4 years of Pufa Detox

This may seem like a generic question, are there many people that have gone through a 4 year pufa detox? If so any consistent symptoms that are prominent after the pufa detox?

Just curious to see how many people out there are in this stage.

Ewlevy1 said:

This may seem like a generic question, are there many people that have gone through a 4 year pufa detox? If so any consistent symptoms that are prominent after the pufa detox?

Just curious to see how many people out there are in this stage.

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I believe I am pretty close or have already depleted most of the PUFA. Some things that happened along with conscious avoidance of PUFA, increasing saturated fat intake, and taking vitamin E.

1. My serum iodine dropped from 78 to 42. The lower end of the normal range is 40. I believe this is a rough measure of how saturated the free fatty acids in the bloodstream are. The lower the iodine the more saturated the fat. The person doing the fat-free diet experiment back in the early 20th century also had his iodine drop as he was getting progressively depleted in PUFA.

2. My ESR (a marker of inflammation) dropped from 11 to 1. Usually the only people with such low ESR are newborn babies or people with high RBC or WBC and I am neither of these.

3. My WBC dropped from 8 to 4, with lower end of normal range being 3.4. The same thing happened to the fat-free diet guy.

4. I stopped burning in the sun (and I don't use any sunscreen)! I started noticing this in the last year or so but was still able to burn eventually so I thought I am just imagining things. However, in the last 3 months or so I completely stopped reacting to the sun. Today, after being out in pretty intense sun (90+ degrees) for 7+ hours I did no even get pink. Basically, if I get any reaction from sun exposure it would be a direct tan (very mild) without any trace of burning. About a year ago, simply standing in intense sun for 30 minutes would make my face look like a monkey's behind and I would start peeling within 24-48 hours. No more burning, peeling or reddening of any body part exposed to the sun. Since sunburn and the red skin color is basically an immune reaction to PUFA oxidation, I believe my lack of sunburn is a decent evidence for little or no PUFA under my skin everywhere on my body.

Can't say mitochondria is uncoupled yet, which should happen in a PUFA depleted state, but another thing is that if I drink (which I rarely do) I sober up much much faster. My friends think I have some magical way of detoxing alcohol since I can sober up literally within 1 hour after getting decently smashed, and I am not in my 20s So, PUFA does seem to have a big burden on liver and once PUFA is depleted or very low the liver can process toxins much better.
With the exception of the above, I feel pretty much the same. I did not get some sort of super energy rush, but I am able to recover very fast (overnight) from physical exertion which would have taken me the better part of the week a year ago.
That's pretty much it. Anybody else had similar experience?

haidut said:

1. My serum iodine dropped from 78 to 42.

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Is that the same thing that is computed when one adds iodine to a fat to check its saturation? I thought that was a different thing from the iodine in the blood.

johns74 said:

haidut said:

1. My serum iodine dropped from 78 to 42.

Click to expand...

Is that the same thing that is computed when one adds iodine to a fat to check its saturation? I thought that was a different thing from the iodine in the blood.

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No, I don't think serum iodine is the same as the "iodine number". However, people with EFA "deficiency" have been shown to have low (but not deficient) serum iodine as well. I think the rationale is that iodine is in the blood in proportion of how much PUFA is in the serum. Of course, this implies that substances that lower free fatty acids may give artificially low iodine results, so one should be taking this test preferably fasting so that the iodine can reflect the fatty acid composition of the adipose tissue broken down for fuel during fasting.

haidut said:

1. My serum iodine dropped from 78 to 42. The lower end of the normal range is 40. I believe this is a rough measure of how saturated the free fatty acids in the bloodstream are. The lower the iodine the more saturated the fat. The person doing the fat-free diet experiment back in the early 20th century also had his iodine drop as he was getting progressively depleted in PUFA.

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I don't think they mentioned his iodine, but the capacity of his serum fatty acids to absorb iodine. From the study:

our subject confirms the previously mentioned observation of a drop in the iodine number of the total fatty acids of the serum as a result of the low-fat regimen

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Source

So, you measured your serum iodine, the study of the person who did the (almost) fat-free diet mentions his iodine number, not his serum iodine.

johns74 said:

haidut said:

1. My serum iodine dropped from 78 to 42. The lower end of the normal range is 40. I believe this is a rough measure of how saturated the free fatty acids in the bloodstream are. The lower the iodine the more saturated the fat. The person doing the fat-free diet experiment back in the early 20th century also had his iodine drop as he was getting progressively depleted in PUFA.

Click to expand...

I don't think they mentioned his iodine, but the capacity of his serum fatty acids to absorb iodine. From the study:

our subject confirms the previously mentioned observation of a drop in the iodine number of the total fatty acids of the serum as a result of the low-fat regimen

Click to expand...

Source

So, you measured your serum iodine, the study of the person who did the (almost) fat-free diet mentions his iodine number, not his serum iodine.

Click to expand...

Right, like I said in my post the serum iodine and iodine number are not the same. However, there are studies showing people with induced EFA, especially the ones presenting with eczema, have lower serum iodine as well. So, the two measures are probably correlated. I think Ray said that serum iodine above 65 is likely to be thyroid suppressive. Trying to find that interview right now. In it he said that the only people who need to supplement iodine are the ones exposed to radiation.

Hey Haidut on sun tolerance,

Ive noticed since keeping my vitamin d levels somewhat high via supplementation that I never even come close to burning anymore. I just seem to get tan very very quickly. I assuming its my body's response to keep from absorbing anymore D. I always just assumed people who burned in the sun(myself included) is from low lever of vitamin d and the body is trying to accumulate more D even at the risk of burning.

How does low PUFA stop one from burning internally, could you elaborate on this? Its this just from overall lower inflammation?


So do you think if your vitamin d levels are very low, and you spend a long time in the sun (assuming low PUFA concentration) you are still unlikely to get sunburned? That would be really cool! I am just assuming your vitamin D levels are already adequate at the moment. I only ask because I remember when I was a kid, I at low PUFA (my parents were very stick and health crazy) and only gave us whole foods, but I would still get sun burned really really bad if I hadnt be out in the sun for a while. I can understand from a topical application such as your formula but how does that work internally if you dont mind my asking.

jimmyquick said:

Hey Haidut on sun tolerance,

Ive noticed since keeping my vitamin d levels somewhat high via supplementation that I never even come close to burning anymore. I just seem to get tan very very quickly. I assuming its my body's response to keep from absorbing anymore D. I always just assumed people who burned in the sun(myself included) is from low lever of vitamin d and the body is trying to accumulate more D even at the risk of burning.

How does low PUFA stop one from burning internally, could you elaborate on this? Its this just from overall lower inflammation?


So do you think if your vitamin d levels are very low, and you spend a long time in the sun (assuming low PUFA concentration) you are still unlikely to get sunburned? That would be really cool! I am just assuming your vitamin D levels are already adequate at the moment. I only ask because I remember when I was a kid, I at low PUFA (my parents were very stick and health crazy) and only gave us whole foods, but I would still get sun burned really really bad if I hadnt be out in the sun for a while. I can understand from a topical application such as your formula but how does that work internally if you dont mind my asking.

Click to expand...

I don't think vitamin D has much to do with sunburn. If anything, it would be vitamin A. When you are exposed to intense sunlight it oxidizes the PUFA in the skin, which triggers an immune response and also histamine release. Hence the redness of the skin. Taking aspirin or niacinamide orally can lessen the sunburn to a degree but the best way to avoid it is to just have no PUFA under the skin so the oxidizing reaction does not occur to start with. As a comparison, look at babies who play in the sun all day. They rarely burn, and if they do it is usually the ones eating formula and other crap loaded with PUFA. People in tropical areas eating saturated fats like coconut oil also don't burn much. Ray wrote about all of these things on his websites, so you can do a search if you need more info.

Vitamin D protects from sunburn because once you have vitamin D, the body doesn't need as much UV light and creates protections from it.

Going back to whether serum iodine reflects PUFA storage, all I could find was associations with the iodine number, not serum iodine. For example:

Iodine number of serum fatty acids in acute infections of infants with and without eczema.

Another group in 1935 agreed that atopic eczema patients had a tended to have low serum iodine numbers....

SERUM LIPIDS IN ECZEMA AND IN OTHER ... Hansen, Arild E., and Burr, George O.: Iodine Numbers of Serum Lipids in Rats Fed on ...

Study of Iodine Number of Serum Fatty Acids in Infantile Eczema.

johns74 said:

Vitamin D protects from sunburn because once you have vitamin D, the body doesn't need as much UV light and creates protections from it.

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Do you know what the mechanism of protection is? Are there any studies behind it?

johns74 said:

Going back to whether serum iodine reflects PUFA storage, all I could find was associations with the iodine number, not serum iodine. For example:

Iodine number of serum fatty acids in acute infections of infants with and without eczema.

Another group in 1935 agreed that atopic eczema patients had a tended to have low serum iodine numbers....

SERUM LIPIDS IN ECZEMA AND IN OTHER ... Hansen, Arild E., and Burr, George O.: Iodine Numbers of Serum Lipids in Rats Fed on ...

Study of Iodine Number of Serum Fatty Acids in Infantile Eczema.

Click to expand...

There are also studies showing serum iodine adaptively decreases in a state of EFA deficiency as its main purposes in the body is saturating PUFA and protecting from its peroxidation. Of course, it could also mean iodine deficiency, but my number simply dropped without going into the deficiency range.
I need to ask Peat to send me the studies on iodine. I got this idea from him and he quoted old studies from the 1940s saying iodine contribution to thyroid function is rather small, and iodine's main purposes was protection from PUFA. Higher PUFA intake would raise serum iodine and low PUFA intake would lower it. Don't quote me on that before I get the studies from Peat, but I think you guys may find them before he responds.

haidut said:

There are also studies showing serum iodine adaptively decreases in a state of EFA deficiency as its main purposes in the body is saturating PUFA

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What do you mean by saturating PUFA? Converting PUFA to saturated fats? I didn't know that was possible inside the human body, except maybe in the intestine.

I was living a cloudy melancholic...desolate life...the days grew shorter...nights longer, and it was getting colder...and then one day...the last molecule of pufa...was released from my body, and all of a sudden the clouds parted, the sun was shining...I heard beautiful music on the horizon, beautiful woman started appearing out of no where...and my nuts instantly doubled in size

haidut said:

Don't quote me on that before I get the studies from Peat

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Ok.

Higher PUFA intake would raise serum iodine

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Raised serum iodine can also indicate hyperthyroidism, so it seems that it would be compatible with low PUFA intake as well.

and low PUFA intake would lower it [serum iodine].

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Low serum iodine can indicate hypothyroidism, so it seems that it would be compatible with high PUFA intake as well. See here:

Many investigations have established the value
of serum iodine concentration as a quantitative
index of thyroid activity (1 to 7). Most previous
reports have been concerned primarily with the
increase in serum iodine which occurs in hyperthyroidism.
The present study deals with the decrease
in serum iodine characteristic of untreated
hypothyroidism, and with the effect of thyroid
therapy on the level of serum iodine of hypothyroid
patients.

Click to expand...

Source

haidut said:

jimmyquick said:

Hey Haidut on sun tolerance,

Ive noticed since keeping my vitamin d levels somewhat high via supplementation that I never even come close to burning anymore. I just seem to get tan very very quickly. I assuming its my body's response to keep from absorbing anymore D. I always just assumed people who burned in the sun(myself included) is from low lever of vitamin d and the body is trying to accumulate more D even at the risk of burning.

How does low PUFA stop one from burning internally, could you elaborate on this? Its this just from overall lower inflammation?


So do you think if your vitamin d levels are very low, and you spend a long time in the sun (assuming low PUFA concentration) you are still unlikely to get sunburned? That would be really cool! I am just assuming your vitamin D levels are already adequate at the moment. I only ask because I remember when I was a kid, I at low PUFA (my parents were very stick and health crazy) and only gave us whole foods, but I would still get sun burned really really bad if I hadnt be out in the sun for a while. I can understand from a topical application such as your formula but how does that work internally if you dont mind my asking.

Click to expand...

I don't think vitamin D has much to do with sunburn. If anything, it would be vitamin A. When you are exposed to intense sunlight it oxidizes the PUFA in the skin, which triggers an immune response and also histamine release. Hence the redness of the skin. Taking aspirin or niacinamide orally can lessen the sunburn to a degree but the best way to avoid it is to just have no PUFA under the skin so the oxidizing reaction does not occur to start with. As a comparison, look at babies who play in the sun all day. They rarely burn, and if they do it is usually the ones eating formula and other crap loaded with PUFA. People in tropical areas eating saturated fats like coconut oil also don't burn much. Ray wrote about all of these things on his websites, so you can do a search if you need more info.

Click to expand...

Thank you Haidut.

Thoughts on serum iodine is very interesting!

That is exciting to hear about all those who've overcome deadly pufa! I'm 15 months into my detox. A lot of great changes have occurred but I have far more to go. I do notice that I don't burn like o use to. It's pretty cool how I can go out on the sun and not get lobstered. FYI if my face or boss start to get a little red. Progest e clears it up inside of 60s...no joke! So it definitely seems that progesterone and/or e has a large effect on skin health and/or pufa.

haidut said:

Do you know what the mechanism of protection is? Are there any studies behind it?

Click to expand...

Not him, but Peat has mentioned that Vit D deficiency prevents tanning. Doesn't affect sunburn immediately, but he is half right.

Hugh Johnson said:

haidut said:

Do you know what the mechanism of protection is? Are there any studies behind it?

Click to expand...

Not him, but Peat has mentioned that Vit D deficiency prevents tanning. Doesn't affect sunburn immediately, but he is half right.

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Well, tanning is an adaptive response to stress (burning) so wouldn't we want to avoid it? Is that an argument against vitamin D?
I am assuming that ideally one would want neither tanning nor burning.

So ideally, we would be able to spend all day out in the sun with no impact on skin color?