A mild Vitamin A deficiency decreases DHEA and Pregnenolone formation by about 40%

[Mauritio]

Even a mild Vitamin A deficiency decreases DHEA and Pregnenolone formation by about 40% in rats.
Not surpsing, since Vitamin A is needed for the enzyme that converts cholesterol into pregnenolone ( Vitamin A deficiency impairs gonadal steroid synthesis)

Even more evident was the effect on androstenedione, which suggests that the important enzyme 3bHSD was not working anymore (3β-Hydroxysteroid-Dehydrogenase – Wikipedia)
In the testes the conversion was more than 4 times lower when the animals experienced an "acute Vitamin A deficiency".

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1264968/?page=1

 

[bruschi11]

The fat solubles are wild things. They’re literally steroids. I’ve had crazy reactions to all 3 of A, D, E. Good and bad.

I lived on E for awhile. Like I was sick but if I took it every 3rd or 4th day twice a week really… E literally gave me a decent life in half of 2021. It’s a steroid.

I utilized A incredibly in 2020 for awhile. Got killed by it in late 2021 (copper dumping.)

I think it’s very possible many aging people could do better with less A. As it’s probably the balance of the fat solubles that affect (next to many other things like hormone) how our livers work. I find it possible A can just build up based on what we are learning.

I think A is absolutely a vitamin. But for many, mitigating intake can really help turn someone’s health around.

 

[charlie]

More nonsense waste of time studies that do not carry over into real life. Many of us are finding limiting "vitamin A" as much as possible makes women extremely fertile, makes the men feel like they are teenagers again if you know what I mean. I am more virile and have more energy now then I can ever remember. All these studies are just more Rockefeller science witchcraft to keep the people unwell, less fertile, sick and docile.

 

[charlie]

How timely:

I've become skeptical of all such hypotheses because of all the mistaken ways that research findings can be misinterpreted and even understood totally backwards of reality. For example, it could be that toxic levels of vitamin A in circulation cause the cells to produce pregnenolone to protect themselves from it, which might look the same as vitamin A being "used" to synthesize pregnenolone. - @Nick

 

[scoobydoo]

More nonsense waste of time studies that do not carry over into real life. Many of us are finding limiting "vitamin A" as much as possible makes women extremely fertile, makes the men feel like they are teenagers again if you know what I mean. I am more virile and have more energy now then I can ever remember. All these studies are just more Rockefeller science witchcraft to keep the people unwell, less fertile, sick and docile.

This is a possibility but there are also many anecdotes from people using fat soluble vitamins for a long time to keep endogenous testosterone very hight
Haidut is a great example of this.

 

[youngsinatra]

It’s very very hard to induce even a mild deficiency of it in real life.

I personally don’t plan on staying super strict on vitamin A avoidance once my serum retinol is down to 20-30 mcg/dl. It will likely take me another 3-5 years on close-to-zero vA to get there tho.

 

[Veritas IV]

Even a mild Vitamin A deficiency decreases DHEA and Pregnenolone formation by about 40% in rats.
Not surpsing, since Vitamin A is needed for the enzyme that converts cholesterol into pregnenolone ( Vitamin A deficiency impairs gonadal steroid synthesis)

View attachment 61703

Even more evident was the effect on androstenedione, which suggests that the important enzyme 3bHSD was not working anymore (3β-Hydroxysteroid-Dehydrogenase – Wikipedia)
In the testes the conversion was more than 4 times lower when the animals experienced an "acute Vitamin A deficiency".
View attachment 61704

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1264968/?page=1

Good man Mauritio, thank you for posting. This has actually led me to other work that i had missed, all of which i'll be going over sometime this week. Am personally considering supplementing small amounts, or i may slightly increase my egg or milk intake, or go back to 3oz calf liver a week, or alternate all 3 on a weekly basis. Haven't quite decided yet.

___

As an unrelated side note: since discovering Bioenergetics i've shied away from excess vegetable carotenoids for a few reasons. 1) Partially due to it's low conversion rate. 2) Adopting the carrot salad years ago for several reasons but did not include carotenoid intake ... which leads me to .... 3) Not wishing to take in excess because the body can shunt it into some odd places.

 

[Izzybelle]

More nonsense waste of time studies that do not carry over into real life. Many of us are finding limiting "vitamin A" as much as possible makes women extremely fertile, makes the men feel like they are teenagers again if you know what I mean. I am more virile and have more energy now then I can ever remember. All these studies are just more Rockefeller science witchcraft to keep the people unwell, less fertile, sick and docile.

The study cited here is from 1966, and seems in line with decades of research (it was actually Peat who alerted me to the fact that more current research has been compromised/pharma/gov't funded and with Weston Price's (now a non-profit foundation) view on Vitamin A. Price studied indigenous natural diets high in Vitamin A and wrote the book "Nutirtion and Physical Degeneration" first published in 1939. I don't know if Peat cited this particular article somewhere, but are you suggesting that Ray Peat was unable to examine the research and detect where there might or might not be a political agenda? Because he talked about that kind of thing all the time.

Anyway, here's a link to the Weston Price Foundation.

Vitamin A-mazing

🖨️ Print post When I first learned about the Foundation’s information and diet twenty years ago, I was very skeptical. I had conventional university training as a nutritionist. […]

www.westonaprice.org

 

[Peater]

The study cited here is from 1966, and seems in line with decades of research (it was actually Peat who alerted me to the fact that more current research has been compromised/pharma/gov't funded and with Weston Price's (now a non-profit foundation) view on Vitamin A. Price studied indigenous natural diets high in Vitamin A and wrote the book "Nutirtion and Physical Degeneration" first published in 1939. I don't know if Peat cited this particular article somewhere, but are you suggesting that Ray Peat was unable to examine the research and detect where there might or might not be a political agenda? Because he talked about that kind of thing all the time.

Anyway, here's a link to the Weston Price Foundation.

Vitamin A-mazing

🖨️ Print post When I first learned about the Foundation’s information and diet twenty years ago, I was very skeptical. I had conventional university training as a nutritionist. […]

www.westonaprice.org

"do you consume a high amount of polyunsaturated vegetable oils? All these will increase your need for vitamin A."

Both PUFA and high Vit A are anti-thyroid so I don't see how one follows the other, with Vit A being unsaturated too.

 

[charlie]

The study cited here is from 1966, and seems in line with decades of research (it was actually Peat who alerted me to the fact that more current research has been compromised/pharma/gov't funded and with Weston Price's (now a non-profit foundation) view on Vitamin A. Price studied indigenous natural diets high in Vitamin A and wrote the book "Nutirtion and Physical Degeneration" first published in 1939. I don't know if Peat cited this particular article somewhere, but are you suggesting that Ray Peat was unable to examine the research and detect where there might or might not be a political agenda? Because he talked about that kind of thing all the time.

Anyway, here's a link to the Weston Price Foundation.

Vitamin A-mazing

🖨️ Print post When I first learned about the Foundation’s information and diet twenty years ago, I was very skeptical. I had conventional university training as a nutritionist. […]

www.westonaprice.org

The Weston Price diet is destroying people just like the Ray Peat diet is. The way Bill Gates loves vitamin A and hands it out like candy does make me think there could be a political slight of hand behind it. If not, then they simply got the theories wrong and like Nick said, what they are seeing means totally something different. We are in the beginning of the Great Awakening and things that were hidden from us are going to be revealed and I believe "vitamin A" is in the process of being revealed that it is not what science says it is. From my observations of myself, my friends and family members around me the more we limit "vitamin A" the healthier and healthier we get. It just keeps getting better and better.

 

[Peater]

This is an interesting excerpt however:

Why does our skin need vitamin A? Vitamin A has anti-keratinizing properties as it helps differentiate our skin cells into what they are supposed to look like. All of the surfaces of our body come in contact with the environment every day and need vitamin A to deal with that contact. Many skin diseases are marked by the occurrence of hyperkeratosis, including psoriasis and acne. When we look at patients with acne, they have lower serum or plasma vitamin A and often zinc will be low. Zinc allows us to use our vitamin A so we also have to consider zinc deficiency with skin diseases, especially if someone is on a more plant-based diet or avoiding red meat or other foods that are good sources of zinc.

A colleague reported to me that the bumps on the back of her arms did not clear up until she began taking desiccated oyster, which is full of zinc. Her diet was rich in v

 

[InChristAlone]

This is an interesting excerpt however:

Yes, I'll keep saying it until it starts clicking in people's brains. The literature says zinc deficiency causes an apparent need for vitamin A.

 

[Izzybelle]

The Weston Price diet is destroying people just like the Ray Peat diet is. The way Bill Gates loves vitamin A and hands it out like candy does make me think there could be a political slight of hand behind it. If not, then they simply got the theories wrong and like Nick said, what they are seeing means totally something different. We are in the beginning of the Great Awakening and things that were hidden from us are going to be revealed and I believe "vitamin A" is in the process of being revealed that it is not what science says it is. From my observations of myself, my friends and family members around me the more we limit "vitamin A" the healthier and healthier we get. It just keeps getting better and better.

Well a quick google tells me that Gates is big on synthetic Vitamin A 'distribution' (good grief! All kinds of 'interventions' I didn't know about. WTH.) in developing countries, and not improving the diet to include natural sources. Just because Bill Gates has found another way to make a feel-good buck and intervene where diet alone could be a solution doesn't necessarily mean that all of the research on Vitamin A is invalid. Maybe there's some Vitamin A manufacturers that need a new market since we all now know how much Vitamin A we can get from liver, eggs, milk and natural sources.

I would also note that the trend away from traditional diets that Weston Price and others have studied in developing countries would reduce the nutrients naturally available in food, and create a synthetic vitamin market via apparent vitamin 'deficiencies' where there were none, which looks to me like what is happening.

 

[Veritas IV]

The study cited here is from 1966, and seems in line with decades of research (it was actually Peat who alerted me to the fact that more current research has been compromised/pharma/gov't funded and with Weston Price's (now a non-profit foundation) view on Vitamin A. Price studied indigenous natural diets high in Vitamin A and wrote the book "Nutirtion and Physical Degeneration" first published in 1939. I don't know if Peat cited this particular article somewhere, but are you suggesting that Ray Peat was unable to examine the research and detect where there might or might not be a political agenda? Because he talked about that kind of thing all the time.

Anyway, here's a link to the Weston Price Foundation.

Vitamin A-mazing

🖨️ Print post When I first learned about the Foundation’s information and diet twenty years ago, I was very skeptical. I had conventional university training as a nutritionist. […]

www.westonaprice.org

Thank you for the link to and reminder of Weston Price's work. Will dabble in it after Mauritio's info as i have lab testing coming up, would like to see if a bit of high quality Vitamin A will help me push past a certain plateu i've reached. Without going into too much personal detail i'm in a perfect position to test. Nothing bad of course, am looking for more good news actually.

 

[mosaic01]

How can anyone still trust the WAPF people who are dying like flies to rancid cod liver oil?

Those Ticking Time Bombs Going Off Are WAPF People Dying Too Young - David Gumpert

An unexpectedly large number of individuals connected to fermented cod liver oil and associated with the Weston A. Price Foundation are dying prematurely.

www.davidgumpert.com

WAPF is either a controlled opposition organization, or it's leaders are poisoned by their own ideology. During this "fermented" (meaning rancid) cod liver oil saga they supported a known liar and probable psychopath, the guy who runs "Green Pasture", and ousted Kaayla Daniel, a member on their board who exposed the scam of "fermented cod liver oil".

The Green Pasture product is advertised as "fermented", even though it's impossible to ferment oils. Only carbohydrates can be fermented. Rather, the oils just turn rancid. Their cod liver oil is put into tanks that are rotting away outside for weeks. It's beyond ridiculous.

The "vitamin" A activity of "fermented" cod liver oil was close to zero, when measured in a lab. Kaayla was not aware that this implies the retinol has actually turned into highly toxic retinoic acid. The reason many people are dying from "fermented" cod liver oil is that this means doing the same what the early "vitamin" A researchers did to their lab rats - feeding them a diet without retinol but with concentrated sources of retinoic acid. This can kill you within weeks.

We don't know whether the current lab rats on a low vitamin A diet are actually fed a low vitamin A diet, or whether it still contains retinoic acid. Until lab rats receive a healthy diet of natural foods that do not contain any carotenes, retinol and retinoic acid, these studies do not say much. Often it's just a play with numbers.

This study on steroid synthesis did not even analyze the actual health of the rats by comparing their behavior, looks, certain blood parameters. It's way too myopic to have any meaning. As Nick writes, in response to poisons the body can actually upregulate it's defense mechanisms and increase protective hormones. But this is a short-term reaction, long-term this will lead to disease and degeneration. The entire context has to be taken into account. Research like this is not self-explainable. It needs to be put into the right context and interpreted correctly to be meaningful.

All of the research on the essentiality of retinol stands on faulty grounds of the early studies that got refuted by Grant Genereux. It can't be said enough, these studies showed rats dying within weeks of receiving a "low vitamin A" diet. They were not dying from a deficiency, they were dying from a poisoning, likely retinoic acid.

Even if the lab rat diets of today contain less retinoic acid, no one has ever attempted to look into this matter.

The WAPF is doing a disservice to Weston Price by promoting a product he never endorsed - rancid cod liver oil. They do not act in his heritage and should just be written off as a bunch of hypocrites. The WAPF article on vitamin A mentions that it is difficult to absorb for the body - the opposite is true. Vitamin A easily absorbs according to the medical literature, and the absorption rate is up to 100% in lower doses.

I don't really trust Weston Price himself so much either. He just observed that people living remotely on a whole foods diet and natural lifestyle were not suffering from tooth decay like modern people do, and that animal foods were highly priotized (which shouldn't come as a surprise). Peope ate what animal foods were available - meat, eggs, fish, seafood, dairy.

His chapter on the Polynesians in the book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" does not even include a description of what constitutes the "native foods". except that shellfish was eaten regularly. He just explains that once the islands got flooded with sugar and canned foods from the west, people began to suffer. Other chapters will probably be similar. His work merely shows the degenerative influence of the western lifestyle compared to fresh and whole natural foods. His observations should be separated from the solution he came up with, mixing butter oil and cod liver oil. It should not come as a surprise that switching to a diet high in refined sugar and canned foods is not good for health.

The food chain of the past was not contaminated with artificial carotene and retinol supplementation, the animals were not treated with antibiotics to prevent infections, and people lived under the sun and had to deal with many infections themselves. Their lifestyle depleted retinol all the time. Herding animals, shielding them from all kinds of natural stressors, and feeding them high-carotene foods on top of supplements makes retinol accumulate in the meat and milk eventually.

 

[Izzybelle]

The food chain of the past was not contaminated with artificial carotene and retinol supplementation, the animals were not treated with antibiotics to prevent infections, and people lived under the sun and had to deal with many infections themselves. Their lifestyle depleted retinol all the time. Herding animals, shielding them from all kinds of natural stressors, and feeding them high-carotene foods on top of supplements makes retinol accumulate in the meat and milk eventually.

I've never been a fan of COD liver oil and neither was RP. Again, that doesn't invalidate all of the other findings and research that is built upon Price's theories. These were things I grappled with early on because I did not like liver and wanted to avoid supplements. It has been argued that the typically grain-fed cattle now lack Vitamin K in their fat, thus the need to supplement. Seems like grain-fed would reduce the amount of Vitamin A ingested as well. Doesn't the liver store the fat soluble vitamins as a way of regulating, preventing deficiency or excessive A in the blood at any given time? Otherwise in my way of thinking we would have evolved the capacity for liver to cleanse the body of these 'toxic' vitamins just like it does other toxins. Ray thought that the liver was the cleanest organ of them all due to this function. It's not like a filter where things get trapped there, they get excreted completely.

 

[InChristAlone]

I've never been a fan of COD liver oil and neither was RP. Again, that doesn't invalidate all of the other findings and research that is built upon Price's theories. These were things I grappled with early on because I did not like liver and wanted to avoid supplements. It has been argued that the typically grain-fed cattle now lack Vitamin K in their fat, thus the need to supplement. Seems like grain-fed would reduce the amount of Vitamin A ingested as well. Doesn't the liver store the fat soluble vitamins as a way of regulating, preventing deficiency or excessive A in the blood at any given time? Otherwise in my way of thinking we would have evolved the capacity for liver to cleanse the body of these 'toxic' vitamins just like it does other toxins. Ray thought that the liver was the cleanest organ of them all due to this function. It's not like a filter where things get trapped there, they get excreted completely.

Clean in what way? It stores large amounts of retinol, copper and iron. Very hard to get those out unless you want to become an alcoholic.

 

[charlie]

Well a quick google tells me that Gates is big on synthetic Vitamin A 'distribution' (good grief! All kinds of 'interventions' I didn't know about. WTH.) in developing countries, and not improving the diet to include natural sources. Just because Bill Gates has found another way to make a feel-good buck and intervene where diet alone could be a solution doesn't necessarily mean that all of the research on Vitamin A is invalid. Maybe there's some Vitamin A manufacturers that need a new market since we all now know how much Vitamin A we can get from liver, eggs, milk and natural sources.

Or maybe, Bill Gates does not like you or me and third world citizens.

Ray thought that the liver was the cleanest organ of them all due to this function. It's not like a filter where things get trapped there, they get excreted completely.

This is where Ray Peat missed the mark. As Dr. Garrett Smith points out the liver "accumulates" toxins until it can expel them.

 

[Izzybelle]

Or maybe, Bill Gates does not like you or me and third world citizens.

This is where Ray Peat missed the mark. As Dr. Garrett Smith points out the liver "accumulates" toxins until it can expel them.

Clearly I'm not a fan of Gates and his work with vaccines is criminal. However, extrapolating that Vitamin A is bad because Bill Gates has a program to distribute synthetic Vitamin A in developing countries is just a guilt by association argument.

I haven't studied the liver myself, but I have studied Ray Peat's work for many years and I don't see anybody providing any evidence of these Vitamin A toxin claims other than the words of a self-proclaimed 'toxic vitamin a expert' who isn't even in the same league as Ray Peat' with his decades of research and experience. I'm gonna need a lot more to convince me.

 

[Divingwater]

More nonsense waste of time studies that do not carry over into real life. Many of us are finding limiting "vitamin A" as much as possible makes women extremely fertile, makes the men feel like they are teenagers again if you know what I mean. I am more virile and have more energy now then I can ever remember. All these studies are just more Rockefeller science witchcraft to keep the people unwell, less fertile, sick and docile.

Has anyone on this forum gotten blood tests before and after? Specifically men to show changes in testosterone and sperm quality parameters? I'd love to see these tests