Low Toxin Diet Grant Genereux's Theory Of Vitamin A Toxicity

[Collden]

Im not sure either but its certainly not WAPF as ive never really looked into it. The idea that we need lots of retinol is basically from Morley Robbins research. Its proven that when people increase retinol intake and copper ceruloplasmin levels increase and that the main focus of my entire diet. I dont even care about PUFA's as long as ceruloplasmin increases. It really is the master regulatory enzyme of our bodies and it REQUIRES retinol to function properly. Without retinol iron cant circulate, gets stuck and cause oxidative stress much worse than the harm PUFA does.

Well you know the average adult human already has millions of IUs of VA stored in his liver, enough to fully supply one for years even with zero VA intake. With this in mind how could a deficiency of VA possibly explain any modern malady?

Hepatic stellate cells and liver retinoid content in alcoholic liver disease in humans. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[magnesiumania]

I dont even know what VA is........

 

[Collden]

I dont even know what VA is........

Vitamin A

 

[magnesiumania]

Im too dumb to make sense of that article so i guess i'll just stick to my liver/cod liver oil =)

 

[magnesiumania]

I just find the knowlegde Morley present about retinol to be very coherent and seem to make sense, much more than the chaos ive found in this thread. Always open for new insights but so far im not convinced. Like the article posted about vit A toxicity from eating liver im just aware that testing and analysis can be faulty. I find much more value in human beings putting together the presentation and share it rather than these anectodal 1 case studies.

 

[SaltGirl]

I kinda want to add my 2 cents to the liver thing.

Our ancestors may have eaten liver - as well as other organ meats - but most likely not in the WAPF/RP way where people are sometimes consuming liver every week. Around 1800 there were around 1 billion people living on this planet. To provide them with that amount of liver(if we assume craziness of consuming a whole liver per person per week) would require 1 billion animals a week. That's 52 billion animals consumed per year to provide that "super food" and this is far from the industrial meat farming we have today.

So in short: our ancestors may have eaten liver, but I doubt it was a regular delicacy on their menu.

 

[Pompadour]

I just find the knowlegde Morley present about retinol to be very coherent and seem to make sense, much more than the chaos ive found in this thread.

It's not chaos it's brainstorming. I read this thread with a great pleasure, because to me it reflects very well the nature of this forum. So far vitamin A doesn't look too good after all that was presented here.

 

[magnesiumania]

Well thats what i mean. Brainstorming is not a a coherent picture where every piece fit perfectly into a system. Did you read through it all tho?

 

[magnesiumania]

By the way, why does Ray promote vitamin A and liver? Has the toxicity part totally passed him by?

Another researcher that understand retinol on a deeper level is Jack Kruse. He explains how retinol is bound melanopsin (the receptor for blue light) etc and advocate the consumption of organ meats.

 

[InChristAlone]

I've been following this from the beginning and it seems like it really helps some people. I have been doing about 1,000 IUs or less of mostly retinol a day, some coming from bananas as I eat 1-2 a day. Somedays I might get up to 2,000IU's because of butter and cream. But I'm not so worried about those sources. I noticed I am not getting any signs of seasonal allergies this year! I do take about 4 grams of vitamin C a day so that could have something to do with it too, but so far for many years I experienced a week of itching eyes ears and throat at the end of May and I believe this is the first year of nothing.

 

[magnesiumania]

Without exogenous retinol ceruloplasmin synthesis is not stimulated

Induction of ceruloplasmin synthesis by retinoic acid in rats: influence of dietary copper and vitamin A status. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[somuch4food]

Well thats what i mean. Brainstorming is not a a coherent picture where every piece fit perfectly into a system. Did you read through it all tho?

Have you ever been able to have a coherent picture of the current state of your body?

Since it's helping people, we are trying to figure out why. So, far as you can see it's not too clear.

By the way, why does Ray promote vitamin A and liver? Has the toxicity part totally passed him by?

Another researcher that understand retinol on a deeper level is Jack Kruse. He explains how retinol is bound melanopsin (the receptor for blue light) etc and advocate the consumption of organ meats.

Ray does recommend VA, but also warns that it can worsen hypothyroidism. He recommends a low-mid intake for slow metabolisms. I think about 3000 or 5000 IU which is not that hard to reach. He also warns against overconsumption of beta carotene.

 

[magnesiumania]

First part: Sorry, not sure what you're trying to say at all.

2: Ok. As it stimulate the HPA axis i suppose it could speed up thyroid metabolism. Also it makes copper bio-available which support tyrosine metabolism > T4. Does Ray explain why it may worsen hypothyroid?

 

[postman]

Well thats what i mean. Brainstorming is not a a coherent picture where every piece fit perfectly into a system. Did you read through it all tho?

If you want structure go read Grants books instead of sifting through a 250 page forum thread.

 

[HDD]

First part: Sorry, not sure what you're trying to say at all.

2: Ok. As it stimulate the HPA axis i suppose it could speed up thyroid metabolism. Also it makes copper bio-available which support tyrosine metabolism > T4. Does Ray explain why it may worsen hypothyroid?

“Yes, vitamin A and estrogen are antagonistic, and while estrogen promotes keratinization (shedding of skin cells), vitamin A opposes it. Since vitamin A is highly unsaturated, in excess it suppresses the thyroid, so it has to be balanced with the thyroid; the combination is effective for increasing progesterone and decreasing estrogen, slowing the turnover of skin cells, and making the skin cells function longer before flaking off.”
Carotenemia & Hypothyroidism – Functional Performance Systems (FPS)

 

[tankasnowgod]

I kinda want to add my 2 cents to the liver thing.

Our ancestors may have eaten liver - as well as other organ meats - but most likely not in the WAPF/RP way where people are sometimes consuming liver every week. Around 1800 there were around 1 billion people living on this planet. To provide them with that amount of liver(if we assume craziness of consuming a whole liver per person per week) would require 1 billion animals a week. That's 52 billion animals consumed per year to provide that "super food" and this is far from the industrial meat farming we have today.

So in short: our ancestors may have eaten liver, but I doubt it was a regular delicacy on their menu.

A cow's liver weighs about 10-15 pounds. I've never heard of anyone eating a whole cow's liver every week. Usually, it's more like 4-8 oz.

 

[Elderflower j58]

Ray peat in his latest interview suggested that polar bear livers contained
Other things that were toxic ,he mentioned algae.
I got the impression that he was scoffing at the idea that the vitamin A
Killed any one.

 

[Elderflower j58]

WARNING: Eat Polar Bear Livers At Your Own Risk!!
You read all about how polar bear livers are loaded with Vitamin A (retinol); as much as 8,000,000 I.U!

The brochure explains that Arctic explorers who had eaten polar bear livers allegedly died from Vitamin A toxicity. You now begin to panic and wonder what your outcome is going to be.

‘Survivorman’ didn’t prepare you for this!

What will happen to you out there in the middle of the Arctic??

Dogmatic Beliefs about Vitamin A
The ending of this story has multiple variations depending, of course, on your dogmatic beliefs about Vitamin A. So let’s investigate some possible endings to our story.

First, we must ask the following two questions:

1. Can this apparent high dose of Vitamin A, in the form of retinol, kill you or just make you sick? Or neither?
2. Might there be something other than the high dose of Vitamin A that you should fear in this instance?

Now, it is the alleged “deaths” of those explorers that began this Vitamin A toxicity bandwagon. However, in reality, none of those explorers died!

There are some websites that state the following with regard to arctic explorers and polar bear livers:

“The Arctic explorers who were said to have died actually lived, but did suffer from exfoliative dermatitis and hair loss. In 1988, a team of Swedish scientists discovered that polar bear and seal livers tend to accumulate the metal cadmium. The symptoms for cadmium poisoning are exfoliative dermatitis and hair loss.”

Of course this is implying that it was not the 8,000,000 IU of vitamin A (retinol), but rather an overdose of cadmium that caused their illness. If this were true, surely we would be told…right?

Now, at first I felt the proverbial “Ah Ha” and felt sure that I had what I needed to write my vitamin A controversy piece. However, since I don’t simply repeat what I read on the internet but instead perform my own research, I found that the cadmium theory may not hold much water if we are talking about cadmium by itself. But, cadmium in combination with arsenic is a whole other story.

Yes, the amounts of cadmium found in polar bear livers is more than enough to cause toxic symptoms in humans, and one of the symptoms experienced by the explorers was hair loss. Many heavy metals, including lead, cadmium, mercury, iron, aluminum, copper and arsenic, can cause this toxic reaction. However, we are only half-way to concluding that cadmium may be a culprit of the explorer’s illness as we continue to explore the vitamin A toxicity theory.

The other symptom the explorers were said to have experienced was exfoliative dermatitis (massive scaling of the skin). So, if cadmium causes this condition as well, we have our conclusion. However, according to my research, exfoliative dermatitis is not a symptom of cadmium poisoning. So it would appear that there must be another culprit that has been overlooked.

Extremely high levels of arsenic have been found in marine mammals (including polar bears) with higher concentrations found in the livers and other organs. Just as cadmium, arsenic can cause hair loss; but does it cause exfoliative dermatitis? Well, according to the ‘Heavy Metal Handbook: A Guide for Healthcare Practitioners’, it absolutely does. And we haven’t even begun to look at mercury toxicity!

So the run down on toxicity symptoms looks something like this:

The symptoms of vitamin A toxicity include the following:

• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Blurred vision
• Joint pain
• Dry lips
• Scaly, dry skin (not defined as exfoliative dermatitis, which is far more serious)
• Excessive hair loss

Toxic symptoms of cadmium ingestion include the following:

• Vomiting
• Abdominal pain
• Diarrhea
• Shock
• Increased salivation
• Choking
• Anemia
• Painful spasms of the anal sphincter
• Hair loss

Toxic symptoms of arsenic ingestion include the following:

• Gastric distress
• Diarrhea with blood present in the stools
• Dizzy spells
• Vomiting
• Burning pain in the esophagus
• Low blood pressure
• Hyperkeratosis
• Hyperpigmentation
• Hair loss
• Exfoliative dermatitis
• Skin cancer

After many hours of research, I have broken down the possible causes of the arctic explorer’s illness:

1. Vitamin A toxicity indeed causes hair loss and dry scaly skin; but notto the degree that could be diagnosed as exfoliative dermatitis, which is far more serious.
2. Cadmium indeed causes hair loss, but not exfoliative dermatitis.
3. Arsenic indeed causes hair loss AND it also causes exfoliative dermatitis

So it would appear that after eating polar bear livers, the explorers illness may be partially blamed on cadmium poisoning and extremely high dosages of retinol (8,000, 000 IU), but the more likely cause of their illness appears to be arsenic poisoning.

Now it is important to note that the explorers did not die, but were very sick and later recovered.

The notion that eating polar bear livers is a bad idea is not a new one. I mean if we think about who might eat this organ meat, Eskimos come to mind. And guess what? They don’t eat it!

So what have I concluded?

Refrain from eating polar bear livers for 2 reasons:

1. Thanks to man and his lack of environmental concern, polar bears (as well as seals) are loaded with toxic chemicals and heavy metals from the seas. Perhaps that should be a bigger concern than retinol toxicity!
2. 8,000,000 IU’s is an unbelievably high dosage of vitamin A no matter how you slice it! Although vitamin A is not the toxic monster some make it out to be, we have to remember that everything can be potentially harmful if taken in unusually large amounts, including water.

So let’s be real here! We are talking about extremes. The idea that vitamin A (retinol) is toxic at low doses such as 5000 IU, 10, 000 IU or even 100,000 IU is very misleading. In fact there are many studies that have shown dosages as high as 300,000 IU per day for a year had no ill effect.

 

[Collden]

What about Accutane, is that in fact loaded with arsenic too?

 

[InChristAlone]

Wow even before I knew about this theory there is no way I would venture to say 300,000 IU VA per day for a year isn't toxic. Nope that's just plain stupid unless you are dieing of cancer and have nothing left to lose.