Hypervitaminosis D - Does sunscreen block UVB 100%?

[Bliss]

I had extreme bloating, severe brain fog, slight wheezing, abdominal pains, back pain, joint aches and fatigue that were induced by sunbathing and in my case, definitively due to excessive Vitamin A in my system. I had supplemented 50,000-70,000iu /week from fish liver oil for years, always paired with 10,000-20,000 vit D (depending on the season) and more than the RDA of K2.

 

[Peatress]

I had extreme bloating, severe brain fog, slight wheezing, abdominal pains, back pain, joint aches and fatigue that were induced by sunbathing and in my case, definitively due to excessive Vitamin A in my system. I had supplemented 50,000-70,000iu /week from fish liver oil for years, always paired with 10,000-20,000 vit D (depending on the season) and more than the RDA of K2.

High pufa?

PUFA/Statins Promote UV Damage & Skin Cancer (melanoma), Cholesterol Is Protective

Several people asked Peat over email about the dangers of sun exposure. He responded by saying that the main danger is the lipid (PUFA) perodixation caused by the UV lights and that taking some aspirin, vitamin E, or niacinamide greatly reduces the damage. The study below confirms that PUFA may...

raypeatforum.com

 

[Bliss]

High pufa?

PUFA/Statins Promote UV Damage & Skin Cancer (melanoma), Cholesterol Is Protective

Several people asked Peat over email about the dangers of sun exposure. He responded by saying that the main danger is the lipid (PUFA) perodixation caused by the UV lights and that taking some aspirin, vitamin E, or niacinamide greatly reduces the damage. The study below confirms that PUFA may...

raypeatforum.com

Shouldn’t be- I have been lowish PUFA (eg avoiding seed oils completely but have had the odd few nuts) over the same timeframe (aprox 10 years). (The vit A was an extract in a small capsule).

 

[Daniel North]

@Bliss That sucks, but i haven't taken any vitamin A supplements ever, or eaten any liver for the past 3 months. Why would I have or get hypervitaminosis A?
And i don't see why hypervitaminosis A would make you sick after eating an eggshell.

 

[mosaic01]

My only comment is i don't think you, who did 50.000 IU every day for a year, should warn others of vitamin A toxicity, when your scenario is extreme and not very relevant to others. Ive only done 10.000-30.000 IU every day for a week through beef liver.

200g beef liver has 60.000 IU, and retinol stores in animal livers vary. You could get 100.000 and don't know it.

Your level of >3 umol/L is very high. A value of >3.5 is already considered clinical toxicity. 0.7-2.5 is considered normal.

 

[Bliss]

@Bliss That sucks, but i haven't taken any vitamin A supplements ever, or eaten any liver for the past 3 months. Why would I have or get hypervitaminosis A?
And i don't see why hypervitaminosis A would make you sick after eating an eggshell.

Depending on the cut-off used, you already had or almost had hypervitaminosis A in November 2022. Eating 200g liver / week is sufficient to cause this, because fat-solubles can accumulate over time (as youngsinatra pointed out, it can be a slow process trying to deplete retinol stores once you have them). Consider that >300mcg retinol / g in your liver is considered a toxic level. An adult male liver weighs ~1.6 Kg, so can store 300 x 1600 = 480,000mcg retinol, which is 1,600,000iu retinol. If you assume you use up the RDA of retinol every day (900mcg retinol = 3000iu for an adult male, so 21,000iu /week ) and that 200g beef liver provides 60,000iu (as mosaic01 pointed out this can be very variable, according to the type of beef and what it was fed- I have seen values from 15,000iu/ 100g to 94,000iu/ 100g) then you could be ingesting an excess of ~40,000iu retinol per week from liver alone. 1,600,000 / 40,000 = 40 weeks, so in less than a year your liver could be at capacity. This doesn’t take into account any contribution from carrots / sweet potatoes / pumpkins / leafy greens etc which contrary to the common claim, can contribute to toxic levels of vit A as demonstrated in the Case Study I linked in your insulin resistance / hypercalcemia thread where the main source of the patient’s hypervitaminosis A that lead to his refractory hypercalcemia was determined to be vegetablesk, particularly kale.

I have no idea if your symptoms after eating dairy / egg-shell are related, but some of your other symptoms match hypervitaminosis A. Particularly the fact that symptoms get better after eating liver is a red flag, since vit A suppresses its own conversion into active metabolites, so the short-term effect of supplementing vit A (including from eating liver) is to reduce those symptoms that were due to the active metabolites. You might have hypervitaminosis D as well though…

 

[mosaic01]

@Daniel North Hypervitaminosis D resolves itself within weeks. You don't need to do anything at all. Stop going into the sun and don't consume a lot calcium is all. You probably need to stop all dairy.

Retinol temporarily offsets some of the effects of high vitamin D, but this is extremely short-lived, and as vitamin A is quickly moved into the liver, it will take you months to get it out of the liver again.

 

[Daniel North]

@Bliss If i had hypervitaminosis A when i had 3,1 in retinol, shouldn't my ALAT be high? Instead it was 28. Very low.
I have an appointment at a doctor for blood tests tomorrow. Hopefully he'll let me do the blood tests I want.

 

[Bliss]

I’m not an expert, just someone who got badly burned by this stuff… I think most of us trying to detox vit A are figuring things out as we go along…. The contention of the low-A folk is that retinoids can be harmful at lower levels than has previously been recognized, before you get to the point of significant damage to the liver. My ALAT was also fine last year (21.3U/L, although it was up from from 11.2U/L four years ago).

 

[Daniel North]

Did the blood test earlier today. 800 euros. Results take at least a week. Time will tell if that money is well spent.

 

[Daniel North]

Still waiting for the results. In the mean time my health status is the same. If it is hypervitaminosis A shouldn't i have become worse after quitting eating liver?

Other symptoms i have are:

1. Frequent peeing (a hypervitaminosis D symptom). It can be because of depleted potassium which hypervitaminosis D causes. Leading to "impairment the ability of the kidneys to concentrate urine, resulting in excessive urination"

2. Low to none sexdrive (a symptom for both hypervitaminosis D and A, I suppose)

3. Low energi and brainfog.

I am still leaning towards this scenario: That the melanotan both made it possible to tan with UVI 11 for 3 hours a day without sunscreen, and that melanotan has a side effect that increases the vitamin D production of the body, resulting in Hypervitaminosis D.

 

[Daniel North]

When i was in Spain the first time, when my symptoms first started, one of the symptoms was increasing trembling. First i asked myself if i was imagining it. But the the trembling slowly increased every day. Eventually it was impossible for me to keep my fingers still when i held it out. I remember thinking to myself "is this how Parkinson feels?"
The trembling has returned today. Although it is almost not noticeable.

This trembling is a known vitamin D toxicity symptom, but not a vitamin A toxicity symptom (as far as i know).

 

[Mossy]

Down in Spain I started having problems I have never had before. Extreme bloating and my skin started to swell. Extreme water retention around my waist. Back pain. Every thing got even worse every time I ate dairy. Probably hypercalcemia.

Have you determined that the Melanotan is not the reason for your problems?

 

[Daniel North]

@Mossy No. It could be. But seems unlikely to me. Since i have used it one time prior (last summer) without any problems (the blood tests i did at the same period showed no abnormalities). And i used it 1-2 months this year up to the time i went to Spain, without any problems. When i got to Spain, and started sun tanning 3 hours a day every day, the problems started. My hypothesis is that melanotan makes the body's vitamin D production go haywire.

All of my blood tests (except for retinol) came back yesterday. The doctor quickly went through them on the phone with just "looks good, within reference, as it should be" and so on. He said he'll send all of them to me by mail when retinol has arrived. I called again today, and he doesn't work today, lol. Spain.... :)
Monday is next possibility.

I seem to remember that he said vitamin D was 68(?) but i don't trust my own memory there. He went so fast through them. It's a blurry memory.
But if it was 68 ng/mL, that is quite high (170 nmol/L). Especially after not being in the sun for over a week.

We'll see.

 

[charlie]

This is horseshit.

Careful. People trying to help you and you are disrespecting them.

1. Frequent peeing (a hypervitaminosis D symptom). It can be because of depleted potassium which hypervitaminosis D causes. Leading to "impairment the ability of the kidneys to concentrate urine, resulting in excessive urination"

2. Low to none sexdrive (a symptom for both hypervitaminosis D and A, I suppose)

3. Low energi and brainfog.

When i was in Spain the first time, when my symptoms first started, one of the symptoms was increasing trembling.

Sounds like Copper toxicity which runs along with "vitamin" A toxicity. It will make you pee a lot because the body is doing all it can to dump the copper.

 

[Mossy]

My hypothesis is that melanotan makes the body's vitamin D production go haywire.

Ok, so maybe a link to Melanotan causing the trouble; where that much sun on it's own may not cause the trouble, apart from probably a bad sun burn.

 

[Daniel North]

The blood tests are back, and i am not closer to understanding what the problem was.
(I manually converted the Spanish results to Norwegian units. I think they are all correctly converted)
Neither my retinol nor my vitamin D is high.
Everything looks fine in my eyes, except for my cholesterol values.

 

[Daniel North]

My cholesterol values started to worsen when i started Peat'ing in June. Eating more carbs from fruit, honey, Coca-cola, sugar. You can see the trend here. All my blood values for the past 3-4 years. At the bottom the latest blood test from here in Spain. The ratio is calculated by converting the Norwegian cholesterol units to American/Irish, and then using the ratio Ivor Cummings uses here: https://youtu.be/9N7CvW1Jqes?si=Zdl1UM0XkkPeaz3l&t=199

Maybe i have gone to hard on carbs. Maybe i should eat less carbs and more meat compared to what i do now. Closer to what i did when i ate nose-to-tail carnivore diett.

 

[Daniel North]

Sounds like Copper toxicity which runs along with "vitamin" A toxicity. It will make you pee a lot because the body is doing all it can to dump the copper.

It could be. I didn't know copper could cause this. Last time i ate lots of liver, the summer of 2021, i also got prostatitis for the first time, so it may very well be because of the copper.

If i don't supplement with zinc or oysters when i eat lots of liver, i get sore in my muscles.

And i haven't found any places to buy oysters here in Spain.

In the summer of 2021 i ate much more liver over a much longer time span. But i also ate lots of oysters and meat. I had insane T3 and high testosterone. But my SHBG was high too, so my free testo wasn't much to brag about. My ferritin was still high. This was after only one blood donation. Now i have 10-12 blood donations behind me, and my SHBG is much better.

 

[Daniel North]

I was sunbathing for like 30 minutes yesterday. Got maybe 2000IU. My sides swelled and over the span of the evening, my stomach got sooo bloated. Even though i hadn't eaten anything unormal.

Now i know i cant be the vitamin D.