Liver Craving/Vitamin A Observation

[Elize]

Stargazer
Hi from Elize.

A question would the addition of Vitamin A 1000 IU to my 2000IU of Vitamin D and K2 cause a drop in cortisol. I took some of the Vitamin A together with the Vitamin D yesterday and developed the most horrible headache. blurry vision and seem to have a very bad adrenaline reaction. Is the ratio of A to D I took wrong? Is this just a cleansing reaction that may pass. My temperature also dropped very low to like 35.8 degrees Celcius making me feel awful. But I know that sometimes we need to feel worse before getting better. Eeeeeeesh if I could just rid myself from the adrenaline reactions after taking thyroid meds etc. Sometimes I wonder if I should not just stop all the supplementation and just continue with thyroid meds and at times I wonder if I should reduce the thyroid meds as the supplement may be causing healing at some level.

 

[stargazer1111]

I have the same issue if I take vitamin A early in the morning, or if I take way too much. I have low cortisol in the mornings and higher cortisol later in the day, so I always get lots of juice in the morning to sustain blood sugar and lower adrenaline and try not to do anything that lowers cortisol until later in the day. However, I cannot know for sure what is happening with you. Pay attention to your body and experiment with things, albeit do so carefully.

I take my vitamin D in the morning without vitamin A. Then, I take vitamin A around midday or mid-afternoon. It is also important to note that vitamin A decreases the absorption of the other 3 fat-soluble vitamins but that the other fat soluble vitamins DO NOT decrease the absorption of vitamin A. I take Vitamin D in the morning, vitamin A and vitamin E (vitamin E protects the vitamin A from being oxidized in the intestine) together in the midday and vitamin K2 with dinner. This seems to work well for me.

 

[stargazer1111]

Oh yeah. And how much salt do you get? I realized that I wasn't eating enough and started taking a handful with juice or milk every few hours in addition to the salt I put on my food. This seems to help with the adrenaline as well.

 

[Elize]

O gosh thanks - that could be what I did wrong. I had eggs and an orange with coffee no sugar added for breakfast. Then took the Vitamin A, D and K2 at the same time. I usually eat a lot of raw Himalayan salt over my food and drink about 4 to 5 glasses of water a day. I fill a water holder and to that add a quarter of teaspoon of salt - Since I am 5 feet 2 inches and weigh 104 pounds wonder if I should perhaps use less of the supplements rather than what is indicated. Perhaps it is too much for my body weight. LOL what mystical being we are. Perhaps I should meditate less and eat more too. I very seldom feel hungry as sensation I have not had for a lonnnnnng time. LOL perhaps going back to the ashram in India will be great as the food is just out of this world. Am going to try to take the vitamins the way you suggest. Thanks a lot.

 

[stargazer1111]

Not feeling hungry is intriguing. When I used to have reactive hypoglycemia I was never hungry. Contrary to popular opinion, insulin actually shuts down the hunger response. I wonder if you might have hyperinsulinemia. That's just a wild guess, though.

I never drink water. But, that's because I drink tons of juice and milk.

Fat-soluble vitamin intestinal absorption: absorption sites in the intestine and interactions for absorption. - PubMed - NCBI

That is the study I found in which they looked at the absorption of the different fat-soluble vitamins. This is what prompted me to separate them out.

 

[Elize]

Thanks soooo much for the document and yes I came to the same conclusion that I may have hyperinsulinemia but am not sure how to deal with it. My functional meds doc just keeps looking at my thyroid. I react to juices and milk and once again am trying by introducing Ghee, cream and home made Kefir. I start sweating like mad and become very shaky after having any juices. Even having a fruit smoothie made with berries, raw egg yolk, coconut oil, gelatin etc has the same effect or I fall asleep within minutes. I am going to separate the vitamins and what about me trying to take the Vitamin A at bed time as I seem to have very low levels of cortisol all day and high at night as per the Dutch Adrenal test. I have to do a lot of my own research as my doc seems to be at a loss with me. The insulin issue could also be why I do not do well with T3 usage as well. I have also looked a lot into the research of late Dr John Lowe the brain behind ThyroGold an over the counter thyroid med. Again with my cortisol issue it was a problem for me. A friend of mine has great success with ThyroGold.

 

[stargazer1111]

I

Worry about the Vitamin A as it can cause confusion and has proven so in both myself and my mother. I had us both in 15,000 IU a day and cut it back to 5000 a day. My mother has dementia and I have early onset as well. I can't find anyone here that will help me with dosage on it and I am at a loss. I've just about given up on the board. They will tell you what to take and some on how much but if you have a problem with something, you're out of luck. I've also read that you can't do Vitamin D for long periods of time. My mother has explosion diarrhea almost around the clock for years and years, even had a large part of her intestines removed. I don't know what to do for her there. Seems the smallest amount of veggies brings it all on her horribly!

I just have to come back here and say that you are absolutely correct and I was absolutely wrong. In fact, I am now working on a hypothesis involving vitamin A and Alzheimer’s because of my experience with it.


There is a family of proteins called the retinol-binding proteins that bind to vitamin A when it is consumed in the diet. These are produced by the liver. Retinol-binding proteins have a very strong structure called a beta barrel and are designed to encase vitamin A in order to protect it from undergoing uncontrolled oxidation-reduction reactions. Vitamin A that is not bound to this protein is unstable, making it potentially dangerous. This has been demonstrated thoroughly in the literature.


I discovered a study done a few years ago looking for potential biomarkers for Alzheimer’s Disease. They discovered that people with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s had very low levels of retinol-binding protein in their cerebrospinal fluid. The worse the dementia, the lower the levels of this protein. In fact, some had no retinol-binding protein at all. At the very least, this means that even small amounts of vitamin A are extremely toxic to these people. At the very worst, it means that some or all of the damage to the brain is being caused by this free vitamin A. Another thing to keep in mind is that free vitamin A seems to weaken neurons when they are challenged with prooxidant materials such as free iron, free copper, and PUFA. Consuming these things along with the vitamin A will make the situation much worse.


I have scoured the literature over the last few months and have come to the realization that nearly all of the toxic effects produced by vitamin A mirror the toxic effects seen in Alzheimer’s.


I am in graduate school studying biochemistry right now and am already working on a grant proposal to test the hypothesis that people with Alzheimer’s have a deficiency of retinol-binding protein and that it is the free vitamin A circulating in their system that causes the damage seen in this disease.


Free vitamin A is prone to undergo uncontrolled redox reactions, leading to the inappropriate production of reactive oxygen species which kill neurons in the brain.


Additionally, it was discovered in another paper that RBP inappropriately enters neurons in patients with Alzheimer’s. Normally, it drops off the retinol and only the retinol enters the neuron. But, in these cases the protein enters with the retinol and somehow ends up entangled in the beta amyloid fibrils known to accumulate. In fact, retinol-binding protein is made entirely of beta sheets and could be partially responsible for the misfolding of the amyloid precursor protein in the brain.


Your experiences with even small amounts of vitamin A are exactly in line with my hypothesis, as are my own experiences. I began to experience mild memory loss and then eventually very severe memory loss for several months after stopping the vitamin A megadoses. I still have mild problems from time to time, especially if I consume something with even small amounts of beta carotene or retinol. But, I am totally normal if I avoid all sources of vitamin A.


I had a similar experience with vitamin A a few years ago by accident and did not make the connection that it was the vitamin A until now. It was a smaller amount coming from normal food. But, it caused similar symptoms then too that completely resolved upon stopping the consumption of those foods.


So, in a nutshell, my hypothesis is this: Alzheimer’s is causing a reduction or elimination of retinol-binding protein in the cerebrospinal fluid (I am unsure what is causing this at this point). This makes even small amounts of vitamin A toxic. So, even a normal diet is likely to produce vitamin A toxicity in people with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s. It may be prudent to strictly limit the amount of vitamin A and beta carotene in the diets of these people.


This is what I will be focusing on in the coming years of grad school (possibly medical school as well).


Oh, and my real name is *****. I want to make sure no one else steals my idea.

 

[ddjd]

My thought is that I was actually craving liver this whole time because I was vitamin A deficient. Historically, I have only gotten maybe 4 or 5 thousand units in a day.

Ive been supplementing with vitamin A for years but my breakthrough came when I stopped using the palmitate drops and moved onto retinol acetate powder. It's way more absorbable. Huge changes that I wasn't getting with the palmitate

 

[stargazer1111]

Be very careful with that and monitor your mental functions. I stopped because of what I just posted. I was wrong before.

 

[stargazer1111]

Test

 

[lollipop]

Interesting @stargazer1111. Will you be coming back and updating this thread as your research progresses? I hope so

 

[raypeatclips]

@stargazer1111 What cognitive issues do you get from vitamin A?

 

[stargazer1111]

Severe memory loss to the point at which I can't recall names of people I've known for years. Also, I will do or read something and immediately forget doing or reading it. For about the last 1.5 weeks of taking the vitamin A, I started noticing this at an increasing rate. Then, about 1 week after stopping all vitamin A, a sort of storm hit me that lasted about a month. I became suicidal, would cry for hours, and had such bad memory loss that I couldn't recall words of familiar things like "ocean" or "transcript." The reason I think it got so bad after stopping is that the body has an ability to recognize when you stop ingesting a toxin. It has been shown to do this with oxalates. If you are continually ingesting the toxin, it sequesters as much of it out of the blood as possible in the liver and the adipose tissue. As soon as you stop ingesting it, the body begins dumping it out into the blood for excretion. At least the amount stored in the liver. The amount stored in the adipose tissue probably isn't dumped.

I am almost totally normal now after 4 months off the vitamin A. But, I still cannot tolerate even small amounts of it. Even a little bit brings back the memory loss. The doctor told me it would take about a year to clear the stored A out of the system so any I ingest right now just adds to the burden.

I've done extensive reading in the literature and am building a grant proposal to be submitted to the NIH to test the hypothesis that Alzheimer's is caused by a deficiency in retinol-binding protein which makes even normal amounts of pre-formed vitamin A toxic.

Studies have been done in an effort to find biomarkers that indicate impending Alzheimer's. Low levels of retinol-binding protein (RBP) appear in the cerebrospinal fluid of Alzheimer's patients and those with mild cognitive impairment. In fact, there is a positive correlation between the two. The worse the dementia, the less RBP there is.

This means there are likely to be 2 possibilities. One, patients with dementia are deficient in vitamin A and this is what is causing the low levels of RBP. The body downregulates RBP production when vitamin A is low. This possibility does not explain the extreme redox stress seen in Alzheimer's. I have done a side-by-side comparison of the known symptoms of vitamin A toxicity and Alzheimer's and nearly every single one is common between the two conditions. The second possibility is that patients with Alzheimer's have a compromised ability to produce RBP, making even normal amounts of vitamin A toxic.

Vitamin A that is not bound to RBP is toxic. It has a similar structure to PUFA and is just as unstable. RBP is a "beta barrel" protein that is designed to encase retinol to protect it from undergoing uncontrolled redox reactions which produce reactive oxygen species and these species are what kill neurons in the brain.

 

[stargazer1111]

Interesting @stargazer1111. Will you be coming back and updating this thread as your research progresses? I hope so

Definitely. I keep refining my idea as I gather more evidence in the literature. Unfortunately, I am still a grad student and likely won't be able to actually test this in the lab for a few more years. But, it is going to be my career focus.

 

[raypeatclips]

@stargazer1111 Have you messaged Peat at all with your ideas about vitamin A and alzheimers? If so, what did he say?

 

[stargazer1111]

@stargazer1111 Have you messaged Peat at all with your ideas about vitamin A and alzheimers? If so, what did he say?

Not really. I messaged him when I was first experiencing symptoms and he never replied so I never tried again.

 

[raypeatclips]

@stargazer1111 This is what Ray said tonight.

"If a person with low thyroid function takes a large amount of vitamin A, it (like any highly unsaturated lipid) interferes with thyroid function. Low thyroid function impairs cognition, all the way to dementia.

J Nutr Sci Vitaminol (Tokyo). 1980;26(4):327-34.
Effects of vitamin A deficiency on thyroid function and serum thyroxine levels in the rat.
Oba K, Kimura S.
Abstract
The effects of vitamin A deficiency, which results in a substantial decrease in the level of serum retinol binding protein, on the existent state of serum thyroxine and thyroid function were examined. In the vitamin A-deficient rats, the thyroid weight increased and the level of serum thyroxine decreased to one half that of the control rats. Normal thyroid weight and serum thyroxine levels were recovered by the replenishment of retinyl palmitate in the vitamin A-deficient rats. In addition, decreased hormone synthesis was observed in the thyroid glands of the vitamin A-deficient rats. The determination of thyroxine distribution in rat serum proteins in vivo showed that thyroxine-binding prealbumin (TBPA) is a major thyroxine transport protein in the control rats, whereas in the deficient rats the amount of thyroxine bound to TBPA decreased and the thyroxine bound to thyroxine-binding globulin (TBG) increased significantly as compared with observations in control rats. These findings suggest that the existent state of serum thyroxine and thyroid function is affected by the serum level of vitamin A."

 

[stargazer1111]

Yeah. That's not true for me. I actually have hyperthyroidism. The vitamin A did nothing to calm that down. And, the cognitive issues aren't due to the hyperthyroidism because the cognitive issues are pretty much gone yet I still have a non-existent TSH and very high T3/T4 levels.

I think we should be careful in assuming that most people have hypothyroidism.

I thought I had hypothyroidism and when my heart rate shot up to over 200, cutting off circulation to my limbs, I was finally forced to see a doctor who determined that I have severe hyperthyroidism. He found two nodules and an overall inflamed thyroid that was dumping excess amounts of thyroid hormones into the blood.

 

[TheDrumGuy]

@stargazer1111, have you written out your history anywhere? Eg how you came to Peat and what health problems you had, progress etc. Looking at your post history I would be interested to hear it.

 

[Frankdee20]

Stargzer1111
Hi from Elize. I notice after taking Vitamin D that I develop bad body aches, I also feel jittery and often have muscle twitches in my left arm, when training in the gym my knees make a creaking sound. I also feel stiff and painful in the mornings. Would it be OK for me to stop taking Vitamin D for a while and take some Vitamin A. I also using thyroid medication and would the A impact on that. Once I get over this bout will order Haiduts Eban as that forms a balance between D and the other vitamins.

Thanks

Stargzer1111
Hi from Elize. I notice after taking Vitamin D that I develop bad body aches, I also feel jittery and often have muscle twitches in my left arm, when training in the gym my knees make a creaking sound. I also feel stiff and painful in the mornings. Would it be OK for me to stop taking Vitamin D for a while and take some Vitamin A. I also using thyroid medication and would the A impact on that. Once I get over this bout will order Haiduts Eban as that forms a balance between D and the other vitamins.

Thanks

Definitely something I notice while supplementing D3 as well is that increase bone pain, joint cracking. I take A and K also and Magnesium, but I believe this comes from bone mineralization. I think Magnesium helps, since this is high Calcium going on.