Distinguishing Vit A Excess From Deficiency

[mujuro]

Hello all,

I understand that generally the symptoms of vitamin A deficiency can similarly resemble those of vitamin A excess, with a few exceptions (hair changes, callouses, yellowing skin).

In early November I did something rather rash and took about 300,000iu retinyl palmitate over the course of about 5 days, having convinced myself that my symptoms were due to vitamin A deficiency. What followed was a string of odd symptoms which I have little doubt were caused by the supplement. I developed 3 welts on my forehead and a drastic yellowing of my palms. In retrospect I also had bone pain in the lower legs, as when pressing my thumb into the tibia to assess water retention it was incredibly painful. The skin on my palms and toes were in a perpetual state of desquamation, and my face and neck took on a strange superficial layer that I could easily scrape away with my fingernails. My hair became thinner, including my body, which is very frustrating. Appetite has been lousy ever since.

Based on subsequent readings and the figures I came across, it didn't seem at all likely that I could have induced symptoms of toxicity/excess with only 300,000iu.

This puts me in a difficult position because every time I eat a bit of liver, I get a definite increase in desquamation and skin symptoms in certain regions, sometimes dry and sometimes moist, and a suppression of appetite. It has taken a few controlled attempts to make sure that these symptoms weren't coincidence. But I don't know if this reaction is my skin on its way toward balance, or away from balance. For the most part, my skin is usually dry and flaky ever since the megadose, hence my confusion as to whether I'm dealing with vitamin A excess or deficiency. I understand that fat soluble vitamin excesses take many weeks to resolve because of clearance time, but with the repeated emphasis on vitamin A's quick consumption when thyroid is performing well, I wonder if it's even possible to reach toxic levels under a Peat paradigm. Essentially, my dilemma is that I don't know at this point whether I need more vitamin A, or I need to stay away from it.

EDIT - I reiterated some parts, but I didn't get much sleep. I hope it is straightforward.

Thanks all.

 

[Such_Saturation]

I never trust upper and lower limits neither for the higher nor the lower, since I find subjectively to have such a higher sensibility to what happens compared to a rat or human objective evaluation. The first time I took 10mg of B6 I had tingling and burning in my feet for two days, for example. I find a bit more liver gives me sores in the mouth, but after that it is any dose actually lower than the new one which gives me the sores and the acne. There are so many things that can happen in the body, such as a high doses mimicking a deficiency (an overwhelming of sorts) or an organism setting higher goals, so to speak, when it sees higher doses coming in.

 

[tomisonbottom]

Hello all,

I understand that generally the symptoms of vitamin A deficiency can similarly resemble those of vitamin A excess, with a few exceptions (hair changes, callouses, yellowing skin).

In early November I did something rather rash and took about 300,000iu retinyl palmitate over the course of about 5 days, having convinced myself that my symptoms were due to vitamin A deficiency. What followed was a string of odd symptoms which I have little doubt were caused by the supplement. I developed 3 welts on my forehead and a drastic yellowing of my palms. In retrospect I also had bone pain in the lower legs, as when pressing my thumb into the tibia to assess water retention it was incredibly painful. The skin on my palms and toes were in a perpetual state of desquamation, and my face and neck took on a strange superficial layer that I could easily scrape away with my fingernails. My hair became thinner, including my body, which is very frustrating. Appetite has been lousy ever since.

Based on subsequent readings and the figures I came across, it didn't seem at all likely that I could have induced symptoms of toxicity/excess with only 300,000iu.

This puts me in a difficult position because every time I eat a bit of liver, I get a definite increase in desquamation and skin symptoms in certain regions, sometimes dry and sometimes moist, and a suppression of appetite. It has taken a few controlled attempts to make sure that these symptoms weren't coincidence. But I don't know if this reaction is my skin on its way toward balance, or away from balance. For the most part, my skin is usually dry and flaky ever since the megadose, hence my confusion as to whether I'm dealing with vitamin A excess or deficiency. I understand that fat soluble vitamin excesses take many weeks to resolve because of clearance time, but with the repeated emphasis on vitamin A's quick consumption when thyroid is performing well, I wonder if it's even possible to reach toxic levels under a Peat paradigm. Essentially, my dilemma is that I don't know at this point whether I need more vitamin A, or I need to stay away from it.

EDIT - I reiterated some parts, but I didn't get much sleep. I hope it is straightforward.

Thanks all.

I recently had a similar experience, and am trying to get clear on the same thing.

Peat said a high metabolic rate would require more A, but also high stress could use up A faster, so it's a hard one to figure out.

Where are you know on the issue?

 

[Travis]

Hello all,

I understand that generally the symptoms of vitamin A deficiency can similarly resemble those of vitamin A excess, with a few exceptions (hair changes, callouses, yellowing skin).

In early November I did something rather rash and took about 300,000iu retinyl palmitate over the course of about 5 days, having convinced myself that my symptoms were due to vitamin A deficiency. What followed was a string of odd symptoms which I have little doubt were caused by the supplement. I developed 3 welts on my forehead and a drastic yellowing of my palms. In retrospect I also had bone pain in the lower legs, as when pressing my thumb into the tibia to assess water retention it was incredibly painful. The skin on my palms and toes were in a perpetual state of desquamation, and my face and neck took on a strange superficial layer that I could easily scrape away with my fingernails. My hair became thinner, including my body, which is very frustrating. Appetite has been lousy ever since.

Based on subsequent readings and the figures I came across, it didn't seem at all likely that I could have induced symptoms of toxicity/excess with only 300,000iu.

This puts me in a difficult position because every time I eat a bit of liver, I get a definite increase in desquamation and skin symptoms in certain regions, sometimes dry and sometimes moist, and a suppression of appetite. It has taken a few controlled attempts to make sure that these symptoms weren't coincidence. But I don't know if this reaction is my skin on its way toward balance, or away from balance. For the most part, my skin is usually dry and flaky ever since the megadose, hence my confusion as to whether I'm dealing with vitamin A excess or deficiency. I understand that fat soluble vitamin excesses take many weeks to resolve because of clearance time, but with the repeated emphasis on vitamin A's quick consumption when thyroid is performing well, I wonder if it's even possible to reach toxic levels under a Peat paradigm. Essentially, my dilemma is that I don't know at this point whether I need more vitamin A, or I need to stay away from it.

EDIT - I reiterated some parts, but I didn't get much sleep. I hope it is straightforward.

Thanks all.

Vitamin A appears to be stored in the liver very efficiently, and I wouldn't expect anyone in this country to have not enough. Simply eating animal foods gives you more than what one get naturally on a vegan diet, since the carotene cleavage step is regulated. Preformed vitamin A absorption is not regulated, so eating animal foods should lead to higher liver retinol levels than say pandas, giraffes, and alpacas have.

I've read some autopsy studies, and the amount found in the liver varies widely. I don't think low vitamin A is much to worry about in America. You could always instead take beta carotene, a provitamin that's only cleaved to retinal to the extent that you're body needs it as the enzyme responsible for this action is genetically downregulated in response to high vitamin A levels (probably sensed through one of the nuclear retinoid receptors such as RXR or RAR.) For this reason, there is essentially no toxicity reported from β-carotene despite the fact that it's essentially two reitinal molecules fused together.

The paleo crowd and the Weston A Price Foundation focus heavily on lipid‐soluble vitamins ostensible only because that's one area where animal foods can seem superior. I don't see this as the case for vitamin A, as plants are absolutely full of carotenes which have that extra built‐in regulatory step—carotenoid oxygenases.

It stores in the liver for quite some time, and I would think that you should be good for a few months.

 

[ddjd]

from personal experience, excess vit A can result in headaches and joint pain

 

[Peatness]

Yellow palms and soles: A rare skin manifestation in diabetes mellitus

Carotenemia with its yellowish-red tint is found in diabetes. The frequency of this phenomenon is unknown and the relationship between skin color and blood carotenoid level is controversial. Frequently the suspicion of diabetes arising from inspection ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov