Low Toxin Lifestyle This "Low Toxin & Low Vitamin A" Movement Is All About The Great Awakening

[mosaic01]

If true, it's great news. Could you share a few sources for this or point to where you've discussed this elsewhere? And what about the calcium to phosphorus ratio? I've recently had to lower my calcium intake due to a health challenge and am only consuming enough calcium so that Ca/P >1. Any further information you can provide would be most appreciated.

Expert says guidelines recommend too much calcium - Harvard Women's Health Watch - Harvard Health

500 to 700 milligrams of calcium through diet and 800 to 1,000 of vitamin D as a supplement should be adequate to preserve bone density....

www.health.harvard.edu

"Essentially, I think that adults do not need 1,200 milligrams of calcium a day. The World Health Organization's recommendation of 500 milligrams is probably about right. The United Kingdom sets the goal at 700 milligrams, which is fine, too. It allows for a little leeway," says Dr. Willett.

The studies about the "requirement" were a joke. Giving older women a 1200mg calcium supplement for a couple weeks. How can that count as a requirement.

The question should be how low can you go until issues appear.

The apparent calcium paradox, mostly derived from ecological studies, whereby countries or populations with lower calcium intakes also have a lower prevalence of osteoporosis, suggests that environmental factors other than calcium intake play a key role in preventing osteopenia, osteoporosis and bone fracture.

Evidence from human studies on the relationship between calcium intake and various health outcomes was reviewed and found to be inconsistent. It was not possible to use measures of bone health for deriving calcium requirements.

https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4101

Scientists have reasoned that maintaining an adequate level of calcium in the blood could keep the body from drawing it out of the bones, thereby keeping bones strong. In the late 1970s, a couple of brief studies indicated that consuming 1,200 mg of calcium a day could preserve a postmenopausal woman's calcium balance. The current recommendation is based on those studies.

So basically they used the fraudulent calcium balance studies that only measured it for a couple weeks, but Dr. Willet says you can only judge calcium balance when doing studies that last years.

But that may not have been a sound decision. "The recommendation was based on calcium balance studies that lasted just a few weeks. In fact, calcium balance is determined over the course of years," says Dr. Willett.

Plus some balance studies showed that for women the EAR (Estimated Average Requirement) is only 400mg and for men around 500mg, and that is just taking into account the short-term balance studies, so the actual requirement has to be way lower, like 200mg or so.

The problem is when defining an RDA, they attempt to measure the average requirement and then add some large safety margin - they did the same with retinol. Because this is all based on the ideology that more must be better.

Across the 74 countries with data, average national dietary calcium intake ranges from 175 to 1233 mg/day. Many countries in Asia have average dietary calcium intake less than 500 mg/day.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5684325/#:~:text=Across%20the%2074%20countries%20with%20data%2C%20the%20best%20estimate%20of,1).

200-500mg per day seem to be perfectly fine.

The actual physiological requirement of calcium has never been determined. It could be as low as 100 or 200mg in healthy people, for all we know. Nepalese people have an average intake of 175mg a day. Balance studies, even done for years, can't count as requirement, they just show how much the body excretes.

If bone health is no marker of calcium requirement, then we are left with a mineral that does not create obvious deficiency states in low amounts.

The calcium RDA is merely political to keep the dairy industry alive (or poison the population). How funny that these smart scientists always arrive at an RDA that perfectly matches the average intake in Europe and the USA, but completely ignore the epidemiological data from South America, Africa, Asia. Looks like western people have figured out everything intuitively by just eating the perfect amounts of nutrients. Oh, but we are also the sickest populations. Something isn't right here.

Given that calcium is in every food, and you will get at least 200mg on a whole foods diet, calcium requirement doesn't seem to matter in practice, but getting too much is very easy on a dairy heavy diet. Of course, during vA detox, calcium loss from bones could be an issue.

 

[Peater]

The high calcium intake Peat recommended only serves a purpose because he also recommended a high vitamin A diet. The body uses calcium to bind up free retinoids that it cannot detox at the moment. If you have high free retinoids that cannot be detoxed fast enough and a low calcium intake the body will pull calcium from the bones and teeth. Either way, if the pattern continues you end up with calcified tissues. The dietary calcium just prevents you from getting osteoporosis at the same time.

That is interesting and reassuring. The (Comparatively) low calcium intake of the low toxin diet was something that stood out to me. Of course I am looking through a Peaty lens, having been here nearly 10 years.

 

[Caro]

The high calcium intake Peat recommended only serves a purpose because he also recommended a high vitamin A diet. The body uses calcium to bind up free retinoids that it cannot detox at the moment. If you have high free retinoids that cannot be detoxed fast enough and a low calcium intake the body will pull calcium from the bones and teeth. Either way, if the pattern continues you end up with calcified tissues. The dietary calcium just prevents you from getting osteoporosis at the same time.

Many thanks Nick! This information should be important for the RP forum members to know, given many would have a high calcium and high Vitamin A intake. Independently, I had come to suspect tissue calcification, including blood vessels. The symptoms had appeared suddenly, so one could be thinking everything's fine and on track, and then ... boom, it isn't and then scrambling to figure out what's happened.

 

[Caro]

Expert says guidelines recommend too much calcium - Harvard Women's Health Watch - Harvard Health

500 to 700 milligrams of calcium through diet and 800 to 1,000 of vitamin D as a supplement should be adequate to preserve bone density....

www.health.harvard.edu

The studies about the "requirement" were a joke. Giving older women a 1200mg calcium supplement for a couple weeks. How can that count as a requirement.

The question should be how low can you go until issues appear.

https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2015.4101

So basically they used the fraudulent calcium balance studies that only measured it for a couple weeks, but Dr. Willet says you can only judge calcium balance when doing studies that last years.



Plus some balance studies showed that for women the EAR (Estimated Average Requirement) is only 400mg and for men around 500mg, and that is just taking into account the short-term balance studies, so the actual requirement has to be way lower, like 200mg or so.

The problem is when defining an RDA, they attempt to measure the average requirement and then add some large safety margin - they did the same with retinol. Because this is all based on the ideology that more must be better.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5684325/#:~:text=Across%20the%2074%20countries%20with%20data%2C%20the%20best%20estimate%20of,1).

200-500mg per day seem to be perfectly fine.

The actual physiological requirement of calcium has never been determined. It could be as low as 100 or 200mg in healthy people, for all we know. Nepalese people have an average intake of 175mg a day. Balance studies, even done for years, can't count as requirement, they just show how much the body excretes.

If bone health is no marker of calcium requirement, then we are left with a mineral that does not create obvious deficiency states in low amounts.

The calcium RDA is merely political to keep the dairy industry alive (or poison the population). How funny that these smart scientists always arrive at an RDA that perfectly matches the average intake in Europe and the USA, but completely ignore the epidemiological data from South America, Africa, Asia. Looks like western people have figured out everything intuitively by just eating the perfect amounts of nutrients. Oh, but we are also the sickest populations. Something isn't right here.

Given that calcium is in every food, and you will get at least 200mg on a whole foods diet, calcium requirement doesn't seem to matter in practice, but getting too much is very easy on a dairy heavy diet. Of course, during vA detox, calcium loss from bones could be an issue.

Thank you Mosaic for your source links and comments. I'll have a fair amount of reading to do, which I'll start on shortly. Glad to hear that calcium requirements aren't that high; my reduced intake is probably a good development.

I still do have the question about the calcium to phosphorus ratio that RP often mentioned. Do you have any comments on the importance of keeping Ca/P>1?

Again, many thanks for your response.

 

[mosaic01]

I still do have the question about the calcium to phosphorus ratio that RP often mentioned. Do you have any comments on the importance of keeping Ca/P>1?

Vitamin B3 reduces P levels markedly. Serum phosphate seems to be unrelated to calcium intake but more related to kidney health.

 

[charlie]

The symptoms had appeared suddenly, so one could be thinking everything's fine and on track, and then ... boom, it isn't and then scrambling to figure out what's happened.

And that is exactly how it happens, everything looks fine and then boom.

 

[mosaic01]

Opinion | Conversations with ... Walter Willett, MD

'Conversations with ...' is a series of exclusive video interviews with leaders of medical research and policy. In this segment, George Lundberg, MD, discusses what's caused the confusion around calci

www.medpagetoday.com

Willet said. "Calcium has been pushed too much."

 

[Caro]

Opinion | Conversations with ... Walter Willett, MD

'Conversations with ...' is a series of exclusive video interviews with leaders of medical research and policy. In this segment, George Lundberg, MD, discusses what's caused the confusion around calci

www.medpagetoday.com

Willet said. "Calcium has been pushed too much."

Thanks for your last two posts and links, will delve into them asap. Interesting about B3 and P, I'll look into that further.

 

[Peater]

Vitamin B3 reduces P levels markedly. Serum phosphate seems to be unrelated to calcium intake but more related to kidney health.

Extremely interesting, thank you.

 

[AinmAnseo]

Vitamin B3 reduces P levels markedly.

Mosaic,
Is there a study that shows this?
What intake levels of B3 (and what form) are you referring to?
Does P refer to Phosphorus?
Thanks.

 

[miwatson007]

Recently I also get the impression that all is converging.

Life forced me to look into this, after I somehow had ignored it for a couple years. To me, the toxic bile theory from Dr. Smith (I guess he coined the term?), built on top of the work of Grant Genereux, is a realization that we have been fundamentally lied to about how our body works and what matters when it comes to health. Everyone is always talking about "detox", thinking about obscure heavy metals or PFAS, or whatever. But in reality, people are consuming toxins daily with their food, especially "vitamin A" and ironically they poison themselves with things that are meant for detox, like green smoothies (there have been documented cases of liver and kidney failure from this).

For the last decade I had been wondering why everyone is just getting sicker, and there is no real solution to modern disease. Then I thought something like "Well, it's a complex combination of all kinds of problematic things and so there can't be a simple solution to disease as a whole". But actually the solution is very simple.

All of this to me is not about a diet or some kind of detox fad, it's a way of life. A way of life that is the complete opposite of all what has been tried before in modern times and what humanity is a whole is currently doing.

Now that people are also questioning the essentiality of certain vitamins/minerals, the corrupt ideologies that started with cod liver oil and big pharma producing synthetic vitamins can be overthrown. They made us worry about non-existing deficiencies, while conveniently burying all the knowledge about poisons. Genereux' take on the history of vitamin C opened my eyes about the fraud that are vitamins. The entire concept was always wrong, essentiality is conditional based on toxicity and environment.

The historical context is so important to understand all of this.

If you go back to around 1900, people lived happily without the concept of vitamins at all. No one woke up and thought "I need to get some vitamins to stay healthy". Imagine this, thousands of years without the concept of vitamins, and no one seemed to care.

But people knew about poisons. "Influenza" was regarded as poisoning of the air. It was common sense to our ancestors that most disease comes from toxins. In fact, the term virus comes from the word "toxin", I think from latin or greek.

The vitamin mania of the last 100 years started ironically with retinol - namely with cod liver oil being force-fed to children, who hated it. Later came synthetic vitamins, produced by the same families who now run the big pharmaceutical companies. Ascorbic acid, the b-vitamins, etc. They were all given to the population to suppress certain symptoms and make the population more productive, especially during war. The WW2-soldiers ran on drugs, b-vitamins and ascorbic acid.

I also mentioned previously that people did not even drink much coffee until 120 years ago. Milk and dairy is also heavily pushed on the population, despite the emerging scientific consensus that the actual requirement for calcium is lower than 500mg. The actual requirement of calcium is probably in the range of 200-300mg, the amount available via common foods.

These chemicals stayed with us, and our fears have led us to run into the open arms of the industry, producing now tens of thousands of different kind of chemicals with all kinds of untested substances, for our wellbeing, apparently.

Somehow we started to think that we just have to find the right combination of chemicals to get healthy, without any good guiding principle.

The guiding princple of pharma medicine is that symptoms/inflammation/pain needs to be suppressed. Peat offered a way better approach, namely bioenergetics; the focus on generative energy production in the living, self-organizing cell - producing structure and vice versa. A framework that has great potential, but does not work in practice if it ignores the mass poisoning of humanity done under the banner of "science".

I am quite certain that the ruling powers knew about the toxic effects of liver from sailors dying to canned meat - covered up under the discovery of scurvy. They just did not know yet what the substance was that produced all of that death and suffering, so they paid scientists to find said substance. That's why the studies on the discovery of retinol seem to be done with so much idiotic preseverance to produce symptoms of absurd suffering in the test animals and ignore those scientists who said that rats can live just fine without vitamin A.

First, they just fed us cod liver oil, but once they had isolated the retinol chemical, they slowly began adding it to everything. Now we are at the point where our entire food production chain is being poisoned by added carotenes and retinol.

Finally, here's a quote from Ray Peat I discovered via Danny Roddy:

"Nutrition is as complex, open, and undefined as metaphysics or cosmology. It's a process of exploring, learning, and figuring things out. It's never a closed book or a finished subject."

First step of understanding nutrition is undoing the damage done by the medical tyranny that exists all around us these days, undoing the last 100 years and going back to the understanding of life that our ancestors had - an understanding based on experience and tradition. The knowledge of toxic "black" bile and toxins in our environment, and that the body must be purified to stay healthy. All even going back to the ancient religions - avoiding being "unclean", avoiding certain foods like pork, etc.

The older I have gotten the more I have realized that the further away from nature we go the less satisfied with life we become and the sicker we feel. Lifestyle, vocation, food, water, relationships. Everything. The less natural it is the more toxic it is to us.

I took the day off yesterday (I work in the tech industry) and made garden planters out of old, discarded wooden fence materials in the bright Florida sunshine. My wife helped me. It was immensely gratifying work with my mate. Afterwards I commented to her how gratifying the work was and how much it centered me. She agreed.

I am beginning to believe that our baseline health, from birth, has been stunted by vaccinations. I am an example of this muted immunological baseline. Born healthy in 1967 I was given the recommended vaccinations which at the time were the DTP combo, mumps, polio, rubella and measles (I believe I was around 18 months old but could be off on that). A few months later I developed both allergies and asthma and my parents were told that they needed to remove the carpeting and drapes from the home as those materials collected the allergens that were causing the asthma and allergy attacks. I then landed in the hospital with pneumonia at about 3 years of age and spent a week in an oxygen tent. At about 5 years I was then getting allergy shots weekly and taking daily oral meds for both ailments. After a year they moved the shot schedule to bi-weekly and then, eventually monthly. Somewhere in there the doctors decided that my tonsils were becoming too inflamed so they should remove this part of my natural immune system. By 6 or 7 years of age the allergy symptoms had calmed down enough that they discontinued the allergy shots but I still suffered from both allergies and asthma in varying intensities, depending on the time of year, and continued to take the oral meds they prescribed for a number of years.

My point is that none of the things the medical establishment did were natural and I now believe that, because of that, I suffered while they profited.

Today, compared with most people my age, I am very healthy. No pharmaceutical medications. 12% body fat, resting heart rate of 55. I lift heavy 3 to 5 times a week. I eat almost no processed foods and drink 2 to 4 glasses of wine a month. No smoking or drugs (outside of the wine). When I go for my annual they consider me an anomaly. What I never tell them is that I take an enormous amount of daily supplements, a combination and formulation that I have arrived at after years of experimentation on myself. Taking these supplements is not natural but it is something I do because, over the years symptoms have demonstrated to me that my body's innate, natural ability to function optimally is not what I think it should be. As stated in the beginning, I believe this is due in large part to the unnatural way I was "treated" by the medical community postpartum and beyond. I further believe because of how the medical community "treated" me that my body can't achieve its intended homeostasis without supplementation.

Unfortunately, my history is not unique. Outside of the Amish, who do not participate in our allopathic medical industry, and who subsequently do not suffer from any of the standard ailments everyone else does, I believe we are all starting with some level of immunodeficiency. For some it is a more intense immunodeficiency than others. But, I believe we all leave the starting blocks in this race with a millstone tied to our waists. I think that supplementation is one way to help the body restore some of its intended immunoresponse and overall health.

 

[mosaic01]

Mosaic,
Is there a study that shows this?
What intake levels of B3 (and what form) are you referring to?
Does P refer to Phosphorus?
Thanks.

Yes. Peat often wrote that niacinamide lowers serum phosphate effectively. He mentioned it alongside other things like aspirin, I think.

So there are many studies, it's well known apparently. All forms of B3 do it.

niacin compounds reduce active transport–mediated phosphorus absorption by their direct inhibitory action on the intestinal cotransporter (NaPi-2b; also known as Npt2b and encoded by the SLC34A2 gene).

extended-release niacin causes a sustained reduction in serum phosphorus concentrations across a spectrum of kidney function corresponding to estimated glomerular filtration rates of 30-90 mL/min/1.73 m2 (0.50-1.50 mL/s/1.73 m2) and greater. Moreover, this clear phosphorus-lowering effect of extended-release niacin was apparent among the 215 patients with estimated glomerular filtration rates of 30-59 mL/min/1.73 m2 (0.50-0.98 mL/s/1.73 m2), stage 3a and 3b chronic kidney disease, specifically.

https://www.ajkd.org/article/S0272-6386(10)00834-6/fulltext

Outside of the Amish, who do not participate in our allopathic medical industry, and who subsequently do not suffer from any of the standard ailments everyone else does

It's interesting that the Amish don't get cancer (they are not poisoned by vaccines, EMF, furniture, fast food, etc.), but they do get heart issues at a similar rate as the average US population.

 

[RealNeat]

Thank you Mosaic for your source links and comments. I'll have a fair amount of reading to do, which I'll start on shortly. Glad to hear that calcium requirements aren't that high; my reduced intake is probably a good development.

I still do have the question about the calcium to phosphorus ratio that RP often mentioned. Do you have any comments on the importance of keeping Ca/P>1?

Again, many thanks for your response.

I would definitely not take what has been said for proper evidence that calcium intake should be as low as 200mg, it's just conjecture at best with low quality reasoning. Ray has plenty of evidence to the contrary, it's kind of ridiculous that people are using such surface level reasoning instead of Rays expertise on the topic. We can pick apart isolated vitamins and minerals all day long and find a guru to bow down to, ultimately it's context that matters and the devil still usually lies in the details.

 

[AinmAnseo]

Yes. Peat often wrote that niacinamide lowers serum phosphate effectively. He mentioned it alongside other things like aspirin, I think.

So there are many studies, it's well known apparently. All forms of B3 do it.

https://www.ajkd.org/article/S0272-6386(10)00834-6/fulltext

It's interesting that the Amish don't get cancer (they are not poisoned by vaccines, EMF, furniture, fast food, etc.), but they do get heart issues at a similar rate as the average US population.

Thanks.

 

[purple pill]

The older I have gotten the more I have realized that the further away from nature we go the less satisfied with life we become and the sicker we feel. Lifestyle, vocation, food, water, relationships. Everything. The less natural it is the more toxic it is to us.

I took the day off yesterday (I work in the tech industry) and made garden planters out of old, discarded wooden fence materials in the bright Florida sunshine. My wife helped me. It was immensely gratifying work with my mate. Afterwards I commented to her how gratifying the work was and how much it centered me. She agreed.

I am beginning to believe that our baseline health, from birth, has been stunted by vaccinations. I am an example of this muted immunological baseline. Born healthy in 1967 I was given the recommended vaccinations which at the time were the DTP combo, mumps, polio, rubella and measles (I believe I was around 18 months old but could be off on that). A few months later I developed both allergies and asthma and my parents were told that they needed to remove the carpeting and drapes from the home as those materials collected the allergens that were causing the asthma and allergy attacks. I then landed in the hospital with pneumonia at about 3 years of age and spent a week in an oxygen tent. At about 5 years I was then getting allergy shots weekly and taking daily oral meds for both ailments. After a year they moved the shot schedule to bi-weekly and then, eventually monthly. Somewhere in there the doctors decided that my tonsils were becoming too inflamed so they should remove this part of my natural immune system. By 6 or 7 years of age the allergy symptoms had calmed down enough that they discontinued the allergy shots but I still suffered from both allergies and asthma in varying intensities, depending on the time of year, and continued to take the oral meds they prescribed for a number of years.

My point is that none of the things the medical establishment did were natural and I now believe that, because of that, I suffered while they profited.

Today, compared with most people my age, I am very healthy. No pharmaceutical medications. 12% body fat, resting heart rate of 55. I lift heavy 3 to 5 times a week. I eat almost no processed foods and drink 2 to 4 glasses of wine a month. No smoking or drugs (outside of the wine). When I go for my annual they consider me an anomaly. What I never tell them is that I take an enormous amount of daily supplements, a combination and formulation that I have arrived at after years of experimentation on myself. Taking these supplements is not natural but it is something I do because, over the years symptoms have demonstrated to me that my body's innate, natural ability to function optimally is not what I think it should be. As stated in the beginning, I believe this is due in large part to the unnatural way I was "treated" by the medical community postpartum and beyond. I further believe because of how the medical community "treated" me that my body can't achieve its intended homeostasis without supplementation.

Unfortunately, my history is not unique. Outside of the Amish, who do not participate in our allopathic medical industry, and who subsequently do not suffer from any of the standard ailments everyone else does, I believe we are all starting with some level of immunodeficiency. For some it is a more intense immunodeficiency than others. But, I believe we all leave the starting blocks in this race with a millstone tied to our waists. I think that supplementation is one way to help the body restore some of its intended immunoresponse and overall health.

Really shows how resilient the human body can be in the face of endless assaults by the medical industry. What are your go to supplements if you don't mind me asking?

 

[mosaic01]

I would definitely not take what has been said for proper evidence that calcium intake should be as low as 200mg, it's just conjecture at best with low quality reasoning. Ray has plenty of evidence to the contrary, it's kind of ridiculous that people are using such surface level reasoning instead of Rays expertise on the topic.

I mean Dr. Walter Willet is a leading nutrition authority, so his opinion that 500mg is enough should at least be recognized, no?

I did not say that your personal calcium intake should be as low as 200mg, I just commented on the general evidence according to the available data. This is just a discussion of evidence, not some kind of blanket recommendation for people to blindly act upon without thinking things through themselves.

The question is, how can someone claim that calcium is awesome in large doses, when the studies show how destructive calcium supplementation is, and all the data points to it being completely irrelevant for bone health?

The institutions like EFSA or the national institutions that set the RDA, they actually went out to show how awesome large doses of calcium are. They ignored the old WHO data and have come up with a RDA that is very high and can only be met with dairy products. This is actually pretty "pro Peat". But even their own data shows: It doesn't add up.

It's absurd to claim the majority of the world population which has lived without dairy or supplements for millenia, suddenly needs one of those to stay healthy. And if dairy is out of the picture, a calcium requirement <500mg is not really too far fetched.

 

[Peater]

The high calcium intake Peat recommended only serves a purpose because he also recommended a high vitamin A diet. The body uses calcium to bind up free retinoids that it cannot detox at the moment. If you have high free retinoids that cannot be detoxed fast enough and a low calcium intake the body will pull calcium from the bones and teeth. Either way, if the pattern continues you end up with calcified tissues. The dietary calcium just prevents you from getting osteoporosis at the same time.

Just a thought - can calcium therefore help to hasten reducing bodily vit A levels if used with sufficient fibre, encouraging bile dumps etc?

 

[Nick]

Just a thought - can calcium therefore help to hasten reducing bodily vit A levels if used with sufficient fibre, encouraging bile dumps etc?

I'm not sure. Maybe if it were to stay in the intestines. But in the tissue I would suspect it stays frozen in place unless it gets decalcified.

 

[Peater]

I'm not sure. Maybe if it were to stay in the intestines. But in the tissue I would suspect it stays frozen in place unless it gets decalcified.

Hmmm, good point. Cheers!

 

[Risingfire]

Why is this called the Ray Peat forum when this dismisses nearly every idea that Dr. Peat has introduced?