indicated in pretty much every disease. Modern foods, chemicals etc all affect the microbiome.
I have a low metabolism and tried to follow your and Dr Gs recommendations for the past year. Well my health got worse and worse. Now turns out I have a hidden fungal infection and high oxalates and have been feeding those all along by eating more sugar.
Now I’ve also been taking vitamin A and stopped after reading these books as I had gotten really sensitive to the sun. I freaked out about it for a while. But oxalates can have the same effect and I won’t know which one was the cause. But I’d like to say that the low vitamin A diet is also low in oxalates so who knows. I don’t think we can pin the rise of chronic disease on one thing but taking the microbiome out of the discussion misses a huge part of the puzzle.
Hear me out real quick. Before considering vitamin A, I was thinking the carnivore diet affected gut bugs, pathogens, and their metabolic waste production that could interact with our immune system. Also their gut diversity and gut integrity to where our immune systems are calming down, BUT our improvements come with the drawback of super sensitivities.
So what if on the opposite spectrum instead someone had a wide variety of foods that included good amounts of fermentable material, and this person also had good diversity as well, so their happy gut bugs and happy gut lining (you know..vitamins and the short chain fatty acids that supposedly tightens the junctions, promotes healthy cell death etc..) allow us to feel good with a variety of food without shitty reactions.
So with eating just beef we somehow create a beneficial immune response by eliminating most fermentation besides mucous with the drawback of not being able to handle other foods anymore and perhaps unfavorably lowering populations and species of gut organisms.
As I’ve stated, and a couple others in this comment section, could it be possible that these positive changes in these people eating nothing but beef and salt have more to do with the microbiome and fermentation or lack thereof and its interaction with our immune system and everything else in between. Zonulin and permeability, “endotoxins” production, etc… I have no idea but I have been thinking that gut diversity and integrity is what makes someone able to handle more foods and be more resilient to stressors of all kinds including pathogens and food substances.
But now, taking vitamin A into consideration I feel clueless again. I realize there are many other factors and everything Ive discussed is very generalized. I apologize for being confusing but I really wanted to throw these ideas around. It’s important we consider everything seeing how its all still a mystery.
There are people that claim to have increased their tolerance and even preference to larger quantities and varieties of fermentable material in their diet (everything like resistant starch, gos fos etc) and experience benefits including subsiding of negative food reactions.
Who knows like I always say…The low vitamin A diet having similar positives results as the carnivore diet just makes me wonder is is vitamin A, a change in the gut in some way, or something else? Thanks for reading.
Yes, while we must have iron, too much is toxic, especially when the U.S. government has mandated iron fortification since 1941…. then other countries followed.
Really interesting. Thanks for sharing! we don’t intentionally consume vitamin A other than in raw milk and dairy, and we never use sunscreen. We also have never been great at eating lots of vegetables. ironically, the more I read, the more it seems that my good health and that of my kids is basically due to ignoring ALL dietary advice… Even that which seems sound (mainly out of laziness or budget factors..why would I buy salad when it provides so little calories?!)
Okay, I am bummed. We drink raw goat’s milk (from our own goats) and goats convert all carotenes to vitamin A. Right now I have four gallons in the refrigerator. And three pounds of cheese.
Yeah but at least those are not fortified with vitamin A. I think that may be why so many report miraculous health improvements when they switch from fortified dairy to raw milk.
Very interesting idea!
So does this apply to both retinol and beta carotene? Does the liver actually store both, or just retinol?
The link you gave for hypervitaminosis A mentioned the following:
“High intake of provitamin carotenoids (such as beta carotene) from vegetables and fruits does not cause hypervitaminosis A, as conversion from carotenoids to the active form of vitamin A is regulated by the body to maintain an optimum level of the vitamin. Carotenoids themselves cannot produce toxicity.”
If I’m understanding correctly, it seems to me that it would just be retinol based vitamin A food and supplements, so certain veggies and supplements with just beta carotene would be ok to eat.
Would love to hear your thoughts. I have a family member with autoimmune issues who can’t seem to make any headway even with multiple doctor treatments.
Great article, and always looking forward to the next post! Thanks Matt!
Grant seems very certain that carotenes are problematic, and that they are just a double-bonded retinol molecule.
I do suspect that many strict vegans who consume no retinol, may be getting such great results because of it, and/or because they convert carotenes to retinol very poorly. But that’s just a guess.
It is my understanding that synthetic retinol is different from animal derived. Is this correct and does Grant address this in his book?
Yes. Grant believes all forms of vitamin A are the same in the end, but the worst form is the kind typically used for fortifying foods and in sunscreens, vitamin A palmitate. Being blended with palmitate just makes it more absorbable I believe?
And of course the more harmful downstream metabolites of vitamin A – retinoic acid and transretinoic acid, such as the types used in acne medication.
It was late 2012 when I came to believe that my symptoms (PseudoTumor Cerebri or Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension), ascites, peeling and severely dry skin, eyes, hair, were a direct result of a toxic load of vitamin A. I stopped eating foods with it, and had found that the syntethtic water-soluble form was the worst!
I ignored warnings to avoid PUFA and switched to using Earth Balance, which was all I could find locally that did not add Vitamin A Palmitate. I ate non-oily white fish, ?Sari? brand non-fortified nutritional yeast flakes, Quaker Life cereal – the only one I could find in my small town, that did not contain vitamin A, and the classic version non-fortified rice milk. I ate a lot of white rice too, and made my own breads with organic flour.
I ate sugar! I made cookies all the time. I never purposely reduced calories, but lost 19 pounds over the course of a few months – most notably the ascites that had plagued me for years. My face and especially my eyes lost the swelling and looked normal again. No more proptosis! My migraines resolved.
Until January of this year.
At that point, I looked back at my 6 years of avoiding retinol and suddenly felt very uncertain about what I had done. Although I didn’t have as much saved to my iCloud folder named Hypervitaminosis as Grant did to his computer, it was pretty respectable in content. And I deleted it all! I was THAT worried over my decision to remove this vitamin from my life. I started eating dairy again, and buying cereal without looking at the fortification list.
I found Grant’s books in March of this year. By that time, I was suffering from migraines, edema, vision changes, extreme fatigue, etc. Everything was building up again. I was unable to read more than half of his work, due to my symptoms. I wanted to write to him, but was too tired.
When was it you sent out the first email about this upcoming Vitamin A post? Was that June or July? Talk about synchronicity! I’m seeing it from many different sources now. Someone on a PseudoTumor Cerebri forum believed that all migraines could be traced back to retinol – she wrote about that years ago!
I am back to removing the retinol foods from my diet (I never removed beta carotene sources, because my 23andme report says I am a poor converter anyway). My kidneys felt better almost overnight. My head gradually feels a bit better everyday, the intense pressure subsiding). In fact, everything starts to feel more normal. My skin looks much better.
I will probably always doubt myself, because I am not a researcher, medical professional or scientist. But like the Anderson family you mentioned, I did not have health issues when I removed it, as far as what standard twice-yearly blood work shows. My PCP and insurance will not agree to anything but CBC and metabolic panels.
Fortification of foods in 3rd world countries may or may not help the children. But it certainly looks dangerous to fortify foods in developed nations. I can’t even eat a Brown Sugar & Cinnamon PopTart!
Yeah, it might be personal conversion rate. Another possibility is that the presence of fat with carotenoids alters their absorption and conversion. Here’s one abstract that says “higher liver vitamin A concentrations were found in those [animals] that ingested higher fat levels.” It suggests that mild amounts of fat are enough to do this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12002680
If this is true, and the vitamin A hypothesis is correct, then that could explain why people report success on both very high-fat diets and very low fat diets.
In certain high fat (low carb) diets, the overall vitamin A content (as retinoids) is low enough for the body to store, if you’re eating mostly muscle meat. In very low fat diets, the carotenoids are poorly absorbed or converted into retinol, and since they’re water soluble, can be easily eliminated — if they’re absorbed at all.
In the middle ground, the highly palatable Western diet, we combine carotenoids with fat (salads with any oil, sauteed veggies, pizza with tomato sauce, etc). If fat does indeed increase carotene conversion to retinol, suddenly these colorful plants could be the highest source of retinol of any diet.
But that one study is hardly conclusive. Still, at first blush it appears to fit the facts, to me.
Interesting thoughts for sure Zogby. Thanks for that.
Matt,
Have you heard of Mikhaila Peterson’s all beef diet? I wonder if her low Vitamin A intake may be how she was able to cure herself of her autoimmune condition? Her father Jordan Peterson was able to cure his health problems as well by eating nothing but beef. I can’t help but wonder if there extremely low intake of Vitamin A is at least part of the reason for their health improvements.
Yes, and I think it’s more than part of the reason. The Peterson’s publicity of their diet definitely had an impact on my willingness to believe in the vitamin A theory. It certainly matches up perfectly.
Good stuff, thanks Matt and Zogby. Nice to read this comment section. Liked the post too. Keep up the good work. I started a Zero A diet almost one month ago and feel a handful of very good results. Less inflammation, better rest, more energy, higher concentration, less finger arthritis, better vision. What’s not to like? I’ve been scrubbing PubMed abstracts for clues. They’re there, just a lot of work sorting them out. Good luck, Johnny Zero
Hi pizzaholic. I posted a comment in Grant’s post about breast cancer some weeks back with a link to a study that showed benefits in changing ones diet from sad to whole fooda with plenty of fresh fruit and veg. The contestants was getting their betacaroten from whole foods not supplements and their blood were tested for betacarotene as well. The higher the value of the blood sample, the better for the long term survival rate it seemed.
I believe it is important to differ between fortified food amd supplements, and real food. Question is whether the betacarotene itself had a protective role, or if the contestants just stopped eating other vit A sources thus actually getting their levels down despite the betacarotene, or if plant foods may have other beneficial components that is also protective?
I personally believe this vit A thing being very interesting. But just looking at one side of the spectrum is a bit unfair. As there clearly are well done studies proving the opposite. But again, with whole foods and not supplememts.
Maybe someone needs to dig in to those studies as well so there is something to talk about :)
If fruit and veg were equally poisenous to synthetic retinol, all vegans and fruitarians and health nuts would have been dead by now from all their kale and carrot juicing.
Nearly all vegans, fruitarians, and health nuts have their health completely deteriorate in a decade or less, so not sure I’m on board with “it must be okay cuz fruitarians” idea.
And yes, using whole foods with hundreds of compounds, all with unique effects on the human body, make it difficult to glean anything useful pertaining to vitamin A.
True that! Veganism et al is not healthy in the long run for most people. But is that due to betacaroten or any of several other reasons?
If the theory of vitA-autoimmune disease connection proves to have validity, what are the chanses of developing autoimmune disease from going (plant based) vegan?
Sure would take longer time at least.
And can betacarotene turn into retinoic acid? As in, is the body capable of converting betacarotene – retinol – retinoic acid?
Also still curious whether pasteurization actually creates retinoic acid in milk products or if it takes higher temperatures (refering to the 1920 rat study where the rat chow contained strerile caseine)
Interesting read! My husband is 39 and out of no where in January started having daily partial seizures in his right frontal lobe. Some of them turn into complex seizures and he passes out. Most of them occur around lunch time.
No family history and no other symptoms. Nothing on his MRI other than some white spots typical of a smoker. Scrambling to find an answer. Any insight or good reads on something that may be connected?
Grant mentions a couple of cases of epilepsy being overturned on a vitamin A depletion diet. Seems to help my girlfriend with hers a lot.
Have you talked to your pal Dr. Garrett Smith about this? I know he used to recommend Vit A to many (most?) of his patients. He said it helped get calcium out of the tissue. Would be curious about his thoughts.
I haven’t. I know he feels strongly about vitamin A being useful in specific circumstances. He might not feel so strongly about it after reading Grant’s books.
Hello Matt,
I am fairly familiar now with Grant Genereux and his theory of vitamin A. I was hoping you could explain to me why the problems with vitamin A are not simply an imbalance of vitamin D?
I was thinking a deficiency of vitamin D would exacerbate any problems caused by consuming vitamin A, and with the raising of vitamin D levels, this would, in a way, raise the “threshold” of vitamin A that would cause problems. My thoughts were that a very vitamin D deficient person that reacts negatively to vitamin A, were to then become vitamin D replete, they would then find themselves able to consume much higher levels of vitamin A than before without issue.
I have asked this question to Grant, but he said he had not researched vitamin D much, in relation to his research, but admitted it could be factor.
A balance of all the fat solubles I believe is a sensible approach, rather than drastically limiting any of them, or an excess of any of them. I wondered if you could explain any of the flaws in this theory?
Thanks.
I think vitamin D is definitely an opposing factor to vitamin A. It helps, but it’s probably just part of the story. Just like good liver function and high metabolism helps but is just part of the story. The fact that vitamin A isn’t a nutrient at all and that animals and humans can do just fine for long periods of time with none, is enough to take a deeper look into its complete set of functions and what happens when too much is consumed over the long-term.
Thanks for the reply.
Vitamin D seems to be a hugely regulatory hormone in the body, and there are thousands of studies that back this up.
From Ray Peat’s email exchanges alone, he has said that adequate levels of vitamin D benefits: testosterone/cortisol balance, protective hormones pregnenolone and progesterone, using calcium, mineral metabolism, lower PTH, bone metabolism, immunity problems, improving T4-T3 conversion, lowering LH, etc.
With this information is it so far fetched to believe that the inability to consume vitamin A could be linked to a vitamin D deficiency?
In my experience Grant Genereux and the vitamin A movement seem to think of vitamin D as “just a vitamin A antagonist” or as you put it, “an opposing factor” and don’t seem to accept the countless studies, as well as anecdotal evidence recovering from ailments simply from recovering from a vitamin D deficiency. It almost seems like this movement is a step backwards from what we can understand from studies and health.
I completely agree that I think excess vitamin A could be a problem, but I think the vitamin A movement is completely ignoring a huge part of the health movement.
I think that it is also important to realize that Vitamin D and A are not isolated nutrients either. For example Magnesium is very important for utilizing Vit D. Vitamin A has a key role in helping make ceruloplasmin in the liver so that one may have good copper levels. Many people are either copper toxic or have an absolute copper deficiency. I am guessing that this Vit A problem may be affecting people’s copper, for good or for bad depending where you find yourself in a deficiency or excess. Again taking just Vit A is not a good idea. Minerals and vitamins all work together for a successful end result, which is why again, Dr. Kelley was a pure genius.
Magnesium needed for vitamin D is under appreciated still I think. I couldn’t get my levels up at all even with supplementing until I got my magnesium consumption optimal.
The doctor who really fueled the craze over Vit D has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from supplement companies and tanning bed associations.
According to a recent article, “rigorous clinical trials have failed to confirm the benefits suggested by early, preliminary studies. A string of trials found no evidence that vitamin D reduces the risk of cancer, heart disease or falls in the elderly. And most scientists say there isn’t enough evidence to know if vitamin D can prevent chronic diseases that aren’t related to bones.”
D probably has a certain role, but it may not be what we’ve been led to believe.
https://khn.org/news/how-michael-holick-sold-america-on-vitamin-d-and-profited/
This is AMA propaganda. Functional medicine has published hundreds of opposing opinion research pieces. Chose, old paradigm that cannot prevent, treat or back up chronic diseases, only symptoms, or new paradigm doing the above daily.
Ummm, I don’t know if it’s AMA propaganda or not that Holick was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, but he does admit to receiving all that money.
I haven’t reviewed the studies referred to, so I don’t know how well they were done, but apparently they weren’t population studies. They were controlled clinical trials.
I’m highly skeptical of people who say that they practice “functional medicine”. I’ve known a couple who were good but a lot more who were virtually incompetent but who wanted to cash in on the current craze. And when I say “cash in”, I mean that literally. They oftentimes don’t take insurance and charge very high fees.
Well, hell. Another comment vanished into the void.
RIP Comment #175974…
My experience with Functional/Integrative Medicine practitioners has been as you described, turtlegurl.
Yeah, I thought functional medicine was a total farce. Never heard anything positive about it. Just absurd amounts of supplements and only getting tangible positive results on rare occasion, probably mostly by accident.
I don’t really think they’re ignoring it at all, nor am I. But the thought that vitamin A is only causing problems because of low vitamin D is pretty outlandish. Those WAPF’ers guzzling cod liver oil were getting a shitload of vitamin D. It didn’t save them. So were the lab animals on fish liver oil that Grant mentions–all of them developing such severe osteoporosis that the researchers kept breaking bones in the animals when handling them.
There isn’t enough vitamin D in cod liver oil to balance the vitamin A. WAPF recommends supplementing vitamin D along with cod liver oil.
This makes a lot of sense. High dosing, I mean really high dosing, auto immune patients with vitamin D has been known to alleviate, reverse, or all together cure their disease. It’s relationship and effects to vitamin A lines up perfectly.
I agree Rappeatclips. Mineral and vitamin interrelationships are a complex dance of synergist and antagonist actions. Anything in excess and deficiency can push a person to an imbalance in the autonomic nervous system and that creates symptoms of disease and disorders.
Supplementation with Vitamin D/K2 worsened my symptoms. Besides polymorphisms involving beta carotene conversion, I also have VDR mutations. (VDR Taq? if memory serves)
For myself, supplementation with any fat-soluble vitamin is worrisome and makes matters worse.
JCC,
Very interesting. I’ve been wondering about all fat soluble vitamins and then I found this article: http://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/nutrition-food-safety-health/fat-soluble-vitamins-a-d-e-and-k-9-315/
It says that all fat soluble vitamins are needed in only small amounts and do not require supplementation. Any excesses are stored in the liver. And, all can be toxic at high doses.
I think excess Vitamin A is probably a real problem. But it is likely that excess D, K, and E are also problems. What if our liver is full of toxins from pesticides, chemicals in the home, etc., plus stored vitamins, and then we consume just a little A, D, K, or E that our body does not immediately use? Do we begin showing symptoms of toxicity?
The fact that beta carotene is stored in our fat tissue until needed by our livers is concerning too. Conventional medicine says that if you consume excessive amounts of beta carotene, your skin will turn orange but that the condition is “harmless” and will resolve once consumption is reduced. I’m not buying that. I think it’s possible that the reason you turn orange is because your body doesn’t have enough time to create more fat cells. What if you consume just a little bit extra day after day? Wouldn’t your body continue to add more fat to be able to store it?
Diet gurus love to say things like Americans are over fed and under nourished. Maybe not. Maybe we’re all just over nourished. Maybe that’s why some highly restrictive diets produce results.
what about blood tests(or saliva, or urine …)to diagnose the repletion of retinoic acid in the system(victms)?
Yeah that would be great. I know little about what’s available in terms of testing.
What about Gerson Therapy?
Using carrot juice for 80 years now, to heal cancer and other degenerative deseases?
I thought Gerson therapy was total bullshit?
If it does work, it probably works in a similar manner to fasting–just completely catabolizing the body consuming nothing but juices.
I used to have severe menorrhagia (like 10x the average). Gynocologist couldn’t help me. I read that vit A deficiency could be the cause and 5 years ago I started taking 10,000 IU (suppliment sourced from fish oil) per day. My next period was aproximately half the volume. If anyone else has dealt with this you will know how life-changing that difference was. And that is not all, my periods became regular, 29 day cycles instead of 32-36 days. PMS symptoms / cramping reduced. And my acne greatly improved. Several times since I have tested by stopping taking it for a month and always all the old symptoms came back.
Gerson therapy? I wonder if that was what a good friend of mine was doing back in the 80s. Until I developed vitamin A poisoning, it didn’t occur to me, but now it makes sense. The main component of his diet was fresh vegetable juice. I think I even helped him make it sometimes. It had carrots, spinach, and a lot of other greens in it. (He was not a vegan or vegetarian, just thought the juice was healthful.) His skin was very yellow. He was a non-smoker, but he got lung cancer and died a few years later.
The original Gerson therapy also included calf liver juice!
Gerson would be hard to tease out because it covers so much area. For example, didn’t Gerson always use coffee enemas? Cleaning out the gut would certainly help a cancer patient…
Matt, your a disappointment. Have you read any of Ray Peat’s articles?
https://www.raypeat.com
whos paying you to write this nonsense?
I’ve read all of them numb nuts. People have come to me for years drowning themselves in milk and orange juice and pounding coffee and wondering why their metabolisms were so low.
Peatards come to Dr. Smith all the time with a shitload of calcium suppressing their metabolic rate as well.
Ray Peat’s a great theorizer, and a well-studied guy. I have benefited from studying his work. I wish it alone led to the promised land. But they are just fragments of ideas woven together into a compelling story, as vulnerable to error as anyone else’s interpretation of the infinite database of research available.
Grant and I both are handsomely paid by the beef industry. Beef, it’s what’s for dinner!
Sorry, just can’t buy this one. The craze for low fat and the taboo against eating offal mean that true vitamin A is generally in short supply. You are going down a dead end with this one.
Thanks for the advice oh wise one!
Vitamin A in short supply? Have you ever tracked your vitamin A intake on ANY diet and found yourself coming in under the RDA? Me neither. It’s one of the most abundant “nutrients” in the food chain.
Also, you’re aware that popular multivitamins, like GNC’s line of Mega Men and Ultra Mega contain 5,000 IU of vitamin A, and that more than 150 million Americans are taking similar vitamins daily?
All it takes is overdoing it for an extended period of time, and then boom. Your liver is full. And it never gets unfull on a regular diet, because nearly all diets contain a shitload of vitamin A.
We also get far fewer infections and come into contact with few pathogens in modern, sterile life. This is key because the liver dumps vitamin A in response to infections. Grant has a whole section in his book about this as a potential explanation for the Hygiene Hypothesis.
I drank at least a gallon of orange juice and two gallons of fortified milk, often poured over 3-4 servings of Just Right or Total cereal (extra vitamin A added) every single week growing up. TONS of tomatoes via ketchup, pasta sauce, pizza, etc. Eggs were another favorite food of mine. AND I used tons of sunscreen and prescription acne medication.
So no. NO CHANCE anyone could be getting too much vitamin A because we don’t eat much liver in current society. I’m going to give this search up immediately Thomas! No need to look into it further! Damn, where were you BEFORE I posted this nonsense?!
Matt, the majority of pro vitamin A, fully formed, is either synthetic or isolated added to foods. Unless a person is eating fortified cereals, and certain fortified milk products where is the vitamin A coming from? Many people don’t eat even carotenes in their diet and the conversion is poor if sub clinical hypothyroidism is as prevalent as thought. The thyroid and the liver have to be working well to convert it.
Ah yes, the “who’s paying you?” argument. Well the jig is up Matt, might as well confess.
@Thomas: there is no “taboo” against eating offal. Nobody eats it because it tastes like shit. Even the “carnivores” take liver in capsules or swallow bits of frozen liver to avoid tasting it, or the ones who pretend to like it like Sv3rige eat a pat of butter with every bite.
@Matt: that book I keep yapping about, “The epidemic of absence”, mentioned the fact that parents of autistic kids report that every-time the kids get sick with the flu, they’re symptoms are massively reduced to almost the point of being “normal” kids, but they come back again as soon as the flu is gone, so that’s a very interesting point that matches what you said about infections depleting vit A. Hmmmmmmmmm
I lol’d the other day watching Frank Tufano swallow liver with big gulps of water like he was swallowing pills.
lol yeah, you can tell it’s your “natural diet” when you don’t want the food to touch your tongue on the way down.
Re: Skeptic’s citation about autistic kids with big symptom reduction while having the flu–suggestive of something that improves during infection, but what?
It reminds me of my father’s experience with another condition altogether.
About a year before his death from dementia, my dad had one of his too-frequent kidney infections (subsequent to bladder cancer treatment) and initially became unresponsive, as if he’d had a stroke. But while in the ER he suddenly started speaking and interacting and reading signs on the wall for the first time in the three years or so that his dementia had gotten much worse. This reprieve faded rapidly with time and/or the effects of another round of ciprofloxacin. No medical people had any explanation for (or interest in) his brief return to higher functioning.
As in most tough, interesting problems, I suspect there are many factors interacting that are hard to identify. If it were just vitamin A, it would be easier to sort out its impact.
I will look at the book you mentioned, Skeptic.
@Sue: While autism is a complex disorder and there’s a spectrum, auto-immune is believed to play a part. So when the immune system is busy fighting actual pathogens, like the flu, it’s distracted away from attacking the children’s brains, hence the brief reprieve.
Dementia is similarly a complex disorder with many possible causes, one of which is auto-immune, so it’s very possible that the same effect that the kids experienced happened to your dad.
The book is really fascinating, especially since I had not heard of the Hygiene Theory before reading it.
“Grant and I both are handsomely paid by the beef industry. Beef, it’s what’s for dinner!”
I knew it!! INDUSTRY SHILL!!
haha – Life would be tough, without you, turtlegurl, Magic Maker, Skeptic, and Razwell. This blog is my refuge in a sea of absurdity!
Back at ya, Carl ;)
Now, put down the bottle of CLO, and nobody gets hurt. It’s good you reached out for help here on The D. Why don’t you join me at the next Blogaholics Anonymous meeting? Saturday 10 a.m. Location TBD by further blogging.
ditto Carl :D
you had me at numb nuts :-)
Matt – have you had a hair test? Show us?! You’ve talked about struggling with weight issues and trying to find the metabolic wonderland… I wonder if your calcium is higher than phosphorous and potassium, relative to the ratios etc.
Its not just eating lots of calcium rich foods that increase calcium, but being inactive, and eating a lot of carbs can do it too. They say the carb to protein ratio heavily influences the calcium to magnesium ratio. Proteins are considered metabolically stimulating, carbs retain calcium and sodium to increase the breathing drive..
N=1, but mine for sure isn’t – and i’ve always been super lean. I’m considered a “Fast oxidiser” and i eat a lot of food too.
No hair test, sorry.
Why not?! Your best mate Doc. Gareth is a hair test guru! Its only $100 bucks or something. Stop being a cheapskate man!
Mark,
Are hair tests even reliable or useful?
Over the years, I’ve read mostly negative reviews and inconclusive outcomes on the topic.
Here’s one of many:
“Why hair analysis does not work:
– Levels of minerals in the hair do not correlate with levels in the body.
– Laboratory techniques are inconsistent ? the same hair analyzed in different labs shows different readings.
– There are no known “normal” ranges for minerals in hair, so the numbers given by the lab are nonsensical.
– Hair analysis is affected by color, texture, age, exposure to the environment, and a host of other factors, rendering results invalid.
– Most importantly, hair analysis has never been proven to help diagnose or treat any disease.”
The only people I’ve personally seen promote such testing are “alternative” practitioners who also sell supplements. While that doesn’t automatically disqualify those folks, I do see that as a conflict of interest.
More important, I believe, is the fact that the “science” and usefulness of such tests have been debated for at least 20 years that I’m aware. To me, it would seem like this shouldn’t be the case, if hair testing is supported by actual “science.”
As for Matt, given his 13+ years of researching health/nutrition – and, considering he’s friends with Dr. Garrett and has also communicated with numerous other high-profile people in the industry – I’d imagine he would have had his hair tested long ago, had he seen any value in doing so. But, that’s just a guess on my part.
Anyway, if you have any reliable resources that show convincing benefits of hair testing, I’d enjoy reading the material.
Personally, I had two hair tests performed, years ago. I had them done out of desperation (a common theme about many things in “alternative” medicine), and, as I previously alluded, I was put on a long list of expensive supplements that the practitioner sold. Had the supplements been recommended for a specific period of time, that would have made more sense. However, the doctor wanted me to be on the “forever” plan. I followed the plan for over a year. I felt no difference while taking them. Likewise, I didn’t notice any changes, after I stopped taking them.
Just kind of thinking about this. If Vitamin A is fat soluble and you are “squeezing” fat out of the cell when using energy, could it be that you are “squeezing” toxin into the bloodstream? Part of a free fatty acid toxic A cocktail?
There are lots of things, like infections and stress, that cause an outpouring of retinoic acid into the bloodstream, and it definitely can cause all manner of malaise.
Indeed, that’s true. Here’s one, hot off the press.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30233492
Whole milk only has vitamin D added. So the low fat diet is the problem. So why should we avoid full fat dairy and why do people act like all milk has the vitamin A added? You can also find a few health food store brands with no vitamins added, like Kolona Farms, I think. But I don’t care to spend $8 per gallon unless it’s raw milk.
This post should be titled, ?you thought I had some credibility left? Nah, watch this!
Just stop, dude. You’re gonna spin your wheels this way for years and never get anywhere. Maybe it’s time to accept that you simply won’t be able to accomplish the goal you set out to accomplish. Nothing wrong with that.
Most people I know who are truly healthy and stable individuals eat conventionally balanced diets, exercise a little, have solid genes. What about the rest? I don’t know. No one knows. And you’re not gonna figure it out by reading bullshit books about vitamin A being a ?poison. Why don’t you enjoy whatever health you can muster by reasonable methods and get on with it?
I think it’s pretty interesting that vitamin A isn’t actually an essential nutrient though, don’t you? I mean, regardless of what anyone chooses to do with that information, or how strangely they decide to eat as a result, or whether or not doing so helps them alleviate an illness or two, you can’t just toss that aside.
“Why don’t you enjoy whatever health you can muster by reasonable methods and get on with it?”
I was doing exactly that. Then I developed near life-threatening asthma. Re-commence looking into weird theories!
Do you still love in Florida? Is there any connection with the airborne cyanobacteria going on?
No. I’m in Santa Fe. My asthma was significantly worse here due to dry air and altitude, until I changed my eating around. I first stared a vitamin A free diet in Florida, and it mostly cleared up there before I left.
Why are you suddenly so certain that vitamin A isn’t a nutrient? You’re trusting the fringe assessment of one guy on the internet, whose e-book is not even particularly well-written, well-organized, or convincing. After reading his book this evening, my overwhelming impression is that basically none of his arguments are sound or convincing. His entire thesis rests on assumptions that are never adequately explained or defended, such as assumptions about how a deficiency disease “should” manifest.
Anecdotal evidence is useless, of course, but for what it’s worth the only thing that reliably improves my upper-arm keratosis pilaris is large doses of vitamin A. When I take vitamin A in the range of 10k to 30k IU daily, I experience massive improvements in skin quality, sleep, mood, etc.
And yes, if I overdo it, I get some symptoms of toxicity. It takes well in excess of 50,000 IU daily for at least a week to get to that point. That’s considerably more than any human being on earth could possibly be exposed to from fortified foods, sunscreens, or multivitamins. (Last I checked the amount of vitamin A in milk, one of the most heavily vitamin-A-fortified foods, was on the order of 500 IU per cup.)
When I look around at the unhealthy people in my environment and my family, I overwhelmingly observe the following patterns:
–Long history of failing to prioritize sleep
–Some level of abuse of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, or prescription medications
–Regular consumption of or exposure to fast food, convenience food, and assorted junk like diet sodas and environmental endocrine disruptors
–Regular consumption of wheat and vegetable oils (yes, I’m old-fashioned like that)
–Failure to adopt any common-sense, regular exercise regime
–Poor body composition as a result of some combination of the above
–Unhealthy coping mechanisms like Netflix binging, junk food binging, alcohol binging, etc.
–Lack of awareness of genetic idiosyncrasies that affect nutrient needs
–Lack of awareness of nutrient needs in general, and failure to provide for those needs, even in people with a history of attempting fringe health maneuvers
–Aversion to any kind of regular monitoring of biomarkers or biofeedback
–Poor body awareness in general
I’ll emphasize that I observe these patterns even in people with chronic illnesses who have tried multiple special diets. The broad theme is that I see people either paying no attention to their health at all, OR focusing excessively on the wrong things while ignoring vast portions of what I consider to be basic and foundational.
After reading this post, I suspect that you are in the latter category. You are eager to take action on a risky and tenuously-supported theory, which makes me wonder whether there are harmful aspects of your nutritional status, your lifestyle, or even your psychology that you’ve simply become blind to. Are you absolutely certain there’s nothing in the list above that you don’t have completely, totally, 100% nailed to the wall?
You seem to attract followers who will eagerly dive down these rabbit holes with you. Even you would probably admit that you have a tendency to swing to radical extremes in your pursuit of solutions. Is any of this healthy for anyone involved? Is it possible you have a psychological attachment to weird health maneuvers?
I’m writing this because I really think you need this perspective in your comments. If all of your followers have optimized literally every single variable that a more conventional approach would suggest, then perhaps it’s justified to try weird things like this. But I highly doubt that’s the case. Because I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t blind to some significantly harmful element of their daily exposures or habits.
I don’t find Grant’s books to be that convincing that vitamin A isn’t a nutrient. He goes on plenty of silly tangents that are quite weak, such as the cod fishery closure in Canada that he seems obsessed with (but that doesn’t even make that much sense). I find all the people not consuming any, including Grant and his gerbils, who have no ill effect from doing so. That’s much more compelling.
I had terrible ketatosis pilaris on the triceps my entire childhood when I was having huge doses of supplemental vitamin A in many forms. Completely clear eating no vitamin A. I will bet you that you won’t have any issue with it on a zero vitamin A diet.
Those are great observations. Changes in any of those categories don’t give me relief from asthma though. Only changing my diet does.
Matt – on the asthma tangent, can you give a quick summary of which dietary changes have helped the most? I hear the reduction of vit A but are there other things that have made a significant difference?
Matt, I remember reading about Buteyko years ago on your blog from a commenter but have only recently given it some real time and effort as my oldest has asthma that doesn’t respond to diet. Did you ever look into it or try it? Chronic hyperventilation seems to be a promising net for many of these symptoms as well.
Yeah, I try it the best I can, but I’m not disciplined enough to really give it any serious effort. My minor efforts have yielded zero results.
Matt,
How long did it take your KP to disappear? I’ve been on the low-to-no Vitamin A diet for almost three months now, and it hasn’t improved. It’s gotten worse around my knees, elbows, and upper thighs. I also hoped some painful acne that started around three years would decrease but it’s still pretty bad. Based on what I read in Grant’s books, I’m wondering if my supplementing with Vitamin A drops, cod liver oil, liver, etc. (because I thought it would eliminate skin issues) somehow damaged the sebaceous glands.
I didn’t have much KP to begin with. That was something I suffered from much more in childhood. My diet back then was about 50% low fat milk, orange juice, and fortified breakfast cereal, lol.
Iggy Pop — I gotta say, your writing is surprisingly coherent for someone with such a long history of heavy drug & alcohol abuse, not to mention the generally wild punk rock sorta lifestyle you’ve lived for lo these many years ;)
Are you willing to share your secret for being able to read an almost 400-page book in an evening? I’ve always wanted to be one of those people.
Re: your positive response to high doses of A, maybe your liver is able to produce higher amounts of RBP than the average person, and maybe that makes a difference? I haven’t read the whole book, so I’m just throwing that out there. What are your thoughts?
lol XD
@Iggy: Yeah maybe someone who thinks wheat is a magically bad food shouldn’t be criticizing others for “fringe health beliefs”. Also, the “eager followers” at this blog are not just blind followers who jump down any rabbit hole Matt mentions. That’s insulting to say the least and not true at all. We contradict him all the time. For example, I’ve always said that Ray Peat is an over-hyped crazy person. I think what’s really going on here is that you’re just upset at someone suggesting something you consume a lot of may be harmful, just like all the Peatards, WAPF people and Carnivores in the comments.
Actually Skeptic, we are all dumb. Lyle McDonald is here now. He makes everyone dumber.
I also feel great from eating high quality liver sometimes. Where are you getting your 10-30k IUs of A per day? I haven’t tried pure retinol. High quality liver like foie gras makes me feel good so quickly that I wonder if it is the special mix or type of B vitamins it has.
I’m bummed bc I take lots of cod liver oil and believe it helps me with certain things. Any suggestions for alternatives to CLO?
Helps with what?
It could be the vitamin D or omega 3. You might try taking those separately without the vitamin A to see if you still get the benefits you think you’re getting from CLO.
How to get the omega 3? I can only eat so much flax and chia.
I’m not a big fan of omega 3 in general, but most use high quality fish oils if they are looking to supplement their diets.
Eat fish?
Wild caught fish. Sure beats expensive supplements and is a helluva lot tastier than rancid flax.
Chaya, you might find this very interesting. Patricia and Ed Kane write about the 4:1 ratio in great detail. It will probably surprise you.
http://www.longevity-and-antiaging-secrets.com/support-files/bodybio.pdf
Just remember that this is a theory and it might not be true at all about A in foods so no need to ditch the cod oil. If you take it look into the fermented cod oil because others are fortified with isolated A and D which is more of an issue in my view…Small amounts are best. People got into problems taking large amounts over long periods, not a great idea. I question the fear of any omega 3 by Peat, also.
I eat a ton of sweet potatoes and carrots with no other sources of vitamin A – I have no idea if I’m a good or poor converter of beta carotene into A. I wonder if that could be an issue? I wonder if the body would convert less in response to excesses in the system?
No idea JD.
JD, one needs good levels of zinc to be able to convert betacarotene to retinol.
Very interesting stuff thank you. Doesn’t red light help deplete the body of vitamin a?
Ask Ari? My copy of his book is in the mail. Not sure if he covers that or not.
I’m considering there may be some validity to this, for me. Mid-November I started eating a very low fat diet, and was using quite a lot of skim milk, which has Vit. A added to it. I was also trying to eat 3 or 4 oz. of liver a couple of times a month. I got eczema on the back of my hands, kept getting worse. (There were nights it took hours to get to sleep because I was obsessed with picking off the flakes that just kept coming back.) Then there were small psoriasis patches on my lower legs. Legs itching, so I was scratching, and legs bleeding from scratching. Hands are cleared up now, legs getting better (sunshine for my legs helping a lot). About four months ago I quit the skim milk, went back to whole milk (I don’t use much of that). Haven’t had liver for awhile. Several years ago I got on the fermented cod liver oil wagon, probably for a year, but haven’t had any for at least five years. No Vit. A supplements. I have never had skin problems this bad (I’m 71) and it dragged on for about five months. For me it makes sense that given that it accumulates in the liver, the recent extra amount in the skim milk could have been too much for me. And there are likely other contributing factors I’m not aware of.
Your experience definitely jives with the theory Meighen. Age is a huge factor as well. As Grant says, most people probably developed problems at some point in life due to vitamin A for centuries, but it probably didn’t take place until 80+ years of age, in part because of the liver’s decreasing size and lowered activity with aging.
Dammit, man. I’ve been slathering prescription strength retin-a on my neck and face for 4 years now trying to get rid of wrinkles and such. I took a nine month break while pregnant and the psoriasis on my ankle disappeared. Then it came back with a vengeance on both elbows, a knee, and my other ankle after the baby was born. I assumed pregnancy hormones had put it into remission; not coincidentally, I also resumed my retin-a regimen shortly after delivering. I should also say that I didn’t have psoriasis until sometime after I started the retin-a. I feel like a fool. A FOOL! I’m ditching the stuff starting tonight and we shall see what happens. Thanks for the article, Matt.
I should also add that the psoriasis didn’t just vanish over night while pregnant. It slowly improved over the nine months until right before I had the baby when it completely resolved. If there’s any validity to Grant’s theory, this makes sense that the retinoid took several months to get out of my system.
Did it work for wrinkles though? it is a standard of anti-aging care, after all;-)
Retin-A — for gawd’s sake, that 1,000% synthetic — has nothing to do with natural vitamin A found in one’s diet, and thus nothing to do with this already invalidated hypothesis thrown out by Mister Marketeer.
Let us know if it clears up on a reduced vitamin A diet (and stopping the Retin-A of course). Thanks for sharing Texanne.
And another piece of the puzzle slides into place…I’ve been seeing a ton of histamine intolerance in my practice in the past few years. This Vitamin A piece sent me looking for a connection. Sure as shit, A stimulates degranulation of Mast cells, and Vitamins E & D help with the production of DAO (Diamine Oxidase, the enzyme responsible for degrading histamine). Also, DAO is manufactured by the placenta (to inhibit reacting the the “foreign protein bundle” gestating?), so many women notice lessening histamine sensitivity symptoms during pregnancy. Some folks get relief with supplemental DAO, expensive and hard to find, but ditching Villainous A would be cheaper…Thank you Matty! You rock!
@SheilaG: very interesting stuff about DAO
What about all the stuff you’ve said previously about recovering from dieting/eating disorders? I’m confused now because I thought that’s what I had to do, but are you promoting dieting again? I know if I did a low vitamin A diet I’d just go crazy again w food
We are discussing a possible dietary therapy for autoimmune disease and a few related conditions. A vitamin A depletion diet is NOT THE LEAST BIT APPROPRIATE FOR EATING DISORDER RECOVERY.
I hope it’s okay if I discuss more than just eating disorder recovery, and that you and others can distinguish for themselves what takes priority in their own personal case.
I have no health issues and I eat cereal and milk at least once a day bc I love the stuff. Giving that up would go against my eat for heat and intuitive eating. Matt, you even preach not to restrict foods your desiring.
I love cereal too. But I avoided it for a few months and since then every time I try to eat it my insides get raped, and the milk makes me quite snotty and wheezy. I think my cereal killing days may be over, sniffle sniffle.
I mostly look for cereals low in iron like organics which usually has little or no iron added. I use whole milk that is only fortified with D, not A. I don’t eat a lot of grains. Maybe 1 or 2 servings a day. Not much fortified grain except occasion restaurants. i don’t keep foods with PUFA oils in my house and rarely eat friend food or mayonnaise or salad dressinfs if they have any PUFA even canola.
I am thinking that the Sun depletes Vitamin A as you make Vitamin D and this happens if you have enough Cholesterol in your diet. I haven’t finished Grant’s books yet to see if he has that opinion. I do so much better in the summer and this sure could be why.
I think he does indeed mention that tanning can break up vitamin A stores. I remember something like that.
…and if you’re smothered with A-palmitate to prevent “burning”, interfering with/supressing the evolutionary answer to being in the conditions of strong sunlight hitting your bare skin (the generation of Vitamin D, in it’s elegant feedback loop which prevents overdose)…BAM! Super insult to the body.
Has anyone who claims to have had success with a low/no vitamin A diet (which also changes hundreds of other dietary variables) tested the theory properly by sticking to the same diet and adding in a high-dose vitamin A supplement to see if symptoms return?
That would be a great way to help test it out Clarence. Good idea.
There is a 10 year vegan on YouTube called Vegetable Police. Tired of gut problems, he went all beef and presto, gut pain vanishes. Two weeks in he adds in a multivitamin, and here come issues. I wish I could tell him to check out the vitamin A theory, but the comments are in the thousands (mostly vegans in dismay for the betrayal).
The vegans erroneously believe that plant based styles of eating are a panacea. Plants do not want to be eaten and defend themselves. Everything is a risk. We walk in a minefield with our every day dietary decisions, all of us.
I once, in 2007, had far too much cod liver oil and felt super sick. I’ve done much better with fish oil.When I used to blog, I awarded Drs. Caldwell Esselstyn and T. Colin Campbell jointly the Reptilian Dragon Penis Award 2012.
I like that Reptilian Dragon Penis Award, lol.
Cool theory, sorry about the recent asthma Matt. Local red tide probably wasn’t any help.
What’s fun about nutrition is, because it’s such a multi-variate field, a new theory like this can cut through and put into new context a lot of the health information and observation already out there. All of a sudden, looking through the lens of a different variable, new patterns and potential conclusions emerge.
Like how PUFA awareness can suddenly put into context why low fat vegan diets can be therapeutic, even if it’s not the vegan-ness per se.
Or in this case, how possible Vitamin A overload could explain why all beef diets can be therapeutic, even if they’re seemingly completely opposite.
Makes me glad to have an in-built laziness with supplements, buttressed by some post-hoc skepticism; I could very well be accidentally undermining myself when information emerges a few years down the road countermanding the old wisdom.
Cool stuff, will scope out Grant a bit and learn more.
Yeah the asthma was weird. Have had an asthmatic reaction to pet dander for 20 years, but last summer I got some exposure, had the typical couple days of wheezing, and then it just never cleared up like it always did in the past. I didn’t want to do anything about it really, so I fell into the temptation of using some inhalers. Within weeks the asthma became extremely severe, and I was literally dependent on inhalers to survive.
That’s when I was like “fuck it,” and started resorting to extreme measures to clear it up. And I have. First with fruit (although I couldn’t eat much of anything with that fruit without flaring up, so I had to quit that), and now a zero vitamin A diet with beef as the centerpiece. 30 days in and I’m 95% asthma free, off the inhalers completely, and doing it all at a dry climate at 7,000 feet of elevation (which always made my asthma worse in the past).
So it’s cool. I miss pizza though, lol.
And yeah, amen on being skeptical of supplements. I’ve been very skeptical of all supplements, and that may have been my saving grace if this vitamin A story proves to be at least partially true.
Have you heard of buteyko method. I know someone who cleared their asthma through it.
Wow that’s amazing. I have had asthmatic allergies to pets my whole life. Maybe I will try this, at least reduce and then eliminate cod liver oil. Not sure about the dietary A. Have you been able to be around cats and such now?
Where is your proof that all beef diets can be very good for people? A small handful of anorexics who complain of being in severe pain from sitting in hard chairs and are mean tempered and irrational and paranoid) Charles Washington for example? He and his followers only care about wearing two skinny jeans not having muscle mass and strength and cold tolerance and being able to sit on hard surfaces without being in agony. Their idea of a healthy diet is ground beef fromt Walmart and nothing else but water. Ha ha ha! They handle people who discuss problems there or elsewhere. They’re losers and fools.
They BAN people. Charles W has banned severak people that I know of. He is a pathetic closed minded bigot who thinks Owslru Stanley – aka The Bear – had all the secrets despite having heart disease and throat cancer and looking crappy and dying young on hisbzero-carb diet. He blamed everything but the diet like his mother making him eat broccoli as a kid. What a joke. His body and mind weren’t any better than Charles Wasjington. In fact they spoke against his dumb diet.
What’s your excuse for your atrocious spelling?
Hi died because of the car accident, not his diet.
re:inbuilt laziness with supplements – I think it’s just intuitive self preservation working. I have clients who have blueberries for breakfast EVERY FREAKING DAY in an effort to get their ever loving antioxidants. When in the history of humanity was that possible? We are built for feast and famine with regards to nutrients, at least the fat soluble ones…
I very much appreciate that Grants books are free. Cutting out vitamin A temporarily seems like a low-risk thing to try to test for improvement in chronic health problems. Think I will give it a go myself. Thanks for the info!
Wow. After reading his first book, I reeeeeealy hope his theories are true! I can identify with more symptoms than I would like to admit. I’m definitely trying it out!
I liked his brother’s diet.
Coffee and toast for breakfast, burger for lunch, steak and potatoes for dinner plus beer.
Sounds like my kind of diet.
Come on Paul. Don’t lie. You know you got excited at Grant’s daily tuna fish sandwich. Mmmm. Now that’s something I could eat every single day and never get sick of!
Bleck!
Alcohol, incidentally, depletes the liver of glycogen, and alcohol consumption seems to protect against a wide spectrum of autoimmune diseases. Drink up!
“Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger
If Vitamin A is actually a completely unnecessary toxic substance, then why on earth would our bodies have developed a mechanism to convert carotenes to Vitamin A?
Perhaps because retinol is less toxic than carotenes? Maybe it must be converted to retinol in order to be stored safely in the liver? Even Ray Peat, who seems to be a vitamin A fanboy, has pointed out many negatives of beta carotene.
Other critics of the potential downsides of vitamin A seem to believe that Grant’s theory is true for plant-derived vitamin A but not animal-sourced pre-formed vitamin A.
This could just be the old feast or famine argument.
Historically these substances would arrive in intermittent lumps. These days we are always topping up the tank without giving it a chance to run down from time to time.
@Paul: Yes! I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Feat or famine. Cycling calories, cycling nutrients, cycling everything! This seems like a big idea that needs to be looked into a.s.a.p. Do you know of any authors who talk about or promote it?
I know John Douillard has advocated seasonal approaches to eating. Might not be a bad idea really. I’m open to it.
The getting stronger blog has some stuff about beneficial adaptions to intermittent stress.
https://gettingstronger.org
Ron Mignery wrote about protein cycling promoting autophagy here:
https://proteincyclingdiet.wordpress.com/article/protein-cycling-diet-2s3nmvrwklbxs-1/
You could make an estimate based on the body’s storage capacity for various nutrients.
Liver glycogen can be used up in a couple of hours of high intensity exercise and replenished with sugar (sucrose). I expect that sugar highs occur when sedentary individuals overload the liver’s glycogen storage capacity.
Muscle glycogen can be depleted by replenished with starch, but the process takes a bit longer. Athletes carboload for a few days before races.
These foods contain water soluble vitamins that can only be stored in limited quantities. Vitamin C deficiency (scurvy) is one the first deficiency diseases to appear.
Fat can only be depleted very slowly and is stored in large quantities. It can take weeks to run down fat reserves, so I expect that fat is needed at a much lower frequency.
The liver can store months worth of fat soluble vitamins, so I expect that they are needed only on a monthly basis.
From this I would suggest a starch heavy diet for energy during the week with fruits as snacks. Fats and proteins would be eaten over the weekend. Think Sunday roast.
Things like liver and deep water fish would be eaten monthly as a supplement.
@Matt: I remember reading Douillard’s ideas but ultimately dropped it because he talked about going low carb in the winter, but I should re-read some of his stuff again.
@PaulS: thanks for the links I’ll check ’em out. The diet you suggested sounds very much like a Pacific Islander diet. Seems to work well for the Kitavans.
lol I’m reading the gettingstronger.org site, and not 2 minutes in and this guy is already gushing about Gary Taubes, a strong, reliable sign that the person who wrote the article is severely retarded. It’s what you expect, the thoroughly debunked Insulin hypothesis, go low carb, then cut out meals and fast a lot. His particular twist is “make a point of NOT eating when you’re hungry”, to disassociate hunger and the act of eating in a Pavlovian way!!!!! Then he’s like “I assure you this diet will not cause an eating disorder” lol I’m dead
Well starch os generally easy to gather on a daily basis, but meat is only caught in lumps, so I expect that many hunter gatherer tribes would follow this pattern.
Monotonous almost always seem to fail eventually. I expect that it is necessary to cycle between anabolic and catabolic phases, which this diet would do.
@PaulS: don’t let the carnivores hear you say that! Don’t you know that even in the midst of unrelenting ice ages and mass extinctions, our ancestors, armed only with rocks and pointy sticks were going out and easily hunting animals and eating meat three times a day every day without fail lol
Sorry, those were old links. It’s been a while since I read up on this stuff.
Check the dates. I expect that he was writing at the height of the Taubes craze.
I often get 1 or 2 good ideas from these guys and disregard the rest.
Actually come to think of it real carnivores like lions only eat about once a week, so that goes with my weekly meat feast theory.
@PaulS: I was reading about medical and nutrition advice from medieval Persia , and apparently physicians recommended you eat 3 big meals every two days, usually breakfast and dinner one day and lunch the next day. (Pregnant women, children and the elderly were exempt from this rule). Most ancient texts have a rule like this that amounts to mild caloric restriction. Made me think of that Stephan Guyenet talk at AHS where he argued that most of these tribes that have exceptional health all have one thing in common: Caloric Restriction.
So essentially intermittant fasting. Fasting protocols have been recomended throughout history.
We see that protein restriction leads to autophagy. Vegans experience short term benefits, but crash and burn long term.
Low carbers follow the same pattern.
Now we have another example with vitamin A.
Yup. The mistake everyone makes is not cycling it, continuing with the “famine” part indefinitely without any “feast” periods, which will lead to lean tissue loss, including from organs, and shot up thyroid, adrenals, lowered metabolism, lowered libido, mental illness, etc…
One of the nutrition people I follow on Twitter, Bill Lagakos, just posted about seasonal eating as well. http://caloriesproper.com/summer-is-fattening-dont-do-it-in-winter/
He’s trying to find some science to back T.S. Wiley’s ideas of humans having the mammalian pattern of fattening up in the summer to hibernate in the winter. Unfortunately, like John Douillard, his conclusion is to go low carb/keto in the winter, but I love ma carbs too much! :(
There’s definitely something here. Circadian rhythms, seasonal rhythms, feast and famine….
I think more and more people are just awakening to the fact that 16+ hours per day of light exposure, 365 days per year, mostly blue light–and looking directly into it at that–is strongly antagonistic to maintaining good health. Then they kind of overthought it from there, thinking we need to live off pemmican 6 months per year or BEETUS.
Primates generally live in the tropics, not the arctic.
I don’t think pacific islanders or mediterranean people were hibernating.
Maybe Neanderthals or some arctic tribes developed adaptions to the frozen north, but it hardly seems like a necessity.
@Matt: yeah maybe it’s overthinking it past the blue light and circadian stuff, I don’t know. It just piqued my interest because the body clearly has a fat storing mode, a cocktail of hormones it slaps together when it decides to get fat, so it’s tempting to think there is the opposite of this mode–a fat dumping mode–a.k.a. the magical unicorn as we call it. If there is one, and we can “hack” it, then that’s the holy grail right? My main interest in this topic is still the MATADOR study, alternating caloric restriction with maintenance to lose weight and not have the body fight back.
lol @ the pemmican. I like how they fail to mention the Native Americans mixed berries into their pemmican (haven’t they read Taubes!!!!!), and ate just as much corn, bean and squash.
@PaulS: Yeah I thought the same so I was reading about hibernation. Apparently there are many different levels of it, from obligate hibernators who go full blown cryosleep mode to softer versions of it like “torpor” where they’re not even asleep. The key thing happening is reduced metabolism, reduced heart rate, slow breathing rate and reduced body heat, all designed to conserve energy. It’s not just about avoiding the cold (there’s a summer version called aestivation), but also periods where food supply is low, which could be the summer as well, in the hot and dry season for example. It’s also a good way to avoid predation. I found examples of mammals hibernating even in Africa and the tropics, so it’s not unheard of.
Danny Roddy talked about the “race to torpor” and reduced metabolism on restrictive diets. Eg here http://180degreehealth.com/the-peat-whisperer-whispers-paleo/
People think that they can live longer by somehow slowing the metabolic process. Doesn’t seem like a good idea if you actually want to get anything done.
A lot of Matt’s writing is about people screwing up their metabolism with weird diets.
Race to torpor is a good name lol. I was excited when I first discovered his work but turns out it’s mostly about baldness (honestly, who gives a shit?), and random books from like 17th century Russia or whatever that talk about energies and auras etc. And his diet is milk, OJ, Mexican Coke and f**king crushed Aspirin. Jesus Christ.
While I agree that chasing torpor is bad, it is the logical conclusion IF your goal is longevity over all else. Billy Craig claimed that longevity (centenarians and supercentenarians) is due to high metabolic rate, but I don’t see how that’s possible since all long lived cultures practice Caloric Restriction, and if you read individual bios/obits of centenarians, It’s always someone who ate 1 to 2 meals a day.
I’m experiencing many of the torpor symptoms while eating 4000-5000 calories a day, eating for heat, and I’m morbidly obese, so I don’t see the point anymore in chasing the magic hyper-metabolism that is bestowed by the Thyroid gods
I think a high metabolism is strongly correlated with longevity, as it’s strongly correlated with body size (including height). Small people have much higher metabolic intensity, and they have a noticeably longer lifespan on average. They may not eat a lot of food compared to Sumo wrestlers, but on a pound-for-pound basis they actually DO eat more food and consume more oxygen than people of larger size, and are usually more physically active and energetic in general.
@Matt: oh yeah good point about size. I remember someone pointing out that most supercentenarians are on the smaller size. It’s usually more women than men, and women from Korea and Japan dominate the top of the longevity charts. Some longevity experts have theorized that estrogen is protective, and that’s why women live longer. So basically, no matter how many carbs I force feed myself and snort crushed Aspirin, I’ll never have the metabolism of 100 year old Korean lady lol
Again, I think the dumb explanations for women outliving men (menstruation and less iron, estrogen, blah blah blah) can 100% be explained by women being smaller than men. End of story.
p.s. I remember Dan Buettner mentioning that people in the Blue Zones are still having sex in their late nineties! There is no surer sign of good health and robust metabolism than strong libido.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/20/science/nucleolus-cells-aging.html
This is the kind of stuff I was talking about Matt. Gerontologists recently discovered that a small nucleolus is a strong predictor of longevity. Yeast, worms, fruit flies, mice and humans with small nucleoli live longer. What reduced nucleolus size? Caloric restriction. It is the factory of the cell that pumps out proteins, but when there’s less resources (food) coming in it shrinks in size. In an experiment they put humans on mild CR and exercise and the nucleolus shrunk. Every avenue of life extension requires restriction, from mTOR pathways (restrict protein) to Insulin pathways (restrict carbs), to autophagy (fasting, caloric restriction, protein restriction). Maybe you can cycle calories to avoid torpor and get the best of both worlds?
Perhaps smaller members of a species outlive larger members of the same species solely because they eat less?
@Matt: yep, I think so. Smaller means less caloric needs, means less fuel and less mileage on the engine. For example if I was at a healthy weight (and no, I don’t mean Brad Pitt in Fight Club level), then I could eat for heat at about 3000 calories or even slightly less. At my morbidly obese size, I need to push way past 4K, closer to 5k, to have a friggin pulse, good temps, and feel like getting out of bed every morning.
As you know, the higher the calories you need, the “dirtier” you need to eat–processed food, junk food, refined sugars and fats, PUFAs start piling up. You also need to eat at least 1K per meal, which is not that fun after a while and means guaranteed discomfort. Also, high calories means more insulin, more IGF-1, more mTOR activation, and everything else that comes with the anabolic state. Anabolism=growth but it also=ageing.
Not to get sidetracked into gerontology, I don’t care that much about living to a 120, but when I say ageing I’m talking about the accumulated wear and tear on all the organs involved with eating, which probably causes or at least accelerates all these connected diseases of metabolism and auto-immune. TL;DR I don’t think eating 5k calories a day is healthy.
Reading nutrition blogs is like panning for gold. You have to sift through a lot of junk for the occasional nugget.
I think baldness is actually interesting. Kind of like the canary in the coal mine of metabolic dysfunction.
Danny Roddy is mostly chanelling Ray “the solution is milk, oj and supplement with thyroid, now what was the question?” Peat.
I think that it is perfectly possible to maintain a high metabolism eating twice a day. Your body can store roughly a days worth of glycogen, so 2 starch heavy meals plus some fruit for snacks to top up liver glycogen would be perfectly sufficient to maintain energy levels.
Any more would probably overload your digestive system and could even suppress metabolism.
This rice and beef vitamin A diet would probably be ideal for weight loss. It is extremely satiating, has plenty of starch and monotonous diets almost always result in weight loss due to reduced food reward.
@PaulS: panning for gold is spot on, although I’m beginning to think there is no gold in them thar hills.
LOL at the Ray Peat think. I would add Ray “eat raw carrot salad every day even though I have thousands of pages of content talking about the evils of plants, fiber, and feeding your gut bacteria, because f**k you, that’s why” Peat.
I think baldness is actually interesting. Kind of like the canary in the coal mine of metabolic dysfunction.
Yet I know several bald guys who are healthier and more virile in their late 50’s than guys the same age and younger who have full head of hair.
In fact, I bet that epidemiologically speaking, there is no observable correlation between baldness and so-called metabolic dysfunctions.
I think I may experiment with removing beta carotene sources as well, to see if recovery from my symptoms is faster.
Thanks so much for this post. I hope the people experimenting with a reduction diet come back and update us all.
That’s was really the point of publicizing Grant’s work. It’s interesting, has potential, and with the state of health in the world and the complete lack of progress made in solving the most pressing diseases, no theory should be casually dismissed no matter how silly it sounds on the surface.
Hey Matt, Ive read two of Grants books now and they do make a lot of sense. But there also seems to be some studies that show benefits of vitamin A. Im not really great at analyzing studies, I cant figure out how this can be possible if vitamin A (especially retinyl palminate) is bad at any dose. Whats the deal? Could vitamin A be boosting these kids immune systems temporarily, giving short term benefits (which may even save lives), but long term harms? Or if not, what am I missing with studies like this? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/2194128/
Like Grant says, vitamin A is released by the liver to fight infection. So the body has clearly learned some ways to use it to its advantage. Since people in “Western” society have a lot less bacteria to fight off, he believes we’re more likely to overload our livers and develop long-term issues from it. Hence why autoimmune disease rates are so low in unsanitary areas and so high in sanitary areas. At least, that was his thought on the matter. So, potentially vitamin A is an asset in unsanitary areas and a liability in sanitary areas? Seems like a stretch. Just reporting what Grant’s beliefs are.
Yep, I eventually figured that out. I had read his last 2 books but I think that info was in his first one (which Ive now read as well). It does make sense. I cant say for sure if its true, but I also cant find many holes to poke in the theory. Other than the difficulty of finding much in the way of studies that show harm. Are you doing the diet? I hate the very idea of ever going back to restrictions, but I think as long as there is no stupid macronutrient or (shudder) calorie restrictions, it sounds promising. Ive been on a low VA (0-5% RDA diet depending on the day, for a week, and Im pretty sure I’ve noticed some good results. I remain skeptical but optimistic. Been burned so many times and I thought eat for heat was my last eating strategy haha.
No, carotenoids are not toxic and can be safely stored in subcutaneous fat. Retinol is far less toxic than its metabolite retinoic acid. Given that retinoic pathways are present throughout the animal kingdom and that the genes coding for it are very conservative (resistant against mutations) that fact alone would convince any biologist that it is somehow essential to life. There is a ton of research on retinoic acid. It initiates cell differentiation in embryonic tissue, and likewise in stem cells in all tissues. It is also very toxic, and therefore tightly regulated. The body gets rid of excess retinol by first converting it to retinoic acid, and eventually make it water soluble and excrete through the kidneys. To Matt’s idea that if the liver is full vitamin a becomes a problem I must object, that retinol can also be stored in the fat cells. Hypervitaminosis due to excessive intake of retinol is usually cured by stopping suppletion. Usually the body clears out the excess in a couple of weeks. I’d rather think that somehow the pathways regulating retinoi acid run awry in Grant’s and similar cases.
Maureen, I largely agree with what you’re saying, so the following is mostly quibbling and tweaking the emphasis.
The fact that even after a long period of abstaining from vitamin A, eating some vitamin A provokes a strong reaction (which Grant and Charlene Andersen both claim), suggests to me that there is a metabolic breakdown somewhere, and not simple vitamin A overload. There we agree.
However, that is still consistent with the possibility that something in Western diets overloads retinol pathways with available retinol and/or retinoic acid. Furthermore, it might also mean that until we figure out why retinol isn’t being handled correctly, the best course of action may well be to minimize intake.
The fact that retinol is stored in fat cells does not mean that doing so is ideal. For example, what if liver steatosis is simply the liver trying to protect itself from toxic levels of retinol, because it can’t get rid of the excess quickly enough?
The theory definitely puts people on guard. I don’t recommend telling people it loosely, unless you don’t mind appearing crazy. When I first heard about it, I mentioned it to my brother for a laugh. But his reaction was quite the opposite. In fact he wanted to know as much about it as possible, since we both had taken Roaccutane when we were young and naive, and our health has never been great since. The next day he compiled his own list of low VitA foods, and I was amazed. Afterall, he’s one of the laziest people I know when it comes to dieting. That’s when I started to think maybe I should take this theory more seriously. I decided to read one of Grant’s books and it definitely changed my outlook. I’ve been on the diet for just over a week now. There has been a little improvement in my health, but the biggest change is how my cravings have come under control. I’m also starting to enjoy a weak long black when I go to a cafe.
This “girl” is Stephanie Person.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmMJ2ioWma0SpD9N21OiuXA
http://www.stephanieperson.com/
She’s in her 50s.
And she eats A LOT OF KALE and shitloads of BUTTER.
Plenty of Vitamin A.
Not bad at all.
I stumbled on the the theories of Grant Genereux while lurking on the RayPeat-Forum from time to time (franco’s thread). Suffering from auto-immune issues myself and having followed several dietary experiences (which I’m pretty sure have worsened and even triggered some of my illnesses), I was of course interested in his findings and I thought I should share my observations:
– My hair loss and dry skin story really began when I was following a cooked vegan diet. My diet was fairly PUFA-ridden (at least 20% of calories) and I’m sure also pretty high in Vitamin A prescucors cause I wanted to do it the “healthy way”.
– Around two years into veganism, I began juicing a lot of vegetables and finally even tried a crazy raw vegan diet focussed solely on colourful raw vegetables, some nuts and especially centered around carrots (!). I remember eating large amounts of carrots all day long because I was too afraid of fructose. I only did this for 4 weeks or so and stopped because of weight loss. It was during that time that I experienced for the first time dandruff and itchy scalp. I also believe that this experience really triggered my cold sensitivity and f***** my metabolism in general. I returned to cooked veganism but my symptoms didn’t vanish.
– Few months later I went back to including some fish and shellfish in my diet. I felt great (although my digestion couldn’t handle this sudden change very well) and began reading on paleo sites of the importance of organ meats. So I tried a big piece of cows liver and approximately one week later I got a skin disease called seborrheic dermatitis which I suffer from till today. I never made the connection with the liver eating until I discovered Grant’s blog a few weeks ago and always thought it was because of the digestive stress I experienced from integrating animal products again or because of alcohol binging on weekends. But it has kept playing on my mind since then.
– Early 2018 I did two fruit juice feasts for several weeks each and which were very much centered around watermelons (heavy in lycopene = carotenoid). Although I felt great during the feast themselves, all my symptoms reappeared in a worse fashion after I stopped the juicing.
I think about giving GG diet a try. Relying on starches and meats isn’t the worst diet after all.
For those who want to read more, I also discovered a blog of a girl who got Vitamin A toxicity. Some good comments can be found in the comment section:
https://www.healthextremist.com/how-i-got-vitamin-a-toxicity/
Vollkorn, I hope you try the Zero A diet and it works for you.
I too only recently stumbled upon Grant’s site and books and can’t find much to argue against, even though I recognize the controlled use of it in the affairs of the body. PubMed is chock full of papers on that subject.
The thing that really grabbed my attention in the first week of reading Grant’s stuff, was his claim that rendering lard creates Retinoic Acid. I had a friend that drank himself to death, no doubt from the eczema that plagued him for 20 years. We used lard in the deep fryers in the restaurants his father owned. He lived and ate in those establishments as a manager.
I went to Florida with him to help open a new one and saw his skin clear-up, likely due to eating lots of hamburgers instead of fried fish coated with beer-batter.
He used alcohol to get to sleep. His dream world was completely messed-up. I’ve wondered about the real cause for many years and I’m pretty convinced Grant has nailed it.
I have two things to say about this:
1. Us humans spend so much of our energy, time, mental energy, money, etc. on living long, that we kind of forget to just enjoy the life that we do have now. Yes, we will eventually die one day. And because infectious diseases and exposure to weather or wild animals is no longer so much part of the equation, we’ll probably die from an old-age disease – that’s what they all are: Alzheimers, heart disease, cancer, etc. There really is no magic pill (or magic restriction), just yet. Sure, scientists are working on stopping the ageing process. Maybe we’ll get there soon. But hey, in the meantime, let’s just enjoy life. I’m so tired of damn restrictions. I’m already gluten intolerant and other things. Now I can’t eat tomatoes and I have to live on beef (which I don’t particularly like anyway).
2. Restriction in any way leads to metabolic breakdown. I’m just really surprised that you are talking about this, Matt. But I understand that you want answers for your asthma (and I would too), but I’m still not convinced this is it. I’ll definitely look into steering away from fortified foods, but veggies are like my favourite food. I don’t really want to cut them out and something tells me that’s a bad idea. Yes, I do have autoimmune responses in my body and I’m keen to find an answer to that one. I’m trying natural cleaning products as a start. A lot of it stems from toxins in our cleaning products and environment. Pollutants in the air too.
Let us know how this goes.
You have to live off ONLY beef due to food intolerances? How are you doing?
I noticed when I went onto an ONLY beef diet that I began reacting to all kinds of other foods when I left the diet. And it’s not improving.
This almost certainly has to do with the gut biome. If the right critters are present, they help break down plant compounds that are otherwise troublesome to the gut lining.
This is a potentially major downside to very strict diets as that causes further die-off of bacteria that feed on plant matter. If VA is to be avoided, I would say it’s better to keep as many low VA foods in the diet as long as they seem to be tolerated well.
This goes back to glyphosate (on top of antibiotics) wrecking gut microbiomes and gut health. Add in hybridization and GMOs that have the defensive compounds in plants at levels novel to humans and we have an unmitigated disaster in the works. And I still suspect this is causing the VA issues.
And remember there is almost certainly going to be some reaction when foods are reintroduced. Go slow and give it some time (a couple weeks at least) before immediately scaling back down.
Also, eat organic and avoid glyphosate as much as possible. We have got to get this crap out of the environment or we will all be sick (it’s just a matter of time). The disease trends are so alamrming right now that this is a make or break period in our history.
I prefer your “Eat an fing piece of pizza and stop worrying about all this shit” material. It has helped me greatly. Im not ready to jump on another miracle diet bandwagon.
After all my years of reading your blogs, Matt, all I want to know is one thing. Is water safe? In other words, can I eat that without Contracting half The Merck Manual? Just one substance, one single substance, that I can put into my body without it eating me back in retaliation would mean the world to me.
SARScastically,
Ian
That’s scary Matt – reading about how rodents developed skin cancer after being slathered in Vitamin A cream. I use a Retin-A cream regularly. I’m not sure now whether to stop it or not. I’m careful about avoiding the sun, but I know it makes your skin thinner and more sensitive. I haven’t noticed any ill effects (yet) and its been proven to work for wrinkles in so many studies over the years. Would you advise quitting in the name of health?
All this bickering about vitamin A is a waste of time. If you would all just follow the recommendations of Dr. Jack Kruse you’d be fine. In fact, if you join at his Gold level membership level within the next 30 days you will get a sneak peak at his new course,? The FORCE! It’s not just for the Sith and Jedi! So, quit all this belly aching about vitamin A and submit yourself to your new master, the one who has brought true balance to the FORCE, the Grand-Poo-Bah Himself, Dr. Jack Kruuuuuzzze!!! ????
Do you get a secret initiation at the gold level and a secret hand shake?
It’s better than that John! When you join up you get a light saber with your choice of either a blue, green, purple, or red light beam!
Hmm, I’m definitely skeptical here but I am totally on board with avoiding fortified foods, supplements and sunscreen. Everyone should do that regardless though.
Ugh, I really love butter, and milk. Luckily I can get whole milk without any added vitamins.
Anecdotally, I have had bad keratosis pilaris my whole life and it was never as bad as when I dabbled in WAP and was eating tons of fat soluble vitamins. It turned into oozing pimples all over my arms and legs…so gross. I was also trying to avoid the sun in those days too. The only thing that helps my kp is sunbathing to practically the point of burning my skin off. I don’t try to do that though for obvious reasons haha.
By limiting PUFAs and starches, Ray Peat style, I was able to sunbathe for hours in mid-day summer without one burn. Got rid of my dandruff too. You don’t need sunscreen. I have burned in the past when I ate more PUFAs like peanut butter, potato chips, pork and chicken fst, sardines, tuna; etc.
Okay, I would’ve immediately dismissed this guy because anyone who goes on a diet and gets an energy burst makes me think “low calorie diet (though I dunno what his caloric intake is) + sudden energy = eating disorder,” BUT geez he’s got me curious because this lines up with something I noticed anecdotally while involved in Gwyneth Owlyn’s eating disorder recovery community.
Okay, so firstly eating 3000+ calories per day completely cured me of a ton of different ailments (most notably chronic insomnia, bipolar disorder, paranoia, social anxiety, constipation, acne, severe fatigue, and being so cold I used to wear hoodies all summer).
But I noticed that a number of people following Gwyneth’s calorie guidelines (and well beyond during periods of extreme hunger, 4000+ calories easily, which I also experienced for the first several months of refeeding), gained wild amounts of edema (well beyond the mild puffiness I experienced during the first 6 months or so) which their bodies held into for YEARS afterwards. Several of those individuals ended up developing diabetes and/or autoimmune disorders after a year or three…
This isn’t due to the sugar consumption. I typically eat at least 1/3 cup refined sugar daily, and ate way more than that during the first couple years of my recovery.
This isn’t due to high carbohydrate consumption. I eat between 200 and 500 g carbohydrates per day.
This isn’t (likely) due only due to PUFA consumption, because while I butter my bread and potatoes and rice, I eat plenty of nuts and seeds and chips, too.
But the vitamin A idea has the potential to be a factor for two reasons…
1) I had a fairly low vitamin A diet growing up (no dairy, no fortified cereals), aside from a short WAPF inspired cod liver oil kick (which didn’t last long because ew and $$), so I imagine my stores of vitamin A aren’t “full” yet. This may not have been the case for those ED recoveres who developed inflammatory diseases.
2) Aside from Sam’s Choice Ice Cream, which I ate copious amounts of during the first four months of recovery, and butter and eggs, I didn’t eat many vitamin A rich foods (I don’t even drink milk, but rather eat yogurt). Breakfast, for me, is either oatmeal or cream of wheat (no vitamin A) with butter or cereal cream (contains vitamin A, but not fortified) and sugar. But several people who developed inflammatory disease would eat heaps (like sometimes an entire box full) of fortified breakfast cereal with milk every day, which would result in several times more vitamin A than my breakfast.
Maybe it’s a small difference. Maybe it’s nothing. But what if it is an important factor that could help then get their immune systems in order? (Along with a robust and healthy population of beneficial gut bacteria, if course. Hey I wonder how retinoic acid or whatever interacts with the microbiome?)
Thanks for posting about this, because it’s very interesting. Will read more.
*robust and healthy is redundant xD
Synthetic vitamin A is absolutely a problem. There is no evidence that naturally occurring vitamin A (not speaking of beta carotene) in naturally occurring amounts with naturally occurring co-factors taken in ancestral amounts (read: not multiple tablespoons daily of PUFAs like poor Dr. Ron) is toxic.
@puddleduck: he said he eats 2300-2400 calories a day. I don’t know how tall he is or what his activity level is, but 2400 is not too shabby. I hear you though, the honeymoon phase of new diets is real.
Thanks for that, Skeptic! That’s low imo (he should have 600-700 more calories daily if he is between 5’4″ and 6′), but not extreme.
That’s not too low for a 57-year old medium-sized dude that’s moderately active. Most see their caloric needs drop by about 1% per year after 30. And I think he was eating about the same amount of calories before and exercising more when he started getting his middle-age gut (now gone).
Whether or not his caloric intake is ideal (I’m going by Owlyn’s info–I’m far from an expert), if he hasn’t lowered it since starting his diet (while also reducing exercise) then he’s not experiencing an ED related energy rush. That fact makes me more interested in his idea and also happy he has found something that has improved his health so dramatically without causing damage! :)
Agreed
I’m open to know more about the theory but I have some questions. The vitamin A that is added to food is synthetic. Does this have a different effect? I think it might. Carotene conversion to vitamin A is limited by poor thyroid and liver function. Many people seem to have vitamin A deficiencies due to chronic infections. Many people don’t eat carotenes and almost no one eats pre-formed vitamin A in foods like pastured eggs, grass fed dairy, and organ meats. I’ll take a look at it though with skepticism, but an open mind. Supplement vitamin A is an different than what you get in foods.
This. 100% this. But hey, this isn’t pot-stirring that generates clicks, so hey.
I’m having some good initial results with decreasing my vitamin A intake. I could never go completely without it because it would limit my diet too much. My initial goal was to stay below 1,000 IUs per day. I doubt that I’m actually accomplishing that. I’ve been on too many diets that required tracking every morsel and I just can’t bring myself to do it any more. I believe I have significantly decreased my vitamin A intake by choosing foods from my list with lower amounts of A and by only occasionally indulging in foods with higher amounts.
However, I can’t attribute my positive outcomes entirely to reduced vitamin A because I also started taking 3,000 mg of Taurine (divided). And, even before I started reducing my A intake and taking Taurine, I was eating for heat. Within a couple of months, my temps came up and my appetite decreased.
So it could be a combo of low A, Taurine, and EFH. Or it may be none of those things. But anyway, here are my results since the middle of June:
– Lost 3.5″ in bust, 4″ in waist, and 3.5″ in hips. That corresponds to dropping one size for me. (I’m 5’5″ tall.) I don’t have a scale so I don’t know how many pounds I’ve lost.
– Skin is much softer and smoother. Age spots and rough, flesh colored bumps on my torso and forearms are getting smaller, less noticeable and some have disappeared completely. I wear sandals all summer and usually my heals become dry, rough, and cracked. Didn’t happen this year. They are soft and smooth.
– I can go out in bright sunshine without sunglasses and night vision is greatly improved. I can go from bright sunshine to a dark room and see just fine. And I can go from dark to bright without squinting.
– My digestion is greatly improved. Chronic diarrhea is gone. GERD is infrequent and mild.
– My fingernails look amazing. Very strong. The moons are beginning to reappear.
I’ll keep the group updated on whether or not I continue to make progress. I’m very happy about how far I’ve come and if this is as good as it gets, I’m okay with it.
Please update. I always wondered what happened to my moons. I have two left on my thumbs, barely visible and it would be cool to get them back and have soft feet again, also in summertime.
I also supp with Taurine.
nice
I use Solgar brand Taurine because it’s made in the U.S. and it doesn’t have any other supplements with it. Vitamin Shoppe has its own brand but it also has B6.
That’s so awesome! What Taurine brand do you use?
Jeanne — I, too, was curious about what type of taurine you use?
I’m using one that’s a spray and supposedly well-absorbed. It says in big bold letters not to exceed 100 mgs per day. Not sure if that’s a high enough dosage to do anything…
Turtlegurl,
Do you mind sharing which Taurine spray you are using?
Thanks
Kaykay — sure: it’s from GoodHealthNaturally.com
Thanks, turtlegurl!
KayKay — I would NOT recommend getting that taurine spray. Apparently, they put citric acid in it, and the directions tell you to hold it in your mouth for 2 minutes before swallowing = recipe for tooth decay.
Interesting tidbits: In the U.S., the RDA for Vitamin A for all adults is 5,000 IUs. But in Europe, the RDA for men is 3,000 IUs and 2,300 IUs for women (not pregnant and not lactating). Seems like a big difference. Wonder how those values were determined.
Not only vit A Differ between us and europe but many other vitamins as well, if not all. I wonder why that is…
For those curious: In sweden we don’t use IU for vit A but RE, the rdi for retinoids are 800 RE (retinol equivalents)
1 RE =
1 mcg retinol
2 mcg betacarotene (supplement)
12 mcg betacarotene
24 mcg alpha carotene or betacryptoxantine
1 IU is 0,33 mcg retinol
It does seem like another eating disorder diet. I feel natural foods of a variety are most beneficial but have felt the best thing I learned from Matt writings was about danger of low calories and the dangers of over restrictive diets. There seems to be no real evidence that Grant was A abundant. All these others who benefited seem to have cut out a lot of other foods that might be harmful.
The other aspect of this is that if there is a link, it is to either synthetic vitamin A or isolated vitamin A which never occurs in nature. These are the types of A added to foods. No one in America eats concentrated vitamin A rich foods. Ray Peat’s diet has good amounts of A from dairy products if they come from grass fed animals.
I haven’t read all the assigned homework yet so I’ll be back later, but just a couple things real quick:
1) Blue Zones. How does Genereux explain the fact that they have the lowest rates of all these diseases while it should be the opposite according to him?
2) what increased in the last 40 years is THE question, but unfortunately, there are so many answers to that that it becomes almost useless. Here’s one: coffee. It went way up in that time period. Who’s to say it’s not a secret villain?
3) personal experience: I don’t eat fruits, veg, seafood (yuck), no liver or magic Sally Fallon foods, no accutane or sunscreen. How did I become saturated?
Hey, Skeptic:
I just read the following and remembered your comment about not eating fruits and veg.
“Kencko wants to help you eat more fruit and vegetables. Sachet-based drink includes pulp and vitamins absent in pressed juice.”
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/26/kencko
Gee, “science” to the rescue. Just add water. Just like “The Jetsons.”
Of course, if you read the opinions of Georgia Ede (and, you probably have), she doesn’t seem to believe that fruits or vegetables are required. In fact, she thinks vegetables could potentially harmful.
I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone.
Oh yeah I know the Edes, I bought into their bullshit once. They’re currently enjoying enjoying a return to the spotlight as in 2017, keto was fad of the year, and in 2018, carnivore is fad of the year.
Your comment reminded me of the legendary Oldways conference in 2015, a Council of Nicaea of sorts where tons of nutritionists and physicians convened to try to reach consensus on nutrition and decide what is canon. It was a hilarious failure as you can imagine.
A quote from an article describing it: ?Ninety minutes into the meeting, we were still trying to agree what the hell a vegetable was,? said Dr. David Katz, director of Yale University’s Prevention Research Center. ?That was a dark moment.
Later Katz tried to spin the conference as totally awesome, while in reality the only thing they (kind of) agreed on was “eat more plants and seafood”, but as you can see from this year with the Carnivore fad trending, there’s even doctors and PhD nutritionists questioning whether plants are even necessary and/or “TOXIC POISON” (except for coffee of course).
THEY. CAN’T. EVEN. AGREE. ON. VEG. BEING. GOOD. FOR. YOU.
I can’t think of a clearer sign that humanity has peaked.
“I can’t think of a clearer sign that humanity has peaked.”
hahahaha – I literally laugh aloud at that one!
Minor point, but you may have been referring to Mike and Mary Dan Eades, versus the carnivore zealot Georgia Ede.
http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/foods
Funny enough, when typing her name into Google, it tried to autocomplete the word “quack” after her name. LOL.
I recall reading an interview of S. Boyd Eaton, regarding the Oldways Conference you mentioned.
“The Paleo Diet, Without Meat?”
ChicagoTribune.com/dining/ct-paleo-vegetarian-food-0217-20160215-story.html#
In re-reading the article, I’m reminded of how much I dislike Mark Hyman. He’s one of the many Functional Medicine people whom I wish would just go away.
Oh god — Mark Hyman. I, too, wish he and his 200 teeth would just go away. When I typed his name into Dogpile (my fav search engine), it autofilled “fraud”. These search engines know the truth. If “functional medicine” didn’t already have a bad name…
The Eades got some of my money when I bought “Protein Power”. I read it all, took copious notes, did every stupid thing they recommended, and…the only difference is that now I have a little less money.
I was just looking at one of Hyman’s websites, where he sells his boatloads of supplements.
The 10-day Detox Basic Supplement pack (at a special price of $146.47, down from $162.75!!!) is only one of the supplement packs you apparently need for this program. And get this: although this is sold as something you will take just for this short detoxing period, it says, “THESE SUPPLEMENTS SHOULD BE TAKEN EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE FOR MAXIMUM EFFECT.” The caps are mine, but that is what it actually says, word for word.
I’m sure he and his teeth are laughing all the way to the bank…
I went to Google Images and searched “200 teeth” to look for something funny. Big mistake. It was worse than that photo of the weirdo on the beach with the angel wings and the codpiece. I feel like I’m going to barf.
I can’t believe Dogpile is still around. I think I last used that in my Netscape browser in Windows 95!
Good ol’ Hymie. He just wants what’s best for us.
Here’s what his supplement pack should have actually stated:
“THESE SUPPLEMENTS SHOULD BE TAKEN EVERY DAY FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, FOR MAXIMUM BENEFIT…OF MY BANK ACCOUNT. HAHAHA, SUCKERS.”
Also…
I was reviewing one of the many online health “Summits” and researching information on some of the presenters. Here’s one of them – a lady named Elle Russ:
https://www.paleofx.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/elle-russ-468×468.jpg
I knew the Paleo folks were confused. But, hunting coconuts with a spear? It’s worse than I realized!
I wonder if lactose intolerance has any connection to vitamin A toxicity? I’ve read articles about how lactose intolerant people are low on Vitamin D.
I haven’t looked on your blog too much, so maybe you have already addressed this thought?
Most people are low in vitamin D. I found it very interesting that Grant’s vitamin D levels skyrocketed up to the upper optimal range as his vitamin A levels approached zero, without supplementation or sunbathing and the like. Just as Dr. G has pointed out, the best way to get your vitamin D levels up are to reduce your intake of calcium and vitamin A.
LOL this whole time I thought that website was Mary Eade’s website! (not sure how I missed the name Georgia right at the top). I guess I zone out the second I hear the “evil carbs” schtick.
Eades, Ede, whatever. Same thing. :)
That’s totally understandable. It’s a carb cacophony!
1. Not sure. Okinawans apparently eat sweet potatoes. I did see this: “The traditional Okinawan diet was about 80 percent carbohydrates.” Perhaps their diet is low enough fat such that carotenoids can’t be absorbed or converted to retinol. But it is a fair question. Another possibility is that Okinawans, in response to their diet, are particularly bad at conversion of carotenoids, but I’m skeptical of that.
2. If I had to guess, it could be higher consumption of colorful veggies (high in caretonoids), eaten with dietary fat, which may improve their absorption and conversion into retinol. For example, pizza or sauteed veggies, or fortified cereal with milk.
3. Yeah, from your diet you’re not an obvious candidate. Do you eat lots of dairy? If not, what _do_ you eat? Did you ever take supplements with A?
I wonder what the vitamin A content of Okinawan purple sweet potatoes is compared to orange-fleshed sweet potatoes, and how much they eat? Again, it’s a long-term cumulative issue, so as long as they don’t overflow their livers, they shouldn’t experience many negative effects, as the theory goes. There are also numerous protective factors. Garrett is diving deeply into that subject now.
The clue is higher up the comments… Vitamin A is depleted by production of Vitamin D. I reckon traditional Okinawans would get a bit of sun…
No, zero supplements of any kind, don’t eat dairy, no fruits or veg, although lately I’ve been eating a lot of butter so maybe that put me over the top? I don’t do pastured butter just generic.
But even so, I’ve had eczema since I was like ten or eleven, but Grant said it takes years to accumulate? It also seems to react to certain soaps, and I’ve had others with eczema tell me the same thing, that they avoid certain brands of soap because it causes a flare up. I don’t see how this squares up with Grant’s ideas.
Butter is dairy! There’s a fair bit of vitamin A in it, and it would be of the preformed retinol variety, which may be more of problem compared to carotenoids found in vegetables.
If you’ve always eaten a lot of butter, or if you did have some period in your life of high vitamin A exposure, it could still be consistent with the saturated liver hypothesis.
Otherwise, it suggests that the problem is one of retinol metabolism, instead of overloaded storage. Or, or course, that retinol has nothing to do with it at all.
@Skeptic Personally not a fan of diet soda at all. I only drink the regular stuff. I think that if your body is craving sugar and you give it some artificial substitute it just screws with your system.
Have you tried eating more fruit or even just drinking regular soda?
lol I know I know! I’ve only been eating it for the last 8 months-ish because my stomach pretty much refuses to digest anything now, and butter seems to go down easy. But like I said, I got eczema at age 10, and Grant said it takes decades to accumulate, that’s why the diseases he talks about are mislabeled “diseases of old age”.
p.s. are sodas and diet sodas on Grant’s radar at all? Because I have a pretty bad addiction, 2 liters a day of diet coke, I briefly quit for 2 months but promptly relapsed.
@Skeptic. Oops replied to the wrong person. See above on soda.
For what it’s worth, I agree with PaulS about drinking regular soda, if you’re going to drink soda at all. I’ll forgo some of the reasons why, because you probably know more about the subject than I do! But, since you used the word “addition,” then the issue likely goes beyond taste preference.
I have a cousin that used to drink Diet Coke like mad. Thankfully, he eventually gave it up. But, he had a tough time doing so. He didn’t even like the taste, at first, but he was brainwashed about calories. Over time, though, he came to like the taste and crave it.
Personally, I cannot have artificial sweeteners, due to triggering migraines. In a way, I’m glad I have the problem and am thankful I finally realized the link.
If you currently drink ANY carbonated beverages with or near meals, I suggest trying to avoid them within an hour before AND after meals. This might help improve your digestive woes.
Oh yeah I’d rather drink regular Coke, and I did until a year and a half ago, but now that I’m prediabetic, I get seriously dizzy when I drink juice or regular coke. Can’t tolerate it anymore. I don’t eat fruits because the indigestion is a goddamn nightmare after eating them.
@Carl: I only drink them with meals though lol, and the sad thing is I think they help me digest, but I have to quit again. I definitely feel the difference when I quit, and last time I lost 7 pounds after I quit, with no change in diet or activity whatsoever, which goes to show how toxic this crap is.
The addiction comment makes me think of Stephan Guyenet’s talk about food reward.
Even without calories, the sweet flavour probably desensitises your tastebuds.
yeah I believe so as well
Skeptic- I’ve been thinking about the blue zones thing since reading Grants books.
We went to Ikaria last year (my husbands family is from there) and my guesses are: dairy is sparse – processed raw and used as yoghurt not milk, and they don’t eat much hard cheese – white cheese seems much lower in A- at least feta is.
Seasonal eating- no brightly coloured vegetables available over winter. They tend to trade within the community for foodstuffs and don’t have a corporate food system which makes every type of food available 12 months of the year. There are actually very few supermarkets in Greece- the ones I saw were tiny and selling small amounts of local produce.
Rice,potatoes, pasta and bread are carb staples.
They don’t actually use red sauces all the time- like we think -cooking in lemon type sauces is common too.
The most common fish to eat is sardines and squid -both quite low A plus the waters are warmer so less vitamin a in the fish generally anyway.
They trust nothing from the corporate food system so no fortification and there is barely any food in packets even in the supermarket- as in sweets /cereal / biscuits isle and the water (all from mountain springs) is amazing. And they don’t eat that much offal.
I suspect their diet is also quite high in vitamin e. A lot of walnuts, pumpkin and sesame seeds are consumed.
And then you have all the other things- everyone happy despite grumbling about the economy- no pharmacies, no supplements, hardly any wifi/cell phone use as they can’t afford it, and I’m convinced that dancing might help the detox process in some way.
Interesting article,but I personally find it a bit hypocritical that you use The Andersens as example to prove your point.
A family which has been zerocarb for 20 years,whereas in previous posts you were making fun of carbless diets that it’ll f*ck up your health.
Besides that…she has been eating fatty beef for 20 years, so she has been getting in Vit.A. There are also a lot of other possible irritants (histamines,salicylates..) in liver,which could’ve caused her to tolerate it poorly.
There are actually people who eat liver daily and don’t suffer from vit.A toxicity.
I do think that for most it’s probably not optimal to use vit.A supplements like candy or drink Cod liver oil like there’s no tomorrow.
@Dutchie: 1)just because she has a rocking bod doesn’t mean she’s healthy. She could have depression, anxiety, brain fog, etc for all we know. Dogmatic dieters are rarely honest about their health.
2) as we’ve seen from Shawn Baker’s blood tests, you can be “zero carb” and still have glucose coming out the ass from gluconeogenesis…
@Skeptic I didn’t say anything about her body, bc whether she’s toned or not isn’t relevant for this article.
What irritates me is the hypocrisy…..dismissing all ‘diets’ as not healthy.
So,that leaves us with what?! only at Eat4Heat as the way to health?
I’m glad that it has helped many people,but Eat4Heat/RRARF only managed to worsen my body even more. Ironically, some of these supposedly ‘unhealthy diets’ have managed to calm things again.
I guess what disappointments me a bit,is that the tone of this site now has a slightly self-righteous taste to it.
Are you saying I have a self-righteous tone? Going from bashing all diets to exploring something as weird and restrictive as this is anything but something present self-righteously. It’s humbling. Fucking embarrassing really.
I’m sorry, Matt.
Looking back at the extremely difficult recoveries some had, it does make me wonder about fortified foods (and supplements in general). Because we were eating a lot of easy to digest foods, many of those foods were inherently fortified. Also, because resting was a big part of recovery, many did not get outside much. I wonder if the mystery behind what went “wrong” with so many recoveries simply had to do with eating so much fortified foods and lack of sunshine? Maybe that was a disastrous combination that nobody recognized. It’s interesting to consider that the answer may have literally been right under our nose ever time we took a bite of food.
Despite your embarrassment, I appreciate your willingness to still put yourself out there to try to find answers. This may potentially be the answer for some who are still suffering with their recovery. Avoiding fortified foods/supplements may be the first step in finally seeing a turnaround in their recovery. I had to stop eating fortified foods because testing showed that I was having a difficult time with sulfites and histamine. Possibly the improvements I made at that point also had to do with the fact that I was no longer eating the added vitamins in the fortified foods. I don’t have a problem with sulfites anymore, and I’ve slowly improved my tolerance to histamine. A doctor in your comment section mentioned the connection she found to Vitamin A and histamine intolerance after reading your article. It was very interesting and curious to read what she had to say after what I’ve been through. It may not be the answer to every ill, but you may have hit upon one piece of the puzzle that will make a difference…fortification and vitamin supplementation. Thank you.
We are all looking through our little hole in the fence at the big picture. We can’t see it all at once. Letting go of the idea that your view is the best or the only one is the first step in recognising that there is something to learn from everyone’s hole in the fence.
To be fair, eat4heat and RRARF we’re primarily for people with eating disorders, and/or those with low metabolisms caused by restriction. For those people, the advice is still the same. Also, the refeed is, and always has been, supposed to be temporary, until you fix your relationship with food and hopefully your metabolism.
I understand your frustrations, many of us feel that way about the lack of answers.
It’s true that it drew a lot of people with ED’s, but there were also a lot of testimonials of people healing whatever they were dealing with.
Now,I’m not blaming Eat4Heat/RRARF for my ill(er) health,bc I’m the one responsible…I partook in it.
I’m just saying that Eat4Heat could be just as much a ‘diet’ to take the piss out on as all these other diets….
@Dutchie: from what I remember, most testimonials were about reversing stuff caused by restriction in the first place: depression, anxiety, brain fog, bad digestion,low libido, messed up menstruation, hair loss, sensitive teeth, etc..
I don’t think anyone said they cured any of the big bads like cancer and autoimmune.
But yeah, no diet is correct. A thousand years from now (if we manage to avoid WW3), scientists will be laughing their ass off reading about our shitty theories on nutrition.
It doesn’t matter anymore…..the damage has been done.
This is not the site for me anymore…..it was fun visiting here, but I guess I don’t see much value in visiting here anymore.
You had fun visiting here? Never seemed like it. Every communication of yours I’ve read seems like complete misery.
Matt, i subscribed to this thread and I no longer want to follow. I tried to unsubscribe several times, and I never received an email where I could unsubscribe. Could you please look into this. I have a million emails from this thread.
thank you.
This also sounds like a low salicylate diet, which has been said to help with all sorts of things (including asthma). My kids and i all benefit from not having too many salicylates, even though they are supposed to be healthy. I think it’s due to lack of minerals needed to process them properly, but I’m not sure.
New to this but quite familiar with the skin stuff…Wondering -any THYROID connections to too much Vit A??
Yes, potentially. Thyroid hormone T4 and retinol are both transported in the body via the protein transthyretin. I haven’t seen any conclusive studies, but excess VitA could interfere with thyroid function since they would compete for this transport protein. There have been some studies on how VitA supplementation or deficiency affects TSH levels and thryoid gland size, but the results have been conflicting.
karen — it could be just coincidence, but my Graves’ Disease (autoimmune hyperthyroidism) had been relatively calm for several years, until this past year, when I took tons of Vit A tabs and fermented cod liver oil. I developed the worst episode of hyperthyroidism I’ve ever had, and ten months later, it still isn’t over.
Out of interest have your had your vitamin D blood levels tested recently, if so, what were the results? Thank you.
Hello Matt,
Could you outline a typical day of zero Vitamin A eating for you please?
Do you people know what the word multi-factorial means? Has it occurred to you that about 1000000 things changed in 1980 with the modern world beyond the simplistic things you’re cherry picking for this ‘theory’? No, no you do not. Our entire food supply, activity levels and lifestyle were changing resulting in a massive increase in obesity which is, in and of itself, an inflammatory state. To blame one thing is simplistic idiotic.
But I guess simplistic scare-tactic nonsense is better than actual research or critical thinking.
Hello, Lyle-
Though you were mentioned in the comments section of the previous blog post (and others), I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you comment on this site. It’s like spotting Bigfoot.
Oh dang it’s Lyle. I agree about the bagillion factors thing, too many to count, too many dots to connect. However, it’s very interesting that all these diseases have a common root: inflammation/autoimmune, and that might narrow down the search hopefully.
It’s OVER for your sales, McDonald. You are most definitely a physics illiterate booksalemen scammer. I have exposed your ignorance in tje OMAD Diet thread.
You cannot even grasp what energy and its units are-NOTHING AT ALL-FICTION. You could easily use “calories” for the Hiroshima explosion, you coukd use mega-cycles or inverse fermiins for food.INVOKING ENERGY AS A CAUSE OF IBESITY IS THE SAME AS SAYING MAGIC DID IT. FEYNMAN SAID THAT. ENERGY KS FICTITIOUS BUT USEFUL. IT IS NEVER CAUSAL AND CANNOT ACT. MATTER AND ENERGY HAVE NO RELATION. TOP LHC PHYSICISTS STRESS THIS. MATTER IS STUFF, RADUATION IS STUFF, TOO. NOT MATTER, BUT NOT ENERGY EITHER. AND , NO, CALORIES ARE NOT, NOT, NOT NEBULOUS , INVISIBLE ENTITIESL THEYNARE ENTIREKY FICTITIOUS. GET AN EDUCATION.
No, Lyle, calories are not important, nor do they even exist. CARBON ATOMS ABSORBED IN THE BLOOD ARE ONE OF THE IMPORTANT FACTKRS. GEMETICS AND HORMINES, TOO, EVEN MORE SO. They are totally FICTITIOUS and NOT intrinsic to food. You cannot grasp the caloroe/inversefermiin/erg model of obesity is WRONG. WE SEE OBESITY IN THE MOST EXTREME DESTITUTE POVERTY-CASE CLOSED, THE ULTIMATE TEST…… I AM ON TAUBES’ TEAM, HE HAS DONE FAR MORE TO FURTHER KNOWLEDGE THAN YOU HABE. TAUBES RIGHTFULLY CRITICIZES THE CALOROE MODEL TO THE POINT OF ADEQUATE REFUTATION. HE ALSO ASKS THE RIGHT QUESTIONS.
ARE YOU EVEN AWARE THAT MATHEMATICAL MODELS DO NOT REPRESENT REALITY! THEY COME AND GO AS HUMANS FIND THEM USEFUL. A LEGEND IN PHYSICS STRESSED THAT TO ME. NOBEL WINNER FOR HJS WORK ON QCD, DAVID GROSS, IS BACKING GARY TAUBES 100%. HEJUST LAUGHS AT YOUR TYPE.
You (and Nikoley, Krieger etc.) bullied Matt and I back in the day, but I have far surpassed you, Colpo, Aragon, Krieger and the rest of your douchey clan in physics knowledge. You are all misusing ohysics tobkame obesity victims. Fat cells can sheink with radiation, can have mechanical force applied and disintegrate like all other body tissues. No FICTIIN DEFICIT NECESSARY…. WHAT REALLY IS OCCURING JS A CARBON ATOM SHORTAGE.
OBESITY IS EXTREMELY POORLY UNDERSTOOD, NEXT TO NOTHING IS KNOWN ABOUT FAT CELL DYSREGULATION AND HOARDING. WE HAVE NO SOLUTIINS FOR SEVERE OBESITY. URGELT IS FAR SMARTER THAN YOU. I ENCOURAGE EVERYBODY TO GO TO HIS YOUTUBE VIDEO AND READ HIS COMME TS ABOUT SHYSTERS LIKE YOURSELF. I KNOW HOW LITTLE ELITE PHYSICISTS KNOW . I know for a fact you fitness bros are ALL BULLSH@TTING.
I have the e-mails from physicists verifying this that you misuse physics for sales and to place blame on victims of obesity. I AM GLAD THE WELL IS DRYING UP FOR YOU.
CICO: Carbon-In Carbon-Out! :-)
Good to see you, Razzle Dazzle!!
Thanks, Carl. : )
I had tasty inverse fermions today along with mega-cycles. These fictitious units sure as tasty as well as nutritious. LOL!
Check out this videov “New Lingerie Styles For Angels” on YouTube. I ROTFLOL!
Whoops, It’s actually this phrase for the video “South Beach Latest Lingerie For Angels”. ROTFLOL. You cannot unsee that.
MY EYES!! MY EYES!!
hahahahaha. Wow. That made me think of the “People of Walmart” website/videos and the things they wear.
Truth really is stranger than fiction!
He probably just came from Wal-Mart. And no one even noticed him there.
Energy is not why atoms jiggled, not what keeps them jiggling , nor what heats up the water. Go place your water for coffee umder a biiig flame. Same principle. All setting food on fire demomstrates is how much carbon and oxygen atoms like each other…… The total chaos and wild, indiscriminate catastrophe of oxidation that is fire is NOT EVEN REMOTELY like the human body’s slower suoer selective chemical cascade…..
Your water for coffee got hotter by the motions of atoms emitting radiation. We ASSIGN ENERGY , a charcteristic, a NUMBER we make up, due to MOTION to atoms. Energy is NOT why atoms or toys move.
Energy and its units are fictitious. A hot cuo of coffee has more calories, inverse fermions than that same cup very cold. But it cannot make you fatter, more muscular etc. Or add matter to the body…. Why? The same amount of CARBON ATOMS are in both.
When atoms transfer their jiggling to other atoms (they are nearoy perfectly elastic)
and jiggle faster and faster they emitt light and heat. Light, while not matter, is stuff-it certainly is NOT energy, it is stuff, part of the electromagnetic field. X -Rays, gamma rays microwaves, infrared HEAT (pitt vipers see this heat, this radiation- heat is radiation, stuff, it can act and damage ) are allll the same stuff, just at different frequencies, lengths of waves.
Energy cannot damage human cells, it is not…anything…. The body involuntariky can dominate our phhsiques if ir wants to. Imhave seen this firsthand with my friend’s disease. This system is there, present and it tracks carbon atoms better than we ever coukd consciously… If somebody wanted to track something, track CARBON GRAMS . FORGET CALORIES, FORGET ALL FICTIONAL UNITS. THEY NEVER WERE CAUSAL OF ANYTHING.
Stop abusing thermodynamics and wringly applying macroscopic thermodynamics of cars, olanes, steam engines to humans. Thermodynamics dies nit address fat cell dysregukatiin. Further, the thermodynamics of molcular motors, molecular machinery of life is RADICALLY DIFFERENT from that of steam engines. Life thermodynamics of non equilibrium ooen systems deals with stochastic thermodynamics. ATP synthase can run BACKWARDS occasiinalky, The Too thermodynamics expert(recommended to me by MIT physicists) in tje world told me personally obesity is a biochemical issue NOT one of thermodynamics.
There is your very public physics education. Bring your friends, I would be happy to expose their ignorance as well. Taubes won the Aragon debate hands down.
I have over 100 e-mails collected from too physicists debunking you and your incorrect , phony singular equation. I know for a fsct it is comoleteky wrong. I knew J
Dr. Polchinski, you foolish guy.You are outright laughable. Just change occuoatiins akready. Or admit you were wrong and be nice to Taubes, work together to rethink your ideas. I look forward to taking on you , Krieger and Coloo if I ever blog again.
Science needs MANY hundreds to THOUSANDS OF METHODS.New, more creative methods. The RCT is NOT the gold stanard anymore and it failed big time to deliver adequate data for doctors ro go on. Had to do with some nasal vaccine. It is outdated. We need much better today. You promote myths, Lyle.
Science has a huhe subjective element.Great scientusts do not overstate it like hokey popularizers. We are not even Tyoe 1 civilizatiin yet, aliens may have different modeks than us. Also, scientific exoeeiments and ibservatiins require judgement kf what to look at and pay atgentiin to AND WHAT TO IGNORE
, AS FEYNMAN SAID
What we thiught was fundamemtak CHANGES, as Dr. Krauss says in videos, Further, Lyle, the ohgsjcs ofmchairs and galaxies may he very differe t from the ohysjcs that giverns biology as Krauss notes on video with Closer To Truth inyerviewer….
Other methkds helped these doctors be successful with regard to administering this nasal vaccine.
TODAY TOP EXPERTS FEEL GENERAL RELATIVITY JS NOT CORRECT, NOT REALLY THE CASE. FAR DEEPER PRINCIPLES UNDERPIN IT. ROGER LENROSE CALLED Q.M, HALF BAKED THEORY.
YOUR CALORIC MODEL IS A DEAD HORSE. LEARN TO ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS, NIT DEFEND AN INCORRECT MODEL. EVEN THOUGH TAUBESX INSULIN MODEL IS INCOMOLETE, THIS DIES NOT MEAN THE CALORIE MODEL IS RIGHT. IT KS NEVER COMING BACK EITHER.INSULIN IS STUFF, IT CAN ACT BUT THERE IS SO MUCH MORE GENETICALKY AND HORMONALLY.
SEVERE OBESITY HAS BEEN WITNESSED IN THE MOST EXTREME DESTITTUTE PI ERTY AROUND THE WORLD. THAT IS DEVASTATING TO YOUR BEHAVIORAL MODEL, LYLE.ACCEPT IT. FEYNMAN WOUKD HAVE SEEN THIS.
In the spirit of Matt’s writings….Food fight…food fight.
There is no “obesity epidemic”. Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, himself, has seen the REAL data and said this. Obesity is a problem. However, it doesn’t rise to the level of an epidemic.
The BMI is totally erroneous and a phony diagnostic criteria. It is dressed up using mathematics, math garb, to SOUND impressive and authoritative. There is NO scientific reason to square height. Scientists know it is a joke. I have talked to physicists about using mathematics and they all note physics and biology are NOT math, math only helps physicists along. The mathematicians have done many shady TRICKS kevin Hall is doing shady tricks right now using math to model obesity – CANNOT BE DONE Biology s far too complex.
TOP physicists understand mathematical models are DIFFERENT FROM ACTUAL NATURE, REALITY,. THIS WAS STRESSED TO ME BY ONE OF THE BEST EVER- MURRAY GELL-MANN. EINSTEIN KNEW THIS, TOO. THAT IS WHY HE CALLED MINKOWSKI’S ALTERNATIVE MATHEMATICS SUPERFLUOUS ERUDITION THAT SAID NOTHING AT ALL. EINY HATED THIS GEOMETRICAL GRAVITY IDEA. . TO EINY, GRAVITY WAS A FORCE- A FORCE FIELD. YOU WILL; ALMOST NEVER HEAR THIS. YET IT WAS HIS VIEW!!!!
You are WRONGLY using a phony diagnostic criteria for obesity, Lyle, to claim an epidemic which is Friedman’s point.
There are MILLIONS of factors in all studies of live humans. The RCT do NOT AT ALL remove them. It is wishful thinking to believe RCT remove this… THOSE SATURATED FAT STUDIES COLPO TROUTS OUT ARE RATHER WEAK, TOO, AS URGHELT SAID. THEY ARE EXPLANATIONLESS,.
Urgelt made this point years ago.
See Lyle refuted in Urgelt’s comments here, people. Urgelt has ten times the brains of this Lyle guy. URGELT KNOWS WE DO NOT- NOT UNDERSTAND OBESITY AND HE DOES NOT LIE LIKE LYLE MCDONALD LIES TO BULLSHIT AUDIENCES AND SELL BOOKS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Zv-W7Oh4o
Debating me and URGELT ( the guy is many times brighter than charlatans like yourself) is NOT going to work out well for you, Lyle. READ URGWELT’S COMMENTS ABOUT CALORIC MODEL
Dear Lyle McC@ckle,
Insulin is important, it is a hormone and can act. Carbon, not joules or calories or mega-cycles (all the same) is also important. But genetics, immune system (regulates fatness up to 40%), hormones trump carbon atoms. You or I could never become Manuel Uribe’s level of fatness no matter how much we tried. What is debunked is the caloric model. Even if not very common, we DO observe true, severe obesity in abject, extreme destitute poverty areas of the world and this is INCREASING WORLDWIDE!. That is the ultimate test. This observations alone tell us there is something very wrong with the popular view. As Urgelt notes, there is VERY LITTLE SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR YOUR BEHAVIORAL MODEL. Is insulin model incomplete? Yes. Many more hormones (undiscovered even)are likely involed. But fat cells are GOVERNED BY H O R M O N E S, which are STUFF, UNLIKE ” energy.”
.I have the full support of LHC physicists. Matter and energy are NOT AT ALL related.
Urgelt told me you and Krieger and Aragon have NOT refuted Gary Taubes or Dr. Attia, not by a country mile.
One more thing, McDonald:
Inverse fermions, mega-cycles, calories-these are entirely arbitrary inventions, needless fictions physicists use to measure something, itself, fictitious.Feynman laughed and was frstrated we use soooo many units. He said we only need one common unit.
Your article about me is a joke. I am here to defend myself and give you a proper lashing. You are FAILING to grasp that not only are calories not a physical object, theynare NOT AT ALL like radio waves or light etc, nebulous invisible entities. No, these units, caloroes, joules, inverse fermions DO NKT EXIST WHATSIEVER, THEY ARE NOT A N Y T H I N G WHATSOEVER, PERIOD. FICTION. Furthermore EN3RGY IS NOT ANYTHING WHATSOEVER.
STOP likening energy to invisible intangible nebulous stuff or entity like radiation. NO, THAT IS NKT WHAT ENERGY IS , NOR WHAT CALORIES ARE.
Radiation is NOT energyand Dr. Strassler debunks your butt.
Quantum fields are mathematical models, guy. This does not mean they all actually exist despite that we can use measurements. I talked to THE BEST OF THE BEST.
Lyle,
You, Aragon, Colpo, Guyenet, Krieget, Helms, Fell,and the rest of the Taubes bashers are all easily dismissed through using Google searcg engine and typing in phrases such as “Obesity and fat cell hoarding”, “Obesity adipocyte dysregulation”.
Taubes did something great in that he brought attention to the erroneous calorie idea. Forget his replacement model. See the big picture, McDonald. You are just like a bullhorn zealot fundamentalist preacher cult leader, your very expression reveals this : “calorie deniers”.
What the HELL is that? You are laghable. There is a mountain of observations AGAINST the calorie model. You ignore it to keep a cherished belief alive.
You are like those stuck around 1909 who call others “Bohr’s planetary atom model deniers”. Physicists rightfully rejected the planetary model because they LEARNED IT’S WRONG. WE ALSO LEARNED THE CALORIE MODEL IS VERY WROBG. The model was WRONG. By Feynman’s era they knew this and before….IT’S CALLED NEW INSIGHT, LYLE.
Science itself rests on assumptions and significant subjectivity. Humans interpret results as well as JUDGE WHAT TO PAY ATTENTION TO VERSUS IGNORE. FEYNMAN NOTED THAT LAST PART.WE NEED TO ASSUME LOGIC IS VALID FOR ONE. A FEW MORE ASSUMPTIONS ARE NEEDED. EVERYTHING HAS BIAS. NEUTRALITY IS A TOTAL MYTH. WE CAN EVEN UNDERSTAND CONSCIOUSNESS REMOTELY, WHAT IS NE ESSARY TO EVEN DO RESEARCH. YOU ARE ASKING NONE OF THE RIGHT QUESTIONS. TAUBES IS, SAYS DAVID GROSS.YOU AND GUYENET CAN STOP BASHING TAUBES. HE HAS DONE MUCH MORE THAN ANY OF YOUR CLAN.
You and Guyenet are NOT svientists at all.
The planetary model is WRONG. Noting that is NOT denial, Lyle….
Feynman said we are trying to prove our guessed laws , theories and models WRONG AS FAST AS POSSIBLE
Clarence Bass admitted to me he was not on my level of understanding the details. I thought that was mighty nice of him. Most people cannot understand the nuances and subtleties of energy, an abstract mathematical FICTION.
Is there a reliable test for vitamin A level?
No. Blood levels mean little, except that higher levels have actually been correlated with something like 7 times increase in hip fractures in the elderly. Retinol is unstable and thus the liver quickly stores it away. Perhaps a liver biopsy could be used, but that sounds intrusive. It’s better to check chronic vitamin A toxicity symptoms and see if there are matches (of which autoimmune diseases share several, which is why I think the theory has merit).
Anyone ever heard of the Potato Hack? You eat just white potatoes for three days at a time. People report weightloss (not surprising), but stuff like achy joints and snoring and other inflammatory issues decrease also. The author of the potato hack book also found some old historical evidence where people thrived on literally just white potatoes.The humble spud actually has an impressive nutritional profile, except for vitamin A, of which it has almost none. Perhaps some support for the theory. Plus, I would love to see an autoimmune vegan try it and see what happens.
The same could be said about Klempner’s “Rice Diet” Dr. McDougall often refers to…
The rice diet is high in fruits and vegetables. It’s not just a diet of rice and rice alone.
Don’t forget the part about Kempner whipping his non-compliant patients with a riding crop! That alone would have made the diet worthwhile! Um, what I *meant* to say is that behavior was outrageous and unacceptable!
ROFLMAO
Indeed, the “Potato Hack” is a familiar topic with many of Matt’s regular readers.
Several months ago, I listened to Penn Jillette’s book “Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales” and it was interesting and funny. (Penn narrated the book.) Penn’s diet guru was/is Ray Cronise – whom Penn affectionately calls “Cra-Ray.”
Personally, I have no interest in following it. I’ve had enough obsessive/restrictive dieting that led to being paranoid about “good” and “bad” foods – something that’s improved, but still lurks in the corners of my mind. For Penn, though, it seems to have served its purpose very well.
Vitamin A and carotene are the most researched vitamin ever. What I got from the literature in short notice: carotene is a very old biomolecule, synthesized by cyanobacteria and the entire plant kingdom. In the animal kingdom genes for carotenoid pathways are also very old and very conservative as well, not prone to mutations. Carotene is only absorbed in your gut in the presence of fat. It can be converted to animal vitamin a, retinol. But the bio-active substance is retinoic acid, which as Grant Genereaux mentions, was used for chemotherapy in cancer as well. A lot of research has been devoted to the role of retinoic acid in embryonic development. It’s a signal molecule to induce differentiation in stem cells. That role is also fulfilled in our bodies, it induces stem cells to differentiate into tissue cells. Because of its toxicity, the retinoic pathways are tightly regulated. RA can only be formed within a cell, and is attached to carrier molecules immediately. It’s intriguing that Grant and other people on a vitamin A free diet never developed deficiency symptoms. RA is detoxified in the liver and eventually excreted via the kidneys. Apparently, RA toxicity is a huge bottleneck to get rid of excess vitamin A. Retinol is stored in the liver and in adipose tissue. Adipose tissue in pigs and poultry can contain substantial amounts of vitamin a.
‘Just a toxin’ seems to simple to me. There are as many vitamin a receptors in the body as for vitamin d, which makes it a hormone, like vitamin d. It is possible that the body has other mechanisms to induce stem cell differentiation. It’s equally possible that those who benefit of vitamin a restriction are a subgroup within the population, not enough data. There might be something wrong with their retinoid pathways. Overdose by taking too much vitamin a usually heals in a couple of weeks after stopping the vitamin a pills. The topic of chronic vitamin a toxicity seems woefully underresearched.
Actually there is quite a bit on hypervitaminosis A, D etc.which are both extremely rare. In one case a Chinese fishing boat crew experienced it after eating a shark liver that delivered 2 million iu vit A. US Dispensitory shows 200,000 iu reaches toxicity after 2 months in an infant (each clears up in a few weeks as you stated). Granted, the various receptors etc you mention, the ultimate practical research is the effects of any vitamin or nutrient on disease and health. As stated, Vit A is very efficacious across the board in increasing resistance to disease & infections including cancers. Interestingly, synthetic Vit A more effective against some cancers than natural, though natural more effective against other cancers. Beta Carotine fond to INCREASE cancers when used alone, but when in combination with the full carotinoid complex, THEN lowers cancer risk as well as many other effcacies! much to say, but not here. Regards. Joe
There is the medical literature on hypervitaminosis. Dosis effect, and remedies, when intake has been too high. But so far I did not come across studies addressing mechanisms of disease where there is something wrong with carotenoid pathways. Which, incidentally, are not completely understood yet.
The fact that genes for both carotene synthesis in plants and protista and for carotene pathways in all organisms means that carotenes are probably essential for life. If it were ‘just a poison’ in all life stages, there would have been species without them, except for detoxifying pathways.
“Nothing is ever set in stone” huh! i bet if you ate a cup of gelatin and chased it with water something would set in you Stone… ;)
Hmmm. 5000 IU of Nutrisorb Vitamin A per day nearly instantly put a stop to my lifelong dry skin and eczema as well as 20 year long cystic acne. I was thinking of attempting a break anyway, so this is worth an experiment.
Hey Matt,
I appreciate that you are back on the 180 degree bandwagon. Yet wasn’t your main message to help people with their fanatacism of diets (albeit this is an elimination diet) and neurosis with food?
And why did Grant give up pork when it’s got virtually 0% DV?
I read alot of what you’ve written, the comments as well as the comments on Ray Peats forum.com site.
Considering some of the quite intellectual & well informed people who took the time to comment with contrary findings, I don’t see how you can still regard this ‘theory? as valid.
I can’t imagine a life without tomatoes & tomato sauce! Living in Germany, close to Italy, considering all of those luscious tomatoes & sauces Italians cook with, Italians should (according to this theory) all have a very high rate of autoimmune problems. Truth is that the UK & US have over DOUBLE the cases that Italy has. So I’m-ah not going to-ah give up-ah tomato-ah sauce ah!
One informed comment from mipp, that stood out for me is as follows:
I read his books a couple months ago when they were mentioned in the other thread and he didn’t really convince me. Some thougts:
– (obvious) his vitamin A elimination diet excludes most foods you can think of and doesn’t prove anything about vitamin A. You eliminate hundreds of other variables when you restrict yourself to a diet of rice and meat. I believe him when he says he cured his eczsema, but as others have already mentioned, it could be anything: dairy, certain fats, leafy vegs, gluten, food additives, anything
– it seems he never tested his own hypothesis on himself. Why not just supplement retinyl palmitate or acetate for a while and see what happens? IIRC he says somewhere he’s afraid his eczema might return or something like that
– the evidence he presents is not convincing. He spends a lot of time arguing that when Canada closed cod fishery in the 90s, it correlated with a significant drop in incidence of some auto-immune diseases. It seems to be the most significant revelation and strongest piece of evidence against vitamin A in his book. The thing is, there is not much vitamin A in cod meat. Cronometer says from 5 to 50 IU per 100g. That’s not much. Milk chocolate bar has 200.
– other dubious claims and conclusions. At one point he mentions Okinawans, how they are known for their longevity and exceptional health and suggests that it’s because their diet is low in vitamin A. In reality it is anything but. The traditional Okinawan diet is distinct from typical Asian diets in that sweet potato is a staple instead of rice. Wiki even cites daily consumption over 800g. that would be like 100,000 IU a day as beta carotene. And Genereux believes carotenoids are as evil and poisonous as retinol. Somewhere else in the book he actually even talks specifically about high consumption of sweet potato being responsible for higher rates of certain diseases in South America and among racial minorities in the US.
These are just the few things I remembered. There were some mandatory conspiracy theories involving nazi doctors and whatnot which make it difficult to take this guy seriously. There are some interesting observations too. Like those about prisoners of war and apparent lack of any signs of vitamin A deficiency. It seems we can survive without dietary vitamin A for quite a long time. I’m not sure if that means that vitamin A is toxic and should be restricted, or that it is so vital to our survival that we accumulate huge reserves in our bodies so that we can survive when food is scarce.
I have experimented with low vitamin A diet myself, first inspired by another user from this forum, then several weeks of almost complete elimination after reading about Genereux’s success with eczema. Can’t say it’s worked for me so far. My skin problems didn’t improve, dandruff returned with force. When I ate almost nothing but rice and meat my skin looked unhealthy and I had lots of tiny little bumps on my forhead. Not like typical acne lesions that I still occasionaly have, more like clogged pores or something. They disappeared when I went back to a more varied diet with eggs, some dairy etc.
Like most people Melzma, you just aren’t getting what Grant is proposing. Supplements, pharmaceuticals, and fortified foods are the most likely culprits of overloading the liver. Only THEN does vitamin A become problematic. And when in that state, absolutely all sources of vitamin A induce inflammation.
Tomatoes add to the load, but that’s a tiny part of the puzzle.
Americans consume WAY more tomatoes than Italians, BTW. https://www.indexbox.io/blog/which-country-consumes-the-most-tomato-in-the-world/
Also, dismissive attempts to point out contradictory information because of Study X or Study Y doesn’t “disprove” a theory. There are definitely some reports coming in that contradict Grant’s theory. Those are interesting, and may just provide further proof that his dramatic health changes and his dietary regimen are effective because of the removal of all allergens from the diet. Like I said in the post, most will dismiss it and attribute any benefits one has to removing dietary allergens. That may be true. But I think there’s more here than that.
This theory is very interesting to me. During my WAP days, I was eating a lot of Vitamin A foods but had issues with keratosis pilaris. Around eight years ago, when I tried eating for heat, I felt much better physically, but the KP did not improve. I recall Matt commenting on 180D “your keratosis pilaris and acne should improve if you improve your metabolism.” But even though I’m around 98 degrees, my skin issues have just gotten worse. Out of desperation from ridiculous acne over the last two years, I recently started them again: cod liver oil, and Vit A drops, along with regular time in the sun, but still no improvement.
Also, I’m wondering, if Grant’s theory just happens to work because of removing allergens from his diet, does that indicate possible metabolism issues? I thought “eating for heat” eradicated most allergen inducing symptoms.
Yes, probably from removing allergens.
I think eating for heat helps a lot of people short-term with allergies, but that could be from the increased liver size and activity during refeeding if Grant’s theory is legit.
Just a quickie, NOT to get into the tomato ting, but while tomatoes are VERY healthy & great supply of Lycopene very important for brain, prostate and many other things, SOME people can react negatively to the SKIN & SEEDS and since it’s a nightshade, can cause depression and inflammation IN SOME PEOPLE! So “peeled” tomatoes are an option, but it’s an individual matter.
As a Harvard trained Medical Nutritionist, this is by far he dumbest & worst item on nutrition I’ve ever read! Personally, I’ve been taking many vitamins & nutrients among them 25,00-50,000 iu vitamin A for about 55 years, more if I get a cold which happens about every 15 years! This is an irresponsible, trash article designed to instill fear enough to buy a junk book devoid of “SCIENTIFIC” fact! It’s completely contrary to my clinical experience with my patients of over 50 years & thousands of studies! Vit A prevents disease, increases the immune system, prevents & fights infections, lowers cancers of many kinds, speeds healing & is a first line of defense in health as it strengthens epithelial tissue, which blood cells etc. This stupid irresponsible article to sell a stupid, irresponsible book will harm anyone who believes it and is morally criminal!
The book is free fancy pants nutrition boy. You should check it out instead of just writing things that make you sound almost as retarded as Walter Willett.
A sarcastic reply to a scientific one. Unfortunate, but reveals your entirely unscientific & unprofessional nature. The options are 1) the writer is seeking attention 2) the writer is seeking to accumulate email addresses 3) the writer will sell items within the book or by use of accumulated email addresses 4) the writer is part of the pharmaceutical company’s propaganda against nutrition 5) the writer is simply malevolent & pernicious 6) the writer believes what he wrote and is simply ignorant.
Hi Joe,
You’re missing the point. Most people considering the low VitA diet would have already gone the conventional route, including high doses of VitA that you have mentioned. You being so scientific and all, I’m sure you’ve heard of Einstein say ?The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results?.
If you read Grant’s book you’ll realize his theory only applies for when your liver is saturated with VitA and is unable to store anymore. Perhaps you haven’t reached there yet, but it certainly sounds like you might soon…
Awww, poor Joe. His whole life’s work debunked by an engineer. Look at all this butthurt and Alex Jones-like conspiracy being hurled around. I can see clearly that you didn’t read the books because:
1) They are free
2) Doesn’t require an email address to access
3) He isn’t selling anything or promoting anything as an affiliate, nor am I
4) He’s not from the pharmaceutical industry, lol… If so they need to fire him immediately over the contentious things he wrote about them, particularly Accutane
5) He’s not the least bit malevolent or pernicious
6) He doesn’t fully believe what he wrote, and is eager for the general public to validate or invalidate his theory through trials
Man Joe, it must be hard to learn new things when you already THINK you know every fucking thing.
How do you explain all the people eating zero vitamin A diets without developing any of the problems you think you need vitamin A to combat? Riddle me that one Harvard boy!
Hey, Joe? Where ya goin’ with that carrot in your hand?
Hey Joe, I said where you going with that carrot in your hand?
I’m going down to see my old lady.
You know I saw her with peeled tomatoes in a can.
Haha best reply matt It is so sad when people think they know everything and are incapable of examining their beliefs. But then again, Harvard trained nutritionists already know everything, which is why everyone who takes their advice are in perfect health with zero diseases.
@Joe Carrington: you do realize that nutrition science is currently a pathetic failure right? It can’t even answer simple questions like “what should i eat?” and “how to lose weight?”, not to mention the massive corruption of nutrition scientists taking money from corporations to shill for products or bury damning data (say, wasn’t it Harvard nutritionists who took money from the sugar industry to cover up research on how sugar increased heart disease?)
I wish this blogging platform had a Thumbs-Up button!!
You likely cannot even grasp that “calories” are fictiinal, just as fictiinal, invenyed and arbitrary as inverse fermions or mega cycles…, Calories are entirely fictitious, arbitrary and not intrinsic to food. Most nutritionists cannot grasp energy. I was educating even the smug Yale medical doctor David Katz who thought lighning was “energy.”.Laughable! If only the public knew how physics illiterate the medical profession is.
We do not have any clue of the optimal diet, Joe.
Hey Matt, Just to be sure as I’m dutch and the language barrier is creating any distortion in the message;
You tell eating liver gave the mentioned Miss Anderson the health problems again? Because of the vitamin a. Or did this kind of vitamin a gave no problems in her case?
Interesting article! I always do real well when eating my grass fed liver, but feel I’m “over taxed” the next day(s).
Yes, here is a comment about it…
On organ meats:
I grew up loving organ meats, but as I started unmasking foods (especially when I gave up all vegetation), I noticed inflammation with organ meats. My body didn’t tolerate them well. So, I listened as I did with everything else. I know organs have mega doses of nutrients, but ribeye has just what I need in the perfect amounts.
She also noted ill effects from grassfed beef, and sticks to supermarket, grain-fed beef with pure white fat.
That is a funny line…when I gave up vegetation…..very strange diet…seems too extreme and a recipe for an eating disorder which she could have.
If her and her husband have an eating disorder, then I want one too! Seriously man. Tom Brady and Giselle won’t look nearly as good as these people when they’re their age.
Sounds like what many people say, I want an eating disorder….go for it.
Tom Brady doesn’t look that good NOW.
But But But… TB12!
BTW, this was the list of her health problems before developing her “eating disorder.” I would argue continuing to eat a diet that causes you all these problems is an eating disorder in some sense…
“I had worsening fatigue (I fell asleep everywhere ? at work, in the car while driving, etc), depression (several plans of suicide), mental confusion, brain fog, paralysis/numbness in limbs (Joe had to carry me out of work a number of times), extreme eczema on hands (like 2nd degree burns), neck and face, continued amenhorrea (lack of periods), cervical dysplasia, Degenerative Disc Disease (couldn’t sit ? worked standing up, constant sciatic nerve pain), continued weight gain (50 pounds overweight at my heaviest), muscle twitches (over 100 twitches in a minute’s time), personality change (from laid back to full of rage), and on and on?”
Damn, I’m not as bad as her but seem to be on the same trajectory ‘O’
What if this guy is particularly sensitive to vitamin A?
What about the countries that don’t fortify milk with vitamin a? I’m in New Zealand and they don’t do that here. Don’t think they fortify cereal with it either.
Perhaps it adds to the whole toxic overload for some people but there could still be others who don’t get enough?
I’ve got keratosis pilaris (stupid skin thing) I’ve just started supplementing with (a low dose of) vitamin a as I’ve heard a deficiency in vit a can cause this.
Perhaps i’ll rethink doing that.
*sigh* why must food and nutrition be so confusing
Plenty of Vitamin A fortified foods in Zealand sweetcakes… https://www.foodsafety.govt.nz/elibrary/industry/Fortification_Overages-Measuring_Actual.pdf
Watch out for that margarine!
Can’t stand margarine. Did turn orange from eating too much pumpkin as a baby though… ????
Some guy said he got rid of keratosis pilaris by eating liver but chicken didn’t work only beef liver. Reckons it’s the copper rather than the vitamin a?
It is more like a hormone. If it were a vitamin, we would not be able to create it from the actual vitamin/precursors found in plants. Ray Peat is so wrong about many things, including PUFAs, fiber and phytoestrogens. Just by researching whole food studies we can see that even omega 6 rich nuts lower inflammation and improve weight loss, compared to saturated fats. Peat suggested otherwise. Ahh yes, I can only imagine how many people reading this will be triggered right now, “um, erm what about the, um, rat studies from 1902″… XD
“rat studies from 1902” lol. Those same people would dismiss a 2014 RCT human trial with a thousand subjects as “too old LMAO
Lots of “passionate” comments on this post!
Hey Matt. As someone who suffers with acne and never had it before I started experimenting with Ray Peats ideas this is very interesting.
I have taken vitamin A and also eaten liver and everytime my acne gets worse. The only thing that seems to eliminate my acne is the sun and tanning beds. I am going to try this elimination diet and see how things go.
One question, why do you think with some people who suffer with acne and take lots of vitamin A and see acne clear up and then come back when they cease use of the supplement?
High enough supplementation might basically be mimicking Accutane. The retinol levels get so high it begins to destroy the sebaceous glands in the skin (no glands, no acne). Or maybe it’s retinoic acid that Accutane quickly turns into, I can’t recall the specifics at the moment (Grant covers it in detail in one of the books). So, you indeed get results, but that also puts the rest of the body at great risk, as the staggering side-effect list of Accutane makes clear since one must assume body-wide effects are happening and not just skin effects. Accutane doses are so large in such a short window (it’s something like 2 or 3 million IUs of retinol in a couple months), that this is well beyond what the liver can bind away, so it will assuredly go elsewhere, including the skin (as intended). I suspect the body preferably tries to excrete it to the skin, as it is safer to cause damage there than the brain and other vital organs, but given the horror stories of Accutane, for some it obviously damaged other places in their body (this is well documented…it carries a black box warning for a reason).
In your case, you probably took just enough to start messing up the stem cells and glands in the skin (but not enough to basically nuke the glands all together), and started getting some clogged pores. Grant suspects retinol might be behind acne in the first place. When you go tan, that might create vitamin D, which weakly binds to the same retinol receptors, and thus may limit it’s harm. Grant suspects this is the real reason people found success with vitamin D therapy. He personally did not increase his vitamin D (he lives in Canada somewhere, so not much UVB), which was good on him to control that variable. I am also curious if certain light wavelengths could break down retinol. If we could find that, we could put this hypothesis to the test in short order. The benefits of red light and near-infrared make me wonder if something is going on there with retinol.
I’m reading Extinguishing the Fires of Hell, and he mentions that over-consumption of vitamin A leads to cytokine release. I’m also reading The Potbelly Syndrome, and that author mentions that cytokine release increases cortisol. Could be a link there?! Things that make you go, hmmmmm?
Vitamin A deficient diet is also a deuterium depleted diet.
Beans, rice, beef; seem ok to me. Plus there are lot’s of other low Vit A and Vit A pre-cursor foods.
Rice and beef are my go-to safe foods when m ?IBS? acts up.
I’ll give this a try to see if my joint pain, bowels, and memory improve; I mean why not!
3000 cals is always my target. Burgers and beer are always my friends.
So for all the people that want to try this diet, I think we should put together a list of foods containing no or low VitA.
I have found so far:
– Beef muscle meat (preferably grain fed)
– Tilapia fish
– Certain starches: Rice, wheat, oats, potatoes, corn
– Certain legumes: Peanuts, white beans
– Coconut
– Honey + Maple syrup
– Natto
– Apple cider vinegar
– Soy Sauce
– Coffee
– Sodas
– Apple juice
– Beer, Vodka, Whiskey,etc.
– Mushrooms
– Egg whites
– Oils
– Salt
– Sugar
I created a list of hundreds of foods and their vitamin A content–from lowest to highest. Matt linked to it in his original post.
Great Jeanne, thank you.
I just saw yellow tomatoes on your list, spaghetti with sauce is in the game again. Cauliflowers have no VitA either when it comes to veggies btw.
Really hope this theory has some basis because with all the foods allowed it appears to be the most fun elimination diet ever.
I found a commercially produced pasta sauce made with yellow tomatoes from the Sunshine Tomato Co. (sunsinepastasauce.com). Unfortunately, the ingredients also include red and green peppers. No way of knowing how much is in the sauce but it could raise the Vit. A content too high. Wonder if we all contacted the company and asked them to produce plain yellow tomato puree or paste, if they would do it.
Thanks so much, Matt, for posting this information. And kudos to Grant for his groundbreaking work on this theory.
I read Grant’s three books and have been thinking about this theory a lot. It all fits. Mind blown.
If Grant’s theory is correct, then long term LCHF folks that include dairy, high Vit A seagood & spps, and copious veggies could be in a world of pain.
It’s interesting that many LCHF?ers remove dairy from their diets and notice improvement.
Something to chew on (if it hasn’t already come up).
Also, low vit D and high vit A is likely correlated to SAD (seasonal affective disorder); which could open up interest in investigating causation.
Armed with this novel new theory, I’ve been looking at the evidence from a different viewpoint. It does looks like this is some toxic sh*t once the liver is full (and maybe before with man made chemicals like retinyl palmitate).
Just one random study I found:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php'script=sci_arttext&pid=S0001-37652015000301361
The neurotoxic effects of vitamin A and retinoids
In the conclusion: “…it would be catastrophic if an individual with history of neurodegenerative disease in the family exceeds vitamin A intake through either supplement use or clinical administration”.
Wow Billy, that analysis REALLY lines up with Grant’s research and experience, right down to bulging fontanelle!
Its kind of disheartening to see that even after more than 10 years of intensively investigating and discarding pretty much every alternative health theory ever conceived of, the search for a single magic bullet goes on…
I’m down with it though lol, I’ve been eating a lot more Vitamin A from spinach, green veggies and liver lately, and for some reason also seen my health take a slide down again.
So if you dont want to go on a totally extreme vitamin A depleting diet, which would be the absolute worst offenders to avoid?
– Liver
– Fortified milk (dont have it where I live)
– Egg yolks
– Cheese
– Caviar
– Seafood
– Tomato products
– Leafy greens
– Carrots
I dont get it, are carotenes just as bad as retinol in this regard? So plant sources of Vit A would be the most important to avoid since they are far more abundant than animal sources (other than liver)?
I can’t answer the plant vs. animal question for you Collden. To that list I will add other orange vegetables, pumpkin and sweet potatoes. Those are some of the highest plant sources. I think orange juice is also probably a big offender because the quantity consumed by OJ lovers is often REALLY high. I always wondered why drinking a lot of it made me hypersensitive to sunburn (burning severely in 15 minutes), even with a dark tan and previously being able to stay out in strong sunlight for an hour or two.
Carotenes are not absorbed in absence of dietary fat. Meaning that fruits and carrots are OK if consumed well before or after fat containing meals.
Another thing is that the liver is not the only storage organ for superfluous retinol. Adipose tissue is the sink of al fat soluble tissue, including carotenes and retinol. In humans, pigs and poultry it is stored preferably in subcutaneous adipose tissue. A wild speculation of mine: could retinol or its precursors/ derivatives in any way contribute to metabolic resistance? Grant mentions fat loss following vitamin a restriction. I’m experiencing the same, but there are confounders. The idea is that the body prevents fat loss in order to keep blood retinol levels under control.
Sorry, I meant fat-soluble toxins, not tissue.
Maureen Butter,
That’s exactly what I’m thinking. I have no expertise in the subject, but I’ve read before that a response to toxins of any sort is for the body to add fat in order to safely store them.
This link is helpful in understanding the conversion ratios of plant carotenes into retinol and includes interesting charts and a discussion on excessive intake, which says plant foods have not been found to contribute to vitamin A toxicity.
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminA-HealthProfessional/
They do say, though:
“Although hypervitaminosis A can be due to excessive dietary intakes, the condition is usually a result of consuming too much preformed vitamin A from supplements or therapeutic retinoids [3,5].”
If by ‘they? you mean conventional medicine practitioners, ‘they? are talking about acute vitaminosis A. Grant and most of us here are talking about the chronic form. In other words, a lot of us are concerned that vitamin A intake (from any source) might eventually lead to chronic health problems long before a person would experience acute symptoms such as pealing skin and blindness.
Spent some time reading the long thread on this at the RayPeatforum and it seems Grant Genereux as well as many people who tried a similar vit A depleting diet after a while develop extreme sensitivities to any form of retinol. Grant was describing an episode where he got a severe arthritic reaction that took 5 months to recover from by taking some lutein.
https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/grant-genereuxs-theory-of-vitamin-a-toxicity.24722/page-17
This seems like a major red flag. If Grants theory is correct then bad reactions to Vitamin A should decrease as one becomes more depleted and one should become more tolerant to retinol-containing foods, not the opposite, or? It seems this is the same story we’ve heard a thousand times before with people having miraculous results on elimination diets.
I was wondering about that, too. If Charlene has been on a zero Vit A diet for 19 years — but has a recurrence of her eczema, asthma, etc. whenever she consumes liver…?
I do think there’s credibility to the idea that Vit A becomes toxic when our livers become saturated with it. But what I don’t understand is why Charlene would develop symptoms so quickly, since her liver wouldn’t become full of Vit A overnight.
I don’t think she’s eaten liver in 18 years. That was more how she figured out that beef was the only option. She started out eating tons of fish and such and eventually whittled it down to what made her feel the best. I don’t know what would happen if she tried to consume some now after such a long time vitamin A-free.
I think it’s really interesting, to this point, that Charlene said the few times her kids tried to eat something other than ribeye, they’ve had some sort of reaction. In her words: “When they have tried other foods, it hasn’t gone well for them.”
I wish she’d elaborate on that, I wonder what they tried to eat. It doesn’t sound right to me that young healthy kids would be having a bad reaction to a food after eating it once.
This is all super interesting as I read more about it but I don’t think I want to guinea pig myself. Plenty of people in the keto, vegan, wapf, insert crazy health fad here communities have miraculous stories of healing. I guess at least Grant’s is a little more normal in that he eats carbs.
Alexandra,
I’m not sure if it’s of any interest to you, but here are Joe and Charlene’s Twitter accounts, if you have a Twitter account and would like to contact them:
Joe: https://twitter.com/JoeCharlene8898
Charlene: https://twitter.com/HandmadeRetro88
Though I don’t have a Twitter account, I’m able to read their Twitter feeds. Joe seems to receive and answer diet-related questions on his account.
Check out this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ANiMqfSKH8
I think this doctor might be onto something. Basically, meat is structure, plants are stressors (not the carbs, but the unique compounds). Maybe us autoimmune people just can’t handle the stress from the plants worth a damn and it makes us worse, whereas healthy folks just get stronger from the challenges it imposes on the body. Maybe retinol and the carotenoids are similar (but are unique in their level of toxicity if things go awry). This would also explain how retinol benefits the eyes in certain ways IF the body can use it to its advantage. Grant is getting a bit too deep into the “it’s a poison” mindset, which I suspect is an over-simplification. There is evidence showing benefits for the eyes (I have done it myself in the past when my night vision seemed a bit worse, I would pop a 25,000 iu retinol fish oil derived softgel and then the next night it is better…was that placebo?). Grant is sort of rationalizing his way out of the beneficial evidence, which he doesn’t need to do, as he has made a solid case that TOO MUCH is the problem, not that it’s ALL a problem.
Grant said in his blog he plans 5 more years of no vitamin A, so we will not find out any time soon how he handles a reintroduction of other foods. He said somewhere he thinks it may take years to get the body to actually heal (however, he hasn’t attempted any accelerated healing methods that I am aware of, like fasting, red-light therapy, go off-grid for a week or two, Qi-going, etc). I would be most curious to see if he handled beef liver better than a plant form. Either way, reintroduction should probably be really slow and one thing at a time. Like one bite of well-cooked broccoli, not an entire bowl. Or a bit of pepper with the beef. Slowly rebuild tolerance to plant matter. I think people go too fast when they reintroduce and of course get diarrhea, back pain, acne, etc., but that might just be a shock to the system. Start in the kiddie pool, wade around until the water feels okay, then slowly edge deeper.
Evan E — interesting thoughts and worth consideration. I’m not sure what to make of this chiropractor, though. He’s 30 and healthy, so he could eat Skittles and smoke meth and get the same results. He already has a podcast, so the skeptic in me predicts that he will soon have books, supplements, and a health coaching program…
“…eat Skittles and smoke meth…”
Okay, turtlegurl, that did it. Now’s the time and Matt’s blog is the appropriate place, so I’ll just go ahead and ask:
Will you marry me? :-)
Sure, I think you’re already married, but why let some technicality like a husband and kids get in the way?
I swear, much of the time, you* seem to write what I’m thinking. While I wasn’t specifically thinking about Skittles and Meth (as far as you know), I was thinking:
“Great, another 30-something who’s lean and probably been lean and healthy most of his life. So, go wreck yourself for 40 or 50 years and then come back and tell us the magic formula.”
I also saw him promoting books and supplements for a friend of his, so that automatically lowers my opinion. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong or a bad guy, of course. But, most of us have heard a lot of this stuff over and over and over. It’s a familiar pattern – blog, YouTube, podcast, consulting, supplements, books, etc.
There’s always some new, fresh-faced kid coming down the pike to tell us old nimrods the obvious things we’ve been overlooking.
“Oh, you’re 25, have done CrossFit for two months, and been eating ‘Keto’ for three weeks. Yes, your 12-pack abs must be the result of that ‘scientific’ combination.”
Despite my frustration and rolling my eyes enough to look like a slot machine, I can only imagine what must go through Matt’s mind. Mostly, though, he takes it in stride and lets people (eventually, hopefully) reach their own epiphanies.
_____
* Well, you, Skeptic, and Matt. Perhaps we can all move to a commune in Utah.
“Will you marry me? :-) …. you, Skeptic, and Matt. Perhaps we can all move to a commune in Utah.”
Yes, Carl, I will marry you ?
Now, how does the rest of this arrangement get into place? Do I propose to Skeptic and Matt, or do you?
Is New Mexico okay? I’m currently looking for a good commune property there now.
Your acceptance confirms my suspicion of your intelligence and good judgement!
Now, as for the rest of the arrangement, it might be easier if you propose to Matt. Then, of course, he would have to propose to Skeptic. Finally, to seal the deal, Skepic would have to propose to me.
To avoid any problems with said chain of proposals, we simply all claim gender fluidity, since it’s now in the public lexicon.
Like Wile E. Coyote, I’m a genius: https://bit.ly/2Pd6QjS
New Mexico definitely works for me! I’ve only been to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but I enjoyed both!
We’ll start our own cult. A dietary cult. Perhaps “The New Mexico Stoners.” Let’s just hope no one starts talking about the Hale Bopp Comet or drinking Kool-Aid.
I’m down with New Mexico, too!
Good idea on the arrangement of things, Carl. So now, Matt will you marry me?
A cult sounds perfect. Nothing ever goes sideways with those. Yes, we’ll beware of conversations about Kool-Aid. Or Nikes.
lol I’ll join the cult only if you guys agree to build a 20 foot statue of Gary Taubes at the entrance, holding a copy of Good Calories, Bad Calories in one hand and a Bullet Proof coffee in the other, while a vanquished Ancel Keys lies at his feet.
Can do, on the statue.
Skeptic, you must have been surprised, to say the least, when you read the blog and found out that:
1) you’re moving to New Mexico,
2) you’re going to be in a polygamous marriage,
3) all of this is with people you’ve never met.
You seem to be taking it all in stride, though.
I like that quality in my husbands ;)
@Alexandra: I don’t buy this “the Anderson kids are TOTALLY LOVING this diet that allows only one food” narrative. Bullshit. Have you ever met a kid that doesn’t love candy or ice cream? I also find the they tried some other foods but didn’t fare too well part. Kids have amazing health and god-like digestion. It was probably emotional blackmail from the parents that manipulated the kids into abandoning the other foods and going back to the diet. I guarantee you one thing: once those kids are teens and have their own income, they’re gonna go on a carb and sugar binge so epic that would put Durianrider into a diabetic coma!
I think one of the reasons the Andersens are quite reserved and quiet about their diet is they get a lot of “that’s child abuse” flack thrown their way every time they do. And death threats from vegans, but who the hell doesn’t get death threats from vegans?
@Evan: he’s not a doctor he’s a chiropractor lol, all these zerocarb gurus are chiropractors, probably because you can go take a 4 week course at your local shopping mall “college” and then pretend to be a “doctor” for that sweet appeal to authority fallacy
Skeptic,
As when I was revisiting the topic of hair analysis (mentioned in a different comment), I was reading the blog of a proponent. When I started looking for information on her education, I found her listed on this website:
http://FakeDoctorate.blogspot.com
Scrolling through the pages, I saw several other “experts” that I’ve seen over the years. I didn’t finish going through all the pages, but I’m sure many other popular gurus would appear.
I wouldn’t be surprised, if Jonny Bowden and Gary Null appeared on the list, too. Perhaps Eric Berg and Josh Axe, too. I recall “Dr.” Axe talking about essential oils and the Bible. He made a comment about essential oils being used on Mary, after her giving birth, to reduce stretch marks.
I’d never be able to fabricate stuff this good!
@Carl: wow I don’t remember reading that in the Bible lol
“Dr” Berg is definitely a chiropractor, and so is Dr. Axe.
“Dr.” Axe on essential oils:
https://youtu.be/wO59q1o18hE't=2m38s
Well, if it’s good enough for Mary…
Essential oils probably deplete Vitamin A stores, too. I use them on potatoes, as they mysteriously (divinely?) turn potatoes into a zero-carb food. You can also use certain oils on ribeye steaks, in order to “balance” the nutrient profile. The oils also unclog toilets, remove rust, substitute for engine oil, repel bears, enable X-ray vision, and prevent poltergeists.
@skeptic haha, I totally agree. I’m counting down the days until the anderson kids (and vegan raised kids/paleo kids, etc) get some real independence and go nuts on some sugar. I love that she says they have total autonomy to eat whatever they want, but how are they supposed to do that when there is only ribeye and water in the house? I doubt they’re driving to the local ice cream parlor whenever the kids ask.
Anyway, I am happy for them if it’s truly working for them. I just think there must be a better way than ONLY EAT RIBEYE for your entire life.
I’m definitely going to monitor my vitamin a intake for myself and daughter though. I do let my daughter have total autonomy over what she eats (she’s almost 3) and most of the time it’s fruit, milk or apple juice and then she usually wants a big dinner of noodles w meat sauce or a hotdogs and hashbrowns. She also loves butter and will ask to eat coconut oil straight out of the jar with a spoon. I really find it so fascinating what she chooses.
That’s good, your daughter won’t have a messed up relationship with food like some of us lol
“I recall Dr. Axe talking about essential oils and the Bible. He made a comment about essential oils being used on Mary, after her giving birth, to reduce stretch marks.”
Oh yes, I remember that part of the Bible. It’s right before the part where they talk about Mary & Joseph drinking kombucha and doing planks.
Matt — any luck with finding some sweet-ass property in New Mexico for our commune?
I’ve already ordered one of these “Spiritual As Hell” t-shirts (seriously). There’s a men’s version, too, so I thought maybe you, Carl, Skeptic and I could all wear matching ones in the official photos of us breaking ground at said commune:
http://omgvip.tunestub.com/product.cfm?id=1516813
Nice! Still working on it. Went to a farmer’s market and got hard-sold some alpaca yarn by a shaky old white lady with a mustache. She was trying to convince me that Taos would be a way better place to live. More spiritual I’m certain. She was spiritual as hell.
Maybe the sign over the commune entrance could combine that slogan with Carl’s idea for the cult name —
The New Mexico Stoners: Spiritual as Hell
Spiritual AF would probably more in line with hip, new lingo.
Matt — funny you say that. I’ve seen JP in his vids wearing shirts that say “Spiritual AF”, along with “Loving AF” and “Woke AF”.
How about a combo platter for our sign?
“The New Mexico Stoners: Spiritual, Loving, & Woke AF”
That’s my biggest concern too. Being walled off into a tiny dietary corner that you can’t escape from is far from an ideal solution. So it will be interesting to see if the same heightened, lasting sensitivity happens to others as well.
I’m hoping that by reducing, rather than eliminating Vitamin A, I don’t run into heightened sensitivity. It might take much longer to straighten out my A status, but I don’t have any issues that I consider to be “auto immune.” I’m just fat.
Matt,
I thought that you were right on the money that any food you avoid for a while will cause problems introducing it back in…carbs, proteins, meat, sugar, etc. It might be the same for A. There also might be other changes that were made that were beneficial besides the A avoidance.
Upregulating vitamin A receptors would be a normal physiologic response to a-deprivation. It’s entirely reversible. But that is not what happened when Grant tried the lutein supplement. Lutein is not converted to vitamin a or retinoic acid. It is more likely that Grant developed huge immune reactions to anything remotely carotene-like when his body fought the cells affected by retinoic acid. It’s a food intolerance reaction, rather than heightened vitamin a sensitivity. Food intolerance or food allergies can stick around much longer.
I would think that just focusing on eliminating added vitamin A, and I suspect other man made vitamins (fortified food, vitamin supplements, etc.), would be enough to start with. The last thing you want to do is to box yourself into a corner with unnecessary dietary restrictions. People taking things to unnecessary extremes is usually what gets them into trouble.
EmmaW, I think you are probably right.
I was thinking the same thing about vitamin A supplements and fortified foods but after 2 months of experimentation I’m afraid even naturally occurring A might be a problem for me.
I do eat a much more varied diet than Mr. Genereux where basically anything low-no vitamin A besides gluten (celiac) is on the menu. Sadly just 2 eggs over the weekend set me back with intense joint pain and severe mucous membrane dryness. It seems to be improving going zero A the last couple of days but the orange tint to my skin that was getting better seemed to worsen again. I also had some tamales with red sauce so that might be another factor.
I’m going to try to stay as low in A as possible without getting overly restrictive or going hungry.
Wearing shirts and hats instead of suntan lotion is a great idea. So is 12 mg/day of astaxanthin, which gets more omegas in your system.
Omegas increase sunburn sensitivity.
You should check out astaxanthin which may be a super carotene. unfortunately I got this information from a book published by a astaxanthin manufacturer. The right form of astaxanthin gets around the body much better than other forms of astaxanthin and other antioxidants. The inferior forms astaxanthin made from petroleum and yeast. The right form of astaxanthin performs well in the brain, nerves, and gums. It has reversed some cancer.
Interesting video linked here about how plants can go from friend to foe. This is starting to make sense of conflicting data and why it just depends how each person responds to food. Is retinol the same story, but goes uber bad once the body is irritated by it? https://youtu.be/isIw2AN_-XU
Woah, so he’s saying all the micronutrients that the carnivore diet is lacking in are also coincidentally exactly the ones that you need less of on a zero carb diet?! Wow! What a miraculous piece of serendipity! It’s almost as if someone retconned this bullshit explanation to neatly do away with the gaping lack of micronutrients in the carnivore diet. I’ve heard this excuse before from carnies, but I’ve never seen any science on it (a ten second clip from a Masterjohn podcast doesn’t count)
Citing Bruce Ames is disingenuous because Ames is a HUGE supporter of eating tons of fruits and veg, and even supplementing micros.
The data on fiber is pretty murky, but there are some meta-analyses that show promise for soluble fiber vs. bran (insoluble). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25070054
I like how he mostly talks about grains and veg in the “plants don’t want to be eaten” section while mysteriously not talking about fruit, you know, the plants that WANT YOU TO EAT THEM. Lectins, or lectin like proteins such as Casein, are also present in dairy and grain fed beef… Also, goddamn Blue Zones. If you can’t explain the Blue Zones, your theory isn’t worth shit.
p.s. I’m not directing this at you Evan just ranting at the video
Matt, if you are going to use the Andersen family’s amazing health on a carnivorous diet as proof for this Vitamin A theory, then it’s also proof that what you’ve been writing for the past 7 years is, uh, flawed, don’t you think? Not sure you can have it both ways.
To be clear, this isn’t a dig at you. I’m just curious how you are processing this. It’s one thing to get short-term symptom remission from an extremely restrictive, zero-carb elimination diet, which is common. It’s another for two people to experience great health on it for almost two decades, along with their children. It’s kind of hard to believe, to be honest.
Yes, VERY flawed.
But if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that if I see someone having great results doing something, I’m guaranteed to NOT get results anything like that if I try it! haha
“…if I see someone having great results doing something, I’m guaranteed to NOT get results anything like that if I try it!”
That’s weird.
Because as JP Sears says, “If it works for me, it’ll work for you…because we’re different people.”
I don’t see many thriving on long term vegan diets
I’m beginning to think what we’re looking for isn’t there. You try to put together a list of “good foods” based on consensus, and you won’t get very far.
OK, you think, surely a list of “bad foods” is more doable? Nope. Fructose? Fruitarians and Peatards would beg to disagree. Red meat and/or cholesterol? Carnivores. Saturated fat? Keto.
That didn’t work. Let’s look at who is thriving and what diet do they eat. Guess what, there’s people thriving on anything from Vegan to Carni and anything in between. So everything works I guess?
So what do we even know at this point? Don’t overeat or under-eat I guess?
Is there any consensus at all at this point? I think the last one was vegetables but that’s gone now. If you were to abandon every nutrition theory and try to restart from the ground up, what would be the solid base to build on, something everyone can agree on?
I’ve wondered what would happen if one of us got plucked from our current lives and then transplanted into other environments – say, someplace tropical near the equator. Or, perhaps with a tribe of Bushmen in Australia. Or, Greece, or France.
If we had to live in the same environment (no air conditioning or hot water, perhaps), did the same physical tasks (walking, farming, etc.), and ate the same foods, would we finally experience a shift in our health?
I’m betting we would. It might be a little or a lot, but I bet something would change.
Live without the internet?! I’m out lol
But seriously, don’t think that the physical activity associated with their life is gonna save you. People who study hunter gatherers have found they burn the same amount of calories as we do.
“We found that despite all this physical activity, the number of calories that the Hadza burned per day was indistinguishable from that of typical adults in Europe and the United States. ”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/debunking-the-hunter-gatherer-workout.html
“Live without the internet?! I’m out lol”
hahaha. Me, too, man. It was purely hypothetical. I’m not ready to part with YouTube.
That hunter-gatherers burn the same number of calories (carbon, for my buddy Razzle Dazzle) as we do is surprising to me. Wow. I’d never have guessed that.
I was thinking about all of it, really. Not just the activity, but living where and how they live. The same exposures to food, bacteria, temperatures, etc. The whole enchilada, so to speak. Mmmm, enchiladas. :-)
I highly doubt that using exercise to burn caloriea is a useful strategy.
I think that the main use of exercise is to maintain muscle mass and improve insulin sensitivity through glycogen depletion and increased storage capacity.
Increased muscle mass would require additional calories for maintanence.
Doug McGuff has written about this in his “body by science” workout book.
Is McGuff still a Low-Carb Paleo guy? I watched a lecture of his, in the summer of 2010 or 2011, but nothing since. I just scanned his website, but found no diet information – just paid consultations, book sales, workshops, and speaking engagements.
No idea about his diet. He had some interesting info about workout routines, mostly about high intensity being more beneficial than steady state cardio.
I don’t think that he is any kind of nutrition guru.
Right. High-intensity training has been around for a while. Arthur Jones was advocating it in the 1970s.
Everything that works is old. Name one effective health strategy that hasn’t been around since forever.
Checked out Arthur Jones. Yes, that’s the stuff. McGuff even pushes nautilus machines.
Peobably just a reaction to all the people running on treadmills and not touching weights. These things seem to go in cycles.
Yup McGuff is a low carb Paleo grains are evil type of guy, but he does have some good ideas on exercise. He says while some genetic freaks and/or juicers require much faster, normal people actually take 6-7 days to recover and rebuild a muscle, so to exercise more than that is like repeatedly hitting the call elevator button after you’ve already hit it once. It can also lead to inflammation if you push the volume too hard.
So the solution is to do ONE full body workout a week. So far I agree, but then he goes on to say it must be very intense and to failure, and that’s where the machines come in, so you can push the intensity safely. His workouts are very weird, kind of like the Casey Viator or Mike Mentzer stuff that Tim Ferris later pushed in the “Four Hour Body”.
*recover much faster
I used to do the type of high-intensity training that McGuff talks about — and I hope to be able to do it again. I only trained once a week.
The hardest part, for me, was overcoming the natural instinct to NOT go to failure, to not empty my muscles. There was always a sort of panic, deep in my brain, that I had to learn to ignore.
Hi Skeptic, I hope I am not being redundant because I have not had a chance to read every single comment yet ( I’m impulsive), but, I have been trying to figure out how to eat for myself, my son with the serious health problems ( actually, I have another son here who is not too well also), and my husband who I hope to help keep alive for a long time to come. So, we have tried lots of approaches and often several different ones at one time ( one for him, one for me and my problems etc..). I sometimes say I hate food. I used to love to cook, now preparing food is a nightmare. I live at the grocery and can’t even bear to look at how much I spend. Anyway, I am a Christian and in all I do I do apply biblical principles as best I can. The earth is groaning in its age and we, as people, are sicker and sicker as time goes by. So, though all these foods we talk about were given to us by God to eat we are at a place where so many of us just can’t eat like we were initially intended to eat. So, many of us have to try all these diets and though it can create orthorexia I suppose, I don’t feel that it has in me. I don’t expect perfection and I know health is about more than food, but food is a big part of it. Now, finally, to my point. I think we need a bit of everything and if we can’t tolerate don’t give up trying. That we should try to eat when our bodies tell us to and stop when we begin to feel full or soon after ( what a loaded subject, intuitive eating. I take bits here and there from people who practice it, but we all have to find our way ). I realize with eating disorders they need to eat a lot while working on healing, so I don’t mean this for them. I do believe over -eating changes how food affects us and it can be negatively so. For me, when I eat what I want in moderation I don’t feel so bad, but when I eat stuff I don’t need because I am stressed or stuck studying and looking for a key to open this prison cell we live in, my problems worsen. And I go for stuff that is not helpful. I am so weird – looking for health and cooking all these respectable ( to someone or some group) foods and then I go cuckoo on some junk that someone managed to get in the door. I am working on putting off eating at night for a little while and I have managed to make it to bed without eating more often. I am not against all emotional eating, though, either. For me, I have to have a food available that gives me a fighting chance – not too bad or too good. If we are stressed we probably should eat, but not so much and that is the hard part for people like me. So, yeah, I think how much we eat is as important as what we eat. Sorry I am so long winded today!!
Oh Skeptic, I am sorry to have to speak some more, But I wanted to explain that the reason I mentioned the Bible etc… was because while I/we can’t eat everything we were intended to eat long ago when we humans were so fresh I can heed the many scriptures that talk about gluttony and the result of it.
I hope I didn’t miss this if it was mentioned, but what about arsenic in the rice? We have a very sick son who, after eating rice nearly daily for about 3 yrs and some more refined products 7 yrs prior to that due to a gluten free diet, showed high arsenic levels on a hair analysis test. We retested after stopping rice for about 8 months and it came down, though it was still high. I can see some don’t feel hair testing is relevant and probably in some things it isn’t, but what about this one?
Probably best to be cautious about rice in that circumstance. Plenty of other things can be eaten besides rice on a vitamin A depletion diet.
@Joanie: Dr Greger did a whole bunch of videos on arsenic in rice on YouTube (pissed off a lot of Vegans lol). If you don’t feel like watching them, here’s the TL;DR: rice from the Southern United States is the worst, because it all used to be cotton fields down there and they used a lot of arsenic to get rid of boll weevils. Californian rice is better. Bangladeshi rice is almost as bad as the South. Indian and Thai rice were the best from what I recall.
You should avoid rice flour products because they concentrate way more arsenic than if you were just eating plain rice. There are also cooking methods that can reduce arsenic in rice, like the “pasta method” of cooking rice where you fill a big pot with a whole bunch of water, like an 8/1 ratio of water to rice, so the arsenic goes into the water and then you dump the water.
Thanks for your 2 cents. I am eating it, but I am known for failing diets frequently. But at least today I found tri beans, Lundberg rice, a bit of beef, and a touch of olive oil ( oh and salt) very tasty and satisfying.
I was thinking what if this vitamin A stuff applies to other vitamins too? What if we’re high in all of them and they’re toxic. Every day you see an article saying vitamin XYZ is not a vitamin but a hormone, or it’s not a thing we need at at all, or it’s poison. Do we even know anything anymore?
One clue is to look at the vitamin label and see what percentage of the daily requirement is in the supplement.
I think the amount of B vitamins in supplements is generally insane. One example – Solgar B-Complex 100: B2 is 5882%. This is NOT healthy, in my opinion and experience.
The only exception to high B doses I’ve found is for B12. Over many years I’ve gravitated to 1000mcg 3x/week.
lol yeah I’ve noticed that. And most people have vitamin “stacks” where they’ll take a multivitamin, then specific ones like B-complex, then drink a Nutrigreen shake and then eat vegetables throughout the day!
Our son is horribly ill with seizures, reactive hypoglycemia ( if treated has true hypoglycemia), an inability to increase his metabolism without kicking seizures into high gear, and cannot eat much fat at all – no saturated fat ( like about 4-6g per 6 meals a day), almost no meat and must have low protein. The only fat he seems to tolerate is olive oil, but not too much. But because no diet really helps him enough to let him have a life I must be open to the idea perhaps olive oil is not really being tolerated. We think there has been insulin resistance at one time and now too sensitive as he is sooooo thin ( scary thin). I just happened to see somewhere today that olive oil is high in vitamin e – another fat soluble vitamin. At times we have given our son vitamin e because someone convinced us it would help – but his stress goes through the roof, blood sugar acts up, and he eventually seizes. Same for vitamin D. So, we are going to try a little butter, I guess tomorrow and get rid of olive oil. So, yeah I wonder about all these fat soluble vitamins.
Hi, Joanie Wilson:
I’m very sorry that your son is horribly ill with seizures, reactive hypoglycemia, and inability to increase his metabolism. I can’t imagine the strain on your family and I hope you’re able to find a successful resolution.
Now, while this is off the subject of diet and fat-soluble vitamins, hearing about your son’s seizures reminded me of the following story that was aired on CNN a few years ago. The little girl featured in the story was having around 300 seizures weekly, prior to the introduction of CBD oil.
I’m not sure if this is relevant for your son, if you’ve looked into the matter, or if it’s even something that’s of interest. But, I thought I should at least share it.
WEED The CBD Secret is out!
A CNN Special Report by Dr Sanjay Gupta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUwkLiciY6Q
NOTE: I’m not a doctor, nurse, or any type of healthcare practitioner. I have no medical training at all. So, this isn’t medical advice.
I wish your son and your family the best of luck, in searching for a safe, effective, and lasting solution.
Thank you very much for your kind words, it truly made my night. Recently, since we could legally try the oil, we bought and tried it with our son ( from Charlotte’s Web who produced the oil that helped the little girl) – no go. It seems like we are blocked at every turn. I never realized until I started journaling his dietary journey 3.5 yrs ago that he reacted to herbs, among what seems like a thousand other things. Why, I wondered, why?? So many herbs are touted as good for diabetics because they lower blood sugar. I can’t believe how many things lower blood sugar. He has had pneumonia 2 times this year and had an infected wisdom tooth = antibiotics. His blood sugar was a nightmare. They can lower bs. So, we tried it anyhow because we were desperate. The good news is that WE use it now and it has helped us immensely with our stress levels and to reduce our anti-stress medication. We didn’t use a lot, though we sure needed to – we white knuckled through a lot of days and nights. But this oil does help. We use the advanced hemp extract. Now the oil is olive oil and I was saying in another comment olive oil has a lot of vitamin e in it and we were wondering about toxicity of other oil soluble vitamins. I don’t do well with any oil or fat so I am waiting on capsules to get here. Again, thank you for your kindness.
Dear, Joanie:
Indeed, it’s my pleasure to chat with you. Thank you for taking the time to provide more details.
I’m sorry the CBD oil wasn’t helpful for your son. But, I’m happy you were able to give it a trial.
Obviously, there are reasons your son is having such difficulties. You’ve just not found the right healthcare practitioner to crack the code.
Not yet.
Just remember that each unsuccessful encounter is drawing you one step closer to the resolution. Sometimes, medicine has to find all the things that are NOT wrong, before they’re able to dig deeper, and, finally, arrive at the correct answer.
There IS a reason.
While your son’s doctors are helping to manage his symptoms, I hope they’re also continuing to ask themselves “Why?” Or, I hope you’re helping to remind them!
“Why is ‘X’ happening?”
When an answer is presented, they must then question why THAT process is occurring. Then, keep repeating “Why?” until no longer possible. “I don’t know” is not a valid answer.
I trust the doctors have looked into the following?
– Ensuring proper stomach acidity
– Testing for enzyme deficiencies
– Function of pancreas, liver, etc.
– Diagnostic imaging of pancreas, etc.
– Measuring hormones
– Testing for infections/parasites
Despite my lambasting “alternative” medicine, I think it has strengths and weaknesses. Thus, in that regard, it’s not unlike conventional medicine.
Take whatever wins you can, wherever you can get them. It’s all cumulative. You never know what small victory will tilt the balance in your son’s favor. At some point, just one more drop of water will burst the dam!
Progress isn’t always a straight line, so be patient.
My prayers and best wishes to your family!
To be fair, I wouldn’t get too discouraged about CBD oil not working. I have talk to over a dozen people who have tried it in hopes of resolving a health issue of some kind. Not a SINGLE PERSON HAS NOTED ANY DIFFERENCE from CBD oil. None.
Matt and Joanie,
Medical marijuana is now legal and available in my state. My husband is enrolled in the program and vapes marijuana for chronic pain. He had tried CBD oil prior and it did nothing for him just as Matt said. The doctor who certified my husband told him that the various cannabinoids in marijuana work synergistically and that’s why isolated CBD is ineffective for most people. Marijuana is also approved for seizure disorders even in children. No one wants to see a child walking around stoned. But that may be better than having the child seize multiple times a day.
Carl, Thanks for all the thoughts to think about haha. I definitely agree that often we have to find all the things that are not wrong first. Our family dr. loves to whip out this maze on a paper with all sorts of stuff on it I have not really read when she thrusts it into my lap – but she tells me, ” look at all the functions that go on in the body and so finding what is wrong is like looking for a needle in a haystack” or something like that. She, and other dr.’s have told me to give up – like that is an option. They are an example of dr’s who care but are frustrated by the limitations of medicine. We have had our share of specialists who are tunnel visioned about certain things like diabetes or seizure medication and not at all interested in being a detective. That is the #1 thing that frustrates me – the lack of interest in the interesting cases. But they are often just too busy. And some testing that would help to illuminate matters is hard to get done in Indianapolis ( I live an hour from Indy ). He has been a patient at IU and as a kid, Riley, In some things these places are great, but in our son’s case – we were not at all impressed and had a misdiagnosis. Our son has been a patient in every major hospital in Indianapolis.
I dove into alternative therapies and such years ago in desperation and you are right about it having strengths and weaknesses. I really made a lot of errors in trying to help our son with some protocols and self dx, but I also know it was just all I could do because no one else would do anything. We have tried several times to get into Cleveland Clinic and insurance would not allow us one time and we did not have the funds to cover it. 6 mos ago we tried again to see a neurologist who specializes in mitochondrial disorders and the state of Ohio prevented us because our son has Medicaid as a back up to my husband’s insurance. What???? Yeah. I said we would pay for what the primary didn’t cover and they said they were not allowed, by law, to even bill Patrick because he has Medicaid. I don’t know what people do to get into these places. Actually, this dr. works for a hospital that is not technically included in Cleveland Clinic, but another dr. they recommended was in the clinic, I think, and she said she was not sure they wouldn’t have the same issues. Plus, it was pediatric, too. These ped dr’s wills take adult cases if they are interested, but if hospitalization is necessary it becomes a problem because they are usually affilated with ped hospitals. I have found, as I looked into mitochondrial, fatty oxidation, organic acid, errors of inborn metabolism and other disorders that so much is centered on children. It is hard to find dr’s and information geared for adults, bc I guess many disorders are serious enough they are discovered in childhood. However, many of the disorders can remain undiscovered until adulthood.
I Tried the baking soda test for stomach acidity and he seemed ok, but I used digestive enzymes for a while. They didn’t seem to make a difference.
His blood liver tests are ok, can’t get a fasting test for insulin because he has to eat the minute he gets up. I think his insulin is overly zealous but who would test this and how?
At one time I convinced our dr. to give me a medication to slow his production of insulin – serious stuff – I was going to just trial it to see if it helped and then use that as evidence to get an endo to do something creative, but I chickened out. I don’t want to mess with his pancreas. My family dr. is getting impatient and trying to push him off on specialists that just think I ought to focus on anti-seizure medications and stop looking for the cause.
We have done some testing on our own, like hair analysis, cortisol saliva, and the Dutch Test for hormones ( urine spot), and lost of thyroid blood tests ( he had a hyper bout in 2012 – a storm, but normalized eventually). At one time he had almost no cortisol, then he had too much. I am wanting to do parasitic/infections/ yeasts etc… stool I guess. But then one reads all the pros and cons and I get discouraged. I think I am just burned out and tired right now. But your encouragement has awakened that ole fight in me. I really value this site for all the great ideas and discussions, but I never participated much because I just don’t feel, even though I have spent years reading up and worked with Peat for a number of years, that I can hold my own with the big brains around here. Plus, I often don’t have any time at all ( today – 8 seizures so far and with the last one all the food and drink landed on the floor and partially on him and me. He also bounced off a shelf at GNC, scaring the manager badly, but he was ok due to helmet and chest/back protector and me catching him partially, slowing it down. There is a space between helmet and back that is open to injury.) But, I am glad I chose to talk because there are some pretty caring folks here and you are one!!
Joanie — re: CBD, you may already know this, but try to get organic, because hemp is a plant that will absorb tons of toxins in the soil around it.
Also, as Jeanne mentioned, CBD is more effective when THC is added — but the amount of THC can be very, very small and not enough to get anyone high.
However, if you and/or your husband are using it and have to do drug tests at your jobs, there’s a slight chance that the THC could show up on those.
Joanie Wilson,
I’m so sorry to hear about your son’s health problems. Have you done any research into Taurine? It is used to control seizures in dogs and many people report elimination or near elimination of seizures when using Taurine. Here’s a link to an article on Livestrong that explains benefits and cautions of using Taurine for seizures in laymen’s terms. https://www.livestrong.com/article/356544-taurine-seizures/ There are also a number of PubMed articles.
Good luck to you and your son.
Hi Jeanne,
I tried taurine with him for a long while and it didn’t appear to help. Now things act differently when combined and I had given it with a boatload of other things. He is on hardly any supplements now ( just magnesium and I can’t take it away without him getting seriously worse), as we discovered most of them bother him in some way. Taurine is an amino acid, I think, and he does not do well with amino acids/ gelatin ( protein in general).
Right now I am trying to pull him out of starvation mode by staggering calories – increase one day, back off the next. Today has been lousy, but I need to not expect him to get better right away. That is the thing I need to focus on. When he gets worse I freak out and stop something that might actually be helping, but not showing it yet.
Jeanne, Hi again. In our state, Indiana, medical marijuana is not available except in some kind of medication (epilotic or something like that, I am going to look it up.). I thought it was but my husband says it is not. A dr. at the hospital recently told me we could get a prescription for the oil. I don’t want him to smoke anything because he is prone to pneumonia and I hate to admit this, but a few yrs ago we actually tried some illegally. We were desperate, but a few days later he got pneumonia. We tried making edibles for a few weeks, but it was so expensive and lot of work, so we stopped for a while. Then, after a bad bout of seizures we got it back out and he inhaled it. We were coming down with a novel strain of swine flu at the time and our son developed pneumonia and then Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome ( 35% survival rate) and was put on life support and transferred to another hospital where he spent 8 days in some crazy roto bed that looked like a rocket. It would rotate nearly upside down. It increases survival rate to 65% or so and it saved his life. If you can believe it our eldest son followed suit and we had 2 sons on life support in those beds – we lived in a hospital waiting room for a month. I have believed, though I could find nothing online, that the stuff he inhaled did this because he had had pneumonia a month before after inhaling. But he has also had pneumonia this yr twice and definitely did not inhale anything.
It might be that the stuff we got was not as safe as we were told. Hard telling what might have been in it. I feel so stupid. I am going to re-check the legalities. Thank you so much for offering ideas to me. I need all the ideas I can get.
Dear, Joanie:
I’m just catching-up on comments, but wanted to say you’re definitely NOT stupid! I’m flabbergasted the number of health challenges your family has had to endure — both sons AND your husband having serious conditions!
(I’m sorry us guys can be so challenging!)
However, the fact that you’ve continued to get back on your feet, each time you’re knocked down, says a lot about your dedication as a Mother and Wife, and clearly demonstrates your caring, selfless nature and strength of character.
You’re doing your absolute best, so no one could ask for more! In fact, you’re learning and doing a lot more than you should HAVE to do, because you’re trying to help close the gap between the illness and what healthcare has been able to offer.
It would be like me trying to repair the transmission in my car. I could read repair stories on the Internet and watch “How to…” YouTube videos, but, ultimately, I’m not a mechanic! So, if I were unsuccessful in attempting to rebuild my transmission, it’s not due to a lack of intelligence or desire. It’s because I was never trained as a mechanic. I didn’t go to school for that profession, I didn’t study the repair manuals, and I didn’t gain hands-on experience working under a seasoned mechanic!
So, I encourage you to keep things in perspective, recognize all the good that you ARE doing, and show yourself the patience and kindness that you deserve!
Your son’s situation has been on my mind last night and again today. I’m going to sift-through the health-related resources I’ve saved over the past five years of dealing with my own health issues and see if there’s anything that might be helpful…or, that may point you toward something or someone that can help.
More to follow.
Joanie, have you had amino acid levels checked? Knowing what AAs are not utilized well might help in developing a tolerated diet.
Turtlegurl this cbd oil thing has had me confused, probably because I just wasn’t ready to mess with it, so my hubby did the research. I have had to learn a bit, though, whether I like it or not. We get ours from Charlottes Web who are the ones ( brothers) who provided it to epileptics who were able to move to Colorado before legalization. They claim to be very careful about their soil and have 3rd party investigations/testing etc… . They explain the difference between hemp and cbd oil. We get hemp. Marijuana ( I don’t know, but assume this means cbd oil which is mostly associated with marijuana) has about 15 to 30% thc in it, psychoactive compared to hemp’s <o.3% non psychoactive thc. And yet it can surface on a test for employment purposes. Some companies are abandoning these tests now and are having to figure out different ways to test. Anyhow these guys have bred their hemp to contain over 80 photocannabinoids ( like naturally occurring turpines flavonoids) in some unique combination that work synergistically to heighten positive effects sometimes called " the entourage effect". I don't know yet, a thing about the entourage effect. This is just what they say and I do think they have proven themselves to be a reputable company.
Carl,
You deserve a big hug((((((())))) – corny, but who cares. I am a hugger person. I don’t want you to feel obligated to have to go through any hassles looking for resources for me.
I know I am not really stupid, but I am much more impulsive than I probably should be and I feel like I never learn to slow down and be more hesitant to jump. Some of it comes from the fact he is 27 now and it is like time is flying. His life, our life…. going so fast. I just want to see him have a life and everything we do concerning him takes forever. It took us 3.5 yrs to take him off a few drugs and supplements because he is so sensitive to changes, probably even good ones.
Oh, my husband’s health is good. I’m always throwing out new diet strategies or some protocol to try after reading and searching and he’ll listen and usually say “Let’s give it a go!” He hates to go to work and leave me to care for him alone and has taken medical leaves during really difficult times ( unpaid). When Patrick is in the hospital we are both there all of the time. I am very blessed. We are getting older and of course that concerns us, but we trust God with all that.
Anyhow, I feel like I have totally hijacked this thread and I am sorry Matt. I’ll pipe down, but I just had to respond to the kind people who have taken the time to offer me ideas.
Aw, thanks, Joanie. You’re very kind. I gladly accept all hugs! :-)
I only wish I could offer something useful. However, you’ve done such a good job at looking at so many things, you’re way ahead of my ideas.
The only thing I forgot to add to the list in a previous comment was Fecal Microbiota Transplant (FMT).
That may not be relevant for your son’s situation, but, again, I’m just throwing things out to see what sticks. So to speak…
Otherwise, it’s no trouble for me to help look for alternate resources. Like the many other folks on this blog, we’re all trying to help each other!
Hi Sue,
My son is the one who can’t tolerate so many foods, so I think that is who you are commenting about. I have not had his amino acids checked. I think he did yrs ago – blood test through some specialty lab I think. If he was to be low I could not have done anything about it for several years because any meat or even much plant protein caused him seizures. I think he is kind of stuck in a starvation state where his body cannot even deal with the thermic effect of protein. I am thrilled to report that we are having SOME success at adding a BIT of meat over the last 10 days or so. It is super exciting. We are ssslllooowwwwllly increasing food while adding one small portion of meat a day ( about 5 to 6 g of protein). It is not perfect, but his body is handling it much better than it used to. We have experimented with many amino acids in the past and they all caused the same problems as the food. Many of these and other supplements and herbs can lower blood sugar and though sometimes it is slight my son’s body over reacts to such things. It is very confusing with the reactive hypoglycemia and episodes of true hypoglycemia- there are inborn errors of metabolism where protein causes hypoglycemia, for example. It has been a nightmare. I think, now, that Propranolol, a beta blocker drug, was causing a lot of this issue when he was on a higher dose, plus interaction with it and a few other things he is no longer on was creating a mess I could not figure out.
There are examples of this like folic acid being a problem for some people who are poor converters of that into methyl folate or whatever. It supposedly accumulates and causes problems. This is to do with the MTHFR gene expression err sumtin like that. So those people are “suppose” to supplement actual folate an also methyl b12 as well? I afraid to see my genes…
Anywho! Some MTHFR “expert” peoples maybe just the beyondmthfr guy, believe that genetic issues like this, cause excess homocysteine to build up in the body and this is one of the big disease causing problems, or atleast brain degeneration? I have no idea about anything I just read too much and retain a quarter of it and become confused.
@Bob Dean Metal Dude – I can sure relate to reading too much, retaining too little, and becoming confused!
As for MTHFR, lots of people are still jumping on that train, while often ignoring the many other genes/SNPs.
The hysteria has caused many people to purchase methylated B-vitamins, without first confirming a need to do so, and over-consume them — much like they were doing with fish oil, just a few years ago.
Getting one’s genes tested might be helpful for some, but I’d imagine not everyone needs to do so. Under-methylating is a problem, but so is OVER-methylating.
So, like most things in health and in life, the problems AND the answers are usually more complex than we understand. Unfortunately, there’s more than we DON’T know than we do know.
I agree, thanks for responding
This all fits very nicely with my theory on human health being intricately linked to liver health and the ability of the liver to perform its various functions.
Almost everything we eat contains something that is either outright harmful or can accumulate to levels that are harmful – which is ultimately why we have a liver (and kidneys, and various mechanisms for toxin removal from our body such as our digestive system, bladder, skin, breathing out). Almost everything we eat, and almost everything we breath in will at some point pass through the liver to be metabolized for use, storage, excreted, or get converted into something safer that can then be excreted or stored. If the liver becomes damaged or stagnated for various reasons, or if we inadvertently deny our liver the resources it needs to perform various metabolic functions, liver function is impaired. This means your body’s ability to metabolize and clean out anything harmful will also become impaired. The worse your liver health gets, or the longer your liver goes without the resources it needs to do its job, the less your liver can keep up with demand, and the more you notice a vast array of possible symptoms, depending on what your liver function is not able to keep up with.
Excess vitamin A filling up storage and resulting in an overflow of harmful byproducts that the liver cant deal with fast enough certainly fits with this concept and adds another very interesting explanation for people feeding on vastly different set of foods to all come up with the same sickness and disease in their bodies. Without a doubt our bodies have become inundated with larger and larger quantities of “harmful” substances over the last few decades, be they in our foods, the air we breath, or what we apply to our skin. The liver can still function enough to keep us alive with only a very small percentage of “healthy” functioning liver tissue, so we may only notice the effects when our liver function gets increasingly low, a reason why one person can eat plenty of vitamin A without expressing symptoms, and another person can react negatively to the smallest quantity – if the liver cannot process it, it will get into the blood stream and affect various tissues, or be expelled via the skin causing skin irritation and inflammation on the way out.
I think there will be many different reasons for people to have impaired liver function (what they’ve been exposed to, what they might be deficient in, and thus the symptoms that are exhibited as a result), and therefore explains why different diets/solutions work or are needed for different people, depending on how their liver function became adversely affected … but I will be very interested to try a vitamin A depleted diet for a short term to see if I notice improvements to some of my own symptoms that I was already attributing to impaired liver function.
Look after your liver and your liver will look after you … I just made that up – not bad (I’m impressed easily tho).
Many different cultures from ancient times to today have observed something along the lines of what Hippocrates said: “all diseases begin in the gut”, meaning it’s all about what you eat (and how much). They were right.
Nick the Noo, the reason that people with different disease background have similar symptoms is not that the causes are the same, but just due to the fact that the body has a limited repertoire of responding to stressors, physical or non-physical. It’s the same when your motor makes a funny noise, you can hear there is something wrong, but the noise doesn’t tell you what.
Also, I’d like to remark that humans probably have the best detoxifying systems in the mammalian kingdom. Fish can only store toxins in their tissue, higher vertebrates like birds have detoxifying liver functions, but mammals top the cake. And omnivores have decidedly better detox functions than both carnivores and herbivores. As long lived omnivores, ours are the very best, possibly only rivaled by some rodents.
If the liver storage capacity for retinol is full, there is still room in adipose tissue. So stopping intake will slowly reduce the vast reserves.
Maureen, do you think in a situation of weight loss in a person with a prior history paleo/WAPF style type of eating (high A) years ago could end up liberating lots of stored A? Hypothetically could a person supplementing A experience a double whammy so to speak from both stored and supplemented A? Your opinion would be appreciated!
Bella, I’m also struggling with obesity. Grant’s experience with the vitamin a restriction include a lot of fat loss, while he was still eating his fill.
I have huge metabolic resistance. If my wild speculation is true, the clearing out of vitamin a dictates the amount of fat you can lose without rapidly regaining it. I finally manage to lose weight now that I’m eating mostly lean beef with moderate amounts of rice, millet or some flatbread. I do eat fruits, in between two meals that I consume within a time window of 8 hours. No high fat or keto for me, it gives me horrible muscle cramps and makes me fatter.
One of the best things I’ve done for myself was deprogramming my diet mindset. I’ve learned to respect and to listen to my body. I never liked to eat tons of veggies, so now I eat veggies to taste. And I don’t restrict my intake, other than avoiding vitamin a and keeping to my time window. If food contains carotene, I only consume them with a very low fat meal or in between meals and when I crave them. Feeling better, slowly.
Thanks for your reply Maureen, I think I remember you from a Facebook group years ago. I was bmi >30 and gradually over the last couple years it had decreased to about 24-25 without me trying so I think my metabolism must have recovered as Matt has discussed. It took about 5 years but things are much better besides the autoimmune symptoms that intensified over the last year. I had started supplementing A though and eating liver again. Ironically during the time I was tapering and redistributing the most I was not supplementing anything or eating liver. That’s part of why Grant’s theory made sense to me. I don’t care if I lose anymore weight at this point but I would like to get rid of the autoimmune symptoms! They honestly seem better when I stick with eating low/no vitamin A style. I’m close to 50 so I am more concerned with health than looks!
I agree with Nick, liver health seems to be crucial. An overburdened liver and a poor gallbladder will lead to the diseases we know. Taking care of this organ sure is important, but the question is how to do it. Avoiding drugs and alcohol seems obvious, but what is the diet for liver health? Truth is nobody really knows.
Somebody here mentioned liver flushing. Having done four of those already, I plan on continuing them on a monthly basis. I feel they could be helpful, or at least they won’t hurt. Same for coffee enemas if you are not overdoing them. But beyond these methods? There are herbs and supplements, but they are only a temporary support for the liver and don’t really undo any damage.
Vk,
As for liver/gallbladder “flushes,” they are not without some level of risk. If a person gets an actual stone (or, one of the saponified oil droplets created from guzzling oil, citrus juice, and Epsom salt) stuck in the bile duct, the person will almost certainly end-up needing emergency surgery to remove their gallbladder.
In the last article posted on this blog, I had this same discussion with a lady who had completed over 40 of these “flushes.” She reported a lot of improvements, as a result of completing the flushes. I believe her story. However, I respectfully disagree with the idea that the items being expelled are actual gallstones.
Anyway, whatever you choose, I wish you good health.
@Vk: If you have non alcoholic fatty liver disease, or even if you’re just overweight and there’s some fat in the liver, that starts to interfere with the liver doing it’s job. Last year there was that study where researchers reversed type 2 diabetes by using aggressive VLC diets that removed the fat from the liver and pancreas of the patients, and restored their function.
@Skeptic:
Good comments. Are you referring to the Newcastle Diet, by chance? If so, I recall hearing about that on the “Latest in Paleo” podcast.
p.s.
I’m not sure if you ever listened to the “Latest in Paleo” podcast or it’s predecessor “This Week in Paleo,” but I listened to all episodes of both shows. What started as a Paleo/Low-Carb/Eat-More-Bacon approach ended-up with a plant-predominant diet with small amounts of meat and no added fats, oils, or supplements.
After he (Angelo) lost a bunch of weight on “Paleo,” his weight loss stalled. That led to his changing-up things, rather than doubling-down on low-carb. He came-up with what he called the “Plant Paleo Diet.” It ended-up being mostly carbs from whole plants.
In the end, Angelo was able to lose the remainder of his weight. In total, he lost about 100 pounds. (And, he’s kept it off for a few years.) He then figured he had nothing else to say or do, so he quit his blog and podcast and went off the radar for 18 months.
In fact, I just went to his site, to get the direct link to his “Plant Paleo Diet” and see that he’s updated his website. It’s now called the “Mostly Plant Diet.”
http://www.humansarenotbroken.com/mostly-plant-diet
He used to have “Before” and “After” photos, sans shirt, on his blog, but they’ve since been removed.
I snapped PDFs of some of the old web pages, for fear he might let the domain expire. But, his updated site seems to indicate he’s working on a new show titled “Humans Are Not Broken.” If it’s anything like his other two podcasts, with regard to quality research, content, and production, the new show will be great.
(That’s a long p.s.)
@Carl: I think so yes. I’ve heard Angelo’s name before, but have never dived into his stuff. His current diet sounds like the Fuhrman diet with some animal foods added. Unfortunately I can’t do a diet like that since my insides would explode with all that fiber and resistant starch he’s recommending. Also, I tried volumetrics way back and it didn’t work for me. My body is not fooled by a stomach full of lettuce, it demands heavy calories lol
I’m surprised he hasn’t jumped to the carnivore bandwagon like virtually 100% of Paleo bloggers. That alone tells me he’s not an idiot.
@Skeptic:
Wow, “volumetrics”! I’ve not heard that one in a while. We must be some old guys. lol
Man, I forgot about your difficulty with heavy fiber, starch, and other difficult-to-digest foods. My apologies. Between this blog and a forum I frequent, I can’t always maintain the most relevant details about the key players. To honor your need for heavy calories, I just had some bacon and eggs. Probably not the best idea, right before bed, but I was hungry.
You’re quite right that Fuhrman (or, “Furburger,” as Penn Jillette calls him) was one of the many people that Angelo researched. I provided him with some of the information on Fuhrman, as well as Greger, Novick, and Popper. We also traded e-mails about Pritikin, Esselstyn, and others. But, my contributions were minimal. Really, it was all Angelo.
So, yes, his “Plant Paleo” / “Mostly Plant” diet is heavily influenced by Fuhrman and others.
Angelo was constantly reading books, researching PubMed, interviewing guests, thinking, and experimenting. He’s definitely not a knucklehead.
He also has a lot of integrity, as he received lots of lucrative sponsorship/advertising offers, but turned-down most, because they were crap products he didn’t believe in. I only recall two sponsors that he accepted and he used both or their products.
That was an especially brave position, since he’d quit his corporate job in Arizona, moved his family to Washington state (where they knew no one), and did his blogging and podcasting full-time. As far as I’m aware, they relied solely on listener donations and his Amazon.com affiliate links for the various food and kitchen items they used and recommended.
Anyway, his website has lots of interesting information, beyond his plant-heavy diet. However, I also know you’re an incredibly well-read guy, so his information may be nothing new to you.
Okay, it’s 6:50 AM and I’m finally off to get some sleep. I really need to flip my days and night back to “normal.”
lol you should, this circadian stuff is no joke
Based on my own research and my own experiences over the last few years, I think there are multiple strategies for liver health.
With over 500 different functions being carried out by the liver, there are numerous ways that liver function can be affected, which is why I think there are numerous sets of symptoms that can be exhibited by people with liver issues. Some of the more well known ones are fatty liver disease (alcoholic or non-alcoholic versions), cirrhosis/scarring of the liver tissue, or virus/bacterial infection, but it can also become clogged and less effective, or it can simply be lacking nutrients for one of the 500+ different functions (which may be a long term dietary deficiency, or it may be the presence of infection in the body, or the presence of or repeated exposure to harmful substances that depletes the body of nutrients – such as exposure to heavy metals such as mercury which have a strong affinity to sulfur leaving little sulfur available for the numerous metabolic pathways in the liver that require sulfur, such as metabolizing salicylates for anyone who has a salicylate sensitivity).
Figuring out what an individual is doing to impair liver function and finding a solution is probably going to be slightly different for everyone, but there are some general strategies to follow for a) improving liver function, b) protecting liver tissue and c) repairing damaged liver tissue. Then you can also minimize your exposure to substances that are harmful to the liver (such as pharmaceuticals or alcohol) or can interfere with nutrient availability.
I think it can be a lot more complicated than that for some people, especially if they have had problems for a while (not ignoring that the liver is heavily involved in digestion), and a struggling liver will ultimately cause problems with digestion. Anyone with impaired gut function or inflammation in the digestive tract or stomach, or your gallbladder is not working well will need to include protocols that help with those issues too.
A gallbladder flush can be risky as Carl suggests, but there are safer ways to get the gallbladder working better. My suggestion would be a few days of beetroot juice, and grapefruit juice mixed with green tea and lemon juice. However, if you have gallbladder issues, you more than likely have gastro issues, and highly acidic foods may aggravate that condition. Go slowly if that describes you.
Too much fat in your diet I think is a major route for liver and gallbladder problems, and subsequent stomach/gastro issues, which will lead to further digestive issues and malabsorption. How? If you are consuming more fat than your liver can manage and bile production is insufficient, then bile quantities will be insufficient to neutralize stomach acid when it reaches the duodenum. This will result in signals to the stomach to reduce stomach acid production to prevent acid damage to the more sensitive small intestinal lining. When your stomach acid levels drop, food is not digested as well resulting in less food being absorbed in the small intestines and more food making its way to bacteria in the large intestines, increasing the chances of bloating and gut inflammation. Low stomach acid levels also increase the chance of pathogens surviving the stomach and taking residence in the lining of the stomach (such as H. Pylori), which can result in inflammation of the stomach lining and esophagus and further reduce stomach acid production. Oversized meals, acidic foods, and foods that encourage acid production in the stomach (such as caffeine) can then make symptoms worse. I ate smaller meals, avoided acidic foods, and drank a hot beef gelatin drink in the mornings to help with this.
Inflammation in the digestive tract has the potential to expose your body to toxins if it results in the intestinal lining becoming damaged. Bloating in the belly can often just be an inflammation response to damage in the intestines, rather than a buildup of gas. For me this was often accompanied by higher cortisol levels which remained high (possibly because my liver struggled to metabolise excess cortisol). Possible causes for damage of the gut lining I think includes exposure to heavy metals, pesticides in foods, or an overgrowth of fungus or other pathogenic bacteria strains. I noticed my symptoms got significantly worse on a particular probiotic which contained different strains of bacteria, histamine producers in particular.
Smaller sized meals I think are important. Giving your liver less to do is one of the keys to keeping it healthy. I suspect that the idea of a low calorie diet resulting in longevity isn’t necessarily because its a low calorie diet, but because they are eating less and placing less burden on liver function (maybe, its an interesting theory anyway).
Herbs that help with liver function and promote liver tissue repair include the usual trio of milk thistle, burdock, and dandelion. Artichoke is also useful. Herbal teas that are beneficial include green tea, roibos/redbush tea, and peppermint tea.
Fruit and vegetables that seem to help include beetroot, grapes/sultanas/raisins, lemon, garlic (although I would go easy on garlic personally), and typical bitter herbs such as thyme, oregano, and sage (you can make a hot tea from these herbs). Carrots would have been one I recommended also, but being high in vitamin A precursors, they might be worth not including at this stage.
Serrapeptase can reportedly be used for healing scar tissue in the liver.
There are non-dietary things that you can do to improve liver health too, such as avoiding pollutants in the air you breath as they will enter the bloodstream via the lungs and become something the liver has to remove. Artificial fragrances in perfumes, cosmetics, toiletries, cleaning products, or laundry detergents were big ones for me. Traffic pollution also, as were mothballs and paints.
Another big one for me personally was exposure to heavy metals (mercury in particular), which I believe was their affect on my sulfur levels. Following protocols to eliminate such substances out of the body I believe is also an important step for those who have been exposed. Mixed mineral ascorbates combined with either MSM or Epsom salt baths, along with daily activated charcoal was the protocol I have had the most success with. I included chlorella with my protocol also, but that would be fairly high in vitamin A precursors, so in light of this whole article, use it at your own discretion.
Sleeping at the right times can make a huge difference. Being asleep by 11pm will greatly speed up liver recovery I believe. The only plausible explanation I’ve come across in my research for this is the premise that certain liver repair functions only take place when asleep during a small window of time between roughly 11pm and 1am, and if you miss that time slot, you need to wait until the following evening. I cant confirm that with data, but from my own experience there seems to be a connection between the time I fall asleep and the severity of my symptoms (ie, the earlier the better, and getting more sleep later does not provide the same symptomatic relief). Exercise and movement is also supposed to be very helpful for maintaining liver health. This could be due to an increase in circulation, or a potential increase in sweating out harmful substances via the skin. Not a new idea to suggest doing something active every day is healthier than sitting on your pie all day.
I’m sure there are more things, but this has become a long enough post already. Apologies to those with a short attention span :)
To those who are wondering, I had a lung tumor about 5 years ago that I believe was a result of having amalgam/mercury fillings removed unsafely. This screwed up my lungs, my endocrine system in particular, but also my liver function. Liver tests showed my liver was dying after emergency surgery to remove half my right lung. I’ve been on a quest to figure out how to heal my liver and the rest of my body ever since, mostly without western medicine. The things I’ve described here is what has helped me to get back to “almost” normal. I am hopeful that this article on the excesses of vitamin A (which I believe is very plausible for my scenario) will help me further.
That sounds like one hell of a battle Nick! Congrats on making it this far and I hope you continue to make progress.
@Nick: you said “If you are consuming more fat than your liver can manage and bile production is insufficient, then bile quantities will be insufficient to neutralize stomach acid when it reaches the duodenum. This will result in signals to the stomach to reduce stomach acid production to prevent acid damage to the more sensitive small intestinal lining.”
I’ve always suspected this but can’t find any good sources that focus on it, specifically the stomach acid part. Any sources you can recommend. Every time I try to find something it just ends up being a chiropractor citing zero sources and recommending you pop Betaine HCL like candy.
Nick the Noo,
Thanks for taking the time to post such great comments. I’m familiar with some of that information, due to struggling with my own health issues, but certainly not all of it. And, I’ve not seen it all posted in one place and so succinctly. Thank you.
Wishing you continued success on your journey!
@Matt:
Thanks Matt – yeah, I’ve had me some days :) I imagine the asthma was no walk in the park either. Will let you know if a low vitamin A diet brings any further joy.
@Carl:
Cheers – hope some of it proves useful. Makes my own painful learning feel more worth it when it helps others.
@Skeptic:
Try a search on stomach acid regulation mechanisms, that is the area you’ll find the most relevant information. In particular there are 3 hormones that I am aware of, somatostatin, secretin, and cholecystokinin, the last 2 I think fall under the category of enterogastrones.
There are actually 3 possible reasons for the reduction of stomach acid that I can see. 1) the body does it by intelligent design to prevent damage to the lining of the duodenum; 2) its a basic stress response to damage occurring to the lining of the duodenum, which triggers the production of somatostatin to shut down stomach acid secretion, just as digestion normally gets turned off in the face of a stressor; or 3) secretin and cholecystokinin are normally produced as chyme enters the duodenum, both of which begin to inhibit acid production in the stomach (by further producing somatostatin I think), cholecystokinin in particular also triggers the release of bile, however if insufficient bile flow exists (in the presence of a fat rich meal in particular), the ongoing presence of undigested lipids in the duodenum would result in an ongoing release of cholecystokinin to trigger the release of more bile, all the while further triggering the release of somatostatin to effectively turn off stomach acid. So a lack of bile flow to promptly emulsify fats and neutralise acidity in the duodenum would ultimately lead to an ongoing lowering of stomach acid production through ongoing somatostatin, whilst potentially also triggering a stress response to ongoing acidity in the duodenum.
Bicarbonates from the pancreas should eventually reduce acidity in the absence of enough bile to prevent an ulcer forming in the duodenum but the lesser volume and lesser alkalinity of the bicarbonates compared to bile usually means a slower raising of the pH levels in the duodenum.
I’ve normally favoured options 1) or 2), but writing it out to explain it now, option 3) has equal validity, especially when it seems that fatty meals are a major trigger for many with gastro problems. There may be more to it than that, but that is my current understanding. Let us know if you learn anything more concrete.
Have you looked into TUDCA for removing fat from the liver. Seems to be a lot of bnoa fide research on it.
Nick the Noo,
I agree with you completely about the health of your liver affecting every aspect of your overall health. In the various comments about how to protect/enhance liver function no one has mentioned Taurine supplementation. I know… here I go again. I will have to change my 180 D name to Taurine Jeanne if I persist along this line. I had no sooner sworn off all supplements for good when I discovered Taurine. And now I seem to be turning into a Taurine advocate. I assure you that I don’t sell Taurine and I don’t work for any supplement manufacturers.
Taurine both thins the bile and stimulates bile production. So it helps in fat digestion. I have experienced a good deal of improvement in my digestion since I began supplementing with Taurine. And that in turn seems to be helping my health in many other ways.
The TUDCA I mentioned above contains taurine.
@Taurine Jeanne:
Have not tried Taurine supplementation before.
Looking at “taurine rich food” lists, I would be surprised if I have ever gone long without sufficient dietary taurine (except for a random few weeks of experimentation with veganism). Doesn’t mean my body was absorbing or utilising that taurine properly however.
It is something I will keep in the back of my head as being useful for improving liver and gallbladder function. Could explain in part why my journeys into veganism repeatedly failed.
Thanks for the input :)
It’s settled…This is the Truman Show… Years ago I heard maaybe Sean Croxton talk about Rami and his liver stuff..(you said he passed away, Matt?) Ever since I eat a lot of liver whenever I have an old “cavity” (deep molar) giving me problems. Whatever happens the pain always goes away, my teeth feel good and I havent been to the dentist in 10 years. I have other issues though. Now I am confused as fuck. I thought liver was a beautiful food.
I took carlons or some kinda capsule brand of cod liver back in 2013 to see if it helped my skin. I swear to god I probably used to much and it gave hundreds of pimples on the back of my head. I immediately stopped taking and it slowly resolved. I couldnt sleep on my back because of it. Those capsules had synthetic and I always assumed that was the issue.. Someone else mentioned the microbiome and I feel like that is a big factor in the food sensitivities situation. Good gut bugs, good gut food, good gut integrity, calmer immune system? I was theorizing that carnivore diets help with autoimmune issues because it starves gut critters but maybe not? Matt if youre reading this, look into Jordan Peterson talk about his miraculous results from Carnivore, his daughter even more so. Its doing sooomething. Despite the absence of all other foods people are feeling better on the meat! HOWEVER they are becoming extremely sensitive to other foods in the process. I was thinking that theyre calming their immune system but at the same time totally ravaging their gut diversity by only eating meat, steaks in particular. If experts cant agree on anything i feel literally mentally retarded at this point..
Way to go on the click baity title Matt..you sneaky son of a carotenoid.
@ Bob Dean: damn I forgot about Sean Croxton. He was the JERF (just eat real food) guy right? He was memed a few months ago when he released the JERF bar, a bar you can eat instead of real food LOL, an oxymoron in physical form. He doesn’t blog about health anymore, he’s moved on to motivational and “entrepreneur” stuff
I listened to Sean’s podcasts for a while, starting back in 2009 or 2010. I even bought his e-book. It must have been a big seller, because he then purchased a sweet house in San Diego, California for $839,000 USD.
Not bad, considering just a few short years earlier, he was living in a one-bedroom apartment. I recall his story about buying a flat-screen television from Best Buy and then returning it, so he could use the money to invest in some health-related course he’s discovered.
Back then, I think it was much easier to ride the waves of the Paleo, Primal, Low-Carb, and WAPF fads. Today, iTunes, YouTube, and the blogosphere are over-saturated.
Hi Carl,
I remember Croxton’s videos under the name “FoodDood” (FoodDude) in 2006, maybe he goes back even further? He had a nice video addressing Dr. Oz and LDL. Wow. I didn’t know he had such an expensive house. There was this Douglas Graham inspired whackball named “Paradigm667” on his forum in 2008. He was denying that chimps actively hunt for meat.
I once told Mark Sisson that I was going out as (a semi-obese version of him-padding under my shirt) him for Halloween back in 2011 after his moderators banned me from his forum. LOL.
Hi, Razwell!
I didn’t realize Croxton has been around that long! I’d never heard of the “FoodDood.” He’s an “old-timer,” like Matt. haha
Funny about getting banned by Sisson’s sycophants for having a sense of humor. Their leader must be worshipped and all dissenting opinions will be crushed!
I’ve had many comments rejected on the Weston A. Price Foundation website. If I posted something supportive, the comment was published. If I questioned Sally Fallon’s obesity, the comment was never published.
How are you feeling, these days, my friend? Are you back to normal? I hope so!
holy crap, dropped almost a million on a house?! that’s pretty damn good for a blogger
Most people who have obesity (obesity is a genuine disease and that is why I have an elevated insulin level (Dr. Jeffrey Friedman did a Q&A and admitted this. In fact, I often overlook the importance of it. But there are likely many more undiscovered hormonal players. Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Joseph Goldstein are Nobel winners and stress the importance of insulin in fat tissue regulation on ScienceDaily site in an article. I wish I could find and link it (Dr. Friedman’s insulin comment and recognition and Goldstein’s recognition of it as well) The insulin model has NOT been debunked despite what a very poor scientist thinks and who has accomplished absolitely nothing in his career.(Guyenet) Insulin is ONE of the major hormonal regulators.
Onlynon the Internet is it debunkef. Real scientists study horjonal regulation , genetics an MOLECULAR MACHINES THAT DRIVE OBESITY
Fat dells are powerfully governed by hormones. Lack of sleep (major deprivation) has a tissue specific effectvon gene expression.
What has been debunked is this calorie model. Body fat is maintained syeady despite HUGE VARIATIONS in eating and exercise. This thetkodynamic MIDUSE argument falls flat on its face. Over 100 physicists agree with me collected over 5 years. Lyle McDonald and Kevin Hall are plain lauugable. I am glad Urgelt attacks the calorie model. It is a wrong assumption. Nature does not HAVE to behave ANY way. It does what it wants.
There is a GREAT lecture by Harvard Medical School BASHING the incorrect energy balance nonsense, tge same n8nsense Taubes rightfully bashes. . She is a black lady who looks like Michlke Obama, wish I could find it. I will try to link it. Guyenet, McDonald et al are on a witch hunt against Taubes out of jealousy, it’s NOT valid or rational. The only “problem” or “sin” Taubes committs is perhaps not seeing past JUST insulin, but insulin IS MAJOR, one of several huge players. BUT OVERALL his message (to me) is tgat he is pushing for the HORMONAL view, and this includes many more hormones. The hormonal view is much more in accord with observations than is the “energy balance” ABUSE of thermodynamics. Thermodynamucs does not even rrmotely explain fat cell behavior and WRINBERG HIMSELF would rtell you that.We cannot INFER ANYTHING about fat dells from thermodynamic theory…. (Thermodynamics is a tgeory, a model, there are no “laws” 7n science) Google Paul Lutus
I thought Guyenet thought obesity had a lot to do with leptin?
“Eat less, move more” is N-O-T how this works. Everybody from Dr. Friedman to Dr. Donal O’Shea, to many Harvard scientists say this, they have discovered it. Gary Taubes gets flak because he attacks this BASELESS fundamentalist belief, this assumption about fat regulation. The “eat less ,move more” have this die hard belief, they are like the most fundamentalist cult, cult is the perfect word, description. There is very little scientific evidence for the behavioral model as Urgelt notes. It is a shame, Guyenet used to be similar to Taubes in May 2010 in attacking the caloric model.i question his motives , tbey are quite clear.
Admitting my own build is lean DUE to GENETICS was difficult back in 2004 because I am an athlete (400 meters track) I am a natural ectomorph who is myscled. Reggie Miller was a skinny classic ecto.
Leaness depends on genetics, great sleep, proper immune system function, lack of background obesity causing diseases proper hormonal fuction etc.
Carbon ingestion is one factor tgat takes a backseat to these others.
@Raz: for what it’s worth, “eat less move more” is the treatment, NOT the theory of how people get fat. It’s based on the idea that the body won’t tap into fat stores unless there’s a calorie or carbon deficit. I haven’t really seen a good rebuttal of this idea.
Even if you go with Taubes, that carbs raised insulin and insulin put fat into your fat stores, so then what? Lowering insulin levels would stop fat gain, not cause fat loss. To lose you still have to create a deficit (until a better solution is found).
Eat less, move more is NOT a treatment. Friedman admits it fails. Nir is surgery that effective. He also admits bariatric surgery does NOT work nearly as well as adverised, either He told me this as well as said this in numerous talks. Further you could NOT get the same result by eating less. Bariatric surgery affects HORMONES, TGEY ARE TRYING TO MAKE A PILL FORM.Thissurgey affects the involuntary system, it does not partially eork by eating less. This is rhe svience. I have studied tjis obessively for a decade.
It is a Hippocrates wortnless nostrum. He is uber critical. Ox Shea in an article I have specifically STATES eat less mive more is NOT how this works.
Obesity is a politically charged topic. The scie tific evidence favors Taubes, the horminal view. He may stress insulin to the neglect of other hormones and gene defects. But tjus xalorie model is wrong. Calories and inverse fermions-exactly the same…. Neitther exist. Units of energy and energy, itsrlf NITHING, do NOT explain, nor are they causes of phenomena. Feynman was very clear about that.
Nobody believes me when I state e ergy is NOT ANYTHING WHATSOEVET. THAT IS DIRECTLY FROM PETIMETER INSTITUTE PHYSICISTS AND MANY MORE. THE Ph.Dxs know this.
We need to LET TO OF THE BASELESS BELIEF TO EAT LESS AND MOVE MORE.
Only a deeper molecular level understanding will help. Eat less move more is worthless advice for those with true severe obesity. You are not understanding the priblem. Taubes knows this adbice does NOT work. Friedman knows it, too.
Disengorge is the name here, not deficit. Mechanical forces could squash fat cells causing disintegration. Google ScienceDaily
Nobody on the Internet studied tjis energy ABUSE TOPIC more than I.
Fat loss could be caused by
Radiation of some sort, cosmetic procedures use radiowaves
Injection of specific medication at the site (cosmetic procedure, forget the drug’s name)
Direct surgery remival (but grows back)liposuction
Potentially mechanic force sqooshing it kGoogle Science Daily article
Bluelight from sun, radiation js STUFF, unlike rictional energy, and CAN ACT on human tissue, it shrinks tumors.zero deficit.
All that is required is that lipid cells stoo hoarding and relaease, disengorge.Fat cells CAN HOARD in the face of starvation
Numerous ways to raise insulin., not just carbohydrates. A huge piece of salmon will raise it.Chronic elevation is bad.
When we semi starve insulin is lowered a lot. This is complicated. The energy abusers ignire that which Bray ,himself, told me, STARVATION LOWERS INSULIN. Insuoin and carbon atom shortages are strongly interlinked. HORMOMES MATTER. Simple overeating is NOT THE CAUSE OF IBESITY. SCUENCE SHIWS THIS. URGELT STRESSES IT.LEIBEL AND REOSENBAUM stress they need to CHANGE VIEWS about common perceptions. Fat people ARE BIOLOGICALLY DIFFERENT IN THEIR OWN WORDS IN THE HBO special.
BRAY AGREES WITH TAUBES ABOUT THERMODYNAMIC MISUSE. IMHAVE THE DIRECT E-MAIL PROVING THIS. Energy balance says NOTHING. Bray admits it. He referred to energy as a state function that says nothing about how a person got fatter. I mysekf never ga e insuoin enough attention, downplaying it toooo much . This is due to factors like immune system and genetics. If anything I was not paying enough attention to it.
Bray is not privately as against Taubes as he is portrayed by the jealous half witt Guyemet. Taubes is on the right general path. No need to overly focus on carbs. Many factors affect insulin. Othr hormones are involved, then we have gene defects etc.
Good habits just make us ever so slightly leaner and onky in those healthy , no adverse medications, good hormones.Reggie Miller is barely “fatter ” today than when he played. He is naturally lean. Eat less move more is veey, veey limuted. The basball oineup does not change. If endomorohs and Reggie both lost fat, the naturallynfattest would still be the fattest, even if less so. The leanest woukd be the leanest. The calorie model is just wrong.
I looked into this O’Shea. You’ll never guess what he advised: eat healthy and exercise! It’s this video on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OpTranRTE/videos/10156291326750921/
If you go to the -3:30 mark (last part of the video), he says “and it’s all about the energy in and the energy out. They’re the two things we can address. And Operation Transformation addresses the calories in… and the calories out”
There is currently no other treatment, other than bariatric surgery, which is still basically creating a deficit by making your stomach smaller and forcing you to eat less.
We CANNOT adress carbon absorptiin versus excretion. You need to get that out ofmyour head. It is NOT voluntary. It is largely involunatry. People’s metabolisms are infividualized, their health, diseases, . You coukd do everything “right” and the body DOES ITS OWN THING WITH A MIND OF ITS OWN. I HAVE OERSINALLY SEEN IT. LEIBEL SAID THIS AS WELL. THE BODY HAS A MIND IF ITS OWN. WEMHAVE VERY LIMUTED CONTROL OF CARBON INGESTIIN VERSUS EXCRETIIN. BODY HAS DEFENSES THAT EXERT CONTROL AND DOMINATION. IT HAPOENED TO ME WHEN I HAD MONO. LIZZE VELASUQEZ CANNOT GAIN FAT TO SAVE HER LIFE.
FIRGET CALORIES. THEYNARE NOT IN ANY WAY INTRINSIC TO FOOD. YOU COULD USE INVERSE FERMIONS OR ERGS. NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.WE ASIGN THESE FICTITIOUS UNITS. THINK INTERMS OF CARBON GRAMS
Lol damn Matt, and that’s the best we’ve come up with after all this “science”, that’s depressing
The IMMUNE SYSTEM STRONGLY controls the carbon absorption versus excretion. This is his whole point of Dr. O’Shea’s discovery. I knew it was involved from my friend. I am so glad it was offically noted. It powerfully exerts control. Our behavior is relatively MINOR, especially in severe cases of oebsity or sick individuals.
Robin Quivers and Joe Lewis ( Bruc4 Lee’s friend became fat and bloated on cancer drugs, unrecognizeable- so sorry about their situations) The calorie model is a DISGRACE and INSULT to Robin Quivers and the like.
back when Guyenet was more sound he ADMITTED in 2011 that fat cell creation and reguyaltion is a BIOLOGCALLY GOVERNED PROCESS NOT simply voluntary decision or passive effect. Dr. PETER M HOFFMAN TOTALLY AGREES WITH ME, TOO.This IS a DELIBERATE DESCION BY THE BODY TO MAKE MORE FAT CELLS, it is NOT from simple overeating or a passive rsult . He studies this molecular machinery of life that governs cells behavior.
It;s in writing from August 2011 r so where he ACKNOWLEDGED PUBLICLLY TAUBES IS RIGTH ABOUT THAT. Guyenet has changed his tun to SPITE Taubes and seel books. Very, very sad- tragic WASTE of a carreer.
Have you ever watched My 600 pound life? Every episode the people lose like 100 pounds to become eligible for weight loss surgery, and then, after weight loss surgery, their weight loss stalls significantly compared to the rate they were losing BEFORE bariatric surgery. Some even stop losing weight or start GAINING after bariatric surgery!
I am obsessed with My 600-Pound Life. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry watching it. Those poor people. Most of them seem to have some mental illness. They get 1200 calories a day, all protein. For years. The follow up shows available online are very interesting. Some following patients for 2 -3 years. None have reached anything resembling a “normal” body weight/shape. It’s hard to imagine they are not somehow wrecked by the prolonged severe dieting.
The show can be funny (though I guess it’s not really funny) too. I can’t forget the one where Dr. Now accused a very obese lady of cheat eating in the hospital and she fervently denied it. Then when he was looking at her bed sores or something, he goes AHA! And literally pulls out a Doritos bag that was stuck in between her fat rolls.
You gotta have a Doritos stash!
I even e-mailed Dr. Nowzaradin. LOL.
Very , very good point, Matt, about bariatric surgery. You pay attention to the details and are very observant inuitive.
Even the scientific literature is rife with errors especially prominent in the field of obesity science. I have communicated with many physicists and they all state that peer -review is dramatically overstated with regard to its actual importance. (Checking math errors is another issue Peer -review doesn’t even work-research shows this clearly, (former BMJ editor admits this)yet it is kept alive because of TRADITION and because the actual truth and reality of the situation is that scientists are no less stubborn or biased than the average janitor.This is the dirty little secret. The system is often abused for gatekeeping, it never was originally untended for the aninymous reviwer to psss it on whether he agrees with the conclusion or not. But it is used this way a lot. We need to ditch it and come up with better methods.
As Dr. Krauss ssys on video, lots and lots of junk is published every day and much of it passes the “almighty” peer review… It doesn’t mean much. This is why I disliked Sagan. He was an asshat self promoter spewing myths, overstating science. The elite do NOT act like him. They are humble and very unsure
Nature sorts it out anyway If your work meant something, others will build from it.
I know this topic well, Skeptic. Friedman advuses ALL people, ALL, lean or ibese to eat what we think is healthfuk and move. OShea does, too. DOR HEALTH, NOT to treat obesity. O’sShea thinks my ideas are brilliant, he personally told me. He is NOT on the side of your view. I know this for a fact. And he does clearly say in hks article that eat less move mkre is NOT AT ALL how this worls. The immu emsystem can dominate. Austrian scientists and Taubes both noted how people habe MARKED variation is eating amd activity and many will remain the same year in, year out.
Eat less move more is a cutesy nostrum NOT SCIENCE, NOT PHYSICS.Friedman called it an outfated nostrum. Advising exercise and nutrient dense eating is NOT the same as saying it cures obesity. It fails for that.
js NOT how this works. Mindsets will not change I see. Thermodyanmics says NOTHING about fat cell behavior, nothing. Nor does it say anything abiut if the body decides to ravage muscle first.
Plenty of obese people live immaculate lifestyles and remain fat. CHASTAIN IS ONE OF THEML I WOULD BET SHE IS MORE FLEXABLE THAN US.
Taunes bashers are foolish. Lyle is foolish…. DAVID GROSS OF KAVLI INSTITUTE SAID TAUBES IS EXCELLENT IN SCIENCE. DO YOU THINK HE CANNOT JUDGE PHYSICS MATTERS? TAUBES IS FULLY SUPPORTED BY A PHYSJCS NOBEL LEGEND IN GROSS. GROSS BACKS TAUBESX VIEW IF THE INCORRECT ABUSE OF THERMODYNAMICS. I KNOW THIS FOR 100% FACT.
All the Taubes bashers out together are not as smart as David Gross at 50% of his capabilities.. Gross revolutionized oir umderstanding of the strong nuclear force field. Gross says WE DO NOT KNOWMWHAT WE ARE DOING AND ARE MISSING SOMETHING BIG in physics. Same applies to obesity. Obesity is NOT UNDERSTOOD, PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
Urgelt is a very, very smart man. Even healthful diet is not understood, we know tidbits at best. Urgelt sees this and stresses it. Urgeltxs intellect is superior to McDonald’s-vaaaastly superior.
Here is DR. O’SHEA talkign about how “eat less, move more” is N-O-T- how this works:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/weight-control-immune-system-battles-efforts-of-many-research-1.2775981
My close childhood friend has an immuen disease. It has DOMINATED him in every way fatness wise or should I say super deathly leanness wise. We MUST make our belifs conform the observations of reality.
The body really does have a mind of it as won as Dr. Leibel stressed.”Unfortunately, and we looekd at this 7 different ways up and down back and forth, our research h shows that with regard to body fatness /composition t the body has a mind its own.”
It certanly does. We need more work on it. It is amazing and scary.
Good read, Razzle Dazzle!
Obesity, true obesity, is a DISEASE STATE. The muscles will develop this non-physiological state- as Leibel calls it. A “sympathetic DENERVATION” occurs, he said. He and colleagues are trying to REVERSE this effect, but have failed . It is hard! THIS is what the lay publc needs t o focus on, NOT eat less move more…. The body has many, many involuntary tricks.
Even the amount of food ingestion is largely gbenetic. We have dfood that goes under tyhe radar. That sip of sugary carbon filled soda here and there. NOBODY AS TAUBES MOTES, NOBODY CAN POSSIBLY KEEP TRACK OF THE INVERSE FERMIONS INGESTION VERSUS EXCRTEED OVER A YEAR LET ALONE 10 YEARS YET MANY PEOPEL NEVER CHANGE MUCH,.IN BUILD
OBVIOUISLY INVOLUNTARY. SAME WITH ANIMALS. THEY DO NTO CONSCIOSULY DO ANYTHING. TAUBES HAS HARD, HARD, HARD HITTNG POINTS THAT MKAE GUYENET ET AL UNCOMNFORTABEL FEYNAMN WOULD HAVE SIDED WITH TAUBES MENTALITY NOT LYLE;’S IN SCIENCE, WE SEEK TO PROVE WHAT LAWS ARE WRONG FAST. WE WANT TO PROVE OUTSELVES WRONG. MUCH OF WHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT OBESITY IS TOALLY, TOTALLY ERRONEOUS PEROGRESS WILL NOT BE FATS.PEOPLE ARE UNWILLING TO CHANGE THEIR MINDSET AND BELIEFS AND ASSUMPTIONS.
EVEN LIEBEL’S MACHINERY IN STUDUES IS APPROXIOMATION, IT IS NOT NEALRY AS ACCURATE AS THE “AUTHROTATIVE AIR”THESE MACHINES MAY GIVE to the common man. We only have primitve GADGETS and mathematics. WE NEED MUCH BETTER.
This state of super chemcial mechanic efficiency. ( Leibel’s words) This is a big reason WHY we do NOT largely control our body fat NAYWHERE NEAR THE DEGREE people ASSUME.
The hardest workign perosn I know is a maid in Ft. Lauderdale, from Haiti. She is very chubby bhut cleans 48 rooms in a day at least 3 days a week or more. Se has help some other days. I do not know any harder of a worker. She eats normally all the times I saw her and she has litle time to actually eat workign from 9 a.ml. until 4p.m.; or 5 or later. Another alsmot eually hardest worker is an Indian lady from India who walsk and walks 2 hours soemtimes, resting on trees . Her oebsity is not even remotely solvd. None of the copmon advbcie worls for oebse peoel TAUEBS CORRECTLY RECOTGNIZES THIAS,. FORGET that he pays sole attention to insulin. Let;s see th BIG PICRTURE The man is SMART, he has done GOOD WORK, much better than his criticizers. taubes got the messaghe out the caloriemodel si WRONG.THIS CHAPS ASSES becvauise obesity is politclaly charged and peopel have silly beleifs about it. I DID, TOO back in 1998 but i HAVE CHANGED. I SAW EVIDENCE FIRSTHAND. Yu can never tell by looking at somebody WHY they are obese. They could work the hardest youi ever sa and remain fat. Poor thyroid, unfortunate genetics, toxic expiosres, lack of sleep, gut microbiota, many reasons. Even VIRISES ARE LINMED.
TYhe LAZIEST person I know is an entitled skinny blond who lives in my neighborhood, sleeps until NOON, varelty raises a finger.
Most people QUIT the workout center memberships DUE TO NOT losing much fat. Thsi is the science. But it is good fr their health. So, they should reconize it likley will NOT lead to fat removal.
However, it is good to lift and move- just not overdone. I got far betetr resuylt slaying int he tropcial Miami sunlight for ghours ( still eating the same on the bwac or after and tonig DOWN exercise) The result was prnoujnced and several friends thought I lost 7 to 10 pounds or so- and it is not like I really had all that much to lose .This was one full week of intense sun exposre at Miami’s latitude- most full body.
Screw working my ass of LOL !!!!!
“the body has a mind of it’s own”, well the body can go f**k itself. I don’t have time to wait 200 years until these bullshit hunches actually lead to something, or more likely they’ll give up and say “we must focus on prevention” like the useless obesity researchers of today. It’s easy for skinny people to say “health at every size” because they don’t have to live in a piece of shit body that’s hurts all the time.
I AGREE. It SUCKS bad. LOL ! Totally.
It royally sucks. I agree wholeheatredly it super sucks.I agre many are useless. I guess it is just very complicated to nail, just like various cancers etc..Luckily my worst was just modestly bigger. I noticed even Michael Jordan;as body changed Wizard years. he carried more msucle and a bit more fat than his Chicago days. My situation was that I carried msucle but a littl emore fat than M. J. a few years ago. As we age, and I am no longer 23 haha! peopel get thcker sometimes. Dave Chappelle got thciker.
We the public have to act and make decisions for ourselves. We MUST enjoy our lives. My best strategy is weightlifting that makes you breathe haaard.
Gurus like Lyle McDonald need to stop blaming and moralizing body composition.Far too many doctors do this, too. From Dr. Friedman , I learned there are many factors even involuntary involved in eating , especially over 20 years- we do not “hear its voice”- factors that could lead to gain this regain. We have modest ciontrol over intake but we cannot control hwo the body handles, partitions or processes food. We also cannot control what is absorbed.If we are sick much of what we eat will not be absored right. Huamns waste a ton of food /fuel anyway- we are not very efficient.
i know that famed physcist, Girard t;Hooft told me that we cannot blame the first law of themrodynamcis for body fat.
The stray few sips or bites of these carbon loaded foods etc. Body fatness regualtion is kind of liek breathing. We can voluntarly temporarliy hod our breath and exert some control but overall this system really can dominate. Just hope for youth, male gender, optimal hormones,. ehalth no diseases- such a person will have the best results.
I would advise ( I have no advcie but if I really was rpessed this is worth a try to have at least a minimal impact) Lizzie Velasquez to kind of push or COAX it in the a direction- her body may or may or may not accept this. I would tell Lizee lift maximal weights 6 reps briefly once a wek, limit overall activity and inducimng heaby breating and fast heart rate and try many snacks throughout the day. may even these drinks to add more carbs, proten and fat. This still liekly would not do much. She may gain a suepr teeny bit of msucle, though… I could not predict or tell.Thuogh the calorie/joule model would *predict *she would gain, the evdience from relaity is that Lizzie cannot gain.
But she is even more extreme than Reggie Miller. Lizzie just cannot gain fat or store it. This will cause health problems.
I was just watching a steroid documentary. It’s sad. The abuse these bodybuilders put themselves through. Nobody can possibly win without steroids in the pros. All those IFBB guys are on them and at doses far higher than a doctor would write for medically (for a typical person 60 or 70 year old suffering with low T)
This shows how much hormones matter for tighness, fat loss and a full muscles that pop. Hormones are sooooo important.
I am totally natural, I just use zinc supplements. I am not a bodybuilder though.Rather, an athlete. My heroes are Bolt, Jordan, Rickson Gracie, Dennis Rodman. They all were great athletes.
This theory sounds plausible to me. It’s impressive work by Grant, and the kind of open-minded thinking from Mr. Stone that we all expect. It neatly explains many aspects of what I observe, and provides a reasonable mechanism, via the liver buffering system, for why modern medical experimentation fails to discover it as a problem. Of course, it could be bollocks in the end, but it seems to me that the benefits of trying it outweigh the inconvenience, as a low- or zero- vitamin A diet still can be varied and satisfying.
If vitamin A is a villain when body stores are full, then it’s worth exploring ways to help the body rid itself of it. Grant hints at a few things, such as taurine and UV light. I have tried both of these in the past, without obvious short-term results, but I was probably still eating a lot of vitamin A at the time.
Given the long healing window that Grant writes about, it would be a significant win, in terms of compliance and simple reduction of misery time, to find ways to improve retinoid tolerance or elimination.
From an intellectual curiosity standpoint, I suspect that there are ways to avoid toxicity even while eating foods with moderate vitamin A. For example, IIRC, the Kitavans eat sweet potatoes as a staple without much evidence of inflammation. Perhaps carotene absorption and metabolism is strongly affected by dietary fat eaten at the same time, and thus high-carotene food consumed with fat might be especially bad. This, of course, is very common in the US, with sides of sauteed veggies and the like.
As for dairy and other high-retinoid diets….I dunno. I’m not aware of a high-retinoid-eating society that escapes all inflammation. For example, I believe the Amish have typical Western rates of heart disease. Could this be from a lack of taurine? They would seem to get more UV exposure than many modern Americans, at least on their arms and face. Or is a steady dose of dairy retinoids just too much of a load to render harmless?
I have always found it interesting that dietary fat seems to be harmful (at least in some cases), yet a high-carb meal is converted into fat in the body. This implies to me that health problems related to dietary fat are not because of the fat per se, but rather something found in the fat, or some side effect of the presence of fat in the digestive tract. Both could be true in this case — too much retinol in dairy fat, or too much absorption of carotene when digested with fat.
For example, one of my favorite foods is salad. If the above is true, then a Westernized salad could be especially harmful, because the leafy greens are extremely high in carotenoids, and are consumed with oil.
In Grant’s Breast Cancer book he mentioned donating blood and exercise as possibly helpful for detoxing A.
Matt – Thx for bringing this idea to our attention. You mentioned that Low VitA helped with your asthma and that beef is the centerpiece. Can you give us some more info on the rest of your current diet and how long it took for you to see some results?
Still figuring that out Rob. I think beef, rice, oats, and peeled, white-fleshed fruits and vegetables with grape juice to drink are probably a pretty good place to start.
I’d say I noticed a slow and steady alleviation of asthma over the first 10 days, and since then it’s been almost completely gone. Occasionally I’ll have a few nights in a row with an extremely slight wheeze late at night, but can’t really figure out why. It may just be from all the charcoal smoke I’m inhaling grilling up beef twice a day on my new Akorn. :)
Your mentioning grape juice makes me think of the people doing grape-only diets (grape fasting?) as advocated by Robert Morse. Some of those folks report all sorts of near-miraculous results — much like many other diets.
I don’t know how they do that for extended periods, though. About three weeks ago, I bought a couple of pounds of red and green grapes and ate them all that same evening. The next morning, I felt like I had a Honey Badger in my colon.
https://youtu.be/4r7wHMg5Yjg
hey Carl you should have seeded and skinned those grapes, haha. What a hassle, but I guess it would be better for us and I couldn’t overeat them because I don’t have that kind of spare time. Can you believe my grandma used to do that for all of us grandkids?
Hi, Joanie: In 1997, I bought a Diana Krall album that included a song titled “Peel Me A Grape.” But, aside from that, I’ve never heard of anyone actually doing it. Your Grandmother should be sainted, for that devotion! I wouldn’t even do that for myself!