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

[Lynne]

I agree with th subclinical A toxicity hypothesis of Grant D. from experience. On the other hand it appears vitamin A Aldehyde is leading to an endogenous produced aldehyde toxicity and also the congested Aldehydes which the A Aldehyde prevents from metabolizing and this also leads to histamine buildup.

That might explain things for me. It's looking like vitamin A excess may be causing some of my problems (most notably skin-based and osteoporosis) and I've had issues witht histamine and aldehyde builup for years.

 

[somuch4food]

On the other hand it appears vitamin A Aldehyde is leading to an endogenous produced aldehyde toxicity and also the congested Aldehydes which the A Aldehyde prevents from metabolizing and this also leads to histamine buildup.

Do you have more information on this?

The histamine link is interesting because my toddler gets better after a dose of Benadryl and am wondering why.

 

[JessFields]

Does Grant's theory (or anyone's here, for that matter) suggest that acne can be triggered by vitamin A?

 

[Orion]

Does Grant's theory (or anyone's here, for that matter) suggest that acne can be triggered by vitamin A?

In my experience it does. I have completed two months of zero vitamin A intake, helps to clear any skin related issue(sebum, dandruff, flakiness, acne, plugged pores, dry patches, etc..). After just spending some holidays with family and not avoiding vitamin A completely issues start to return.

 

[somuch4food]

Does Grant's theory (or anyone's here, for that matter) suggest that acne can be triggered by vitamin A?

From Extinguishing the fires of hell:
p211:
Another obvious thing to consider is that the shrinking liver size could be causing the acne flare-ups in the first place. Remember that the body moves
retinoid-laden lipids into the sebaceous glands. This is proven to fuel the
acne causing bacteria living there.

(Grant mentions the liver increases in size during childhood, but that stops during teenage years and could account for more vit A sensibility)

 

[Lynne]

In my experience it does. I have completed two months of zero vitamin A intake, helps to clear any skin related issue(sebum, dandruff, flakiness, acne, plugged pores, dry patches, etc..). After just spending some holidays with family and not avoiding vitamin A completely issues start to return.

+1 that senario & to most of the symptoms

Remember that the body moves
retinoid-laden lipids into the sebaceous glands.

I also get a fatty residue on my brush when I brush my hair and something like keratosis pilaris in various areas which is likely a consequence of this. I'm definitely heavily weighted in the skin symptom responder category.

I presume celulite would be another manifestation of vitamin a toxicity, as I get that too, despite being otherwise slim.

 

[Blossom]

This is an interesting paper on the neurobiology of retinoic acid that was posted on Mr. Genereux's site.

The Neurobiology of Retinoic Acid in Affective Disorders

 

[Steven Bussinger]

In my experience it does. I have completed two months of zero vitamin A intake, helps to clear any skin related issue(sebum, dandruff, flakiness, acne, plugged pores, dry patches, etc..). After just spending some holidays with family and not avoiding vitamin A completely issues start to return.

So you ate the same diet, but added Vitamin A? I doubt it.

You have hundreds of uncontrolled variables here. This is not proof of anything.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

These massive walls of text are probably skipped by most people. Try synthesizing it down to a few paragraphs and you will have contributed more then CTRL +V

I didn't skip them. I think it's helpful to centralize information, though it would probably be more effective to summarize and then point to a link. But at least this way, it's reproduced here.

This thread has over 1000 replies. Anybody reading it is not expecting to breeze through.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

Things just don't add up. Also these researchers dont understand that when the diet is deficient it will start dumping stores of it and symptoms can flare.

When Chris Masterjohn said he became deficient in a matter of a week on vacation and then taking a large dose stopped his allergy symptoms was not because he needed so much A it was because his body was fianlly dumping all this retinol he was consuming and thus an increase in yucky symptoms. When he took the large dose the detox stopped and he was fine again. (No one becomes deficient in a fat soluble vitamin in a week)

Maybe the researchers don't understand that because there isn't any research on it. Right now it's simply a (potentially faulty) observation from some people on the internet.

CMJ's story is a good point, but it makes me wonder why anybody needs to constantly keep a regimen of any fat soluble vitamins. Why do people get symptoms when they stop taking D or K2 for a couple weeks?

Moreover, one could just as easily conjecture that CMJ's liver stores were not able to be utilized (so symptoms reappeared), and when the body got some retinol in the blood that was freely available from food or supplements, the symptoms went away. As I've been saying, there's a lot potential for breakdowns somewhere in the retinol metabolism that are giving people these problems. I haven't looked at a graph of all the enzymes that might be involved, but I'm sure there are dozens of them. It's the case with any other nutrient. Any one of those enzymes going haywire could be what's causing someone issues.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

@Janelle525 Have you tried this?

 

[InChristAlone]

@Janelle525 Have you tried this?

Haha I remember sharing that in the Facebook group. Actually I just got done using my UV lamp on my butt. Seems to help even if it comes back with a vengeance eventually. Maybe I just don't keep with it long enough.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

The Amazoniac strikes again, this time pre-emptively: "In Deficiency Of Vitamin E, The Vitamin A Reserves Of The Liver May Be Much Reduced"

 

[somuch4food]

Dr. Garrett Smith posted some evidence on his forum that vitamin A is not a vitamin at all: There is nothing "essential" or "vital" about Poison/"Vitamin A" - Part 2, molecular evidence

There are many agonists to so called vitamin A receptors (RxR, RAR). Vitamin A deficiency is in fact a Fatty acid deficiency.

 

[Lynne]

Dr. Garrett Smith posted some evidence on his forum that vitamin A is not a vitamin at all: There is nothing "essential" or "vital" about Poison/"Vitamin A" - Part 2, molecular evidence

There are many agonists to so called vitamin A receptors (RxR, RAR). Vitamin A deficiency is in fact a Fatty acid deficiency.

Yeah, I'm following Dr GS closely at the mo.
Cheers @somuch4food, the VA and fatty acid deficiency angle is another big piece in the puzzle for me.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

The problem in switching to carotenes-only is that some people just can't convert it, it will build up and it's not good. This is what happens in diabetes and hypopboydism, which are the only two cases that have elevated stores of vitamin A; all others have normal or low..

I wonder what this means for Rule #2, below.

"Approaching the problem from a slightly different angle it appears certain that in some diseases the power of the liver to store vitamin A must be impaired."

"... vitamin A deficiency might lie in the reduced power of the liver to absorb the vitamin, or to effect its synthesis from carotene. "

I've read at least 80% of Grant's first book, and even perused some of Dr. Smith's "blog forum", including the master outline and "essentiality" arguments. I zeroed in on RBP because in my experience doing these investigations, you always want to see what the transport proteins are doing. However, the RBP post doesn't even include what's really important about RBP. And the other RBP posts are extremely biased: The purpose of retinol-binding protein is to PROTECT YOU from Poison/"Vitamin A". Scary!

So I was extremely underwhelmed about the kind of data available about RBP. Then I read the "rules" post, which is the single best piece to actually understand the whole issue. Grant's work was good in explaining how widespread and severe the issue could be, it got my attention, but the picture he paints is too simplistic. It's just one example after another of how RA can cause mayhem. It's a propaganda piece and it did its job of getting everyone and their orthorexic selves afraid of yet another component of normal food. Sorry for the digression, please read Dr. Smith's Rule#2, which I"ll summarize.

TL;DR The liver produces RBP to wrangle retinol, but in conditions like zinc deficiency and protein deficiency, it can't. So retinol doesn't get reined in to the liver and is out in the bloodstream, doing all the stuff Grant talks about.

Grant mentions that fatty liver is a symptom of VA toxicity. I'm wondering if one gets fatty liver first, and then the liver becomes dysfunctional and can't properly manage vitamin A. Taurine is supposed to help with VA toxicity. Haidut has a thread on how a high protein diet reversed fatty liver. There is another one from the mysterious j. from 2014: "Low Protein in Diet Reduces Vitamin A Stored in the Liver".

"Several papers have discussed the relationship between vitamin A and vitamin E and the influence of vitamin E on the metabolism of vitamin A. Bauernfeind et al. (1974) described four ways in which vitamin E may enhance vitamin A metabolism. They are (1) protection of vitamin A from oxidation in the digestive tract, (2) increase in the absorption of vitamin A, (3) increase in the utilization of vitamin A and, (4) increase in the storage of vitamin A."

"Kohlmeier and Burroughs (1962) also showed an interrelationship between vitamin A and vitamin E plus vitamin K in beef cattle. Supplementation of vitamin A alone improved weight gains and feed conversion, but the improvements were doubled when supplemental vitamin E plus vitamin K was fed in addition to the vitamin A."

"Tocopherol supplementation also increased the time necessary to deplete the vitamin A stores of the calves. Since the effect of the tocopherol supplementation was not consistent, the Connecticut workers suggest that there may be a given level or range of tocopherol intake for maximum utilization of vitamin A. This same study also showed a decrease in tissue concentrations of tocopherol when vitamin A was supplemented and suggested that these decreases may result from the influence of one vitamin on the biological activity of the other. Smith (1961) stated in his review that in addition to a vitamin E deficiency accelerating vitamin A depletion, an excess of vitamin E could inhibit the conversion of b-carotene to vitamin A due to its antioxidant properties. Bauernfeind et al. (1974) made similar remarks in their review. They stated that signs of vitamin A deficiency were accelerated in animals with low tocopherol reserves and that the utilization of both oral and intramuscular administrations of vitamin A were greatly impaired in vitamin E deficient animals. They also reported that vitamin E can protect against the toxic effects of high levels of vitamin A. Vitamin E appears to have a reverse effect on vitamin A in regards to cell membrane stability and subdued the growth depressing effects of excess vitamin A in rats."

The relationship between A and E is bewildering. They're said to compete with and deplete each other, and at the same time, maximize the use of each other? Or at least E enhances A. I wonder if this is some weird quinone dynamic, because it's similar with K.

 

[somuch4food]

@Steven Bussinger I agree. Garrett Smith is disappointing as a first praticionner spokeperson for the vitamin A issue. His style is too boastful and his emphasis on conspiracies/propaganda instead of science to prove the theory won't convince most people.

About Grant, I understand that he's not trained in this field so he took a rhetorical approach to publish his theory.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

@Steven Bussinger I agree. Garrett Smith is disappointing as a first praticionner spokeperson for the vitamin A issue. His style is too boastful and his emphasis on conspiracies/propaganda instead of science to prove the theory won't convince most people.

About Grant, I understand that he's not trained in this field so he took a rhetorical approach to publish his theory.

It's a personality thing. I'm not trained in the field, but you don't see me going crazy. Conversely, Dr. Jack Kruse is very well trained, and he's all about bombast and dogma.

 

[Steven Bussinger]

One of the theories in this thread is that vitamin A from (animal) foods will be less toxic because it's already bound to RBP. I looked for some studies about RBP content in foods and couldn't find anything.

I'm thinking that RBP will not be present in any food unless you are eating liver (or the whole animal, eg sardines or oysters). Retinol is a fat-soluble vitamin, after all. I'm sure it was dubbed so because it was first found in fat. It only needs a carrier protein to be ferried around in blood.

 

[Lynne]

@Steven Bussinger I agree. Garrett Smith is disappointing as a first praticionner spokeperson for the vitamin A issue. His style is too boastful and his emphasis on conspiracies/propaganda instead of science to prove the theory won't convince most people.

Agreed