Critique of Georgi/Mercola/Ray Peat

[haidut]

Do you have any thoughts on how long it could take to get vitamin A back in a more appropriate range? (Assuming someone has eaten vitamin A in excess of what would be sufficient for their current thyroid condition for example, resulting in the suppression Ray spoke about)

Unless somebody has been taking large doses of vitamin A for weeks/months, then whatever thyroid suppressive effect may be there from vitamin A should dissipate rather quickly, probably within days after one stops intake. Just taking some vitamin E for a few days should be able to negate the anti-thyroid effects from peroxidized vitamin A right away. As far as the other claims of vitamin A toxicity as per Genereux - there should be a way to test for it, and we may be able to check levels in hair/nails, so if there is indeed vitamin A accumulation causing problems it should show up in those tests as they span a period of many weeks and even months. Also, if vitamin A is causing problems with bile that would/should manifest in elevated liver enzymes and possibly even bilirubin, which is easy to test for in blood.

 

[Mr Joe]

Unless somebody has been taking large doses of vitamin A for weeks/months, then whatever thyroid suppressive effect may be there from vitamin A should dissipate rather quickly, probably within days after one stops intake. Just taking some vitamin E for a few days should be able to negate the anti-thyroid effects from peroxidized vitamin A right away. As far as the other claims of vitamin A toxicity as per Genereux - there should be a way to test for it, and we may be able to check levels in hair/nails, so if there is indeed vitamin A accumulation causing problems it should show up in those tests as they span a period of many weeks and even months. Also, if vitamin A is causing problems with bile that would/should manifest in elevated liver enzymes and possibly even bilirubin, which is easy to test for in blood.

But correct me if I'm wrong : Low thyroid = Low liver function = High liver enzymes and even billirubin. So even with these high indicators the problem can be a thyroid deficiency and going low vit A would be useless, which is again showing that increase thyroid and CO2 (and thus lowering serotonin and cortiol) is the real key to high metabolism ?

 

[Peater]

Unless somebody has been taking large doses of vitamin A for weeks/months, then whatever thyroid suppressive effect may be there from vitamin A should dissipate rather quickly, probably within days after one stops intake. Just taking some vitamin E for a few days should be able to negate the anti-thyroid effects from peroxidized vitamin A right away. As far as the other claims of vitamin A toxicity as per Genereux - there should be a way to test for it, and we may be able to check levels in hair/nails, so if there is indeed vitamin A accumulation causing problems it should show up in those tests as they span a period of many weeks and even months. Also, if vitamin A is causing problems with bile that would/should manifest in elevated liver enzymes and possibly even bilirubin, which is easy to test for in blood.

Thanks for that excellent post, very informative and helpful!

 

[InChristAlone]

Labs do not show the whole picture. The liver can handle a lot before failing. Liver failure is silent. You don't know until it's too late. But there are some symptoms to look for. Eczema, itchy skin, inability to eat fiber because sludgy toxic bile causes SIBO, nausea, IBS, IBD, colitis, chron's, high cholesterol, gluten and food sensitivity, food sitting in the stomach, lighter colored stool (should be brown not yellow), oily stool, headaches and eye pain, anxiety, allergies, hypothyroidism, acid reflux, fatty liver, autoimmune disease. I mean the list is basically everything. T4 is converted to T3 in the liver. So even someone treated with T4 can be hypothyroid.

By the time you are jaundiced it's over folks. Liver transplant time. Don't wait for labs to be off. Sometimes even doctors can't tell what's wrong with the liver without a biopsy.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

I watched a livestream from the Nutrition Detective and he was very vocal about his disdain for Ray, not only his theory but as a person.

He has had a lot of clients and people in his programs who followed Peat, ruined their health, and then regained it after going Low A.
He does that because he points out how ridiculous is the “Peat meme diet” viewed from the outside, how it’s so clear it ruins people’s health. It’s very clear and predictable how high fructose combined with high VA and high Saturated Fats high sucrose can be very problematic, and gives people fatty livers, makes them fat.
Thinking that drinking 10 cups of coffee a day and lots of refined sugar is somewhat healthy. It’s not.

 

[Peater]

Labs do not show the whole picture. The liver can handle a lot before failing. Liver failure is silent. You don't know until it's too late. But there are some symptoms to look for. Eczema, itchy skin, inability to eat fiber because sludgy toxic bile causes SIBO, nausea, IBS, IBD, colitis, chron's, high cholesterol, gluten and food sensitivity, food sitting in the stomach, lighter colored stool (should be brown not yellow), oily stool, headaches and eye pain, anxiety, allergies, hypothyroidism, acid reflux, fatty liver, autoimmune disease. I mean the list is basically everything. T4 is converted to T3 in the liver. So even someone treated with T4 can be hypothyroid.

By the time you are jaundiced it's over folks. Liver transplant time. Don't wait for labs to be off. Sometimes even doctors can't tell what's wrong with the liver without a biopsy.

And low Vit A and soluble fibre are enough to get this bile moving and out of the body?

What are the views on fasting currently?

 

[Peater]

He has had a lot of clients and people in his programs who followed Peat, ruined their health, and then regained it after going Low A.
He does that because he points out how ridiculous is the “Peat meme diet” viewed from the outside, how it’s so clear it ruins people’s health. It’s very clear and predictable how high fructose combined with high VA and high Saturated Fats high sucrose can be very problematic, and gives people fatty livers, makes them fat.
Thinking that drinking 10 cups of coffee a day and lots of refined sugar is somewhat healthy. It’s not.

It would be genuinely interesting to see what these people took "Peat's diet" to mean.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

It would be genuinely interesting to see what these people took "Peat's diet" to mean.

It’s always the same with you guys. That they didn’t do the diet right.
Look up “fatty liver” on RPF. Even @ecstatichamster, one of the most active forum members, has an older thread saying he got a fatty liver on Peat.
If your dietary principles requires you to be in pristine state of health in order to not have damage from your applying them, perhaps your dietary principles are inherently damaging.

 

[Nick]

What are the views on fasting currently?

Fasting slows or stops bile production and excretion while also stopping the intake of toxins, which can in some cases as a temporary measure allow for tissue healing. It has many downsides, including all the problems that Peat mentioned with fasting and there could be additional issues when fasting ends and bile excretion begins again.

 

[Peater]

Fasting slows or stops bile production and excretion while also stopping the intake of toxins, which can in some cases as a temporary measure allow for tissue healing. It has many downsides, including all the problems that Peat mentioned with fasting and there could be additional issues when fasting ends and bile excretion begins again.

Interesting thanks. I dabbled with it years before finding out about Peat but didn't notice much.

 

[Mr Joe]

It’s always the same with you guys. That they didn’t do the diet right.
Look up “fatty liver” on RPF. Even @ecstatichamster, one of the most active forum members, has an older thread saying he got a fatty liver on Peat.
If your dietary principles requires you to be in pristine state of health in order to not have damage from your applying them, perhaps your dietary principles are inherently damaging.

Please go easy on that, the vit A stuff is starting to be like a sect. I am ok to exchange on every subject but now its like someone asking "a car stroke me and I have my hand broke" and guy coming "its because you have vit A toxicity". After all this is a RayPeat forum and has been for years. Keep please the conversation around vitA toxicity in dedicated threads. No problem creating a full "VitaAtoxicityforum" and you guys could spend all day sharing why drinking milk the most ancestral food that humains know is bad or why drinking Oranges the most common and juicy and energyzer drink in all the world is going to kill you. I know people that never ate any liver in their lives, and never got any vitA stuff and got sick as hell because they were hypo and thyroid fixed all. And some people got worse on low vit A diet. So don't generalize your case you come preech your stuff in every non related post please. This forum must remain clean but lets not forget it's mainly a raypeatforum. Unless things has changed of course.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

I know people that never ate any liver in their lives, and never got any vitA stuff and got sick as hell because they were hypo and thyroid fixed all.

There is nothing to brag or to praise about taking thyroid. Show me someone who achieves pristine health without using ANY hormones, that’s worth paying attention.
The goal should always be to avoid using exogenous hormones.
When one is in his 60s or 70s or older age, only then it’s justified to use hormones.

 

[Mr Joe]

There is nothing to brag or to praise about taking thyroid. Show me someone who achieves pristine health without using ANY hormones, that’s worth paying attention.
The goal should always be to avoid using exogenous hormones.

Is there something to brag or to praise not beeing able to drink orange juice and eat a carrot without making a thread on "how I got vitA toxicity eating a carrot ?".

The society had poisened us all since decades and I don't see bigpharma inventing oranges and carrots secretly to make us sick but on the other hand I see them pushing omega3 that they synthetized and pushing people to eat more green stuffs and avoid meat, also saying thay milk is bad. Most kids from 80/90+ years are sick today and everyone will find a cause of that that he will generalize and say "do like me". It doesnt work like that. And yes nothing wrong taking thyroid if you need it. We can produce poisons that you are not suppose to take initialy to kill you and we are able to produce a remedy that you are not suppose to take initially to cure you. Again I am not saying you are not having great result with low vitA but we created a thread "Gerogi/Mercola" that I was happy to read to understand what happened and we end up talking about VitA again. Come on guys.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

And yes nothing wrong taking thyroid if you need it.

Why would anyone with a functioning thyroid need to take exogenous thyroid? Unless someone’s thyroid is removed, I see no justifiable use case.
Why does Danny Roddy, a young man in his mid 30s living in an ideal climate with low stress, low EMF, and having quality nutrition needs to take exogenous thyroid to function optimally? Explain this.

 

[Mr Joe]

Why would anyone with a functioning thyroid need to take exogenous thyroid? Unless someone’s thyroid is removed, I see no justifiable use case.

That's a Gerogi/Mercola thread. There is a lot of other thread discussing that.

 

[haidut]

Why would anyone with a functioning thyroid need to take exogenous thyroid? Unless someone’s thyroid is removed, I see no justifiable use case.
Why does Danny Roddy, a young man in his mid 30s living in an ideal climate with low stress, low EMF, and having quality nutrition needs to take exogenous thyroid to function optimally? Explain this.

For the same reason the rest of the "young" are now biologically older than their parents, have lower IQ, cannot reproduce naturally, have strokes and heart attacks at the rates of population in a retirement home, and are dying from chronic diseases in their 20s and 30s that did not show up in people until their 70s just a few decades ago.

The "Young" Have Now Become The Old

This new study is yet another grim reminder of how much the health of the "young" has really declined over the last several decades. I put the "young" in quotation marks because it is becoming increasingly clear that those people are only young chronologically. Biologically, these people are...

raypeatforum.com

For the same reason Peat lost his cool on one podcast saying this below. The situation is basically catastrophic, for almost everybody.

We are sometimes winning now — the Covid tyranny optimism thread

this is hilarious actually. No knock on Gov. DeSantis

raypeatforum.com

"RP: People need to start understanding that the system is systematically murdering them, and understanding that the situation is desperate, they need to see that solidarity with life, against capital, is their hope.""

@Mr Joe

 

[haidut]

But correct me if I'm wrong : Low thyroid = Low liver function = High liver enzymes and even billirubin. So even with these high indicators the problem can be a thyroid deficiency and going low vit A would be useless, which is again showing that increase thyroid and CO2 (and thus lowering serotonin and cortiol) is the real key to high metabolism ?

Yes, I agree. I still believe low thyroid is at the core of such issues. Every single person that I know with core temps below 98 (after eating), which strongly suggests low metabolism, has liver issues, and many of them never touched alcohol and/or drugs, including vitamin A.

 

[sunny]

I remember that ......
""RP: People need to start understanding that the system is systematically murdering them, and understanding that the situation is desperate, they need to see that solidarity with life, against capital, is their hope.""

..... it must have been hard to watch, decade after decade, the situation getting worse, and most people becoming more oblivious .....

 

[haidut]

..... it must have been hard to watch, decade after decade, the situation getting worse, and most people becoming more oblivious .....

Yep, and in my opinion this "scar" on his inherent optimism in regards to humanity contributed to him having a stroke not long after he said those words.

 

[LuMonty]

There is nothing to brag or to praise about taking thyroid. Show me someone who achieves pristine health without using ANY hormones, that’s worth paying attention.
The goal should always be to avoid using exogenous hormones.
When one is in his 60s or 70s or older age, only then it’s justified to use hormones.

If my memory serves me well, me and some other guys were trying to show you that your over-training was an issue, and that plus a lack of calories and nutrients, especially with added thyroid, would explain your lack of results. Your complete resistance to changing your mind then was odd, and now you've done a 180 on something you questioned.

I recall Peat's comments about new knowledge changing people's minds and ways of thinking. Organic change is good, exploratory ways of thinking are good. Your pugilistic attitude is what invites so many people to reply to you, and you would be wise to meditate on what you want out of these interactions, or if you even want them at all. I'd wager that rather than not posting, some self-reflection would go a long way.

I'd like to try something instructional here to show my meaning: as to the quoted post, no one is bragging, and no one in pristine health would use exogenous hormones, except perhaps muscleheads who use 'roids as part of their way of life. I'd invite you to reconsider why you'd post your post I've quoted in this response and your post #54 of this thread. For me, I'd be embarrassed. It's a whole lot of strawmanning and begging the question. Look at Haidut's replies and his links, it's a big deal how the fabric of society has weakened life itself, and so on in a cycle.

For me, it is rather apparent my parents are/were hypothyroid, so I use thyroid as needed. I also have several challenges to my health due to my mutant physiology, and some of my solutions are certainly "anti-Peat" in the strictest sense, but "pro-Peat" as far as interacting with and investigating my issues. As a result, I am often mistaken for being 20 or younger, and yet my siblings all look like they're in their 50's at best, but I'd say closer to 60 years old.

tl;dr rather than be so fragmented, seek answers if you truly want them, be disciplined, and post with clarity of mind that invites meaningful reciprocation