Thank you for this. Throwing away my vitamin A supplement now... Any idea how long it takes to clear out of the body? I’ve been taking it daily for probably a year, year and a half...
Well this is about more than just supplements, so it's not just the supplements you'd want to detox. At this point it seems like it's taking 2-3 years or more to bring levels down, but everyone is different and Dr. Smith is always trying to find new ways to speed the process without going too hard on detox (which can cause flare ups aka retracing).
Im in Dr Smiths program and it is really helping me after decades of trying other approaches with little or negative results. Everything the others were adamant would make me well ended up making me sicker. The 60 dollars to join the program was the best 60 dollars I ever spent!
Generally, would you recommend against eating liver (e.g. chicken or beef) because of this? I always thought liver was a healthy food because of the density of various nutrients, but that includes Vitamin A.
The liver is the body's waste and toxin processing organ, and it stores much of the toxins it processes until they can be more safely excreted. You should 100% avoid it.
Thank you so much for your most intriguing eye-opener of an article. I am going to watch this video shortly. I too was brainwashed to think that liver was really good for our health even though it processes all of the body's toxic waste. I have just binned the Vitamin A tablets forever.
Green tea and white tea (baby green leaves) are both potent detoxifiers for liver but it is critical that it is organic or the applied pesticide is steeped in the tea and just adds to the body's already toxic load.
The comments to that youtube video are turned off, which tells me all I need to know.
The liver performs many functions, one of which is to process toxins. Don't eat animals from factory farms and you won't have to worry about toxic livers.
Wild animals often go straight for the liver when eating prey.
Pigs deficient in Vitamin A gave birth to piglets without eyeballs. Vitamin A is in fact a Vitamin, and it's not toxic if you get it from food.
Look up the website of the Weston A Price Foundation. Vitamin A is not a scam, but as always slapping "now with Vitamin A" on some garbage supermarket food is most certainly a scam.
As far as Bill Gates putting Vitamin A in his frankenfoods, that's not much difference to the vitamins they add to FORTIFIED rice or IODIZED salt. It's just the bare minimum to prevent an epidemic of degenerative diseases, so people keep eating their frankenfoods.
This quote and Bill Gates' awful vitamin A pushing is enough for me to begin slowly reducing vitamin A intake:
"The Golden Rice Project was the result of an initiative by the Rockefeller Foundation, and is based on a widely recognised need for a sustainable biofortification approach to contribute to alleviating the scourge of micronutrient deficiencies worldwide. It was this initiative that brought together Profs Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer, who in an exemplary collaboration created Golden Rice to help mitigate the problem of vitamin A deficiency in the world."
"As far as Bill Gates putting Vitamin A in his frankenfoods, that's not much difference to the vitamins they add to FORTIFIED rice or IODIZED salt. "
Wrong. This is incorrect; genetically altered is not the same as supplemental vitamin added to processed food product by any stretch of the imagination. Read the science around the Golden Rice scams and get your basic facts right before flinging accusations.
Who is flinging accusations? I think GMO food, fortified rice, and iodized salt are all unhealthy in their totality. But just because iodized salt is a scam doesn't mean IODINE is a scam. Just because Bill Gates is pushing some new frankenfood with "now with added Vitamin A" on the box doesn't mean eating liver from healthy animals is bad. I get my Vitamin A from raw, grassfed beef and raw milk and butter. I also eat liver from time to time.
When I say that golden rice is the same as fortified rice, I just mean it's the next generation of big business pretending to care about a problem (that they themselves created) so they can have an excuse to expand their empire even more. Vitamin A deficiency is real, and it's created by factory foods. Big business then tries to "solve" the problem with even more factory foods.
All good liars pepper their lies with truth. It's good that you realize Gates is a liar but that doesn't automatically mean everything he ever said was a lie. Vitamin A deficiency is a real problem and leads to all kinds of birth defects, dental problems, and deadly diseases like tuberculosis. You can read "Nutrition & Physical Degeneration" for free online, and you will see that this stuff was known 80 years ago.
I’m coming from a position of taking supplements because I know my diet isn’t the best (can’t stand most vegetables). So learning that my vitamin A, D, K, and turmeric supplements are not beneficial (and even harmful) is completely knew to me in the last few days. What about the magnesium, vitamin C, zinc, Quercetin, and NAC I’ve been taking?
We need to unpack that notion that we are at risk of deficiency without eating fruits and veggies in copious amounts. The five-a-day and eat-the-rainbow campaigns are recent and are propaganda campaigns sponsored by industrial agriculture corporations -- big Ag.
The fact is that fruits and vegetables also contain a lot of anti-nutrients. So your body may in fact be trying to tell you something.
Magnesium is ok but not citrate. You shouldn't take anything citrate. Garrett recommends topical magnesium supplements as oils or creams. He sees the best results in brining up magnesium levels that way over pill form.
Zinc is a very important mineral for supporting detox enzymes. Same with molybdenum and selenium.
I don't know about Quercetin and NAC. I believe that Garrett's take on NAC is that our bodies make all the NAC they need. You just have to make sure they have the base minerals necessary. If you take NAC then you may mess with the body's bio-feedback/homeostasis mechanisms in an unintended and detrimental way.
Thank you so much for your response. I was taking selenium, but stopped when I read that it could contribute to causing diabetes. Any truth to that? There is so much information out there, and it is so hard to know what you can trust. Over the last few years, I’ve definitely learned you can’t trust Big Pharma, Big Medical, or the government.
Michelle, I recommend you start doing your own research rather than just starting or stopping supplementation just because you heard someone claiming something.
I recommend you read studies about all this. You will find thousands or tens of thousands of studies about all these supplements on Pubmed for example. Read Randomized Controlled Trials, Meta-Analyses etc.
Sometimes you will find very contradictory results. For example, I also researched the association between Selenium and Diabetes. There are studies which show that Selenium supplementation was associated with a (very weak) increase of Diabetes risk. Other studies show Selenium supplementation was associated with a decrease of blood glucose levels....
If you find such contradictory studies, you will be confused. So you need to try making sense of these findings. I was wondering if a U-shaped association may explain that. So I searched for it and in fact I found studies which show that as well a low Selenium level in your blood as also a quite high Selenium level in your blood is associated with a higher Diabetes risk.
So this means:
Both a deficiency and too much of Selenium can increase the risk of health problems including Diabetes. So if a study finds that selenium supplementation was associated with a higher risk of Diabetes, this is probably because the Selenium levels of these people increased too much. They took too much for too much time.
On the other hand, if there are other studies which show that selenium supplementation reduced glucose levels, this may indicate that these people had too little Selenium in their blood before. And so taking Selenium reduced their risk.
So it makes sense that you check your selenium levels! If you have too little, increase the level. If your level is good or even high, do not take it. Or take a (low) dose which keeps you in a healthy blood level!
Please do your own research and do not trust anyone.
For example you will also find studies like this which show that long term supplementation of Selenium and Q10 reduce the risk of cardiovascular mortality by 55%.
"During a follow up time of 5.2 years a significant reduction of cardiovascular mortality was found in the active treatment group vs. the placebo group (5.9% vs. 12.6%; P=0.015).
Conclusion: Long-term supplementation of selenium/coenzyme Q10 reduces cardiovascular mortality. "
Title:
"Cardiovascular mortality and N-terminal-proBNP reduced after combined selenium and coenzyme Q10 supplementation: a 5-year prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial among elderly Swedish citizens"
There are also MANY hundreds or thousands of studies showing supplementation of Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Turmeric etc. has great health benefits and reduces disease risks. For example, Vitamin D supplementation has shown to reduce the risk of developing an autoimmune disease by 40% for example. This was a high quality RCT with 25.000 participants. Also cancer mortality was reduced by 40% in people with a normal BMI. Turmeric or Curcumin completely prevented diabetes in one study and there are lots of other studies showing major health benefits. Reduced health problems with supplementation.
Magnesium is very important, too. Read all the studies and meta-analyses, please.
Also Vitamin A supplementation can have massive benefits. There are meta analyses of RCT´s showing that Vitamin A supplementation reduces measles mortality and measles infection rates by 70% and 50% for example. Also studies show that COVID was cured much faster with high dose vitamin A supplementation. On the other hand, I would not recommend a long term high dose intake of vitamin A.
I agree with Josh in some way. Vitamin A is actually something that you do not want to take in excess. But it also has great health benefits. Maybe it is better if you receive vitamin A by Beta Carotene via vegetables for example. I would not take vitamin A long term. Maybe just sometimes, or therapeutically. Also, measure your blood level.
There are also studies showing that Quercetin is very helpful for certain conditions. Much lower risk of infectious diseases for example! I am not sure if a long term intake is ideal. Studies should investigate this further.
NAC supplementation for 6 months has shown in a high quality RCT from Italy to drastically reduce thr risk of a symptomatic influenza infection.
So taking this in winter for example could be a good idea. But please read all the studies and do your own research. Deficiency of Cysteine is very dangerous. Josh is right. Cysteine is produced by your body. But the synthesis is not always enough. Diseases, inflammatory processes, oxidative stress, higher age etc. lead to a higher need of Glutathione and so you will lose more Cysteine. It is easy to develop a deficiency.
So in this case the best is to measure your Cysteine level in your blood. If you have a good level, maybe you do not need to take NAC.
All in all I totaly agree that a healthy plant based diet is the basis and the best way to stay healthy. BUT supplements have proven health benefits and can reduce health risks. Just read the studies. On the other hand, some supplements may also have negative effects if you take TOO much, if your blood level increases too much or if you take a wrong form of these supplements. For example, there are two different forms of Selenium. One is healthy, the other one is problematic which may also explain why some studies had contradictory results.
You need to become an expert for what you really need and in which dose. If you do it correctly, supplements may improve your health and drastically reduce health risks.
Thank you Max, for taking the time to write me this thoughtful response. I really do appreciate it. You’ve brought up a lot of really good points. You are right that we should do our own investigating rather than relying on any one person too much. Off to do some searching for studies and reading!
I'm curious about the relationship between Vitamin A 'toxicity' and Vitamin K2 and Vitamin D. I learned while researching Vitamin K2 that there's a complex relationship between fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K2 which involves some degree of competition or mutual counter-action between the vitamins.
So if you are getting lots of A but little K2 and/or D, that may produce 'toxicity'. Nutritionist Kate Rhéaume-Bleue's goes into this in her book about Vitamin K2, but I admit I have forgotten the details.
I believe there is an antagonistic relationship btwn vitamin D and A, which is why vitamin D seems to help in the short run. But vitamin D supplements are poison and will do more harm than good in the long run and can only hold the dam of vit A toxicity so long. This is not about not getting enough D or K. It's about liver health/cholestasis and the inherent toxicity of vitamin A.
In my opinion, yes. And only good options for getting D up are sunlight or a sun lamp are the only good options. But as I pointed out in the interview with JJ, people who are reducing their vitamin A toxicity are seeing their vitamin D levels rise without any extra effort.
There is a slide on this in the slidedeck of my presentation. See the link to Jim Stephenson Jr who has been writing on this for years. He has a lot of posts on FB but he also started a substack though paid subscriptions only.
Are you saying that golden rice is a scam because (1) it doesn’t solve Vitamin A deficiency, or (2) because Vitamin A is toxic?
I equated golden rice to supplemental vitamin spray because they are both scams that get you to think you can keep eating those frankenfoods. Healthy foods don’t need to be "fortified" or "enriched".
It doesn’t surprise me that golden rice does a poor job at solving Vitamin A deficiency. So does "enriching" food, which is why I drew the parallel. My point is that Bill Gates isn’t poisoning people with Vitamin A, he is malnourishing people while using a garbage version of Vitamin A to hype his product.
I assume you agree with me that Vitamin A from natural sources (food) is NOT toxic. After all, one of the links you sent me has this quote: "in order for beta-carotene to be effectively absorbed and be converted, fat (e.g. butter or vegetable oil) must be present in the meal.
What are your thoughts on Weston A. Price's work? His book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" is free online, and the Weston A Price Foundation has written a lot in defense of Vitamin A on their website.
I found it interesting to compare the amount of vitamin A in whole milk and 2% milk. My whole milk contains 91 mcg vitamin A per cup, about 152 IU's. I use this for coffee. It doesn't list any added vitamin A. Two percent milk that I eat with cereal shows added vitamin A palmitate on the label, and one cup contains 169 mcg vitamin A, which is about 282 IU's (per https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/mcg-to-iu-converter), which is almost double the amount in whole milk. I wonder why they supplement the vitamin A in 2% milk but not whole milk, and why they decide to give 2% milk so much more vitamin A per serving than whole milk. I'm not giving up milk, but I think I can live without the 2%, and I'll just be buying whole milk for now, and I'll continue checking the labels of various milk producers for added vitamin A.
Here is my take: Studies have found that VERY high dose vitamin A supplementation helps people recover from measles. In some studies vitamin A deficiency is assumed b/c if vitamin A supplementation helps it must mean they had a deficiency. In other cases, serum levels of vitamin A and/or retinol binding protein are measured and found to be lower in people with measles complications.
However, low serum retinol/RBP levels are not a good indicator of vitamin A deficiency (assuming there is even such a thing as vA deficiency, but that's beside the point). In fact, it is known that it is possible to have low levels of serum vA/RBP and still be vitamin A toxic. There can be various mechanisms for this, but this is a sign of cholestasis where the liver is withholding vitamin A so the level circulating in plasma is lower.
So in my opinion, they are not measuring hypovitaminosis A but rather hypervitaminosis A mis-identified as deficiency. But then if that's the case, why does high dose vitamin A help?
Well this was discussed somewhere in Grant Genereux's first book and I know that Anthony Mawson holds this view, which is that measles induces a release of retinoids or a kind of retinoid cascade, which is what causes the rash and other symptoms. If you give a hyper dose of vitamin A it basically sends various signals to the body to shut down retinoid metabolism thereby short-circuiting that cascade. For example, it has been shown that the administration of high doses of vitamin A downregulates gene expression of retinoid receptors.
Retinoids are very toxic and bioactive chemicals, so our bodies tend to keep very tight controls to maintain retinoid homeostasis. So the mass vA dose creates a kind of negative feedback loop to dampen retinoid metabolism, otherwise that influx of vA would be very toxic.
Note finally that in his first book, Grant discusses research showing that people who had measles when they are younger have better health outcomes later in life including fewer auto-immune diseases. Grant reasons that if measles triggers a massive vitamin A release when we're young, then it means we have less in our livers over time thereby reducing our chances of developing an auto-immune disease later on.
Um, are you referring to vitamin A in the active (retinol) form, or the pro-vitamin beta carotenes, please, or do you make no distinction? These are commonly conflated but I think that is a mistake. I used to have acne but my skin is fine since I started eating liver and I think it's probably that I needed the retinol from liver. I know it's not uncommon (25% of a sample of UK women in one study I saw) for people to have no activity in the enzyme in the body that converts the provitamin to the retinol form, I have assumed I must be one of those. Too much betacarotene really doesn't agree with me. But liver really helps with my health. sample size n=1 ;)
An excellent piece. Thank you Josh, for drawing attention re Vitamin A, particularly over the Gavi and B&M Foundation influence on fortification. Vitamin A is not their only interest (or profit) venture...As well as the influence in autoimmune conditions.
Couple of important things to note before peeps go cleaning out the vitamin cupboards-
Vitamin A has an intertwined and complex relationship to magnesium, copper and iron, within the body. Levels of others, affect absorption and removal of the other.
Quality of vitamin A greatly changes how the body processes it and utilises it.
I would strongly suggest, anyone who is concerned re vitamin A levels in their diet, (whether supplements or foods), go h asvea look at The Root Cause Protecol, Morley Robbins. https://therootcauseprotocol.com/resources/
Read the research he provides. It's free.
He has been studying vitamin A, magnesium, copper and iron, deficiency and toxicity and most importantly their interdependent relationships, the longest. Of course make your own mind up.
Nope. Sorry. Morley's advice is garbage and the root cause protocol is awful and ridiculously overly complicated. Garrett Smith treats refugees from his program who end up way worse off after following his awful health advice and poisoning themselves with retinol and vitamin D supplements and copper. I strongly advise readers here to not touch the RCP with a ten foot poll. And I don't have time or energy to debate this. I will delete any further comments trying to defend the RCP.
The principles to good health are far simpler than we've been led to believe.
All good 😊, I'm not for any one protecol, one Dr or 1 way of thinking. Particularly as i agree 100% with with your final statement and the evidence supports it's truth.
I'm for people looking at different views/data and I found Morley a good starting concept for most to challenge their precondition thinking around vitamins. Its up there with the dogma on vaccines.
Last I checked, he hadn't jumped on the vitamin d train, and I definitely don't support that.
I'm not familiar with Garrett Smith's work but you've certainly peaked my interest now😊
It is really worth investigating Dr Garrett Smith's work. Many of us are seeing results on this program which also includes balancing minerals in the body as well as a recommended diet.
I don't know about that and haven't come across anything to suggest that. However, there is good evidence that birth control interferes with vitamin A metabolism and probably affects the liver as well. See some of that evidence here:
In addition, there is a link to a video in my presentation when I'm talking about the liver releasing bile into the blood, which shows that Estrogen induced the liver to release bike from hepatocytes into the blood. Of course estrogen rises twice in every menstrual cycle.
Also, pregnancy can cause cholestasis. That is the main reason for morning sickness btw. Also look up cholestatis of pregnancy.
So in my opinion these are likely three of the major reasons women are more susceptible to auto-immune diseases.
To be clear, I don't disagree that women have higher prevalence of autoimmune issues. They do. I'm just saying as far as I know it isn't due to a difference in vitamin A metabolism per se. I think it's related to the other issues I mentioned which are more related to liver health. Vitamin A toxicity and liver health are separate but intertwined aspects of this theory.
Why is it vitally important? Is it important enough to poison half the population and set them up for higher rates of debilitating diseases later in life? Do you agree that condoms are an adequate substitute?
Hi Jane, I don't know if you've had a chance to watch my presentation to the PANDA open science meeting yet but if you haven't I think it can clear up a lot of things for you.
I'll reply to each question:
"As to vitamin A and autoimmune disease, if,as you say, liver disease is implicated, would this then mean that liver disease is more likely to induce autoimmune disorders in women rather than men, who might also be affected by vitamin A toxicity?"
To be clear it's not liver disease per se but some form of cholestasis, which can take many forms. Two key aspects of it are either a sequestering of bile and toxins in the liver, for example by decreased bile production. This can actually make people feel better, for a time, since it means there are less toxins circulating outside the liver. But eventually the liver will start releasing toxins bound to bile into the bloodstream. That is the second aspect. And that's when you get the endogenous vitamin A toxicity. So it isn't just any liver disease although I believe many other liver diseases are related (as in caused by this one).
I'm not saying that this cholestasis is more likely to induce auto-immunity in women, I'm saying the cholestasis (esp. the second aspect) is more common in women for the reasons I spelled out in my previous post.
"are rates of autoimmune disease increasing in women , if population growth and improved diagnosis are corrected for?"
In Grant Genereux's first book (Extinguishing the Fires of Hell) he lays out some compelling epidemiological evidence to show that autoimmune diseases are becoming more prevalent, and it isn't just because of increased awareness or improved diagnosis. If it is increasing in prevalence overall, I would say it's increasing for women, too. Is it growing faster for women? I don't know.
"Can rates be compared, given difficulties of accurate data collection, between women who've never used hormonal contraceptives, those who have and men?"
I imagine there are datasets out there where one could look at this. I don't know if it has been done. There are problems with confounding but there are ways to deal with that.
"Has anyone done assays of serum vitamin A and its binding protein for these groups?"
So serum vitamin A or serum retinol is a poor indicator of toxicity, precisely because of this cholestasis issue. If your liver is sequestering vitamin A, then you can actually have low serum levels -- even 'deficiency' level -- but still be toxic. Garrett has seen people start out with low serum levels and as their livers start healing and they start detoxing, their serum levels shoot up as the liver stops sequestering and gets to work detoxing.
There are more accurate measures. One of them is levels of retinyl esters in the blood. There is a large, high quality national longitudinal survey called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that has many different measures of people's health, and it includes estimates of how much vitamin A people consume and also measures of a couple of different retinyl esters in their blood, as well as a battery of other questions and data, which I'm sure includes questions about birth control use.
I have been wanting to analyze those data for some time, but there's only so many hours in the day! Issues related to COVID are far more pressing.
"Some autoimmune disorders appear to be heritable; how would these compare? Have genetic markers for specific disorders been identified and compared for males and females?"
I don't know about males and females. But we know that auto-immune disorders can't be genetic in origin because they have increased in prevalence so much over recent decades. However, it's possible that our genetics predisposes us to react differently to toxins, including vitamin A. So I think that is probably where the link is.
It has been known since the early experiments on rodents in the early 1900s that vitamin A toxicity manifests in a wide variety of ways, which are unique to each animal even though there are many similarities across animals. In other words, there is wide variation in the way that animals and people manifest vitamin A toxicity. This is known. As far as I know, scientists have not come up with a good explanation for why this is. I expect genetics may play a role.
There may be other reasons, too. For example, if you have some part of your body that is inflamed for some reason, say an injury, I think that you are more likely to develop a focused problem in that area due to vitamin A toxicity. But that is just speculation. We are WAY outside the box of mainstream science here.
Thank you for this. Throwing away my vitamin A supplement now... Any idea how long it takes to clear out of the body? I’ve been taking it daily for probably a year, year and a half...
Well this is about more than just supplements, so it's not just the supplements you'd want to detox. At this point it seems like it's taking 2-3 years or more to bring levels down, but everyone is different and Dr. Smith is always trying to find new ways to speed the process without going too hard on detox (which can cause flare ups aka retracing).
I wish I could remember why I started taking A in the first place....
you can try taking homeopathic remedies to detox the liver such as Cardus Marianus, chelidonium majus, https://www.pureformulas.com/product/liver-stim-liquescence-by-professional-formulas/1000013950, https://www.wellnessherbs.com/carduus-marianus-compositum-drops
No worries! :)
Lots of stuff at CTD on Vitamin A
https://ctdbase.org/detail.go?type=chem&acc=D014801
Interferon Gamma high on the list of interacting genes
Yeah it's a nasty molecule.
Im in Dr Smiths program and it is really helping me after decades of trying other approaches with little or negative results. Everything the others were adamant would make me well ended up making me sicker. The 60 dollars to join the program was the best 60 dollars I ever spent!
Generally, would you recommend against eating liver (e.g. chicken or beef) because of this? I always thought liver was a healthy food because of the density of various nutrients, but that includes Vitamin A.
The liver is the body's waste and toxin processing organ, and it stores much of the toxins it processes until they can be more safely excreted. You should 100% avoid it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf6FhC24gy8
Thank you so much for your most intriguing eye-opener of an article. I am going to watch this video shortly. I too was brainwashed to think that liver was really good for our health even though it processes all of the body's toxic waste. I have just binned the Vitamin A tablets forever.
Green tea and white tea (baby green leaves) are both potent detoxifiers for liver but it is critical that it is organic or the applied pesticide is steeped in the tea and just adds to the body's already toxic load.
The comments to that youtube video are turned off, which tells me all I need to know.
The liver performs many functions, one of which is to process toxins. Don't eat animals from factory farms and you won't have to worry about toxic livers.
Wild animals often go straight for the liver when eating prey.
Pigs deficient in Vitamin A gave birth to piglets without eyeballs. Vitamin A is in fact a Vitamin, and it's not toxic if you get it from food.
Look up the website of the Weston A Price Foundation. Vitamin A is not a scam, but as always slapping "now with Vitamin A" on some garbage supermarket food is most certainly a scam.
As far as Bill Gates putting Vitamin A in his frankenfoods, that's not much difference to the vitamins they add to FORTIFIED rice or IODIZED salt. It's just the bare minimum to prevent an epidemic of degenerative diseases, so people keep eating their frankenfoods.
@Douglas Mathieu
This quote and Bill Gates' awful vitamin A pushing is enough for me to begin slowly reducing vitamin A intake:
"The Golden Rice Project was the result of an initiative by the Rockefeller Foundation, and is based on a widely recognised need for a sustainable biofortification approach to contribute to alleviating the scourge of micronutrient deficiencies worldwide. It was this initiative that brought together Profs Ingo Potrykus and Peter Beyer, who in an exemplary collaboration created Golden Rice to help mitigate the problem of vitamin A deficiency in the world."
http://goldenrice.org/Content1-Who/who.php
"As far as Bill Gates putting Vitamin A in his frankenfoods, that's not much difference to the vitamins they add to FORTIFIED rice or IODIZED salt. "
Wrong. This is incorrect; genetically altered is not the same as supplemental vitamin added to processed food product by any stretch of the imagination. Read the science around the Golden Rice scams and get your basic facts right before flinging accusations.
https://gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/17470-gmo-golden-rice-shows-stunted-and-abnormal-growth-with-reduced-grain-yield
https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/18998-new-study-fails-to-show-golden-rice-can-help-solve-vitamin-a-deficiency
https://www.gmwatch.org/en/106-news/latest-news/18976-gm-golden-rice-must-be-vacuum-packed-to-retain-beta-carotene
Who is flinging accusations? I think GMO food, fortified rice, and iodized salt are all unhealthy in their totality. But just because iodized salt is a scam doesn't mean IODINE is a scam. Just because Bill Gates is pushing some new frankenfood with "now with added Vitamin A" on the box doesn't mean eating liver from healthy animals is bad. I get my Vitamin A from raw, grassfed beef and raw milk and butter. I also eat liver from time to time.
When I say that golden rice is the same as fortified rice, I just mean it's the next generation of big business pretending to care about a problem (that they themselves created) so they can have an excuse to expand their empire even more. Vitamin A deficiency is real, and it's created by factory foods. Big business then tries to "solve" the problem with even more factory foods.
All good liars pepper their lies with truth. It's good that you realize Gates is a liar but that doesn't automatically mean everything he ever said was a lie. Vitamin A deficiency is a real problem and leads to all kinds of birth defects, dental problems, and deadly diseases like tuberculosis. You can read "Nutrition & Physical Degeneration" for free online, and you will see that this stuff was known 80 years ago.
You might like
https://geoffpain.substack.com/p/rapid-liver-failure-after-pfizer
will update soon
Yes I saw that thanks
Polar Bears already mentioned I guess
Not sure I mentioned it specifically but it has definitely been brought up. For examples:
https://nutritionrestored.com/blog-forum/topic/the-known-history-of-vitamin-as-toxicity-goes-back-much-further-than-its-discovery/
https://nutritionrestored.com/blog-forum/topic/eating-liver-correlates-with-headaches-and-obesity-in-women/
I’m coming from a position of taking supplements because I know my diet isn’t the best (can’t stand most vegetables). So learning that my vitamin A, D, K, and turmeric supplements are not beneficial (and even harmful) is completely knew to me in the last few days. What about the magnesium, vitamin C, zinc, Quercetin, and NAC I’ve been taking?
We need to unpack that notion that we are at risk of deficiency without eating fruits and veggies in copious amounts. The five-a-day and eat-the-rainbow campaigns are recent and are propaganda campaigns sponsored by industrial agriculture corporations -- big Ag.
The fact is that fruits and vegetables also contain a lot of anti-nutrients. So your body may in fact be trying to tell you something.
Another fact is that one of the big drivers of nutritional deficiencies is toxicity. We need certain minerals to manufacture detox enzymes. If you need to run your detox enzymes on high for a prolonged period of time, you will run out of fuel and burn out. See this group of posts on Garrett Smith's older website: https://nutritionrestored.com/blog-forum/forum/problematic-nutritional-deficiencies-and-or-excesses-caused-by-poison-vitamin-a/
Magnesium is ok but not citrate. You shouldn't take anything citrate. Garrett recommends topical magnesium supplements as oils or creams. He sees the best results in brining up magnesium levels that way over pill form.
Zinc is a very important mineral for supporting detox enzymes. Same with molybdenum and selenium.
I don't know about Quercetin and NAC. I believe that Garrett's take on NAC is that our bodies make all the NAC they need. You just have to make sure they have the base minerals necessary. If you take NAC then you may mess with the body's bio-feedback/homeostasis mechanisms in an unintended and detrimental way.
Thank you so much for your response. I was taking selenium, but stopped when I read that it could contribute to causing diabetes. Any truth to that? There is so much information out there, and it is so hard to know what you can trust. Over the last few years, I’ve definitely learned you can’t trust Big Pharma, Big Medical, or the government.
Michelle, I recommend you start doing your own research rather than just starting or stopping supplementation just because you heard someone claiming something.
I recommend you read studies about all this. You will find thousands or tens of thousands of studies about all these supplements on Pubmed for example. Read Randomized Controlled Trials, Meta-Analyses etc.
Sometimes you will find very contradictory results. For example, I also researched the association between Selenium and Diabetes. There are studies which show that Selenium supplementation was associated with a (very weak) increase of Diabetes risk. Other studies show Selenium supplementation was associated with a decrease of blood glucose levels....
If you find such contradictory studies, you will be confused. So you need to try making sense of these findings. I was wondering if a U-shaped association may explain that. So I searched for it and in fact I found studies which show that as well a low Selenium level in your blood as also a quite high Selenium level in your blood is associated with a higher Diabetes risk.
So this means:
Both a deficiency and too much of Selenium can increase the risk of health problems including Diabetes. So if a study finds that selenium supplementation was associated with a higher risk of Diabetes, this is probably because the Selenium levels of these people increased too much. They took too much for too much time.
On the other hand, if there are other studies which show that selenium supplementation reduced glucose levels, this may indicate that these people had too little Selenium in their blood before. And so taking Selenium reduced their risk.
So it makes sense that you check your selenium levels! If you have too little, increase the level. If your level is good or even high, do not take it. Or take a (low) dose which keeps you in a healthy blood level!
Please do your own research and do not trust anyone.
For example you will also find studies like this which show that long term supplementation of Selenium and Q10 reduce the risk of cardiovascular mortality by 55%.
"During a follow up time of 5.2 years a significant reduction of cardiovascular mortality was found in the active treatment group vs. the placebo group (5.9% vs. 12.6%; P=0.015).
Conclusion: Long-term supplementation of selenium/coenzyme Q10 reduces cardiovascular mortality. "
Title:
"Cardiovascular mortality and N-terminal-proBNP reduced after combined selenium and coenzyme Q10 supplementation: a 5-year prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial among elderly Swedish citizens"
There are also MANY hundreds or thousands of studies showing supplementation of Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Turmeric etc. has great health benefits and reduces disease risks. For example, Vitamin D supplementation has shown to reduce the risk of developing an autoimmune disease by 40% for example. This was a high quality RCT with 25.000 participants. Also cancer mortality was reduced by 40% in people with a normal BMI. Turmeric or Curcumin completely prevented diabetes in one study and there are lots of other studies showing major health benefits. Reduced health problems with supplementation.
Magnesium is very important, too. Read all the studies and meta-analyses, please.
Also Vitamin A supplementation can have massive benefits. There are meta analyses of RCT´s showing that Vitamin A supplementation reduces measles mortality and measles infection rates by 70% and 50% for example. Also studies show that COVID was cured much faster with high dose vitamin A supplementation. On the other hand, I would not recommend a long term high dose intake of vitamin A.
I agree with Josh in some way. Vitamin A is actually something that you do not want to take in excess. But it also has great health benefits. Maybe it is better if you receive vitamin A by Beta Carotene via vegetables for example. I would not take vitamin A long term. Maybe just sometimes, or therapeutically. Also, measure your blood level.
There are also studies showing that Quercetin is very helpful for certain conditions. Much lower risk of infectious diseases for example! I am not sure if a long term intake is ideal. Studies should investigate this further.
NAC supplementation for 6 months has shown in a high quality RCT from Italy to drastically reduce thr risk of a symptomatic influenza infection.
So taking this in winter for example could be a good idea. But please read all the studies and do your own research. Deficiency of Cysteine is very dangerous. Josh is right. Cysteine is produced by your body. But the synthesis is not always enough. Diseases, inflammatory processes, oxidative stress, higher age etc. lead to a higher need of Glutathione and so you will lose more Cysteine. It is easy to develop a deficiency.
So in this case the best is to measure your Cysteine level in your blood. If you have a good level, maybe you do not need to take NAC.
All in all I totaly agree that a healthy plant based diet is the basis and the best way to stay healthy. BUT supplements have proven health benefits and can reduce health risks. Just read the studies. On the other hand, some supplements may also have negative effects if you take TOO much, if your blood level increases too much or if you take a wrong form of these supplements. For example, there are two different forms of Selenium. One is healthy, the other one is problematic which may also explain why some studies had contradictory results.
You need to become an expert for what you really need and in which dose. If you do it correctly, supplements may improve your health and drastically reduce health risks.
Thank you Max, for taking the time to write me this thoughtful response. I really do appreciate it. You’ve brought up a lot of really good points. You are right that we should do our own investigating rather than relying on any one person too much. Off to do some searching for studies and reading!
Thank you. And if you have questions with regard to studies for example, you can ask me. I always like helping others.
Thank you Max! Is there a good way to get ahold of you?
I'm curious about the relationship between Vitamin A 'toxicity' and Vitamin K2 and Vitamin D. I learned while researching Vitamin K2 that there's a complex relationship between fat soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K2 which involves some degree of competition or mutual counter-action between the vitamins.
So if you are getting lots of A but little K2 and/or D, that may produce 'toxicity'. Nutritionist Kate Rhéaume-Bleue's goes into this in her book about Vitamin K2, but I admit I have forgotten the details.
I believe there is an antagonistic relationship btwn vitamin D and A, which is why vitamin D seems to help in the short run. But vitamin D supplements are poison and will do more harm than good in the long run and can only hold the dam of vit A toxicity so long. This is not about not getting enough D or K. It's about liver health/cholestasis and the inherent toxicity of vitamin A.
Vitamin D supplements are poison too??
In my opinion, yes. And only good options for getting D up are sunlight or a sun lamp are the only good options. But as I pointed out in the interview with JJ, people who are reducing their vitamin A toxicity are seeing their vitamin D levels rise without any extra effort.
There is a slide on this in the slidedeck of my presentation. See the link to Jim Stephenson Jr who has been writing on this for years. He has a lot of posts on FB but he also started a substack though paid subscriptions only.
And there's also this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa9Gzp-alYU
What is your opinion of Dr. Mercola? He recommends getting D levels up. Is the only good way to do that with sun exposure?
Are you saying that golden rice is a scam because (1) it doesn’t solve Vitamin A deficiency, or (2) because Vitamin A is toxic?
I equated golden rice to supplemental vitamin spray because they are both scams that get you to think you can keep eating those frankenfoods. Healthy foods don’t need to be "fortified" or "enriched".
It doesn’t surprise me that golden rice does a poor job at solving Vitamin A deficiency. So does "enriching" food, which is why I drew the parallel. My point is that Bill Gates isn’t poisoning people with Vitamin A, he is malnourishing people while using a garbage version of Vitamin A to hype his product.
I assume you agree with me that Vitamin A from natural sources (food) is NOT toxic. After all, one of the links you sent me has this quote: "in order for beta-carotene to be effectively absorbed and be converted, fat (e.g. butter or vegetable oil) must be present in the meal.
What are your thoughts on Weston A. Price's work? His book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" is free online, and the Weston A Price Foundation has written a lot in defense of Vitamin A on their website.
I found it interesting to compare the amount of vitamin A in whole milk and 2% milk. My whole milk contains 91 mcg vitamin A per cup, about 152 IU's. I use this for coffee. It doesn't list any added vitamin A. Two percent milk that I eat with cereal shows added vitamin A palmitate on the label, and one cup contains 169 mcg vitamin A, which is about 282 IU's (per https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/mcg-to-iu-converter), which is almost double the amount in whole milk. I wonder why they supplement the vitamin A in 2% milk but not whole milk, and why they decide to give 2% milk so much more vitamin A per serving than whole milk. I'm not giving up milk, but I think I can live without the 2%, and I'll just be buying whole milk for now, and I'll continue checking the labels of various milk producers for added vitamin A.
It is well-known - it is even on the warning label of bottles - that vitamin A above a certain level is dangerous to pregnant women.
What's the story with Vitamin A deficiency vis a vis measles?
Here is my take: Studies have found that VERY high dose vitamin A supplementation helps people recover from measles. In some studies vitamin A deficiency is assumed b/c if vitamin A supplementation helps it must mean they had a deficiency. In other cases, serum levels of vitamin A and/or retinol binding protein are measured and found to be lower in people with measles complications.
However, low serum retinol/RBP levels are not a good indicator of vitamin A deficiency (assuming there is even such a thing as vA deficiency, but that's beside the point). In fact, it is known that it is possible to have low levels of serum vA/RBP and still be vitamin A toxic. There can be various mechanisms for this, but this is a sign of cholestasis where the liver is withholding vitamin A so the level circulating in plasma is lower.
So in my opinion, they are not measuring hypovitaminosis A but rather hypervitaminosis A mis-identified as deficiency. But then if that's the case, why does high dose vitamin A help?
Well this was discussed somewhere in Grant Genereux's first book and I know that Anthony Mawson holds this view, which is that measles induces a release of retinoids or a kind of retinoid cascade, which is what causes the rash and other symptoms. If you give a hyper dose of vitamin A it basically sends various signals to the body to shut down retinoid metabolism thereby short-circuiting that cascade. For example, it has been shown that the administration of high doses of vitamin A downregulates gene expression of retinoid receptors.
Retinoids are very toxic and bioactive chemicals, so our bodies tend to keep very tight controls to maintain retinoid homeostasis. So the mass vA dose creates a kind of negative feedback loop to dampen retinoid metabolism, otherwise that influx of vA would be very toxic.
Note finally that in his first book, Grant discusses research showing that people who had measles when they are younger have better health outcomes later in life including fewer auto-immune diseases. Grant reasons that if measles triggers a massive vitamin A release when we're young, then it means we have less in our livers over time thereby reducing our chances of developing an auto-immune disease later on.
Um, are you referring to vitamin A in the active (retinol) form, or the pro-vitamin beta carotenes, please, or do you make no distinction? These are commonly conflated but I think that is a mistake. I used to have acne but my skin is fine since I started eating liver and I think it's probably that I needed the retinol from liver. I know it's not uncommon (25% of a sample of UK women in one study I saw) for people to have no activity in the enzyme in the body that converts the provitamin to the retinol form, I have assumed I must be one of those. Too much betacarotene really doesn't agree with me. But liver really helps with my health. sample size n=1 ;)
An excellent piece. Thank you Josh, for drawing attention re Vitamin A, particularly over the Gavi and B&M Foundation influence on fortification. Vitamin A is not their only interest (or profit) venture...As well as the influence in autoimmune conditions.
Couple of important things to note before peeps go cleaning out the vitamin cupboards-
Vitamin A has an intertwined and complex relationship to magnesium, copper and iron, within the body. Levels of others, affect absorption and removal of the other.
Quality of vitamin A greatly changes how the body processes it and utilises it.
I would strongly suggest, anyone who is concerned re vitamin A levels in their diet, (whether supplements or foods), go h asvea look at The Root Cause Protecol, Morley Robbins. https://therootcauseprotocol.com/resources/
Read the research he provides. It's free.
He has been studying vitamin A, magnesium, copper and iron, deficiency and toxicity and most importantly their interdependent relationships, the longest. Of course make your own mind up.
Be well.
Nope. Sorry. Morley's advice is garbage and the root cause protocol is awful and ridiculously overly complicated. Garrett Smith treats refugees from his program who end up way worse off after following his awful health advice and poisoning themselves with retinol and vitamin D supplements and copper. I strongly advise readers here to not touch the RCP with a ten foot poll. And I don't have time or energy to debate this. I will delete any further comments trying to defend the RCP.
The principles to good health are far simpler than we've been led to believe.
All good 😊, I'm not for any one protecol, one Dr or 1 way of thinking. Particularly as i agree 100% with with your final statement and the evidence supports it's truth.
I'm for people looking at different views/data and I found Morley a good starting concept for most to challenge their precondition thinking around vitamins. Its up there with the dogma on vaccines.
Last I checked, he hadn't jumped on the vitamin d train, and I definitely don't support that.
I'm not familiar with Garrett Smith's work but you've certainly peaked my interest now😊
It is really worth investigating Dr Garrett Smith's work. Many of us are seeing results on this program which also includes balancing minerals in the body as well as a recommended diet.
I don't know about that and haven't come across anything to suggest that. However, there is good evidence that birth control interferes with vitamin A metabolism and probably affects the liver as well. See some of that evidence here:
https://youtu.be/Ol_ATNVOPaI
In addition, there is a link to a video in my presentation when I'm talking about the liver releasing bile into the blood, which shows that Estrogen induced the liver to release bike from hepatocytes into the blood. Of course estrogen rises twice in every menstrual cycle.
Also, pregnancy can cause cholestasis. That is the main reason for morning sickness btw. Also look up cholestatis of pregnancy.
So in my opinion these are likely three of the major reasons women are more susceptible to auto-immune diseases.
To be clear, I don't disagree that women have higher prevalence of autoimmune issues. They do. I'm just saying as far as I know it isn't due to a difference in vitamin A metabolism per se. I think it's related to the other issues I mentioned which are more related to liver health. Vitamin A toxicity and liver health are separate but intertwined aspects of this theory.
Why is it vitally important? Is it important enough to poison half the population and set them up for higher rates of debilitating diseases later in life? Do you agree that condoms are an adequate substitute?
Hi Jane, I don't know if you've had a chance to watch my presentation to the PANDA open science meeting yet but if you haven't I think it can clear up a lot of things for you.
I'll reply to each question:
"As to vitamin A and autoimmune disease, if,as you say, liver disease is implicated, would this then mean that liver disease is more likely to induce autoimmune disorders in women rather than men, who might also be affected by vitamin A toxicity?"
To be clear it's not liver disease per se but some form of cholestasis, which can take many forms. Two key aspects of it are either a sequestering of bile and toxins in the liver, for example by decreased bile production. This can actually make people feel better, for a time, since it means there are less toxins circulating outside the liver. But eventually the liver will start releasing toxins bound to bile into the bloodstream. That is the second aspect. And that's when you get the endogenous vitamin A toxicity. So it isn't just any liver disease although I believe many other liver diseases are related (as in caused by this one).
I'm not saying that this cholestasis is more likely to induce auto-immunity in women, I'm saying the cholestasis (esp. the second aspect) is more common in women for the reasons I spelled out in my previous post.
"are rates of autoimmune disease increasing in women , if population growth and improved diagnosis are corrected for?"
In Grant Genereux's first book (Extinguishing the Fires of Hell) he lays out some compelling epidemiological evidence to show that autoimmune diseases are becoming more prevalent, and it isn't just because of increased awareness or improved diagnosis. If it is increasing in prevalence overall, I would say it's increasing for women, too. Is it growing faster for women? I don't know.
"Can rates be compared, given difficulties of accurate data collection, between women who've never used hormonal contraceptives, those who have and men?"
I imagine there are datasets out there where one could look at this. I don't know if it has been done. There are problems with confounding but there are ways to deal with that.
"Has anyone done assays of serum vitamin A and its binding protein for these groups?"
So serum vitamin A or serum retinol is a poor indicator of toxicity, precisely because of this cholestasis issue. If your liver is sequestering vitamin A, then you can actually have low serum levels -- even 'deficiency' level -- but still be toxic. Garrett has seen people start out with low serum levels and as their livers start healing and they start detoxing, their serum levels shoot up as the liver stops sequestering and gets to work detoxing.
There are more accurate measures. One of them is levels of retinyl esters in the blood. There is a large, high quality national longitudinal survey called the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) that has many different measures of people's health, and it includes estimates of how much vitamin A people consume and also measures of a couple of different retinyl esters in their blood, as well as a battery of other questions and data, which I'm sure includes questions about birth control use.
I have been wanting to analyze those data for some time, but there's only so many hours in the day! Issues related to COVID are far more pressing.
"Some autoimmune disorders appear to be heritable; how would these compare? Have genetic markers for specific disorders been identified and compared for males and females?"
I don't know about males and females. But we know that auto-immune disorders can't be genetic in origin because they have increased in prevalence so much over recent decades. However, it's possible that our genetics predisposes us to react differently to toxins, including vitamin A. So I think that is probably where the link is.
It has been known since the early experiments on rodents in the early 1900s that vitamin A toxicity manifests in a wide variety of ways, which are unique to each animal even though there are many similarities across animals. In other words, there is wide variation in the way that animals and people manifest vitamin A toxicity. This is known. As far as I know, scientists have not come up with a good explanation for why this is. I expect genetics may play a role.
There may be other reasons, too. For example, if you have some part of your body that is inflamed for some reason, say an injury, I think that you are more likely to develop a focused problem in that area due to vitamin A toxicity. But that is just speculation. We are WAY outside the box of mainstream science here.