Vitamin A Is Toxic?

[HealthisWealth]

I have tried both ways, but orally gives me the worst effect. I did try it yesterday with topical D and K2 included, as well as oral D and K2, which I believe helped significantly. I also took MitoLipin, saturated choline, topically, which may have been a good help as well. Ultimately, with combing all these, and using a small amount of A (12,500) it has been my most successful episode with it yet.

what dosage d3 and k2?

 

[Mossy]

what dosage d3 and k2?

Topical
--------
D3: 4,000 iu
K2: 4 mg
A: 12, 500 iu
MitoLipin: 5 drops ( I forgot gotten to mention this, which could be a big contributing factor)

Oral
-----
D3: 4,000 iu
K2: 4 mg

 

[HealthisWealth]

@Mossy

You mean d3 in iu and k2 and mcg?

and you take the retinol everyday?

 

[mayweatherking]

does he have blood work like his testosterone level? testosterone is made via vitamin A, i want to see what it is. maybe he just down regulated all his hormones so he has none, then that cured it, which yeah it would work, but he would have no testosterone?

 

[Mossy]

@Mossy

You mean d3 in iu and k2 and mcg?

and you take the retinol everyday?

Indeed. Thanks for catching my blatant errors; trying to do too much at once--either that, or too much potato juice.

 

[Mossy]

does he have blood work like his testosterone level? testosterone is made via vitamin A, i want to see what it is. maybe he just down regulated all his hormones so he has none, then that cured it, which yeah it would work, but he would have no testosterone?

Hi mayweatherking, I can't tell if this question is for me or someone else.

 

[mayweatherking]

Hi mayweatherking, I can't tell if this question is for me or someone else.

whoever knows about the guy who made the post, saying vitamin A is toxic, i wonder what his testosterone level is, after saying vitamin A is so bad

 

[Mossy]

@Mossy

You mean d3 in iu and k2 and mcg?

and you take the retinol everyday?

I forgot to add, I don’t take retinol every day, because I have such a bad reaction to it. It’s one of the least taken supplements that I have.

 

[Shredder2]

Interesting stuff. I had readily obvious signs of vitamin A poisoning after regularly eating liver some years back as part of a paleo diet, and years later I still can not eat liver without experiencing symptoms soon after. Even years before that I took Accutane, which is probably partially why I reached toxicity so quickly when eating liver regularly.

 

[raypeatclips]

Interesting stuff. I had readily obvious signs of vitamin A poisoning after regularly eating liver some years back as part of a paleo diet, and years later I still can not eat liver without experiencing symptoms soon after. Even years before that I took Accutane, which is probably partially why I reached toxicity so quickly when eating liver regularly.

What symptoms? Have you had your vitamin D levels tested?

 

[Shredder2]

What symptoms? Have you had your vitamin D levels tested?

Dryness of hair skin and eyes, flaking skin, chapped lips, skin thinning, photo sensitivity, nose bleeds, general stiffness throughout the body. Never had D tested.

 

[raypeatclips]

Dryness of hair skin and eyes, flaking skin, chapped lips, skin thinning, photo sensitivity, nose bleeds, general stiffness throughout the body. Never had D tested.

Any plans to get D tested? I am always interested by people's vit D levels when they say they have issues with A as I think it might be exacerbating a D deficiency.

 

[Shredder2]

Any plans to get D tested? I am always interested by people's vit D levels when they say they have issues with A as I think it might be exacerbating a D deficiency.

I could be low on vitamin D now, but I get significantly less sun these days. It wouldn’t tell me much about what was going on years ago, unfortunately.

Interestingly enough, I can eat butter - just plain, by itself -despite butter allegedly containing vitamin A.

 

[Kyle Bigman]

Do any of you understand why beta-carotene would trigger autoimmune reactions in people like Grant Genereux or Jordan Peterson, who have largely eradicated vegetables?

In Genereux's ebook he states that it converts to retinol, but I have read that beta-carotene almost never leads to vitamin A toxicity, in large part due to the body's tight regulatory process. Basically the body does not absorb beta-carotene if it senses vitamin A saturation.

Moreover, I have read some studies showing that beta-carotene is actually inversely correlated with things like arthritic gout, yet vitamin A (in retinol) is positively correlated with gout.

So clearly I think the two are separate. I was wondering if any of you had more knowledge regarding vitamin A or beta-carotene metabolism/regulation.

 

[Blossom]

Do any of you understand why beta-carotene would trigger autoimmune reactions in people like Grant Genereux or Jordan Peterson, who have largely eradicated vegetables?

In Genereux's ebook he states that it converts to retinol, but I have read that beta-carotene almost never leads to vitamin A toxicity, in large part due to the body's tight regulatory process. Basically the body does not absorb beta-carotene if it senses vitamin A saturation.

Moreover, I have read some studies showing that beta-carotene is actually inversely correlated with things like arthritic gout, yet vitamin A (in retinol) is positively correlated with gout.

So clearly I think the two are separate. I was wondering if any of you had more knowledge regarding vitamin A or beta-carotene metabolism/regulation.

I think you will find this post helpful.

I don't think so. You are probably correct in describing that thought as "weird".

I'll try. Here are some preliminary quotes from an experiment* done in 2002:

This is despite the fact that each β-carotene molecule can form two retinol molecules:
View attachment 6412 (Ignore the eccentric cleavage pathway. A different enzyme is responsible for this.)

Retinoic acid is the main player and works on nuclear receptors. Even retinol can be considered a precursor in a sense, but consuming β-carotene adds another layer of control over retinoic acid levels. This is because at high vitamin A intakes, the activity of this enzyme is reduced:

A few words about the enzyme's new name:

So it is now officially carotene monoxygenase, but the historical name should be kept in mind should you want to search earlier studies. This is referred to as βCMOOX throughout the article:

The authors did their own experiments. They made rats vitamin A deficient by restricting vitamin A and then fed them varying doses and types of vitamin A. The intestines were then removed from each group, homogenized, and separated by centrifugation. The fraction with the carotene cleavage enzyme (βCMOOX) was then analyzed for its ability to split β-carotene. You can ignore the eccentric cleavage products:
View attachment 6413
As the dose increases, the enzymatic activity decreases. Having high vitamin A levels will down-regulate this enzyme.

And this happened quickly, within a day or two. Here is a graph showing how quickly the activity of this enzyme decreased after a loading dose of trans retinoic acid:
View attachment 6415

They also extracted the total RNA from two groups of chickens: one vitamin A deficient and one that was given retinol in the food. They took this extracted RNA and used a radioactive probe, a complimentary RNA strand that hybridizes selectively with the βCMOOX messenger RNA.

They could then see this RNA fragment after it was separated by gel electrophoresis. Radioactive elements can expose photographic plates in the dark:
View attachment 6414

So the RNA that encodes for the enzyme gets progressively down-regulated as the retinol or retinoic acid levels increase. The carotene cleavage enzyme is under direct genetic control. There are two classes of nuclear receptors that interact with retinoic acid: the RXR and RAR. These interact with DNA directly and can exert primary control over DNA expression. Other hormones like vitamin D, thyroid hormone, eicosanoids, androgens, mineralcorticoids, and glucocorticoids can do this too through nuclear receptors of their own (VDR, TR, PPAR, AR, MR, GR). The RNA that encodes the βCMOOX enzyme has promoter regions:

So the DNA that produces the carotene cleavage enzyme interacts with a retinoic acid response element. These are specific sequences of DNA that the retinoic acid receptors bind to.

Remember that the high-retinol rats had β-carotene conversion efficiency of under 5%.†

Just to show how tight this feedback control is, a study was done on Filipino schoolchildren. There body stores of retinol were measured at baseline and then after 3 months of very high β-carotene fruits and vegetables. The graph is somewhat counter intuitive, since they measured the body status with radioactive retinol. This means that the higher values on the X-axis correspond to lower retinol body stores; the more tissue retinol you have, the less radio-labeled retinol you can absorb:
View attachment 6416 Pearson coefficient of r=−.99
What is amazing is how straight this line is. This implies that all of the children could regulate β-carotene conversion nearly perfectly. There was no apparent genetic variation out of 27 children.

So if you are eating "Eggs, butter, cheese, milk, etc", then I would expect your carotene cleavage enzyme (βCMOOX) to be at very low activity. The relatively high amounts of retinol from these should suppress transcription of this enzyme. So the sweet potatoes should actually be quite safe, since less than 5% would probably be converted for you.


*Bachmann, Heinrich, et al. "Feedback regulation of β, β-carotene 15, 15′-monooxygenase by retinoic acid in rats and chickens." The Journal of nutrition 132.12 (2002): 3616-3622.
†Nutr. 124: 1461S–1466S. 21. Brubacher, G. B. & Weiser, H. (1985) The vitamin A activity of betacarotene. Int. J. Vitam. Nutr. Res. 55: 5–15
Ribaya-Mercado, Judy D., et al. "Bioconversion of plant carotenoids to vitamin A in Filipino school-aged children varies inversely with vitamin A status." The American journal of clinical nutrition 72.2 (2000): 455-465.

 

[Kyle Bigman]

This is very informative and insightful. Thank you so much Blossom.

 

[Blossom]

This is very informative and insightful. Thank you so much Blossom.

You're welcome. I find Travis' posts very helpful.
I'd just experiment and go by how you feel in the hours and days following eating betacarotene.

 

[somuch4food]

The only way to reduce the amount of vitamin D stored in their system is time, assuming no more vitamin D is ingested (this includes nightshade vegetables) and vitamin A to antagonize the effects of excess vitamin D.

What is the relation between vitamin D and nightshades?

BTW, this is all just my opinion, I am not a doctor, and probably 80-90% of the forum members would suggest that you should just take vitamin D and that I am stupid.

Taking a vitamin D supplement to raise vitamin D is putting a band-aid on an underlying problem.

I am of your opinion that D3 is regulated by the body and that artificially raising does not get to the root cause. It is more like medication.

Dryness of hair skin and eyes, flaking skin, chapped lips, skin thinning, photo sensitivity, nose bleeds, general stiffness throughout the body. Never had D tested.

Interesting, I have some of these symptoms from time to time. I will monitor to see if I have a correlation with vit A.

 

[Cirion]

Guess I'm gonna die then because I have lots of sweet potatoes every day. Lol

Not worried about it, as long as all my other nutritional intake is on point anyway. I could potentially see how it would be an issue if other vitamins were not intaken at an appropriate ratio alongside it though. I think this is another cautionary reason to only supplement something if you really know what you're doing too. I can't realistically see how you can reach toxicity through food alone, though I suppose it could happen if you supplement it.

 

[Kyle Bigman]

Guess I'm gonna die then because I have lots of sweet potatoes every day. Lol

Not worried about it, as long as all my other nutritional intake is on point anyway. I could potentially see how it would be an issue if other vitamins were not intaken at an appropriate ratio alongside it though. I think this is another cautionary reason to only supplement something if you really know what you're doing too. I can't realistically see how you can reach toxicity through food alone, though I suppose it could happen if you supplement it.

With beta-carotene there is a system by which the body should regulate the amount that is absorbed.