Tarmander
Member
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2015
- Messages
- 3,772
Great blend of criticism and pragmatismGreetings everyone,
I'm "tim-2" from Grant Genereux's forum.
I've been following a low VA diet for 12 months now.
This is what I eat most days now:
Breakfast: Granola with almond milk and banana.
Lunch: Battered fish, potato, leek, cabbage and mushrooms.
Dinner: Chicken and baked beans with most of the tomato sauce drained out.
I eat about 3 hard boiled eggs per week.
At first I went really low VA but I have since realized that it's a marathon not a sprint to reduce VA levels in the body and I've also seen science showing that the body works hard to conserve VA when we go really low. So I have a small amount of VA from leeks, a tiny bit of tomato, fish and chicken.
I had my serum retinol levels tested recently and it's 1.8 umol/L which is 50.4 ug/dL. My cholesterol and liver enzymes have normalized compared with a test I had 3 years ago.
I've seen a huge change in my seb derm over the past year. It is 95% better, almost completely gone. I've suffered with it on my scalp, face and chest for many years. I had to use 6% H2O2 on my body every few days to control it! Now I hardly ever have to use the hydrogen peroxide. The current theory for seb derm makes no sense because it doesn't cover all oily areas, it happens in patches. Maybe the RA is coming out in those patches and is creating dead skin cells which the yeast feeds on that causes seb derm. Riboflavin deficiency is likely a key player as well, seb derm is connected to riboflavin deficiency. I posted on Grant's forum showing evidence that over 70% of people are riboflavin deficient! And guess what? Riboflavin is needed to convert retinol to retinoic acid and then to convert retinoic acid to water soluble retinoids that get excreted in the urine! So VA toxicity is depleting people's riboflavin levels. I posted the relevant studies on Grant's forum about this: Riboflavin's role in an important VA detox pathway
I'm a WAPF survivor, the WAPF diet caused me a lot of damage. I took CLO, FCLO, ate liver and copious amounts of dairy fat.
Here is my take on the VA toxicity situation:
VA is an essential vitamin needed for vision and for RA which is a hormone used by the body. VA issues are simply a matter of too much VA in our diet and possibly chemicals, nutrient deficiencies and health conditions that slow down the elimination of it.
I believe that everyone that is dealing with VA toxicity should get serum retinol tested but also Vitamin D and then make sure they are Vit D sufficient as Vit A competes with Vit D in the body. VA also likely depletes K2, molybdenum and choline. It depletes riboflavin. Basically we need to supplement with some Vit D or get lots of sun. Sunlight breaks down carotenoids and retinoids into still toxic breakdown products that must be eliminated by the body.
We should follow a diet that is extremely rich in B vitamins. Legumes are essential as they are rich in molybdenum, thiamine and folate. Mushrooms are an excellent food as they are zero VA and zero pectin and are high in riboflavin. (As posted on the Grant Genereux forum pectin should be minimized as it breaks down into methanol in the gut. Fruit juice is a major source of pectin and should be avoided. Fruit, vegetables and legumes all contain pectin, we should avoid consuming an excess of these foods.) Squid is low VA and high in riboflavin too. Fish I consider essential as it contains DHA, iodine and selenium. I think a few eggs per week is a good idea for the choline and they also contain iodine, selenium and DHA as well.
What a blessing Grant's work has been to raise awareness of this issue. I am very thankful to Grant. However, I can't endorse his books as they are full of logical fallacies and I would question anyone's intelligence if they can't easily see that. Plants developed the ability to synthesize carotenoids billions of years ago as a form of sun protection. Animals developed the ability to convert them into retinoids and use them and they became essential. VAD is real and Grant will eventually get xeropthalmia, fortunately the onset is very slow so he will have time to replenish his VA reserves before permanent damage occurs. Grant denies that retinal is needed for vision which is just flat out denial of hard science.
I'm concerned about anyone getting pregnant or having children while following a very low VA diet longterm.
Mexicans consume about 1/5 of the RDA while Americans consume about 3x the RDA, Mexicans have far less autoimmune disease. I think about 1/3 of the RDA is a good figure to aim for long term although most of our VA toxicity issues have likely been caused by consuming VA far in excess of the RDA long term.
I would caution against following Garrett Smith's advice. He often gets things totally wrong. It's great that he is on board with the VA toxicity issue though.
Matt Stone, what a legend. He's the reason I heard about VA toxicity.