SamYo123

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I knew early on the supps were terrible for me, I tried them for 18mo on/off but mostly just made me cold to the bone for 3days after then ended up with hair loss a month later each time so I gave up. Judging by how I've reacted to removing the bulk of my VA intake food isn't magically better for you.
Any body builders on beans steak n starch? What about the phosphate?
 

mosaic01

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I found another explanation (see first post) that may explain why people report initial improvements when avoiding Vitamin A. Even Genereux's own data shows that many plateau after some time or don't even experience any benefits at all (except maybe some initial improvements in the first months:

Even before conducting this survey, quite a few people had reported that their early progress had stalled, or had even reversed as time went on. That’s a huge concern, and it’s the primary motivation that prompted this survey. The survey results confirmed those early sporadic reports. Many more people (~50%) are indeed hitting the “detox” setback and it’s far more common than I had previously thought.

This detox ideology is common in religious diet circles, for example in raw vegans and fruitarians, and going down that path usually leads to massive problems and suffering over time, because all symptoms are blamed on not adhering perfectly to the ideology, instead of questioning the ideology.

Given that (as shown by @haidut here) Vitamin A powerfully lowers cortisol and is also important for normal steroid function, lowering it acutely could could lead to the following changes:

- For a couple months it fels very good for some, as some have too much Vitamin A compared to Vitamin E, K, D, C and Zinc in their body (in that case, their vitamin A will normalize)
- When the Vitamin A is lowered too much over time, the body will shut down essential processes, increases the catabolic hormones, which may also feel good for some. Running on adrenaline and cortisol actually feels good subjectively. More importantly, it's very anti-inflammatory in the short and medium term.

After around 6 months at max, the body will have used up most of the liver stores, and probably shifts the metabolism into some kind of Vitamin A conversion mode - the body tries to reduce the vitamin a requirement and saves it for the most essential things.

One sign that this vicious cycle happens is that people think they react negatively to even low amounts of Vitamin A in foods like it happens to @Vinero.

This is not how the body works, and reacting in a negative way to a nutrient is usually a sign of deficiency. The effect probably comes from Vitamin A lowering stress hormones, which can be pro-inflammatory in the short term.

Since the data clear shows that Vitamin C is the most protective substance against Vitamin A toxicity, simply increasing Vitamin C should be the most obvious solution, followed by balancing it with Vitamin D, K, E and Zinc. While it's clear that avoiding high-vitamin A foods like liver and eggs can be beneficial for some, everything else is porbably a dead end, and those who react negatively to even the small amounts of vitamin A in dairy, fruits and vegetables should look into the root cause.
 
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bistecca

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So, all in all, this study below should serve as a serious warning to the crowd out there arguing that supplementing with ANY amount of vitamin A is "toxic" and that apparently many health problems can be "cured" by simply restricting vitamin A in take to the point of deficiency.
Love it
 

Dr. B

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@haidut how does this all work then if you’re drinking milk for vitamin A and not supplementing that, but supplementing vitamin d3. Do we need to be careful supplementing vitamin d3... is 5000IU D3 daily better and safer than 10000 IU
 

Dr. B

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I found another explanation (see first post) that may explain why people report initial improvements when avoiding Vitamin A. Even Genereux's own data shows that many plateau after some time or don't even experience any benefits at all (except maybe some initial improvements in the first months:



This detox ideology is common in religious diet circles, for example in raw vegans and fruitarians, and going down that path usually leads to massive problems and suffering over time, because all symptoms are blamed on not adhering perfectly to the ideology, instead of questioning the ideology.

Given that (as shown by @haidut here) Vitamin A powerfully lowers cortisol and is also important for normal steroid function, lowering it acutely could could lead to the following changes:

- For a couple months it fels very good for some, as some have too much Vitamin A compared to Vitamin E, K, D, C and Zinc in their body (in that case, their vitamin A will normalize)
- When the Vitamin A is lowered too much over time, the body will shut down essential processes, increases the catabolic hormones, which may also feel good for some. Running on adrenaline and cortisol actually feels good subjectively. More importantly, it's very anti-inflammatory in the short and medium term.

After around 6 months at max, the body will have used up most of the liver stores, and probably shifts the metabolism into some kind of Vitamin A conversion mode - the body tries to reduce the vitamin a requirement and saves it for the most essential things.

One sign that this vicious cycle happens is that people think they react negatively to even low amounts of Vitamin A in foods like it happens to @Vinero.

This is not how the body works, and reacting in a negative way to a nutrient is usually a sign of deficiency. The effect probably comes from Vitamin A lowering stress hormones, which can be pro-inflammatory in the short term.

Since the data clear shows that Vitamin C is the most protective substance against Vitamin A toxicity, simply increasing Vitamin C should be the most obvious solution, followed by balancing it with Vitamin D, K, E and Zinc. While it's clear that avoiding high-vitamin A foods like liver and eggs can be beneficial for some, everything else is porbably a dead end, and those who react negatively to even the small amounts of vitamin A in dairy, fruits and vegetables should look into the root cause.
What if you supplement no nutrients besides vitamin d3, vitamin A is all from liver and milk

What amount of D3 is safe then 5000IU or 10000 IU it seems there can be serious risks to D3 supplementing then...?
 

orangebear

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I think it would be interesting to try to find explanations for why they see massive improvements in their health from restricting Vit. A.
This. Really understanding what's going on would be great.

I grew up on a lot of VA: chicken liver, carrots, milk, eggs, etc., though at the same time, my parents didn't make sure we ate enough. That could be a recipe for VA toxicity since my low calorie intake was probably not doing my metabolism and thyroid any favors. As an adult, I ate a good bit of eggs, milk, and beef liver, whether I was just eating as I was taught, or — once my health started going down the toilet — when I was on keto, carnivore, RCP, etc.

It was my RP-insipred health coach who first suggested I might be overdoing VA, so I cut the liver, but still I was averaging about 10-20k IU per day with a ton of dairy, OJ, and other high VA fruits. I have always been underweight (120 lb or less for a 5'6" guy) but I went from under 100 in 2020 (got real sick) to 160 with RP-style eating. Some was lean gains despite barely exercising, but a good bit was fat. I felt relatively better until a couple months ago. I started feeling anxious again, sleeping poorly, and developed pain around the liver area (and probably the pancreas area), among other things.

Once I came across the low VA stuff, I decided to try it and immediately I felt better, but it's been a rather unstable ride for just the 2.5 weeks I've been doing it. I'm convinced I've been doing too much VA for my context, but changing my diet has come with other consequences, such as much less calcium and I believe some of my symptoms are related to that. Ultimately, I don't want to try yet another thing that is supposed to take years to help, but could make things worse in the end. Too many things I've already tried have done exactly that, including the RP-style eating with more VA than I can handle at the moment.

Truly understanding the mechanisms is desperately needed in order to make the right choices for actually improving health rather than masking symptoms while digging a deeper hole.
 

Dr. B

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This. Really understanding what's going on would be great.

I grew up on a lot of VA: chicken liver, carrots, milk, eggs, etc., though at the same time, my parents didn't make sure we ate enough. That could be a recipe for VA toxicity since my low calorie intake was probably not doing my metabolism and thyroid any favors. As an adult, I ate a good bit of eggs, milk, and beef liver, whether I was just eating as I was taught, or — once my health started going down the toilet — when I was on keto, carnivore, RCP, etc.

It was my RP-insipred health coach who first suggested I might be overdoing VA, so I cut the liver, but still I was averaging about 10-20k IU per day with a ton of dairy, OJ, and other high VA fruits. I have always been underweight (120 lb or less for a 5'6" guy) but I went from under 100 in 2020 (got real sick) to 160 with RP-style eating. Some was lean gains despite barely exercising, but a good bit was fat. I felt relatively better until a couple months ago. I started feeling anxious again, sleeping poorly, and developed pain around the liver area (and probably the pancreas area), among other things.

Once I came across the low VA stuff, I decided to try it and immediately I felt better, but it's been a rather unstable ride for just the 2.5 weeks I've been doing it. I'm convinced I've been doing too much VA for my context, but changing my diet has come with other consequences, such as much less calcium and I believe some of my symptoms are related to that. Ultimately, I don't want to try yet another thing that is supposed to take years to help, but could make things worse in the end. Too many things I've already tried have done exactly that, including the RP-style eating with more VA than I can handle at the moment.

Truly understanding the mechanisms is desperately needed in order to make the right choices for actually improving health rather than masking symptoms while digging a deeper hole.
Vitamin A could be causing hypocalcemia? What were the calcium and vitamin d intakes of people having trouble with vitamin A
 

orangebear

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Vitamin A could be causing hypocalcemia? What were the calcium and vitamin d intakes of people having trouble with vitamin A
It's more likely that VA causes hypercalcemia (my bone density is alarmingly low for a 33 yo guy and I have soft tissue calcification all while having low PTH). Consuming a ton of calcium before going low VA probably helped to keep the bone/joint symptoms at bay by minimizing bone resorption.

Edit: It's likely that the K2 content of all the dairy I was consuming helped too.
 

InChristAlone

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It's more likely that VA causes hypercalcemia (my bone density is alarmingly low for a 33 yo guy and I have soft tissue calcification all while having low PTH). Consuming a ton of calcium before going low VA probably helped to keep the bone/joint symptoms at bay by minimizing bone resorption.

Edit: It's likely that the K2 content of all the dairy I was consuming helped too.
Yes which is why calcium is so necessary on these diets full of vitamin A.
 

orangebear

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Yes which is why calcium is so necessary on these diets full of vitamin A.
So logically, it would make sense to still keep calcium intake up while detoxing the extra VA, right? There are few foods that are high Ca, low VA, so my best bet is to probably supplement with eggshells or such. If so, how do you supplement eggshells without wasting high VA eggs? :sweatsmile:
 

Pistachio

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I am posting about this study not because I am thrilled at the possibility of society now having oral (non-steroid) contraceptive methods for males, but rather because this study highlights that vitamin A is actually required for male fertility. Even minor interference with so-called retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-a) causes fertility problems and fully blocking that receptor invariably renders all subjects fully infertile. That receptor is activated by all-trans-retinoic acid - i.e. the "active" form of vitamin A synthesized from retinol and its various dietary/supplement precursors such as retinyl palmitate and retinyl acetate. The study managed to achieve full infertility in 99% of the study subjects (animals) by administering an RAR-a antagonist. The study also claims the effects were reversible after a few months of not using the RAR-a antagonist, but I have serious doubts about that claim. Why? Well, one reason is that vitamin A deficiency has been shown in many animal studies to often cause irreversible sterility if maintained for a sufficiently long period of time. The study itself readily acknowledges that fact while also explicitly stating that the RAR-a antagonist was initially abandoned by the pharma company that discovered it, since it was confirmed it acted as a "testicular toxin". Also, considering vitamin A is a required factor for steroidogenesis, and not just spermatogenesis, interfering with the RAR-a receptor may lead to hypogonadism severe enough to cause testicular atrophy, which is rarely reversible. Finally, since vitamin A and RAR-a activation are required for proper vision, this study may end up unleashing on the world a "solution" that causes terrible health problems in males on a global scale. Hhhm, if I was an evil person, dedicated to the cause of depopulation, I would probably think this drug is a "gift" from the gods. I wonder who funded those studies...Yes, that right, CONRAD - funded by Bill Gates and many other "elites" with an openly stated depopulation agenda. @Drareg

So, all in all, this study below should serve as a serious warning to the crowd out there arguing that supplementing with ANY amount of vitamin A is "toxic" and that apparently many health problems can be "cured" by simply restricting vitamin A in take to the point of deficiency.
Considering fertility is one of the primary biomarkers of good systemic health in males (and in females too), I fail to see how degrading it by reducing the activation of RAR-a (through vitamin A intake restriction) is in any way healthy. Perhaps the multitude of studies demonstrating virtually guaranteed cancer (usually hematological) development in organisms deficient in vitamin A would be even more convincing...if the vitamin A detractors can even be bothered reading them.

Oral Administration of a Retinoic Acid Receptor Antagonist Reversibly Inhibits Spermatogenesis in Mice
Could a birth control pill for men be on the horizon? Retinoic acid receptor antagonist interferes with sperm production

"...Scientists have known for almost 100 years that depriving an animal of dietary vitamin A causes male sterility. While investigating targeted loss of function of the gene encoding one of the RARs, RARalpha, which results in male infertility, senior author Debra J. Wolgemuth, Ph.D., ran across a paper by Bristol-Myers Squibb on a compound that was being tested for the treatment of skin and inflammatory diseases. The compound seemed to cause changes in the testis similar to the mutation that she and Dr. Chung were studying in Dr. Wolgemuth's lab. (Dr. Wolgemuth is professor of genetics and development and of obstetrics and gynecology; and Dr. Chung is an associate research scientist, both at Columbia University Medical Center). Bristol-Myers dropped its interest when it found that the compound also was ¬- in the company's words -- "a testicular toxin." The paper did not elaborate on how the drug caused infertility, so Dr. Wolgemuth and her team tested the drug in mice to find out; they noted that the changes it caused were similar to what one sees with vitamin A-deficiency and loss of function of RARalpha. "We were intrigued," said Dr. Wolgemuth. "One company's toxin may be another person's contraceptive." To investigate whether the compound prevented conception at even lower levels than those cited in the company's study, Dr. Wolgemuth and her team placed the treated male mice with females and found that reversible male sterility occurred with doses as low as 1.0mg/kg of body weight for a 4-week dosing period. One advantage of using a non-steroidal approach, the researchers say, is avoiding the side effects commonly associated with steroidal hormone-based methods."

"...This study was supported in part by grants initially from CONRAD and subsequently from the NIH, NICHD."
Is this anti-Vitamin A kick coming from the Peaters?
 

InChristAlone

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So logically, it would make sense to still keep calcium intake up while detoxing the extra VA, right? There are few foods that are high Ca, low VA, so my best bet is to probably supplement with eggshells or such. If so, how do you supplement eggshells without wasting high VA eggs? :sweatsmile:
Not sure!! Garrett Smith will tell you that you don't want it all to dump into your blood stream quickly though, unless you have good binders which I don't think he emphasizes enough. Need to bind it all up multiple times a day the gallbladder is squirting like 70 times a day and then it's being reabsorbed for the most part.
 

orangebear

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I lost my morning wood Peating aswell, will be interesting to see when that returns. Do you not know your average vit A intake based on cronometer?
For what it’s worth, I lost my morning wood as well while doing RP, but it’s been back this past week. That said, I still have a lot of unpleasant symptoms and a generally unstable situation with what symptoms to expect on any given day. I don’t know if the morning wood is back for good or not.
 

Dr. B

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So logically, it would make sense to still keep calcium intake up while detoxing the extra VA, right? There are few foods that are high Ca, low VA, so my best bet is to probably supplement with eggshells or such. If so, how do you supplement eggshells without wasting high VA eggs? :sweatsmile:
IF you can get non fortified skim milk that should be low vitamin A
Maybe ground bones, coconut water

It's more likely that VA causes hypercalcemia (my bone density is alarmingly low for a 33 yo guy and I have soft tissue calcification all while having low PTH). Consuming a ton of calcium before going low VA probably helped to keep the bone/joint symptoms at bay by minimizing bone resorption.

Edit: It's likely that the K2 content of all the dairy I was consuming helped too.

Does pasteurized grass fed dairy have K2 or only raw milk?
So calcium helps negate the effects of the vitamin A?
 

orangebear

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IF you can get non fortified skim milk that should be low vitamin A
Maybe ground bones, coconut water



Does pasteurized grass fed dairy have K2 or only raw milk?
So calcium helps negate the effects of the vitamin A?
Yeah. Getting non-fortified skim/low-fat dairy isn’t easy in the US, especially since I live in a city.

If I understand correctly and am interpreting my experience correctly, calcium helps to stop bone resorption but doesn’t necessarily solve VA induced hypercalcemia. Vitamin K does counteract the effect of VA to an extent, but ultimately if you have too much VA you need to lose some. In the meantime, calcium and vitamin K can help to deal with the high VA.
 

Dr. B

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Yeah. Getting non-fortified skim/low-fat dairy isn’t easy in the US, especially since I live in a city.

If I understand correctly and am interpreting my experience correctly, calcium helps to stop bone resorption but doesn’t necessarily solve VA induced hypercalcemia. Vitamin K does counteract the effect of VA to an extent, but ultimately if you have too much VA you need to lose some. In the meantime, calcium and vitamin K can help to deal with the high VA.
How did you figure VA causes all this, was it from supplements or foods? The effects of a VA supplement are completely different than a food to the point you may as well consider them different things. Just 10-20mg zinc daily can cause issues as a supplement yet you can get much more from Oysters and not have issues
 

orangebear

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How did you figure VA causes all this, was it from supplements or foods? The effects of a VA supplement are completely different than a food to the point you may as well consider them different things. Just 10-20mg zinc daily can cause issues as a supplement yet you can get much more from Oysters and not have issues
I did both eating too much high VA foods — including liver — and I supplementing CLO quite heavily at one point. I did preface my comment with "If I understand correctly and am interpreting my experience correctly" so I'm not making claims to know for sure, but if acute VA poisoning can cause osteoporosis and hypercalcemia, then it's not a stretch to imagine chronic VA poisoning might do so as well. What I do know is that I do have symptoms of hypercalcemia and X-rays show both soft tissue calcification and low bone density. In the case of acute VA poisoning, these things are known to happen without elevating PTH. I also fit this pattern since I have low PTH. Again, I am not saying this is it for sure, but the patterns do match up fairly well. Consuming foods with a lot of calcium and vitamin K seem to alleviate the symptoms, though I have yet to conduct a proper experiment with those compounds isolated.
 

Dr. B

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I did both eating too much high VA foods — including liver — and I supplementing CLO quite heavily at one point. I did preface my comment with "If I understand correctly and am interpreting my experience correctly" so I'm not making claims to know for sure, but if acute VA poisoning can cause osteoporosis and hypercalcemia, then it's not a stretch to imagine chronic VA poisoning might do so as well. What I do know is that I do have symptoms of hypercalcemia and X-rays show both soft tissue calcification and low bone density. In the case of acute VA poisoning, these things are known to happen without elevating PTH. I also fit this pattern since I have low PTH. Again, I am not saying this is it for sure, but the patterns do match up fairly well. Consuming foods with a lot of calcium and vitamin K seem to alleviate the symptoms, though I have yet to conduct a proper experiment with those compounds isolated.
Does pasteurized grass fed whole milk contain significant vitamin k2?
 

Dr. B

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That matches my experience after months of experimenting with liver and eggs.
I am posting about this study not because I am thrilled at the possibility of society now having oral (non-steroid) contraceptive methods for males, but rather because this study highlights that vitamin A is actually required for male fertility. Even minor interference with so-called retinoic acid receptor alpha (RAR-a) causes fertility problems and fully blocking that receptor invariably renders all subjects fully infertile. That receptor is activated by all-trans-retinoic acid - i.e. the "active" form of vitamin A synthesized from retinol and its various dietary/supplement precursors such as retinyl palmitate and retinyl acetate. The study managed to achieve full infertility in 99% of the study subjects (animals) by administering an RAR-a antagonist. The study also claims the effects were reversible after a few months of not using the RAR-a antagonist, but I have serious doubts about that claim. Why? Well, one reason is that vitamin A deficiency has been shown in many animal studies to often cause irreversible sterility if maintained for a sufficiently long period of time. The study itself readily acknowledges that fact while also explicitly stating that the RAR-a antagonist was initially abandoned by the pharma company that discovered it, since it was confirmed it acted as a "testicular toxin". Also, considering vitamin A is a required factor for steroidogenesis, and not just spermatogenesis, interfering with the RAR-a receptor may lead to hypogonadism severe enough to cause testicular atrophy, which is rarely reversible. Finally, since vitamin A and RAR-a activation are required for proper vision, this study may end up unleashing on the world a "solution" that causes terrible health problems in males on a global scale. Hhhm, if I was an evil person, dedicated to the cause of depopulation, I would probably think this drug is a "gift" from the gods. I wonder who funded those studies...Yes, that right, CONRAD - funded by Bill Gates and many other "elites" with an openly stated depopulation agenda. @Drareg

So, all in all, this study below should serve as a serious warning to the crowd out there arguing that supplementing with ANY amount of vitamin A is "toxic" and that apparently many health problems can be "cured" by simply restricting vitamin A in take to the point of deficiency.
Considering fertility is one of the primary biomarkers of good systemic health in males (and in females too), I fail to see how degrading it by reducing the activation of RAR-a (through vitamin A intake restriction) is in any way healthy. Perhaps the multitude of studies demonstrating virtually guaranteed cancer (usually hematological) development in organisms deficient in vitamin A would be even more convincing...if the vitamin A detractors can even be bothered reading them.

Oral Administration of a Retinoic Acid Receptor Antagonist Reversibly Inhibits Spermatogenesis in Mice
Could a birth control pill for men be on the horizon? Retinoic acid receptor antagonist interferes with sperm production

"...Scientists have known for almost 100 years that depriving an animal of dietary vitamin A causes male sterility. While investigating targeted loss of function of the gene encoding one of the RARs, RARalpha, which results in male infertility, senior author Debra J. Wolgemuth, Ph.D., ran across a paper by Bristol-Myers Squibb on a compound that was being tested for the treatment of skin and inflammatory diseases. The compound seemed to cause changes in the testis similar to the mutation that she and Dr. Chung were studying in Dr. Wolgemuth's lab. (Dr. Wolgemuth is professor of genetics and development and of obstetrics and gynecology; and Dr. Chung is an associate research scientist, both at Columbia University Medical Center). Bristol-Myers dropped its interest when it found that the compound also was ¬- in the company's words -- "a testicular toxin." The paper did not elaborate on how the drug caused infertility, so Dr. Wolgemuth and her team tested the drug in mice to find out; they noted that the changes it caused were similar to what one sees with vitamin A-deficiency and loss of function of RARalpha. "We were intrigued," said Dr. Wolgemuth. "One company's toxin may be another person's contraceptive." To investigate whether the compound prevented conception at even lower levels than those cited in the company's study, Dr. Wolgemuth and her team placed the treated male mice with females and found that reversible male sterility occurred with doses as low as 1.0mg/kg of body weight for a 4-week dosing period. One advantage of using a non-steroidal approach, the researchers say, is avoiding the side effects commonly associated with steroidal hormone-based methods."

"...This study was supported in part by grants initially from CONRAD and subsequently from the NIH, NICHD."

Mate what if you, for 3 years, consumed 5000 IU vitamin A from whole milk and liver and supplemented 10000 IU d3. I do have those symptoms like penis and teste shrinkage, and ive gotten massive improvements from dropping the vitamin D3 entirely. Even within a week of stopping and maintaining the milk liver diet, massive increases in everything.

Im wondering if complete healing is possible considering how long ive been megadosing the D and possibly been deficient in A
 

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