Vitamin A (retinol) Is Not Toxic To The Liver In High Doses

tara

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:welcome Nick
Sounds like great progress.
I and probably others would be interested to read what our version of ' went totally Peat' consists of, beyond the vitamin supplements, since people have so many individual variations, and your results have been so positive. :) Possibly in a separate thread, if you feel like it.
 

lindsay

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Question about Vitamin A for anyone out there who would like to answer..... If I don't have skin problems, do I need to supplement vitamin A? I don't eat liver ever, but I do eat a good amount of high fat dairy and some eggs. My skin is perfectly clear and if anything, I'm prone to dry skin, but that seems to be due to bathing with hot water because if I skip showering, my skin feels good. I did have eczema as a child, but I've controlled it. So would Vitamin A still be beneficial to supplement? I know it's very important for thyroid function and I do take 2 grains of Cynoplus daily during winter. Thanks!
 

Nick Ireland

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Hello Tara
I think my doc was surprised that I clocked a total testosterone level effectively double that pre TRT therapy. I believe the liver to be at the centre of my trt issues - I was metabolising drugs at a rate three times that of my brother, clearly revealing elevated cyp450 enzyme activity. Liver enzymes seem to rise in response to a compromised organ eg non alcoholic fatty liver. I was experiencing crazy levels of estrogen on trt, it just wasn't clearing and elevated liver enzymes were probably not helping. A high sugar, moderate protein, lower fat diet seemed to be the fastest way for me to flush out my liver by accelerating metabolism and minimising liver stress. I experienced a 'detox' period and the addition of caprylic acid seemed to be a superb catalyst for that purpose - it is able to 'switch' on the liver's 'housekeeping' mode. I drank soy milk and used beta carotene and melatonin for two decades - that must have taken quite some tole on me?!
I can say with certainty that vitamin A is stirring primal activity in my physiology. I feel more focus and awareness, a little more aggression, my skin is getting it's soft oiliness back, I have more resistance to stress - combined, they point to increased androgen activity, but only further blood tests will prove that. Certainly estrogen must be getting a real beating from my A E D combo at present and I'm very glad!
Diet? I'm on potatoes, a little white bread, the big carrot, egg yolks, watermelon, organic gelatin candy (which is plentiful here in the UK/Ireland), liver (once a week), 2 litres semi skimmed organic milk and 4 litres fresh orange juice with added salt. I drink coffee four times a day with about 4 to 6 heaped spoons of sucrose white sugar. Occasionally some chicken breast and bacon. We have parsnips here (white carrots) grown locally and combined with carrots, butter and salt, then steamed and mashed they taste fantastic. I never drink water as I see it as nutritionally counterproductive, so all my liquids are in the above list and I take milk and orange to bed at night with salt, sipping it when I wake up during the night. My adrenalin surges and pounding heart of two years are gone. I take various supplements - vitamins and minerals. I try to avoid herbs seeing as they nearly always have a double edge to their blade.
One point of note - studies show that the liver accumulates the great majority of of our ingested carotene. The skin will receive some but may not indicate liver saturation levels. It's my opinion it could take several years to metabolise ALL of that carotene out of the liver with a metabolic diet based on the sheer size of the liver and carotenes consumed over a lifetime.
Lindsay - I know your point about dry skin vs showering vs vitamin A. I have found that vitamin A in each person has a magic level. For me at present it's about 20,000 iu per day and that may change. That means I don't get that itchy dry feeling even after showering and my facial skin has enough oil to protect it. Going lower or higher can bring back opposite effects. Perhaps the A is matching my metabolic rate at this level?
 

tara

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@ Nick Ireland
Nice report, thanks.
You don't think the cooked carrot is too much carotene for you at this stage, if you were trying to clear excess carotene?
 

Peater

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I'm surprised at the amount of references to supplements rather than just eating a whole food like liver and getting all the selenium, B12, etc. as well.
 

Nick Ireland

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Tara,
I thought about that and considered that the increased metabolic rate would help clearance. It's a Catch22 for sure! I do wash my finely grated carrot before adding salt, so I hope that helps and I notice how orange the waste water is in that process.

Peater, I'd like to rely on foods, but mass production is seriously compromising the food chain whether it be meat or grains or dairy. As things progress I will drop to lower doses in my supps. I don't consider I am at maximum absorption yet by any means.
The cyclical challenge of winter on all regenerative functions increases the already high demand for nutrition to optimise metabolism and fight disease. Also, combatting age related lower absorption rates (which I believe can be reversed) must be factored in. I REALLY notice the effect of Northern Winter on Peat style progress.
If I lived in, say, N Africa for a couple of years I would be rocking with good health thanks to humidity levels, sunshine and temperature.. oh and altitude if I chose a mountain village. All those powerful health modulators go out the window when I live in a temperate climate by the sea. Right now I am forcing down the calories to stay on top metabolic capacity thanks to cold, damp, dark weather. I was on holiday 'a few weeks back, in a hot climate. Within days I felt every function operating better.... mood, digestion, energy, need for sleep, quality of sleep etc. in the old days, sanitariums in the Alps did a roaring trade in recovery clinics. Apart from Peat, very, very few physicians have the capacity to understand the power of that geographical healing.
It's no surprise that Ireland is the home of what Peat calls 'nearly a perfect food' - the humble potato. For centuries it was the staple diet of the working folk of this Island. High density energy provision, proteins and nutrients - coupled with dairy for fats. Interestingly, the West of Ireland is the world capital of coeliac disease.
 

Ecomike

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Interesting thread here. I have been using doses of synthetic Vitamin A as high as 100,000 IU per day for 20 years now with no problems. Solved all sorts of Gout and acne problems for me and for over 100 others it solved bruising, and sports injuries, pain and inflammation, joint and gout issues in just 2-3 days. I use it with Vit C and E. More details later. Keep in mind that any one can develop or have an allergy to just about anything. I think the natural versus synthetic battle is too one sided on both sides as I get nothing, no benefit, out of taking natural A or beta carotene!!!
 
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haidut

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Amazoniac said:
post 105090 Quick questions haidut,
According to your experience, what is the average daily ideal range of retinol intake from diet alone (or weekly translated to daily)?
And how the health of the liver affects its retention and utilization?

There is no ideal range, but in general it should be ingested with vitamin D in a ratio of about 5:1 retinol:cholecalciferol. Higher metabolism increases requirements for vitamin A due to increased steroid synthesis. Liver health is probably not the main factor in its utilization as the liver only stores it. Peripheral tissues convert it to retinoic acid, so that's what counts. The liver toxicity of vitamin A is probably from increased lipid peroxidation, so taking vitamin E with it prevents that.
 
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yomama

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haidut said:
post 105092 but in general it should be ingested with vitamin D in a ratio of about 5:1 retinol:cholecalciferol

do you mean IU ? e.g. 5000 IU of retinol : 1000 IU of D3 ?
 
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YuraCZ

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Peater said:
post 66945 I'm surprised at the amount of references to supplements rather than just eating a whole food like liver and getting all the selenium, B12, etc. as well.
Exactly..
 
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haidut

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yomama said:
post 105101
haidut said:
post 105092 but in general it should be ingested with vitamin D in a ratio of about 5:1 retinol:cholecalciferol

do you mean IU ? e.g. 5000 IU of retinol : 1000 IU of D3 ?

No, I meant 5:1 ratio. If you are taking 1,000 IU vitamin D that means 5,000 IU vitamin A. But if you are taking 5,000 IU vitamin D that means 25,000 IU vitamin A. As is commonly the case in biology, it is the ratio that matters rather than any specific amount.
 
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ddjd

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Interesting thread here. I have been using doses of synthetic Vitamin A as high as 100,000 IU per day for 20 years now with no problems. Solved all sorts of Gout and acne problems for me and for over 100 others it solved bruising, and sports injuries, pain and inflammation, joint and gout issues in just 2-3 days. I use it with Vit C and E. More details later. Keep in mind that any one can develop or have an allergy to just about anything. I think the natural versus synthetic battle is too one sided on both sides as I get nothing, no benefit, out of taking natural A or beta carotene!!!
Do you use palmitate or acetate?
 

ddjd

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Everyone considering taking high vitamin A needs to listen to Ray's radio broadcast from 2-21-2014. He talks about vitamin A near the end (sorry, I didn't write down the time.) He says safe levels depend on the status of the thyroid. Too much vit A is antagonist to thyroid. Apparently thyroid hormone and vit A are carried on the same protein in the blood. It can act like a PUFA in competing with thyroid. Increasing thyroid hormone increases your requirement for vit A.
After listening, I decided not to take vit A at all until I can get some thyroid supplement, since my own thyroid levels are below normal!
@haidut do you think it's true that vit A can be antagonistic to thyroid?
 

Amazoniac

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We of course need vitamin A, but I think you could confidently say that retinol and iron are the two single most dangerous vitamin supplements (with vitamin D₃ coming-in at a distant third.)
Can you elaborate on this, Travis? It's not the first time that I read that it's a risky supplement. You mentioned that it can accumulate in the liver and possibly compromise other functions of its cells. But when it starts to become problematic, wouldn't it show up on the skin as well so you can back off safely?
 

Travis

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I just read that the chronic toxic dose was only 4,000 IU.

At a dose like this, you expect the majority to be stored safely in the liver as retinol esters. However, the liver will become saturated someday. When the storage capacity is exceeded than it may become a problem.

The tissue retinoic acid concentrations are dependent on the blood retinol concentrations. High retinoic acid levels increase transcription of hundreds of genes involved in cell growth. Topical retinoic acid can double the skin turnover rate, and high chronic fish oil consumption in The Nordic Countries is associated with osteoporosis consequent of increased alkaline phosphatase transcription. But this could be potentiated by the relatively low vitamin D photosynthesized in the Northern latitudes.

If you want to know exactly what happens to the cell with increased retinol, you have to look at an mRNA microarray study. This is where they extract all of the mRNA and characterize it; match it to the proteins they transcribe.

Shouldn't be an issue if your liver isn't saturated.

You might expect skin changes with even one high dose. If you exceed the storage rate of the liver, you would expect the blood level to rise. But your liver would then pull-out retinol from the bloodstream (HDL) and store it, so the increase would be short-lived. I think the only real problem is by totally saturating the liver, and this would take time. But there is certainly no way to know how much retinol esters are already stored in the liver before supplementation. A person on a hardcore paleoatkins diet might already be ~70% saturated.
 

ddjd

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Can you elaborate on this, Travis? It's not the first time that I read that it's a risky supplement. You mentioned that it can accumulate in the liver and possibly compromise other functions of its cells. But when it starts to become problematic, wouldn't it show up on the skin as well so you can back off safely?
Yes I'm confused also. Why would haidut say there's no problem with high doses and this study would back up this opinion
 

Travis

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Yes I'm confused also. Why would haidut say there's no problem with high doses and this study would back up this opinion
There were a few problems:
vitamina1.png
vitamina2.png


But I have to admit that I'm surprised by how few there were. Notice the desquamation in 9% of patients. This is a classic effect of retinoic acid.

No test on liver function in the Phase II trial for 300,000IU retinol acetate and tamoxifen (an estrogen antagonist). The only time the word "liver" appears in the article is here:
Patients previously treated for metastatic disease and/or with disease localized only at a previously irradiated site, or with liver or CNS metastatic involvment [sic] were excluded from the study.
In the world of cancer research, so much vomiting and desquamation can be considered "relatively free of side-effects." Next to 5-fluorouracil and doxorubicin, anything will seem mild.
Treatment consisted of tamoxifen: 10 mg p.o. three times a day and retinyl acetate: 300 000 IU p.o. daily, and was continued until disease progression or the onset of marked side-effects.
They don't say how many patients went the full 3 months on this dose.

Here is something interesting:
Another possible interaction between retinoids and tamoxifen might involve the biosynthesis of polyamines (Manni 1988). In most experimental systems, retinoids have been shown to inhibit ornithine decarboxylase and subsequently to induce a polyamine depletion that is directly related to growth inhibition, differentiation and accumulation of cells in the G1 phase of the cell cycle. Similarly tamoxifen was shown to inhibit ornithine decarboxylase activity and to induce a decrease of polyamines in MCF-7 breast cancer cell lines (Lippman et al. 1987a; Manni 1988).

So it might actually work on some forms of cancer, but many cell types respond differently to retinol/retinoic acid. Epithelial cells of the skin actually increase in cell proliferation with retinoic acid, and even β-carotene has been shown to increase the mortality of lung cancer in a large and well-known study.* Lung cells are epithelial cells.

Most of the reading that I've done was on the negative effects of vitamin A, but I'm sure there are hundreds of studies on the positive effects as well. There seems to be many factors involved, like vitamin D levels. In the earlier study done by the same researchers, this 300,000IU dose raised the blood levels by only about 60%. I would bet money that the rest was stored in the liver. I don't know how long a 300,000IU dose could be maintained.

Here is a pop-up chart,† just found, that confirms my beliefs regarding the relationship between liver and blood levels. High doses may be perfectly fine for some time, but there may come a point—depending on the dose—that the volumetric capacity of the liver is exceeded. At this point, the same dose would be expected to have a much more dramatic effect on blood retinol levels than had previously.

Boccardo, Francesco, et al. "Phase II study of tamoxifen and high-dose retinyl acetate in patients with advanced breast cancer." Journal of cancer research and clinical oncology 116.5 (1990): 503-506.
*Albanes, Demetrius, et al. "α-Tocopherol and β-carotene supplements and lung cancer incidence in the Alpha-Tocopherol, Beta-Carotene Cancer Prevention Study: effects of base-line characteristics and study compliance." JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute 88.21 (1996): 1560-1570.
†Degerud, Eirik M., et al. "Bioavailability of iron, vitamin A, zinc, and folic acid when added to condiments and seasonings." Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1357.1 (2015): 29-42.
 
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Peater

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Anyone else just eat a generous helping of liver every now and then?

I'm not being flippant, I see the need for supps but with liver also providing protein, selenium and B12 it seemed a sensible approach and more in keeping with how liver would have been consumed in the past.

Living on a grey damp rock in the Atlantic, I do take 10,000IU Vit D on a semi regular basis
 

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