Post Your Vitamin A Success Stories Here Please

[Amazoniac]

@Amazoniac Do you think that's why, in many cultures, liver is eaten a little bit at a time, in some form of sausage, dish or pate? For the retinol to be metabolized completely? It is comparatively rarer to find traditional recipes with big meals of liver, it's mostly always in small amounts at a time.

I think a few thousands UIs when thyroid is high are probably going to get utilized quickly to create the steroid hormones. Even Ray has cautioned against large doses of retinol several times in the past, and it obviously has an anti-thyroid effect when large amounts are taken, as was known even back in McGavack's thyroid book (1951).

One thing that's often missed is I suspect people eat liver not only because of the retinol, but more importantly because of its large amounts of the b vitamins, especially riboflavin, along with many minerals like copper.

btw, thanks for the suggestion, Medicosis Perfectionalis seems like an awesome YouTube channel.

It's possible, and also to mask the strong taste to get the nutrition. If the liver is rich in copper yet it's poison A that's limiting for the person, portioning must be learned from the response to it rather than inhate taste, otherwise cases of acute intoxication from diet would've been prevented (although in some of them consumers appeard to ignore the cues). But for example, table salt eaten on its own rapidly becomes unbearable (tut), yet you can easily take an excessive dose of poisonyl esters without being discouraged, it's not likely to be revolting and trigger repulsion unless the dose is insane, and you notice that something went off later after ingesting.

- Cause and Prevention of Liver Off-Flavor in Five Beef Chuck Muscles Muscle

The channel is great, he consults various textbooks before condensing them in those videos. The guy is a boss.

 

[mrchibbs]

It's possible, and also to mask the strong taste to get the nutrition. If the liver is rich in copper yet it's poison A that's limiting for the person, portioning must be learned from the response to it rather than inhate taste, otherwise cases of acute intoxication from diet would've been prevented (although in some of them consumers appeard to ignore the cues). But for example, table salt eaten on its own rapidly becomes unbearable (tut), yet you can easily take an excessive dose of poisonyl esters without being discouraged, it's not likely to be revolting and trigger repulsion unless the dose is insane, and you notice that something went off later after ingesting.

- Cause and Prevention of Liver Off-Flavor in Five Beef Chuck Muscles Muscle

The channel is great, he consults various textbooks before condensing them in those videos. The guy is a boss.

I've fallen in love with the channel already, and have learned a lot in a few hours.

I personally find that good beef liver tastes quite good. I have a frozen source from a small farm and it almost tastes great on its own.
I make my own pate with cream, and onions and other goodies.

When we think about it we know so little about isolated nutrients and their interactions. The retinol in liver, especially on a warm sunny day, seems to get utilized directly (I feel a strong surge of hormones), with great skin. I think the generous supply of riboflavin in liver probably helps to metabolize vitamin A properly, as was mentioned earlier. Moreover, liver comes with carnitine which prevents copper toxicity.

From my perspective, careful use of liver is like including thyroid glands in traditional cooking, it is powerfully supportive of health and metabolism. Regular use of liver and oysters with their amazing supply of b-vitamins, copper, zinc and other minerals, can probably help reverse trans-generational effects of mineral deficiency.

 

[Highserotonin90]

Vitamin A Oil (100ml)

673mcg they are equivalent 673 ui ?

 

[Locutus]

It's possible, and also to mask the strong taste to get the nutrition. If the liver is rich in copper yet it's poison A that's limiting for the person, portioning must be learned from the response to it rather than inhate taste, otherwise cases of acute intoxication from diet would've been prevented (although in some of them consumers appeard to ignore the cues). But for example, table salt eaten on its own rapidly becomes unbearable (tut), yet you can easily take an excessive dose of poisonyl esters without being discouraged, it's not likely to be revolting and trigger repulsion unless the dose is insane, and you notice that something went off later after ingesting.

- Cause and Prevention of Liver Off-Flavor in Five Beef Chuck Muscles Muscle

The channel is great, he consults various textbooks before condensing them in those videos. The guy is a boss.

I'm desperate.
Adult acne forever. Tried everything...
I want to give "mega dose" vit A a go.
May you suggest a conservative titration approach?
People mention coupling A with D , K , E , B2 , C ...
So confused.

 

[ecstatichamster]

50,000 or 100,000 units of natural A per day with a bit of D3 and K2 MK4 and E would be good.

I have a family member doing 100K units of A and his cystic acne is 80% better.

 

[Locutus]

50,000 or 100,000 units of natural A per day with a bit of D3 and K2 MK4 and E would be good.

I have a family member doing 100K units of A and his cystic acne is 80% better.

Do you think the Idea Labs products are ok?
Retinil (retinyl palmitate)
Calcitrol
TocoVit
Kuinone

 

[ecstatichamster]

Do you think the Idea Labs products are ok?
Retinil (retinyl palmitate)
Calcitrol
TocoVit
Kuinone

yes. but you may want another source of the A

 

[Locutus]

yes. but you may want another source of the A

What is your family member using?

 

[ecstatichamster]

NOW Supplements, Vitamin A (Fish Liver Oil) 25,000 IU, Essential Nutrition, 250 Softgels​

 

[youngsinatra]

I'm desperate.
Adult acne forever. Tried everything...
I want to give "mega dose" vit A a go.
May you suggest a conservative titration approach?
People mention coupling A with D , K , E , B2 , C ...
So confused.

Please be careful. I got diagnosed hypervitaminosis A (vitamin A toxicity) by dosing 50‘000 IU per day for 10 months and it literally completely destroyed my health and my liver. (also my skin - became extremely bloody dry and peeling like crazy). The bad part is that it takes very long time until this damage is reversed.

If you still believe that vitamin A helps for skin issues (which I don’t), please, rather than taking retinol esters (found in liver, fish oils or supplements) try some pharmaceutical grade tretinoin. The esters are stored in the liver for years and high doses will eventually cause toxicity in the future - but pharma retinoic acids only stay in the system for a short time and don‘t get stored in your tissue.

If you research the retinoids in dermatology journals you‘ll find out that they developed those drugs because they don‘t cause the toxicity that vitamin A itself causes.

And in my case, even while having a optimal vitamin D level and vitamin E intake - it did not prevent vitamin A toxicity.

 

[Birdie]

50,000 or 100,000 units of natural A per day with a bit of D3 and K2 MK4 and E would be good.

I have a family member doing 100K units of A and his cystic acne is 80% better.

About how long has this dose been used for good effects?

 

[ecstatichamster]

About how long has this dose been used for good effects?

2 years so far.

 

[Birdie]

2 years so far.

Thanks

 

[Birdie]

I'm starting tomorrow to up my Vitamin A from 25,000 IU / 4 or 5 times a week, to 50,000 daily. Reason is that I'm breaking out on my back again. I first had this problem back (2011) when I began to up my Vitamin D. I had been taking 4000 IU a day in winter and 2000 in summer. But raising the Vitamin A did the trick.

Lately, I'd upped the summer also to 4000.

I think I'll just keep the Vitamin D at 2000 year round for a while and up the A again. I'd been using retinal palmitate but it's unavailable. I might order the NOW. I think that Ray advised more A if you are dosing high D. and getting acne. I think if you are raising your metabolism and getting acne, he advised more Vitamin A..

 

[ursidae]

NOW Supplements, Vitamin A (Fish Liver Oil) 25,000 IU, Essential Nutrition, 250 Softgels​

doesn't that supplement contain PUFA's?

 

[Amazoniac]

I'm desperate.
Adult acne forever. Tried everything...
I want to give "mega dose" vit A a go.
May you suggest a conservative titration approach?
People mention coupling A with D , K , E , B2 , C ...
So confused.

No, I suggest you to couple it with the trash can and focus on actual nutrients. The cases of deficiency are often functional, requiring the person to address the impairments early or late. Measures that are not sustainable in the long-term have to lead to rapid resolution, I don't expect this to occur with poison A. Having enough venom D increases your tolerance to poison A, yet the antagonism is stronger for poison on venom than the opposite.

You would probably experience something positive at first, encouraging you to maintain or seek the effect, making you overlook the negatives. Once the detrimental effects are undeniable, there could be structural damage already. You might channel your frustration towards the forum, start attacking it as a way to set yourself apart from it and prime you to a fresh life, believing that you've been corrupted and with promises that you'd never fall for it again. After a while staying away from the forum, you would realize that the problems persist, your attacks were foolish, shifting the blame to you and your selectiveness of the information that's encountered; not being able to responsibilize anyone would lead to self-hate. The perception that this pattern of behavior has repeated itself in the past, therefore, likely to continue in the future, would make you question: what's the point of living if it will eventually be a failure? Well, now it's acne, liver damage and suicide concerns. Refusing to transcend before traveling the world, your journey would involve plenty of walking and sun exposure. You'd be too immersed to notice improvement in your issues, but it's only when you reach India that things would permanently change. After developing unshakeable confidence from the challenges faced in traveling, you would think that an innocent-looking Samosa offered by a street vendor couldn't bother you; little did you know a near-death experience awaited. The infection would take over, your immune system would enter the survival mode, intolerance and fever would ensue: all or nothing. After surviving, a fortunate outcome of the event would be the drastic change in your mucosal microneurome, almost an inadvertent fecal transplant. Once your immune system normalized its activity, it would no longer be reacting in disproportion, and the lack of low-grade inflammation would manifest on skin. The street vendor that manipulates foods with hands that are dirtier than our pasts is a healer. However, after a while of returning home, you would find your life to not be stimulating enough, the period of being the center of attention passed, people got used to the exaggerated stories, making you depressed and bored, and the prostration affected your entire life, with your skin suffering too. To conclude, you would solve the situation by deciding to travel indefinitely, would only stop at old age when you don't have the energy needed to adapt to new things and lack the immunological and hormonal profile required for robust responses.

Large amounts are safer through macabrotenes. It's worth paying attention to differences in effect depending on the food and meal composition. For example, sweet potato are practically all b-carotene, oranges are rich in b-cryptoxanthin that's less fat-soluble and easier to be absorbed, spinach has a lot of betaine that can make up for an increased need for methyl groups induced by poisons. When you have a generous pool of macabrotenes available, I would apply DEK on skin and let the body convert poison according to demand.

 

[Homo Consumericus]

Alright, I've figured out the solution to a pimple-free face for me-- 200IU vitamin E added to meals with low-moderate fat and 400IU to meals with moderate-high fat content.

A bonus discovery was that meals with very low/no fat (even zero fat dairy) were least likely to trigger facial eruptions when vitamin E wasn't added.

A year ago I wasn't sure which of the fat soluable vitamins was most helpful for clearning my face. Following multiple experiments with vitamin E, I confirmed pimples only returned the day after a day without vitamin E. I use good old D-alpha-tocopherol.

 

[tankasnowgod]

I was listening to the interview with Dr. Peat that Danny Roddy did maybe 2 or 3 years ago and Dr. Peat was talking about a good many successes with vitamin A up to 100,000 units a day.

I'm now taking 25,000 units a day while I take 50,000 units of D3 and some K2 (maybe 5-15mg a day of K2 MK4).

What are your positive experiences with A?

I have a relative with very bad adult acne who is relieved a bit with 100,000 units of A a day, but he won't take more than that and he may need more.

I suspect some people need a lot of A for awhile to remediate long term deficiencies.

Back when I did high dose Vitamin A (100,000 to 200,000 a day for several months), things seemed very positive, metabolically. I had used high(er) doses of Vitamin a for years, frequently in the 25-50,000 IU range, along with regular liver. I always used Vitamin D and K2 along with it, FWIW. I was at the leanest of my 30s while doing this, even with working an early morning shift.

When I tried cutting Vitamin A drastically, when the Generaux thread was all the rage, I got the quickest weight gain ever, ballooning to new highs. Clearly, some people benefit from that diet (and I think it's best used as an intervention diet when it does work), but not me. I do fine on the higher A doses. Even reading Grant's blog, it's clear he gets some basic things about A intake very wrong, as people used to supplement it in much higher doses, along with regular liver. There is simply no way people are eating higher amounts of A (in general) now as compared to, say, the 50s, 60s, or 70s.

I'm thinking about going back to the higher doses (100,000 IU) for a few months at this point.

 

[InChristAlone]

Back when I did high dose Vitamin A (100,000 to 200,000 a day for several months), things seemed very positive, metabolically. I had used high(er) doses of Vitamin a for years, frequently in the 25-50,000 IU range, along with regular liver. I always used Vitamin D and K2 along with it, FWIW. I was at the leanest of my 30s while doing this, even with working an early morning shift.

When I tried cutting Vitamin A drastically, when the Generaux thread was all the rage, I got the quickest weight gain ever, ballooning to new highs. Clearly, some people benefit from that diet (and I think it's best used as an intervention diet when it does work), but not me. I do fine on the higher A doses. Even reading Grant's blog, it's clear he gets some basic things about A intake very wrong, as people used to supplement it in much higher doses, along with regular liver. There is simply no way people are eating higher amounts of A (in general) now as compared to, say, the 50s, 60s, or 70s.

I'm thinking about going back to the higher doses (100,000 IU) for a few months at this point.

The explanation to ballooning up is all the stored retinol esters start to come out and possibly overwhelm the system and then fat is a good way to put toxins in storage. So then the cause would be redistributing. Not enough fiber to eliminate the toxic bile acids and they get reabsorbed back into the bloodstream. Things can seem all fine and dandy when the A is stored in the liver until it can't store anymore and starts spilling over. If you don't have fatty liver/cholestasis and consume plenty of fiber then you are possibly protected from this scenario. But if your liver is becoming diseased the burden would be too much and health would decline. There is a study revealing all older people on autopsy showed toxic amounts of A in the liver I can't remember all the findings on the pathology though.

 

[tankasnowgod]

The explanation to ballooning up is all the stored retinol esters start to come out and possibly overwhelm the system and then fat is a good way to put toxins in storage.

Meh, I don't believe that. Got any proof?

This study suggests that tissue levels of Vitamin A are LOWER in obesity, even though serum levels are "normal." If that were true, there would be little to no retinol to "come out" in the first place-

Obesity Leads to Tissue, but not Serum Vitamin A Deficiency - Scientific Reports

Obesity negatively affects multiple metabolic pathways, but little is known about the impact of obesity on vitamin A (VA)[retinol (ROL)], a nutrient that regulates expression of genes in numerous pathways essential for human development and health. We demonstrate that obese mice, generated from...

www.nature.com

I will also point out that a few of the studies that Grant Generaux cited on his "Obesity" blog post actually showed that Vitamin A DEFIECINCY caused obesity and fat gain.

It makes a lot more sense that Vitamin A itself is an anti-cortisol and anti-obesity agent-

Vitamin A Lowers High Cortisol Levels (Cushing Disease)

Several studies, starting with the human one. The scientists used retinoic acid, which is the active form of retinol. Usually, people take vitamin A in the form of retinyl palmitate or retinyl acetate, and then these pro-drugs convert into retinoic acid with an efficiency of about 10%. The...

raypeatforum.com

Vitamin A Is A Powerful Anti-obesity Agent By Lowering Cortisol

I know some people on the forum struggle with high cortisol, as well as its accompanying side effects such as weight gain, muscle loss, etc. It looks like vitamin A may be able to help, and it can do so even in people with Cushing disease whose cortisol levels are VERY high. Here is some info on...

raypeatforum.com

Generaux cited the following study-

Circulating Retinoic Acid Levels and the Development of Metabolic Syndrome

AbstractContext and Objective:. In this prospective study, we evaluated the association of retinoic acid (RA) with the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in the Chi

academic.oup.com

And here are some quotes from that study-

At baseline, higher RA levels were inversely associated with the presence of MetS (odds ratio 0.61; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.44–0.74, P < .001) after adjustment for age, gender, body mass index, the homeostasis model assessment index for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), and other confounding factors. Subjects with lower RA levels had a progressively worse cardiometabolic risk profile at baseline. Serum RA levels were inversely associated with 8-iso-prostaglandin F2α (P < .001), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (P = .015), and IL-6 (P = .020) and positively correlated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (P = .038). Among 825 subjects without MetS at baseline, 146 had developed it at 4 years. Serum RA by quartiles was inversely correlated with the incident MetS (adjusted hazard ratio 0.67; 95% CI 0.48–0.81, P = .006).

The serum RA level is inversely associated with the development of MetS independently of adiposity and insulin resistance.

Vitamin A Metabolism and Adipose Tissue Biology

In recent years, the importance of vitamin A in adipose tissue biology, obesity and type II diabetes has become apparent. This review focuses on recent developments within the area of vitamin A and adipose tissue biology. Adipose tissue has an active ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov