I recently stumbled across the blog of Grant Genereux, an engineer from Canada, wherein he recounts his story of how he cured himself of severe eczema as well as chronic fatigue and brain fog with an elimination diet.
But that's just the beginning of it, because he has also done what I consider to be a genius work of health / nutritional investigation and he puts forth a compelling theory that Vitamin A is the root cause of the autoimmune diseases (eczema, diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto's, Celiac, Crohn's / IBD, etc.) and is also likely to be a major contributor to depression, chronic fatigue, cancer and obesity.
He presents the case that Vitamin A (i.e. retinol) has been misunderstood since it's initial discovery due to botched experiments by the original scientists and that this misunderstanding has essentially become entrenched in nutritional science because subsequent researchers either repeated the original mistake or dismissed their contrary findings to support the original conclusion.
In short, his theory is that "Vitamin A" is not a vitamin at all, and is actually a toxin and that our bodies are equipped to safely store and utilize the substance in appropriate amounts, but when the body exceeds its storage capacity for the substance (which is primarily stored in the liver) the body has to store it in other organs and tissues (because its fat-soluble and cannot be easily excreted) and that's when it wreaks havoc on the organs and tissues and slowly destroys your body from the inside out (which we observe as "autoimmune diseases").
Vitamin A is recognized by mainstream medicine to be toxic in excess (see: Hypervitaminosis A) but part of Grant's theory is that it is way more damaging than they realize because it accumulates over time, and we can reach toxic levels the substance over time just by consuming more of it than the body can safely store / utilize.
The theory sounds preposterous at first — but if you think about it, that's only because we assume that the scientists were smart people who did good research and any substance identified as a "vitamin" must surely be so — but if you read his research, I think you'll find that he presents a small mountain of evidence to back up his theory and that the mainstream theory has giant holes in it that most people are not aware of.
Here is a link to the post where he introduces his theory: Ending the Mystery of Autoimmune
Also, I know that my personal anecdote does not prove anything, per se, but I will add that I found this theory very compelling and so I gave it a try, and I could give much more detail, but the short version of my experience is: I completely dropped my previous Peat-inspired diet and went on a minimal vitamin A diet and within about 3 and a half months it has essentially cured my chronic fatigue and depression as well as improved or eliminated a myriad of other symptoms. I'm not saying I'm feeling perfect but it has been a dramatic reversal. I feel like my health was taking a dive for a decade — going into a steeper nosedive with each passing year — and it wasn't until trying this elimination diet that I've been able to "pull up" and start gaining altitude, to start genuinely healing.
I have been experimenting with diet and supplements and hormones for almost a decade now, trying to reverse my declining health, and I have never had a dramatic healing experience like this. And the amazing part is, I didn't add anything, I only subtracted things. I stopped taking thyroid, stopped any hormones, pretty much stopped all supplements (except for some infrequent B and K vitamins and some minerals).
All I did was stop everything else and just eat a vitamin A elimination diet — which in practice for me mostly meant: no more orange juice, no more dairy, no eggs, no pork. I mostly just ate beef and rice / bread / potatoes and coconut oil and some apple juice — and some other minimal vitamin A flavorings like onions, garlic, olive oil vinaigrettes, etc. Also less often I ate other low-retinol meats like chicken and tilapia.
I may write up my personal experience in more detail later, but for now I'm just trying to urge people to read Genereux's material and I am hoping to get some discussion going on his research and his vitamin A toxicity theory. Thanks for reading.
ADDENDUM:
If you want to skip the introduction linked above and download his books on the subject directly, here are the links. Here is a quote from Genereux about them:
"I am publishing this in a free eBook ... I’ve put this information into an eBook form because it is now just way too long to include in a blog post. The book is entirely free. There are no hooks or catches to it. There is no advertising, or any monetary gain in this book for me, or anyone else. The only cost to you is your time in reading it. This book is intended for the people who have these diseases, and for their families."
Extinguishing the Fires of Hell (2015)
https://ggenereux.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/extinguishing-the-fires-of-hell2.pdf
Poisoning For Profits (2017)
https://ggenereux.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/poisoningforprofits.pdf
But that's just the beginning of it, because he has also done what I consider to be a genius work of health / nutritional investigation and he puts forth a compelling theory that Vitamin A is the root cause of the autoimmune diseases (eczema, diabetes, arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto's, Celiac, Crohn's / IBD, etc.) and is also likely to be a major contributor to depression, chronic fatigue, cancer and obesity.
He presents the case that Vitamin A (i.e. retinol) has been misunderstood since it's initial discovery due to botched experiments by the original scientists and that this misunderstanding has essentially become entrenched in nutritional science because subsequent researchers either repeated the original mistake or dismissed their contrary findings to support the original conclusion.
In short, his theory is that "Vitamin A" is not a vitamin at all, and is actually a toxin and that our bodies are equipped to safely store and utilize the substance in appropriate amounts, but when the body exceeds its storage capacity for the substance (which is primarily stored in the liver) the body has to store it in other organs and tissues (because its fat-soluble and cannot be easily excreted) and that's when it wreaks havoc on the organs and tissues and slowly destroys your body from the inside out (which we observe as "autoimmune diseases").
Vitamin A is recognized by mainstream medicine to be toxic in excess (see: Hypervitaminosis A) but part of Grant's theory is that it is way more damaging than they realize because it accumulates over time, and we can reach toxic levels the substance over time just by consuming more of it than the body can safely store / utilize.
The theory sounds preposterous at first — but if you think about it, that's only because we assume that the scientists were smart people who did good research and any substance identified as a "vitamin" must surely be so — but if you read his research, I think you'll find that he presents a small mountain of evidence to back up his theory and that the mainstream theory has giant holes in it that most people are not aware of.
Here is a link to the post where he introduces his theory: Ending the Mystery of Autoimmune
Also, I know that my personal anecdote does not prove anything, per se, but I will add that I found this theory very compelling and so I gave it a try, and I could give much more detail, but the short version of my experience is: I completely dropped my previous Peat-inspired diet and went on a minimal vitamin A diet and within about 3 and a half months it has essentially cured my chronic fatigue and depression as well as improved or eliminated a myriad of other symptoms. I'm not saying I'm feeling perfect but it has been a dramatic reversal. I feel like my health was taking a dive for a decade — going into a steeper nosedive with each passing year — and it wasn't until trying this elimination diet that I've been able to "pull up" and start gaining altitude, to start genuinely healing.
I have been experimenting with diet and supplements and hormones for almost a decade now, trying to reverse my declining health, and I have never had a dramatic healing experience like this. And the amazing part is, I didn't add anything, I only subtracted things. I stopped taking thyroid, stopped any hormones, pretty much stopped all supplements (except for some infrequent B and K vitamins and some minerals).
All I did was stop everything else and just eat a vitamin A elimination diet — which in practice for me mostly meant: no more orange juice, no more dairy, no eggs, no pork. I mostly just ate beef and rice / bread / potatoes and coconut oil and some apple juice — and some other minimal vitamin A flavorings like onions, garlic, olive oil vinaigrettes, etc. Also less often I ate other low-retinol meats like chicken and tilapia.
I may write up my personal experience in more detail later, but for now I'm just trying to urge people to read Genereux's material and I am hoping to get some discussion going on his research and his vitamin A toxicity theory. Thanks for reading.
ADDENDUM:
If you want to skip the introduction linked above and download his books on the subject directly, here are the links. Here is a quote from Genereux about them:
"I am publishing this in a free eBook ... I’ve put this information into an eBook form because it is now just way too long to include in a blog post. The book is entirely free. There are no hooks or catches to it. There is no advertising, or any monetary gain in this book for me, or anyone else. The only cost to you is your time in reading it. This book is intended for the people who have these diseases, and for their families."
Extinguishing the Fires of Hell (2015)
https://ggenereux.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/extinguishing-the-fires-of-hell2.pdf
Poisoning For Profits (2017)
https://ggenereux.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/poisoningforprofits.pdf
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