I've decided to test out the Anti-Vitamin A diet.
I've been on it since 18th Oct 2023. About a week now
The reason I became motivated to test this diet out is because of some recent health problems only the Anti-Vitamin A Theory offers an explanation too.
One can read and discuss as much as one wants, but you will only know for sure by trying it out. So that's what I'm going to do.
I want to log my experience. For both myself and others. And to maybe get advice and viewpoints from those who wants to chip in.
My GF is also in on this experiment and diet.
For some more context, I have been eating liver on and off for 3 years and 3-4 months. I also did an acutane treatment when I was around 20, but I had to stop after only 2 months due to extreme muscle pain. I am 35 now.
This is the recent health problem only the Anti-Vitamin A theory offers an explanation too:
I recently went to Spain and was sunbathing 2-4 hours a day with a UVI of 11. My GF and I became bloated and I swelled up/water retention. Never have we both been this bloated, and i had never swelled up like this before. I've actually never swelled up. I've always been lean. I also noticed i swelled up more and became more bloated when I ate calcium-rich foods. Like dairy. So I assumed I must have got Hypervitaminosis D. A blood test proved that wrong. See attached photo "blood test 10th Sep 2023". The next possible explanation for my sensitivity to calcium and sun is hypervitaminosis A. And even though my serum retinol was nothing alarming, the Anti-vitamin A theory states that IF you have too much vitamin A in the liver and/or skin, you will see an increase in serum retinol levels after starting on the Anti-vitamin A diet.
My threads related to this subject:
raypeatforum.com
raypeatforum.com
raypeatforum.com
And the thread that inspired me to read about and try out this diet:
More about me - Optional to read. TLDR down below:
I was an athlete until i was 23. My performance was at a gradual decline from the age of 18. At the time we thought it was overtraining. The last 2 years of my career were worthless. I did my last good competition when i was 20. I retired with what i thought was a broken body with permanent muscle knots, not responding to training, except tiredness. In the span of about 5 years my body went from not producing lactic acid to extreme production of lactic acid. Before my decline, i was beating people 2 years my senior, and was given good chances to become a world champion.
Since retiring i have tried almost everything to get a functioning body back. That was my goal. To just function. I was tired of being tired, back pain, stiff muscles, depression, low energy, and irritability. And in contrast to what i perceive as most common, i didn't accept the situation as "that's just the way it is". I don't accept the notion that depression is "something you have to learn to live with, and deal with", instead of getting rid of it.
So this is a 13-year-long journey.
After retiring i started on the low-carb diet with the goal of "curing" myself and do a comeback. My body responded well, but my Achilles heel was when I pushed my body I quickly ran out of glucose and after that my muscles were like jello. Useless.
My first breakthrough was discovering Andrew Soul - The vitamin man - when i was 28. He talked about a suicidal mother who cured herself by taking niacin. I thought "if niacin can cure someone suicidal, maybe it can cure my depression?" It did. In just 30 min. This was a milestone to me, because it was a proof to my own belief that my problems were solvable. And it gave me motivation to keep on searching.
Since then i read more and more. About 5 years ago i started on the carnivore diet. Great success but you get no athletic performance from it. It is also booooring in the long run, and difficult to be social. Me and my 2 friends that i had allied with in the search for great health, we also tried fasting. Both short and long. We have a messenger group called the "Diarrhea Club" in honor of our many mistakes. Megadosing vitamin C and magnesium amongst many.
3 years and 4 months ago i stumbled upon Dr Berg on youtube. He mentioned in a video about "how to remove acne" that one of the things good for your skin was vitamin A. In my head it clicked, and i remember acutane. Which in my language is also called "vitamin A acid". From there it was a short way to discovering liver.
Then came my second milestone. What me and my friends now refer to as the "Super Fitness days".
3 days of unbelievable physical performance. This has shaped a lot of our worldview up until now, and we have tried to recreate the "super fitness days" without success.
First we had 2 days fast, then 1 eating day, 2 days fast, then 1 eating day, and 2 days fast.
On the third day after the last fasting day, i ate 200g of liver. Didn't like it. But i ate it anyway. 5 days after the fast i ate 200g more. Still didn't like it. On day 6 something weird happened. I craved more liver. I ate another 200g on the 7th day, and this time it tasted delicious. Weird. I ate 200g more on the 9th day. And on the 10th day i ate another 200g. I also ate 500g of beef heart and 1000g of duck heart these last days. I also didn't want coffee anymore on the 5th day. And i ate lots of candy from day 7th to the 10th day. And i used magnesium oil for the first time from day 4th. On the 11th to 13th day i had the SuperFitness. It was incredible. It came out of nowhere. I hadn't trained for at least 2 weeks. On the 11th day i just felt like running. So i strapped my running shoes on, and ran. It was like flying. i just never got tired. So i ran faster. And faster. I ran a 1 hour stretch faster than what i had done in 10 years. The next day i ate another 200g and did a similar feat. And the same the 13th day. Same feat, 200g liver. On the 14th day i was destroyed. I struggled with breathing over the next week until i became sort of normal again.
What had happened?
We managed to recreate some of the "super fitness" a couple of weeks later, and then i ran against 18-20 year olds who were the best in the region. I had joined the same group on a hard interval before the summer and ofc got completely destroyed by all of them. Ofc i did. They train 800 hours a year and are just underneath national elite level, and i train 100 hours a year. But this time i won. Which should be impossible. A couple of days later my body was super tired again.
Since the "super fitness days" me and my 2 friends have tried to figure out what happened to my body, and tried to recreate it. I was also mentally sharp in those 3 days. It was like i had no brainfog, unlimited motivation, higher IQ, i talked faster and without any stuttering, fill words, or fill sounds. I was funnier in conversations. More alert to my surroundings. More playfully. Everyone else suddenly appeared "slow" to me. Is this how young people see old people?
This experience cemented the belief in me that every health problem, physical or mental, is about bad nutrition. And it is solvable.
TLDR:
I was an athlete and had to retire due to health problems when i was 23. Since then i have tried out everything to fix my problems. Liver was introduced to my diet 3 years ago, and it was part in an experience which i now refer to as "Super Fitness Days".
Regular blood test last 3 years:
After this i partnered with my GP to take a blood test of me about every 2 weeks. So far we haven't managed to figure it out. You can see my blood tests attached. The Super fitness is the green horizontal bar. Everything above the green horizontal line is prior blood tests.
We have managed to increase my free testo index and lower SHBG, but this seems to me is mostly from doing blood donations, and getting rid of iron overload. I have done about 12 donations over the past 3 years. Megadosing vitamin C was the cause of my increase in ferritin the autumn 2020, and spring 2023.
Some of the people I've followed and listened to over the past 3 years:
Shawn Baker - Carnivore
Paul Saladin - Nose to Tail Carnivore
Morley Robbins - The Root Cause Protocol
Ray Peat:
After a couple of years without seed oils we found more and more people mentioning Ray Peat as the original person who was against seed oils. That people got it from him. One of my friends started to read Kate Deering's book (which according to him is badly written), and i was skeptical in the beginning, but gradually found what Peat said more and more interesting. I did. Our third member is still on Carnivore.
So for about half a year i have been on the Peat diet. Results? Weight gain. Still low energy. (Manboobs when i tried progesterone. Reversing it with androsterone. My GF loves her bigger boobs tho.)
But that's not necessarily the Piet diet's fault.
Over the past 1,5 years i have become gradually more and more tired. Both mentally and physically. So gradually that i only realized it a couple of months ago. And the Peat diet didn't help.
Maybe the reason is a build-up of vitamin A. The anti-vitamin A theory says that you can feel much better short term by eating vitamin A. And perhaps that is what happened with the "Super Fitness Days"? And that i ate duck heart (High amounts of vitamin K2 MK4) and beef heart (high amounts of CoQ10). So for a short term the body got rid of the vitamin A problems, and got boosted by MK4 and CoQ10? Maybe the "Super Fitness" is how the body should be every day when it is in good health. I hope so.
Other recent health problems.
-Over the past 1,5 years my hairline has suddenly receded by about 1 cm. Both my grandparents, and my father never lost their hair. I am not genetically predisposed to losing hair. Something is fishy.
-Both my father and GF, who i have given some liver to now and then, has both had their eye sight become worse at an accelerating pace over the past year. Today my GF said "even close up is now starting to get blurry". My dad just had an eye sight operation.
-Even though my T3 is high, my energy and body temp is low (36-36,5C).
-Brainfog is back.
-Fatigue and weakness in muscles.
-Muscle atrophy
-Low motivation
-ADHD mental feeling
-Bad Cholestrol ratios
-Dark circles around the eyes (None in my family has this)
Health problems after starting on the Anti-Vitamin A diet a week ago:
-Mild headache
-Redness in the face (it was at its worse 2 days ago)
-Some farting after eating oats. Not a big problem.
-Mild insomnia
-Back pain
-Mild bloating
Diet:
Mostly lean beef (500-1000g a day) and oats with raisins. I also take selenium 100microgram, zinc 15mg and taurin 1000-2000mg. I also use Haiduts Kuinone, and Androsterone (for the man boobs).
I'll post updates and thoughts here in the future
I've been on it since 18th Oct 2023. About a week now
The reason I became motivated to test this diet out is because of some recent health problems only the Anti-Vitamin A Theory offers an explanation too.
One can read and discuss as much as one wants, but you will only know for sure by trying it out. So that's what I'm going to do.
I want to log my experience. For both myself and others. And to maybe get advice and viewpoints from those who wants to chip in.
My GF is also in on this experiment and diet.
For some more context, I have been eating liver on and off for 3 years and 3-4 months. I also did an acutane treatment when I was around 20, but I had to stop after only 2 months due to extreme muscle pain. I am 35 now.
This is the recent health problem only the Anti-Vitamin A theory offers an explanation too:
I recently went to Spain and was sunbathing 2-4 hours a day with a UVI of 11. My GF and I became bloated and I swelled up/water retention. Never have we both been this bloated, and i had never swelled up like this before. I've actually never swelled up. I've always been lean. I also noticed i swelled up more and became more bloated when I ate calcium-rich foods. Like dairy. So I assumed I must have got Hypervitaminosis D. A blood test proved that wrong. See attached photo "blood test 10th Sep 2023". The next possible explanation for my sensitivity to calcium and sun is hypervitaminosis A. And even though my serum retinol was nothing alarming, the Anti-vitamin A theory states that IF you have too much vitamin A in the liver and/or skin, you will see an increase in serum retinol levels after starting on the Anti-vitamin A diet.
My threads related to this subject:
Tanning increases melanin, which increases estrogen, which increases serotonin?
I just came home from a vacation in Spain, and both me and my GF has had the worst(!) symptoms at the end of the vacation. Extreme bloating no matter what we ate. Unlike when i have been bloated previously this time there was almost no farting. I had extremely high water retention in my "love...
Can too much calcium lead to fluid build up in the skin?
Long story short: I was in spain and got a lot of water retention in my love handles. Super tight skin. Maybe increased calcium because of vitamin D? Then when i got back it didn't get any better until i stopped drinking goat milk. I drank around 1 liter a day. Then i got a bit better for a...
Can hypercalcemia increase insulin resistance?
As the title says. Im in spain, and i think i have figured out i have too much vitamin D levels compared to vitamin A and K levels. I have kuinone and are eating duck hearts (rich in MK4), but it doesn't help. It gets worse when i tan and after i tan. It get especially worse when i eat diary...
And the thread that inspired me to read about and try out this diet:
More about me - Optional to read. TLDR down below:
I was an athlete until i was 23. My performance was at a gradual decline from the age of 18. At the time we thought it was overtraining. The last 2 years of my career were worthless. I did my last good competition when i was 20. I retired with what i thought was a broken body with permanent muscle knots, not responding to training, except tiredness. In the span of about 5 years my body went from not producing lactic acid to extreme production of lactic acid. Before my decline, i was beating people 2 years my senior, and was given good chances to become a world champion.
Since retiring i have tried almost everything to get a functioning body back. That was my goal. To just function. I was tired of being tired, back pain, stiff muscles, depression, low energy, and irritability. And in contrast to what i perceive as most common, i didn't accept the situation as "that's just the way it is". I don't accept the notion that depression is "something you have to learn to live with, and deal with", instead of getting rid of it.
So this is a 13-year-long journey.
After retiring i started on the low-carb diet with the goal of "curing" myself and do a comeback. My body responded well, but my Achilles heel was when I pushed my body I quickly ran out of glucose and after that my muscles were like jello. Useless.
My first breakthrough was discovering Andrew Soul - The vitamin man - when i was 28. He talked about a suicidal mother who cured herself by taking niacin. I thought "if niacin can cure someone suicidal, maybe it can cure my depression?" It did. In just 30 min. This was a milestone to me, because it was a proof to my own belief that my problems were solvable. And it gave me motivation to keep on searching.
Since then i read more and more. About 5 years ago i started on the carnivore diet. Great success but you get no athletic performance from it. It is also booooring in the long run, and difficult to be social. Me and my 2 friends that i had allied with in the search for great health, we also tried fasting. Both short and long. We have a messenger group called the "Diarrhea Club" in honor of our many mistakes. Megadosing vitamin C and magnesium amongst many.
3 years and 4 months ago i stumbled upon Dr Berg on youtube. He mentioned in a video about "how to remove acne" that one of the things good for your skin was vitamin A. In my head it clicked, and i remember acutane. Which in my language is also called "vitamin A acid". From there it was a short way to discovering liver.
Then came my second milestone. What me and my friends now refer to as the "Super Fitness days".
3 days of unbelievable physical performance. This has shaped a lot of our worldview up until now, and we have tried to recreate the "super fitness days" without success.
First we had 2 days fast, then 1 eating day, 2 days fast, then 1 eating day, and 2 days fast.
On the third day after the last fasting day, i ate 200g of liver. Didn't like it. But i ate it anyway. 5 days after the fast i ate 200g more. Still didn't like it. On day 6 something weird happened. I craved more liver. I ate another 200g on the 7th day, and this time it tasted delicious. Weird. I ate 200g more on the 9th day. And on the 10th day i ate another 200g. I also ate 500g of beef heart and 1000g of duck heart these last days. I also didn't want coffee anymore on the 5th day. And i ate lots of candy from day 7th to the 10th day. And i used magnesium oil for the first time from day 4th. On the 11th to 13th day i had the SuperFitness. It was incredible. It came out of nowhere. I hadn't trained for at least 2 weeks. On the 11th day i just felt like running. So i strapped my running shoes on, and ran. It was like flying. i just never got tired. So i ran faster. And faster. I ran a 1 hour stretch faster than what i had done in 10 years. The next day i ate another 200g and did a similar feat. And the same the 13th day. Same feat, 200g liver. On the 14th day i was destroyed. I struggled with breathing over the next week until i became sort of normal again.
What had happened?
We managed to recreate some of the "super fitness" a couple of weeks later, and then i ran against 18-20 year olds who were the best in the region. I had joined the same group on a hard interval before the summer and ofc got completely destroyed by all of them. Ofc i did. They train 800 hours a year and are just underneath national elite level, and i train 100 hours a year. But this time i won. Which should be impossible. A couple of days later my body was super tired again.
Since the "super fitness days" me and my 2 friends have tried to figure out what happened to my body, and tried to recreate it. I was also mentally sharp in those 3 days. It was like i had no brainfog, unlimited motivation, higher IQ, i talked faster and without any stuttering, fill words, or fill sounds. I was funnier in conversations. More alert to my surroundings. More playfully. Everyone else suddenly appeared "slow" to me. Is this how young people see old people?
This experience cemented the belief in me that every health problem, physical or mental, is about bad nutrition. And it is solvable.
TLDR:
I was an athlete and had to retire due to health problems when i was 23. Since then i have tried out everything to fix my problems. Liver was introduced to my diet 3 years ago, and it was part in an experience which i now refer to as "Super Fitness Days".
Regular blood test last 3 years:
After this i partnered with my GP to take a blood test of me about every 2 weeks. So far we haven't managed to figure it out. You can see my blood tests attached. The Super fitness is the green horizontal bar. Everything above the green horizontal line is prior blood tests.
We have managed to increase my free testo index and lower SHBG, but this seems to me is mostly from doing blood donations, and getting rid of iron overload. I have done about 12 donations over the past 3 years. Megadosing vitamin C was the cause of my increase in ferritin the autumn 2020, and spring 2023.
Some of the people I've followed and listened to over the past 3 years:
Shawn Baker - Carnivore
Paul Saladin - Nose to Tail Carnivore
Morley Robbins - The Root Cause Protocol
Ray Peat:
After a couple of years without seed oils we found more and more people mentioning Ray Peat as the original person who was against seed oils. That people got it from him. One of my friends started to read Kate Deering's book (which according to him is badly written), and i was skeptical in the beginning, but gradually found what Peat said more and more interesting. I did. Our third member is still on Carnivore.
So for about half a year i have been on the Peat diet. Results? Weight gain. Still low energy. (Manboobs when i tried progesterone. Reversing it with androsterone. My GF loves her bigger boobs tho.)
But that's not necessarily the Piet diet's fault.
Over the past 1,5 years i have become gradually more and more tired. Both mentally and physically. So gradually that i only realized it a couple of months ago. And the Peat diet didn't help.
Maybe the reason is a build-up of vitamin A. The anti-vitamin A theory says that you can feel much better short term by eating vitamin A. And perhaps that is what happened with the "Super Fitness Days"? And that i ate duck heart (High amounts of vitamin K2 MK4) and beef heart (high amounts of CoQ10). So for a short term the body got rid of the vitamin A problems, and got boosted by MK4 and CoQ10? Maybe the "Super Fitness" is how the body should be every day when it is in good health. I hope so.
Other recent health problems.
-Over the past 1,5 years my hairline has suddenly receded by about 1 cm. Both my grandparents, and my father never lost their hair. I am not genetically predisposed to losing hair. Something is fishy.
-Both my father and GF, who i have given some liver to now and then, has both had their eye sight become worse at an accelerating pace over the past year. Today my GF said "even close up is now starting to get blurry". My dad just had an eye sight operation.
-Even though my T3 is high, my energy and body temp is low (36-36,5C).
-Brainfog is back.
-Fatigue and weakness in muscles.
-Muscle atrophy
-Low motivation
-ADHD mental feeling
-Bad Cholestrol ratios
-Dark circles around the eyes (None in my family has this)
Health problems after starting on the Anti-Vitamin A diet a week ago:
-Mild headache
-Redness in the face (it was at its worse 2 days ago)
-Some farting after eating oats. Not a big problem.
-Mild insomnia
-Back pain
-Mild bloating
Diet:
Mostly lean beef (500-1000g a day) and oats with raisins. I also take selenium 100microgram, zinc 15mg and taurin 1000-2000mg. I also use Haiduts Kuinone, and Androsterone (for the man boobs).
I'll post updates and thoughts here in the future
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