Vitamin A aka retinol free diet

Well, I learned from my DNA tests that taking Vitamin E causes inflammation and once I stopped, a lot of things calmed down. So, I'm interested to see if this is another of those types of things. It might be true for some, but not everybody.
 
These theories look great on paper...

I bet that you will never see that "theory" on paper or on television. Can you imagine the forces that are stacked against this theory, when so much financial gains are at stake?
 
I bet that you will never see that "theory" on paper or on television. Can you imagine the forces that are stacked against this theory, when so much financial gains are at stake?

Notice what I said, SlavaOn: this might work for some people, but may not be generally applicable; it probably depends on genetics.

It's rather like Freud imposing on the whole rest of the world a theory based on his own inner landscape that was pathological and twisted. It was true for him, but not for everyone.

There are numerous instances where the application of Vit A has proved to be healing.

It's not black and white.
 
There are numerous instances where the application of Vit A has proved to be healing.

It's not black and white.

The respective author of the theory, Mr.Generaux never argued that Vit.A is not healing or is not necessary. I apologize, if I made an impression contrary to that. He plainly states that the natural metabolites of the said Vit.A, namely retinoic acid, that is not safely stored by the liver, is the toxic culprit. And, it happens when the liver is too small to process it quickly (young children) or when liver's stores are full and it can't store any more of it (older people). Then, it is stored by cells in the tissues and the retinoic acid starts creating the havoc we call "auto-immune" diseases... There is Vit.A overload in Western countries going on since early 70s - it is a fact.

Mr.Generaux is making a point that it is only going to be much much worse. Millions of people are in a pipeline for overloading their livers with the excess of Vit.A. Just last week I saw parts of a recent documentary by a Russian journalist Arkady Mamontov about palm oil imports to Russia. He doggedly pursued that subject: Position of EFKO company in relation to the program «Special correspondent» and film of Arkady Mamontov «Palm shores 2» for several years. Palm oil has replaced milk fats in many products in Russia, oftentimes not even stating it on the labels. These are the fake foods. Palm oil has very high carotenoids content that are converted to retinoic acid by our bodies! It is a big moneymaking operations for some and, taking into consideration, the above finds about Vit.A, it is a setup for a health disaster for all Russians in not so distant future.
 
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It seems that Vit A can be an antagonist to thyroid hormone. Here is a short clip from Ray Peat.

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As I was going through the Iodine thread, I came across a post of mine that may be interesting:

I noticed that Brownstein mentions in passing (p.163): "Both vitamin E and vitamin A have both been shown in studies to improve fibrocystic breasts". I knew about vitamin E, but I didn't know that about vitamin A, so I did a search and found this in case it might help:

Vitamin A

Vitamin A has been only minimally studied for fibrocystic breasts. However, there are retinoid receptors in breast tissue, which can modulate breast changes. In a study of 12 women with fibrocystic breast disease, women were given 150,000 IU of vitamin A daily for 3 months. Five of the 9 patients who completed the study had full or partial remission of their FBD. However some patients developed mild side effects, leading 2 of the original 12 to withdraw because of headaches, and 1 patient required a reduction in dosage. Beta-carotene would appear to be a more appropriate source of retinol owing to its greatly decreased toxicity and similar activity in ovarian and inflammatory disorders. Nonetheless, some women will need supplemental vitamin A as a significant portion of the population has genomic variations that impair the conversion of beta-carotene to vitamin A.
Source
 
I actually did a high dose Vitamin A (as Retinyl Palmitate) a few years back to try and deal with acne. If I remember correctly it was around 150,000 IU daily for 2 or 3 months. I didn't notice any negative effects from it, and it did clear my skin at the time, but it didn't resolve the issue in the long run.
 
I got to the end of the book and I am thinking - am I the only one who made past chapter 20? (there are 27 chapters)
And the reason of the above question is the name of that chapter "Celiac Disease and Gluten"...
The topic of gluten molecule in breads always raised a great interest on this forum and I have published my hands on research about gluten content in properly made sourdough bread sourdough "do nothng" bread making

Interestingly, but Grant was able to make a logical connection between vitamin A and gluten! Logical can also be called speculative, it is a conjecture that he has made. Alas, if one applies the rule of the Okkam's razor, I would accept his conclusion, other than that it was the hybridizing of the wheat in 1970s that led to a rise of "franken-wheat" breed with an altered gluten molecule..

Here is a snippet from that chapter:

Dr. Davis has published a hugely successful series of Wheat Belly books popularizing this well-known gluten connection. He puts the blame for many health conditions squarely on the gluten molecule. He is essentially claiming that the wheat gluten molecule is the root cause. To rationalize why the gluten molecules have become so toxic, and almost all of a sudden, he’s coined the term “frankenwheat”.

Well, “frankenwheat” is a pretty sensational sounding term. I don’t like molecules being wrongly accused of being related to Frankenstein without some solid scientific evidence. Dr. Davis makes this claim because the wheat plant has been genetically modified to be shorter and stronger. It’s not the same plant that it was 40 years ago. But, has this shorter and stronger plant actually changed the structure of the gluten molecules too? In the wee bit of research that I was able to do, the answer is very likely no. The wheat gluten molecules are still the same ones we had 50, or even hundreds of years ago.

Therefore, we need to ask how could it be that the same gluten molecules have essentially become an allergen or toxin for so many people. Clearly, it’s not because the molecule has changed. Therefore, it must be because the conditions in the gut have changed. Additionally, the immune cells in the intestine are being trained to produce immunoglobulin in the presence of gluten in this altered environment. Therefore, gluten, on its own, is probably not the root cause of celiac disease. Just based upon the dramatically increased rates of this disease it’s highly unlikely. Yet, it’s indeed now a serious contributing factor and antagonist, and it’s absolutely not off the hook on all of this. Of course, it’s critically important to determine exactly what is going on here. Wheat has been considered the “staff of life” for centuries, and hundreds of millions of people rely on it daily as their primary source of energy and protein.

I can only speculate as to how exactly gluten has become this antagonist. Could it be that the gluten molecule is binding to retinol very similar to what happens with the urushiol molecule in poison ivy? Once bonded, it is the combination of these two molecules that invokes the immune response. Another partial hypothesis I have is that with the intestine being chocked full of retinol, the sticky gluten molecule may bind with some of that retinol and carry it into the blood, and later expose it. Remember back in an earlier chapter where I referred to the Japanese researchers investigating novel ways to deliver retinoic acid deep into the skin as a skin rejuvenation therapy. They did this by using a glucose ring structured molecule termed cyclodextrin to embed the retinoic acid molecule within. This is possible because the cyclodextrin is large and has a central cavity. The cyclodextrin is somewhat donut shaped. After mixing the cyclodextrin with retinoic acid they were able to apply it topically. The skin would then absorb the entire inclusion complex. Deeper in the skin, the glucose packaging would be consumed and expose the retinoic acid molecule. The cyclodextrin was just providing a safe delivery envelope. The gluten molecule also has internal cavities. Therefore, the gluten molecule may be acting similar to the cyclodextrin and / or the retinol binding protein. This would fit with the observation that many people have gluten sensitivity well before they test positive for gluten antibodies.

This hypothesis of gluten acting as a carrier molecule is actually not that speculative since something very similar was researched and documented back in the 1960s. The concern was that many commercial flours and bread products were starting to include emulsifiers. The emulsifiers included such compounds as monoglycerides, diglycerides, and other poly-compounds. To emulsify means to wrap and contain one compound within another. The observation was that these additional emulsifiers increased the absorption of vitamin A from food tremendously. The fear was that people with moderate to high levels of vitamin A in their diets could be at risk; so much so that their rates of actual vitamin A intake into their blood would be dangerously high. Of course, as a person’s vitamin A storage levels increases, their tolerable absorption rates into the liver will diminish. Therefore, over time, the situation becomes more and more risky. Additionally, as the intestine accumulates more local storage of vitamin A, these emulsifiers are not just going to transport more vitamin A from digesting food. They are also going to pick up locally tissue-stored vitamin A and carry it into the blood. So, just maybe, gluten is getting a bad rap here.

The other very popular theory in the press is that gluten causes “leaky gut”. Well, let’s remember that in eczema the facts are that the sebaceous glands get burned out, and the hair goes missing. There is subsequently a complete breakdown of the barrier function of the inflamed skin. Now, one of the conditions used in the clinical diagnosis of celiac disease is the flattened villi of the small intestine. Of course, we also have a similar breakdown of the barrier function in the intestine too. That is definitely going to cause a bi-directionally “leaky gut”. The big sticky gluten molecule may get stuck in the tight junction of cells lining the intestine. Once inflamed, these cells are no longer going to have their normal elasticity. But, that does not help reveal the real root cause of all of this. We really need to take a step back, and determine what’s causing the inflammation in the first place.

Most Celiac’s do not recover on the gluten free diet
Here’s the shocking little truth regarding gluten and celiac disease. If gluten were indeed the root cause of this disease, we should expect a large percentage of people who do adopt a gluten-free diet to more or less fully recover. However, that is simply not the case. Here’s a 2009 publication documenting this observation:

Complete recovery of intestinal mucosa occurs very rarely in adult coeliac patients despite adherence to gluten-free diet.
Abstract: Complete normalization of duodenal lesions is exceptionally rare in adult coeliac patients despite adherence to GFD, symptoms disappearance and negative CD related serology. Control biopsies are mandatory to identify lack of response to gluten-free diet.
Source: PMID: 19302264 Complete recovery of intestinal mucosa occurs very rarely in adult coeliac patients despite adherence to gluten-free diet. - PubMed - NCBI

Here’s another 2010 publication:
Mucosal recovery and mortality in adults with celiac disease after treatment with a gluten-free diet.
CONCLUSIONS: Mucosal recovery was absent in a substantial portion of adults with CD after treatment with a GFD. There was a borderline significant association between confirmed mucosal recovery (vs. persistent damage) and reduced mortality independent of age and gender. Systematic follow-up with intestinal biopsies may be advisable in patients diagnosed with CD as adults.
Source: PMID: 20145607 Mucosal recovery and mortality in adults with celiac disease after treatment with a gluten-free diet. - PubMed - NCBI

At least 65% of the celiac disease patients make no recovery, or recover very little after being on a gluten-free diet for over a year. Doesn’t that just make it stunningly clear that gluten is not the root cause? Just like with so many of the other autoimmune diseases, the fires of inflammation rages on even after the gluten is gone. So, clearly there is more going on here.

There are some other very interesting aspects to observe regarding celiac disease. Let’s consider the common side effects. They are: “brain fog”, depression, ADHD-like behavior, abdominal pain, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, headaches, bone or joint pain, and chronic fatigue. Oh, but wait, there’s more. They include low bone mineral density (osteoporosis), itchy skin rashes (dermatitis herpetiformis), defects in the enamel of the teeth, joint swelling, poor growth, delayed puberty, infertility, or repeated miscarriages, neurological problems, and recurrent seizures (epilepsy). Does that list look familiar? Okay, so celiac disease, like all the other autoimmune diseases, is affecting the entire body (think elephant here).

Additionally, there is something else peculiar documented about this disease. That is that nearly 70% of women with this disease are also zinc deficient. But, no, zinc deficiency is not causing the disease either. It’s just the opposite. The zinc deficiency is being caused by the disease. One obvious factor is that the inflamed intestine might be unable to absorb it as efficiently. However, there is a more direct connection here. The body uses zinc, vitamin E and some other compounds to protect cells from elevated retinol. Therefore, autoimmune diseases result in the quicker depletion of zinc by using it up more rapidly in trying to protect cells. The documented function for this is that zinc is used to facilitate the building of the retinol binding proteins. As the level of retinol increases the body simply needs to produce more of these RBPs to facilitate the removal and transport of excess retinol. If there is a corresponding compromised kidney function, then some of the recycled RBPs will be lost in urine.

Guilty by Association

As before, I can’t just leave it at that. I have to, at least, offer one more plausible explanation as to why gluten has mysteriously become toxic to millions of people. I think there is a very big clue here in that most people develop gluten sensitivity after age 20 or so. How is it that they have been perfectly okay with this grain molecule for 20 or more years of their lives, and then it magically becomes a serious allergen? As people progress from gluten sensitivity to clinical confirmation for the disease they have immunoglobulin antibodies.

I have a simple, and maybe even wacko, hypothesis. It’s simply guilt by association. Remember the itchy self-destruct process I’ve speculated on before in the context of eczema. We only need to extend it a tiny little bit. The tissue cells in the intestine become inflamed due to their overexposure to retinol / retinoic acid and send out their damage alerting molecules and self-destruct cytokine messages. The immune cells respond, and take out these affected tissue cells. That’s all perfectly fine and normal. But, the immune cells then go on the hunt for the suspected pathogens that would have normally been responsible for starting the inflammation process to happen in the first place. Yet, there are no pathogens to be found. However, the immune cells do find the big gluten proteins nearby. To the immune cells, being a protein, the gluten molecule looks enough like a candidate pathogen. The adaptive immune system takes no chances, and now builds antibodies to it. Therefore, we have now developed an allergy to this food molecule for completely the wrong reason. It may have been just an innocent molecular bystander to the inflammation fight. We have now effectively been vaccinated for the gluten molecule. That vaccination could last for decades, if not a lifetime. Some people call it an allergy. Others call it celiac disease. I’m calling it a tragic poisoning by the overload of vitamin A.

Lastly, since eczema is such a common co-symptom in celiac disease, then logically the reciprocal may apply. If you have eczema, then it’s very likely that you could have gluten sensitivity too. I’d say you could almost bet on it.

Vaccines and Inadvertent Self-vaccinations

Naturally, this self-vaccination scenario is perfectly normal and takes place, at the least, a million times a day (over the entire human population). It’s what the human body has always done before the advent of manmade vaccines. But, this inadvertent vaccination against the wrong antagonist is just a little hypothesis of mine. Now, for it to be even plausible, we should expect there to be similar occurrences happening when people get normal manmade vaccinations.

Most people understand that normal vaccine doses contain a crippled version, or viral fragments, of the disease-causing viruses they are being vaccinated for. But, what some people might not know is that is not all the vaccine doses contain. These doses can contain other toxic chemicals. This is of course not by accident. The designers of the vaccine want a substance that is going to highly antagonize the immune system and to hopefully force its adaptive immune process to kick in. When the vaccine is administered these toxic chemicals cause a significant amount of localized inflammation to alert the immune system. The adaptive immune system comes in to investigate what the hell is causing all the inflammation. The goal of the vaccine is to antagonize the immune system enough to force it to build antibodies to the virus that was included in the vaccine dose.

But obviously, what could happen is that some of the antagonistic toxic chemical drifts away from the viral fragments that were included in the vaccine dose. They could also bind to other proteins. Therefore, the antagonistic inflammation occurs at a location some distance away from the vaccine’s target virus. Then, when the immune system finds some other protein in the vicinity it puts the blame on it. Being extra thorough, it builds antibodies to that protein instead of, or in addition to, the vaccine’s intended virus. It could be proteins from say peanut butter, or orange juice, or any other food sourced protein that just happens to be there. Now, and quite inadvertently the person is vaccinated for this food-based protein too.

To finish this post, I share a link to a survey that over 100 people went through and the results of it were published by Grant. It is not that simple: Recent Survey Results

 
If anyone is considering getting spirulina, please check to see if it has vitamin A. I think a lot of companies are infusing it with it. I'm looking at nutrition facts and some have low values of vitamin A and others have high amounts.
 
Just for reference, what the Cs said in the last session (2020-03-21)
This one person asks:

I think it would be important to get confirmation (or rebuttal) from the Cs, that over-consumption of Vitamin A (from retinol and beta-carotene containing foods) has negative health effect on large numbers of people and made them prone to get sick from coronavirus.

(L) Okay, this person is asking if this is one of the aspects?

A: Overconsumption of vitamin A is easily detected by yellow color and easily corrected and is not a significant factor.
 
Additionally, there is something else peculiar documented about this disease. That is that nearly 70% of women with this disease are also zinc deficient. But, no, zinc deficiency is not causing the disease either. It’s just the opposite. The zinc deficiency is being caused by the disease. One obvious factor is that the inflamed intestine might be unable to absorb it as efficiently. However, there is a more direct connection here. The body uses zinc, vitamin E and some other compounds to protect cells from elevated retinol. Therefore, autoimmune diseases result in the quicker depletion of zinc by using it up more rapidly in trying to protect cells. The documented function for this is that zinc is used to facilitate the building of the retinol binding proteins. As the level of retinol increases the body simply needs to produce more of these RBPs to facilitate the removal and transport of excess retinol. If there is a corresponding compromised kidney function, then some of the recycled RBPs will be lost in urine.

There's something else worth mentioning here. A lot of people suffer from acid reflux, low stomach acid and thiamine deficiency. All these will contribute to a zinc deficiency and a damaged mucosal lining. I found taking thiamine improved all these. That is not to say that celiac disease is a thiamine deficiency, but rather that there are other things we can blame the symptoms for besides Retinol.
 
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