From Chris Masterjohn: Testing Nutritional Status - Vit A

[Dolomite]

I have tried it for a year. Serum retinol went from 35 to 45 and then eventually dropped to 25. Health didn’t improve at all. I have lots problems including gut issues and temperature issues, but avoiding retinol like the plague did nothing positive for me. My seb derm actually got a lot worse.

I think the new way to do vitamin A detox is to focus more on the liver than just reducing how much you eat. Did you do any liver support during the diet? I was able to clear up some serious gut issues with activated charcoal.

I didn't get great gut results either until I added beans to my diet. I started out with 1/2 cup 5 times per day and then reduced it to three times per day after about 8 months. I still eat beans 3 times per day. The beans really help get toxins out of your bile.

 

[valzim]

*Symptoms were, breaking out in an itchy rash on my chest, followed by red itchy patches temporarily developing in various places all over. I began having pains at multiple locations across my midsection, developed non-stop headaches / migraines, stabbing pains in the head, pain behind the eyes, dry eyes, blurred vision, muscle pain, sunshine intollerance involving bloating, brain fog, fatigue and irritability. Additionally, various issues that had developed over those 10 years flared up or were exacerbated including back pain, mouth ulcers, ear cysts, tinitus, joint pain, bone pain, heart pain, worse hay fever, hair shedding, depression, irritability, anhedonia and fatigue. The worst of the symptoms resolved after 2-3 months. The remainder have slowly been improving since. There are various lab values and other conditions that I believe were also affected, but I have not yet re-tested / have yet to see improvement so can’t say. One objective measurement I have is HRV from Oura ring measurements. My average had been decreasing year on year from 33ms in 2020 when I started tracking, to 27ms in the first half of 2023. The first couple of months after stopping vit A supplementation it dipped lower still, to 25ms, but has been steadily gaining since, and the last two months I have been at 33-34ms.

I think there is something to the saying, You can't detox as long as you are intoxxing. Lots of those symptoms are seen in Accutane side effects.

 

[peter88]

I didn't get great gut results either until I added beans to my diet. I started out with 1/2 cup 5 times per day and then reduced it to three times per day after about 8 months. I still eat beans 3 times per day. The beans really help get toxins out of your bile.

Can’t do soluble fiber. I tried for weeks from different sources and it never gets better. Fiber as a whole causes me gut problems and just sits in my colon and builds up the more I eat it. Pressing on my left side near my belly button I can feel the food just sitting inside of me rotting.

All of these problems started when my appendix was removed and quitting coffee has made my gut much much worse. I’ve tried every diet and supplement regimen I’ve seen on this forum and nothing has yielded me results.

 

[Dolomite]

Can’t do soluble fiber. I tried for weeks from different sources and it never gets better. Fiber as a whole causes me gut problems and just sits in my colon and builds up the more I eat it. Pressing on my left side near my belly button I can feel the food just sitting inside of me rotting.

All of these problems started when my appendix was removed and quitting coffee has made my gut much much worse. I’ve tried every diet and supplement regimen I’ve seen on this forum and nothing has yielded me results.

Without an appendix your gut flora is probably in bad shape. It involves eating yogurt but Dr. William Davis has some L. reuteri recipes. Maybe that would help rebuild your gut flora. I never made the yogurt because it calls for high fat (too much Vitamin A) milk but I did take the L. reuteri probiotic he recommends. @Mauritio has some good threads on gut flora that might be of interest to you if you haven't already looked at them. Also, @Korven has some threads about his gut problems. Raw potato starch is probably frowned upon here but it has helped me. Psyllium doesn't work for me because, like you, it slows the transit time so I understand about things not moving. I quit coffee because it is too addicting and it never helped my gut but maybe you need it.

 

[Validus]

Can’t do soluble fiber. I tried for weeks from different sources and it never gets better. Fiber as a whole causes me gut problems and just sits in my colon and builds up the more I eat it. Pressing on my left side near my belly button I can feel the food just sitting inside of me rotting.

All of these problems started when my appendix was removed and quitting coffee has made my gut much much worse. I’ve tried every diet and supplement regimen I’ve seen on this forum and nothing has yielded me results.

In addition to charcoal, have you ever tried a couple teaspoons of baking soda in cold water? I've gone has high as 4-6 in one day.

That always helps my stomach "feel" better and helps me go to the bathroom without caffeine help.

I think it's likely a decent anti-inflammatory too.

 

[Blossom]

I supplemented vit A (extract from fish liver oil) 10,000iu/ day for 10 years. I also took vit D (2,000-3,000iu / day, unless I had done significant sunbathing that day). 10 months ago something I heard made me decide to stop. NOTHING ELSE in my diet / supplements changed, but within a week I developed a debilitating set of symptoms*. According to Masterjohn I was below the toxic threshold for intake even without vit D, but since I was concurrently supplementing vit D I should have been 32x below the toxic threshold.

*Symptoms were, breaking out in an itchy rash on my chest, followed by red itchy patches temporarily developing in various places all over. I began having pains at multiple locations across my midsection, developed non-stop headaches / migraines, stabbing pains in the head, pain behind the eyes, dry eyes, blurred vision, muscle pain, sunshine intollerance involving bloating, brain fog, fatigue and irritability. Additionally, various issues that had developed over those 10 years flared up or were exacerbated including back pain, mouth ulcers, ear cysts, tinitus, joint pain, bone pain, heart pain, worse hay fever, hair shedding, depression, irritability, anhedonia and fatigue. The worst of the symptoms resolved after 2-3 months. The remainder have slowly been improving since. There are various lab values and other conditions that I believe were also affected, but I have not yet re-tested / have yet to see improvement so can’t say. One objective measurement I have is HRV from Oura ring measurements. My average had been decreasing year on year from 33ms in 2020 when I started tracking, to 27ms in the first half of 2023. The first couple of months after stopping vit A supplementation it dipped lower still, to 25ms, but has been steadily gaining since, and the last two months I have been at 33-34ms.

That’s great news. Mine has slowly improved as well. Here’s a comparison from when I first started measuring it towards the end of 2022 and this week.

 

[youngsinatra]

There are multiple case reports on PubMed of people getting end-stage liver disease secondary to chronic hypervitaminosis A. Some of those cases needed and got liver transplantation which resolved their health issues.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0041134518308856

https://aasldpubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lt.21007

There are a lot more case reports that demonstrated more moderate-severe problems that didn’t need such drastic therapies.

The lowest dose of supplemental vitamin A that caused cirrhosis was 7 or 8K IU per day for 10 years I think. So chronic intoxication is also a real problem. (will link reference later)

 

[hierundjetzt]

There are multiple case reports on PubMed of people getting end-stage liver disease secondary to chronic hypervitaminosis A. Some of those cases needed and got liver transplantation which resolved their health issues.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0041134518308856

https://aasldpubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lt.21007

There are a lot more case reports that demonstrated more moderate-severe problems that didn’t need such drastic therapies.

The lowest dose of supplemental vitamin A that caused cirrhosis was 7 or 8K IU per day for 10 years I think. So chronic intoxication is also a real problem. (will link reference later)

We all know that longterm high dose of SYNTHETIC vitamin A is dangerous. Nothing new there.

 

[youngsinatra]

We all know that longterm high dose of SYNTHETIC vitamin A is dangerous. Nothing new there.

Well, if 7-8K IU a day for an extended period of time can cause terrible liver issues, it can become a real-life-issue with a high retinol diet.

Retinyl palmitate is the primary form of retinol found in animal foods like liver, eggs and cheese, too.

And you cannot differentiate the toxicity between synthetic or natural vitamin A in animal studies.

There is at least one case where a child died of hypervitaminosis A where the mother fed her chicken liver daily. ( I think 4oz or so)

 

[youngsinatra]

Severe hypervitaminosis A in siblings: evidence of variable tolerance to retinol intake - PubMed

A 2-year-old boy had signs and symptoms of chronic hypervitaminosis A. A course of increasing severity led to eventual death. A younger brother later had similar clinical features. Chicken liver spread containing up to 420 IU/g vitamin A was the likely source of intoxication. Markedly elevated...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[hierundjetzt]

Well, if 7-8K IU a day for an extended period of time can cause terrible liver issues, it can become a real-life-issue with a high retinol diet.

Retinyl palmitate is the primary form of retinol found in animal foods like liver, eggs and cheese, too.

And you cannot differentiate the toxicity between synthetic or natural vitamin A in animal studies.

There is at least one case where a child died of hypervitaminosis A where the mother fed her chicken liver daily. ( I think 4oz or so)

Yes, I would say that any amount of vitamin A supplement can cause liver issues. I don't think anybody is refuting that.

Feeding even an adult chicken liver every day will cause vitamin A toxicity. You shouldn't really eat it more than once every week, or maybe two weeks, given how much vitamin A you would be dumping in your system at once.

 

[Bliss]

That’s great news. Mine has slowly improved as well. Here’s a comparison from when I first started measuring it towards the end of 2022 and this week.View attachment 61680View attachment 61681

Wow Blossom that’s a serious improvement! What do you attribute it to?

 

[Bliss]

I think there is something to the saying, You can't detox as long as you are intoxxing. Lots of those symptoms are seen in Accutane side effects.

Exactly

 

[Blossom]

Wow Blossom that’s a serious improvement! What do you attribute it to?

Transitioning away from mainly eating a muscle meat carnivore diet although it was helpful for my gut for a while and losing visceral fat.

 

[Bliss]

I am glad you are feeling better. However, from your story it's really hard to say if the culprit was vitamin A or if your supplement was rancid (as can be the case with fish liver oil or fish oil supplements).

I was taking this one from country life which is a small gel capsule and the extract is diluted in MCT oil:

A couple of years ago they discontinued and so since then I was using the NOW brand vitamin A which has an unspecified mixture of vitamin A from fish liver oil and retinyl palmitate in extra virgin olive oil, also a small softgel capsule.

So I doubt that rancid fish oils were the problem, since I was consuming very little fish oil in the first place. Also, if my symptoms were due to rancid oils, how do you explain the onset of symptoms after discontinuing ? Whereas with vitamin A we have a plausible mechanism whereby incoming dietary vitamin A induces storage mechanisms, which are downregulated when the input ceases:

Retinoic acid homeostasis: retinoic acid regulates liver retinol esterification as well as its own catabolic oxidation in liver

From the abstract: “Retinol is stored in liver in the form of its esters. The retinol-esterifying enzyme lecithin:retinol acyltransferase (LRAT) catalyzes the conversion of retinol into its storage form. Expression of the LRAT mRNA is induced by retinoic acid (RA), or by dietary vitamin A, and is downregulated upon vitamin A depletion. RA also induces the expression in liver of the mRNA for CYP26, the enzyme that disposes of excess RA by oxidizing RA to 4-oxo-RA. CYP26 is downregulated upon vitamin A depletion.” (My emphasis).

So when I stopped vitamin A intake, all the retinol I had in storage which before had been leaking out somewhat and causing some symptoms, now was no longer being quickly stuffed back into storage and instead could hang around turning into harmful metabolites (hello isotretinoin and accutane side effects…)

 

[dukesbobby777]

I think the new way to do vitamin A detox is to focus more on the liver than just reducing how much you eat. Did you do any liver support during the diet? I was able to clear up some serious gut issues with activated charcoal.

Where do you buy your AC from? I have half a bag left from health natura, but they don't stock it anymore. You do the bigger granules?

 

[hierundjetzt]

I was taking this one from country life which is a small gel capsule and the extract is diluted in MCT oil:
View attachment 61689

A couple of years ago they discontinued and so since then I was using the NOW brand vitamin A which has an unspecified mixture of vitamin A from fish liver oil and retinyl palmitate in extra virgin olive oil, also a small softgel capsule.

So I doubt that rancid fish oils were the problem, since I was consuming very little fish oil in the first place. Also, if my symptoms were due to rancid oils, how do you explain the onset of symptoms after discontinuing ? Whereas with vitamin A we have a plausible mechanism whereby incoming dietary vitamin A induces storage mechanisms, which are downregulated when the input ceases:

Retinoic acid homeostasis: retinoic acid regulates liver retinol esterification as well as its own catabolic oxidation in liver

From the abstract: “Retinol is stored in liver in the form of its esters. The retinol-esterifying enzyme lecithin:retinol acyltransferase (LRAT) catalyzes the conversion of retinol into its storage form. Expression of the LRAT mRNA is induced by retinoic acid (RA), or by dietary vitamin A, and is downregulated upon vitamin A depletion. RA also induces the expression in liver of the mRNA for CYP26, the enzyme that disposes of excess RA by oxidizing RA to 4-oxo-RA. CYP26 is downregulated upon vitamin A depletion.” (My emphasis).

So when I stopped vitamin A intake, all the retinol I had in storage which before had been leaking out somewhat and causing some symptoms, now was no longer being quickly stuffed back into storage and instead could hang around turning into harmful metabolites (hello isotretinoin and accutane side effects…)

You will have to check if it was IFOS certified fish oil in the form of Puori’s O3, that's the only way to know.

 

[InChristAlone]

Where do you buy your AC from? I have half a bag left from health natura, but they don't stock it anymore. You do the bigger granules?

I tried to find the bigger granules but didn't find any for human consumption so didn't want to risk it. I use zen principle hardwood AC.

 

[Validus]

You will have to check if it was IFOS certified fish oil in the form of Puori’s O3, that's the only way to know.

So Puori Omega 3 Fish Oil - Ultra Pure is tested for vitamin a?A?

I just looked and saw nothing representing vitamin a, retinol etc that was tested.

O3L Omega-3 - Clean Label Project

Facebook Youtube Linkedin Instagram Puori O3L Liquid Omega-3 Puori O3 liquid is a pure, clean, high quality and sustainable certified Omega-3 supplement with a great and fresh taste of lemon which gives no fish burps. Puori O3 Liquid from provides a high dose of omega-3 extracted exclusively...

cleanlabelproject.org

 

[hierundjetzt]

So Puori Omega 3 Fish Oil - Ultra Pure is tested for vitamin a?A?

I just looked and saw nothing representing vitamin a, retinol etc that was tested.

O3L Omega-3 - Clean Label Project

Facebook Youtube Linkedin Instagram Puori O3L Liquid Omega-3 Puori O3 liquid is a pure, clean, high quality and sustainable certified Omega-3 supplement with a great and fresh taste of lemon which gives no fish burps. Puori O3 Liquid from provides a high dose of omega-3 extracted exclusively...

cleanlabelproject.org

No, for rancidity. Please read my post...