Low toxin lifestyle

[Rick K]

Hi all,

As of late the RPF forum seems to have switched gears & is on an incessant rant about the toxicity of copper & Vit A. I know a lot of forum members have left. Does anyone have any positive experiences by adding Vit A &/or copper into their diet such as healing skin issues or parasites or nerve disorders? ALS is purported to be halted, not cured but halted by ingesting small amts of copper salicylate. I procured some for someone who had ALS & added GHK peptides but this guy’s wife was w pharma sales rep who thought she was smarter & better looking than me & chucked it in the trash & he’s pushing up daisies now so I never found out it’s potential.

I have experienced remarkably curative healing for eczema with 100k IU of Vit A after several days of ingestion.

[Kevin007]

Rick,

I was on the RPF for almost a decade! I’m finding myself on there less and less now.  I felt like it was a place I could go to talk to like-minded people who were happy to help me on my journey.  Not so much anymore.

So what type of vit A were you using and what kind of health benefits were you seeing?

[Gawdawg]

I know a guy who had emailed Ray Peat about a gut issue and Ray recommended supplementing with a certain amount of Vitamin A (I don’t remember the amount) and it helped resolve the gut issue.
In regards to the Ray Peat Forum, remember Ray Peat said this, “Nutrition is as complex and open and undefined as metaphysics or cosmology or anything. It’s a process of exploring and learning, and figuring things out. It’s never a closed book; never a finished subject.”
To say, with an authoritarian approach, that one specific dietary method or system is THE way is bunk. If anything is toxic, it is now the Ray Peat Forum.
Enjoy the day!!

[kayess]

I’m not sure about vitamin A helping my skin – might depend on the type of skin issue. If you’re tracking food intake in chronometer, be sure to just use generic foods not branded. I thought I was deficient in Vit A because the branded milk I kept inputting didn’t have their Vit A levels listed.

I’ve had much more immediate relief from skin issues supplementing topical magnesium. I use it around my nails specifically to address dry skin and hang nails. It stings a bit on little cuts, but it’s an almost immediate response where my skin becomes hydrated and the hang nails are gone or much less painful.

In terms of supplementing those 2, my mind is going to liver. If you’re supplementing from a different source then this doesn’t matter. I do think there is some truth behind the “toxicity” idea if you’re consuming liver too often. This is conjecture, but when I think about hunter gatherer type communities, they would have had one liver per animal, and they weren’t slaying an animal every day because they consumed every part of the animal. So there would have been a lot of time spread out between liver consumption, it likely wasn’t a weekly thing.. perhaps monthly. And it was likely shared.

[Lilac]

I put Idea Lab’s vitamin A product in my nostrils for a week or two in an attempt to heal my lost sense of smell. I felt that that approach did move the needle in the right direction. It was not a drastic improvement.

[Cari aka “Rinse & rePeat”]

I was a lurker there for 5 years and a member for three now.  The 180 took me by surprise. I am really glad you are here “Sandy”. You always made me laugh!

[Cari aka “Rinse & rePeat”]

+1

[Lollipop]

Hi Rick! I have never taken enough quantities of either Vit A or Cooper to fully comment.  I drink whole milk and get Vit D and Vit A.  It has been quite a while since I felt a need to supplement individual vitamins.  I think my food is fairly nutrient dense and my gut health is good, so my body can use and digest what it needs.

However, when I lived in India, people used cooper vessels for drinking and eating and cooking. I did hear of cases of toxicity fairly often. Interpret as you will.

[Zack Vegas]

If you look at older studies like the following, they will straight up say that Vitamin A deficiency is a type of “virtual castration”-

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3181/00379727-72-17460

In that study, they show that testosterone supplementation can alleviate many of the negative affects.  The phrase “toxic masculinity” gets thrown around a lot today, so I wonder if masculinity and testosterone are two of the toxins being referred to in this “low toxin diet.”

Here’s another study that shows low vitamin A status is more common in those with autism and leads to higher serotonin levels.  Vitamin A supplementation both improved subjective symptoms, and lowered Serotonin (aka 5-HT)-

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0361923017303404

Grant did post some studies that showed that a low Vitamin A diet can be useful as a 2-3 intervention diet for some people, but even in those studies, night blindness started to occur longer term, and that’s when the intervention was stopped, and Vitamin A increased, which did resolve the night blindness.

Personally, I have had direct topical Vitamin A dramatically reduce dandruff in just a couple days application.  I trialed a low A diet long ago, and found many negatives in just 3 months.  Adding Vitamin A back in immediately reversed some of the symptoms, and others did improve over time.

I don’t see how a diet that will eventually lead to low testosterone, low fertility, high serotonin, weight and fat gain, dandruff, poor skin and blindness can be the “natural” diet for everyone.  Nor does it make sense that a “toxin” would be omnipresent in milk and eggs of pretty much every species.

[Lilac]

I am bit intrigued by the low vitamin A hoopla. But, man, oh man, that is a restrictive diet. I can’t remember all the details, but a lot of the enjoyment I have left would be wiped out–orange juice and fruit to name two. And no eggs would be hard. I like beans and beef, but I’m doing the no-starch thing now, so I don’t want to derail that. I also don’t feel bad at all. Ray Peat has been good for me for 11-plus years. I don’t blame Ray if I gain weight, I blame myself. You can overdo the Peaty foods–easily. So maybe I will try the diet for a week or two someday. Just not in the next few months.

 

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