Vitamin A Palmitate
 

Hi all,

I have read several places on the board from people saying not to take Vitamin A Palmitate and basically stating the conclusion it is unsafe. I have looked into this a little bit and am having trouble finding evidence of this, other than people saying retinol in general can be toxic. Any thoughts on this?

While not very specific, here is my take on vitamins,etc.

RDA is a poor recommendation for optimum nutrient levels. THe levels were decided upon based on preventing a disease, the disease that a defficiency in a specific vitamin will create. It was NOT determined to be the optimal level for great health.

IMO vitamins, minerals and micronutrients all work hand-in hand. A deficency in one could cause the need for more of another, or the opposite, causing a dilitorious effect at a lower level.

For example, as I understand Calcium. Higher levels of calcium have been prescribed by doctors to prevent osteoporosis. HOWEVER, the heart disease rate is raised in those patients. Apparenly what was missed is the need for the K2 vitamin that controls the location that calcium is deposited. It will go into heart and artery muscle, and tartar on the teeth in a low K2 diet.

As doctors are generally not trained in foods and nutrition, their advice should be suspect.

I dont have Dr Lin's book on dental health in front of me so I cannot look to see if he suggests an optimal amount. He does recommend a number of fat soluable vitamins, that work syergistically, and a number of minerals, including many that are forgotton, like zinc. Given the food recommendations and the number of recipes for teeth/bone health, I am guessing he thinks eating foods are the most important source of A and other vitamins, as the chewing of foods is critical to mouth/jaw development.

Sorry this isnt exactly what you are looking for , but I hope it helps in some way.

It's become increasingly difficult buy a vit A supplement in a store or online that has natural vitamin A and doesn't also have retinyl palmitate or 'vitamin a palmitate.' I tried twice and both times the photos said 'vitamin a from fish liver oil' and then received vit A plus vit A palmitate.

So maybe there's a safe way to take the vitA palmitate...maybe the people saying it isn't safe are mistaken...

sorry - this is vitamin D

From page 33 of Ramiel Nagel's Cure Tooth Decay: Heal and Prevent Cavities with Nutrition (2007):

Blue Ice fermented cod liver oil 1t - 3500-10,000 I.U.
pig or cow blood 1c - 4000 I.U.
X-Factor Gold butter oil 1t - 1000-3000 I.U.
marlin 3.5oz - 1400 I.U.
chum salmon (dog, keta, or calico) 3.5oz - 1300 I.U.
herring 3.5oz - 1100 I.U.
sockeye salmon 3.5oz - 763 I.U.
duck egg 1 1/3 eggs - 720 I.U.
oysters 3.5oz of oyster meat - 642 I.U.
halibut 3.5oz - 600 I.U.
grund and rainbow trout 3.5oz - 600 I.U.
sardine 3.5oz - 480 I.U.
mackerel 3.5oz - 345-440 I.U.
pork lard 1T - 140-400 I.U.
salmon 3.5oz - 360 I.U.
canned sardines 3.5oz - 270 I.U.
caviar 3.5oz - 232 I.U.
shrimp 3.5oz - 172 I.U.
chicken egg 2 eggs - 120 I.U.
butter 3.5oz - 56 I.U.
pork liver 3.5oz - 50 I.U.
milk 4c - 40 I.U.
beef liver 3.5oz - 30 I.U.

from Cure Tooth Decay page 35

Fat Soluble Vitamin A

Blue Ice fermented cod liver oil 1t - 7,500-25,000 I.U.
turkey liver 3.5oz - 75,000 I.U.
duck liiver 3.5oz - 40,000 I.U.
beef liver 3.5oz - 35,000 I.U.
chicken liver 3.5oz - 13,328 I.U.
fish head / fish eyes / animal eyes - very high
eel 3.5oz - 3,477 I.U.
hard goat cheese 3.5oz - 1,745 I.U.
soft goat cheese 3.5oz - 1,464 I.U.
duck egg 1 egg - 472 I.U.
king salmon 3.5oz - 453 I.U.
ghee 1T - 391 I.U.
butter 1T - 350 I.U.
X-Factor Gold butter oil 1t - 200-450 I.U.
egg yolk 1 1/2 yolks - 333 I.U.
whole mile 1c - 248 I.U.

I lost the research on natural vitamin A versus vitamin A palmitate when I changed computers bc my hard drive crashed.

But I have posted the information on the forum so did a search to see if I could find some of the posts.

Here you go http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=210491

I'm sure there are others because I've posted on natural vitamin A many times but there is good information on vitamin A starting at Post: 16,661.

Zuleikaa, I need you to resurrect your old hard drive :)

Thanks for the link, I didn't see anything negative though, no evidence for the conclusion not to take it, that it isn't safe, in fact the source says that's the natural storage form, which suggests the synthetic form is bioidentical and therefore just fine...I will keep looking.

I did do a google search and got a handful of hits on the forum for 'vitamin a palmitate' and also 'retinyl palmitate' ... just a couple of old posts saying they were toxic. One in the great vitamin D thread.

I did a high-dose vitamin A protocol a while ago. I have a few insights to share here. First, this is the product I used: https://www.iherb.com/pr/Now-Foods-...50-Softgels/382

A few things about vitamin A I found during my search in preparation for that high-dose protocol. It's fat-soluble so you gotta eat some fat when you take it, otherwise it doesn't do squat. It's stored in the liver, there's about 2 years worth capacity in there (about 6 million IU). RDA is BS. Daily supplementation is BS. Acute (lethal, liver failure) toxicity takes about 6 full bottles (calculated based on mice experimentsm, per body weight) in that link above - in one big dose for an adult human (about 56 million IU). Chronic toxicity develops after 6-10 years of taking some form (dunno, no data on specifics) of vitamin A at a dose of about 10k IUs per day. High-dose protocols (200k IU per day, 3 days total) have been used to treat certain conditions in children. High-dose protocols (100k IU per day, 6 months total) of a modified vitamin A molecule have been used to treat severe acne.

Some more things about vitamin A. It's used by the immune system to fight infections. It's used elsewhere for metabolism, i.e. energy. It's used for other things but I didn't look into that cuz it wasn't useful to know any of that for me, or I just forgot what I read.

Read posts 57 and 58 and 83 of my journal for more details about the high-dose protocol I did. To summarize, it's 3 million IU, spread over 15 days, 200k IU per day.

I'm not sure I answered your questions about vitamin A with the above.

Personally, I believe the animal form (from fish or some other animal's liver) is the best for us, and least toxic (if at all) for us. I mean, if it's synthetic for example, it can't be good for ya, ya?

Generally speaking, when it comes to supplements, I see them as therapeutic rather than as a form of food. In other words, I don't supplement daily, I use them to treat medical conditions. In my case, I've seen a tremendous positive effect in the first 5 days of that high-dose protocol, but nothing afterwards.

I went looking for answers and only found things that give me more questions:

Here, an article at WAPF:
https://www.westonaprice.org/health...vitamin-a-saga/

ETA: Chris Masterjohn's article at WAPF on A and D:
https://www.westonaprice.org/health...tamins-a-and-d/

Here a blog article on Vitamin A:

https://ggenereux.blog/2015/02/12/eca/


ETA: Here is the Vitamin A page at the Linus Pauling Institute:

http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-A

:)

Martin I bought a similar form of vitamin A. I will check out your posts and I'll let you know what I think. Em, the Genereux post is fascinating, I'm about halfway through. Thank you both.

That Genereux post, what a long ass piece. As I'm writing this below, I anticipate my post will be long too.

Anyways, it's about auto-immune disorders. The basic premise is that it's genetic and/or environmental. It can't be genetic, that's clear enough. It must be environmental. That post suggests it's vitamin A poisoning. Maybe. I suggest that vitamin A poisoning is only possible if there's no fat coming in, or of course if the dose is high enough over a short enough time like 6 full bottles in a single dose of the stuff I used for my high-dose protocol. So, my protocol is 3 million IUs spread over 2 weeks taken with fat, lethal single dose is 56+ million IUs taken on its own (from mice experiments, so that number is a dose-per-bodyweight equivalent for humans).

The toxicity data is either from single lethal dose in mice or from very long-term low-dose like 10k IU daily over 6-10 years in humans. Correlation data is not reliable enough to make a determination, it suggests things, but it can't give us the power of prediction if we want to do something like I did for example. Modified vitamin A can't be directly extrapolated, it's not the same molecule, it has different effects. It's about the same as suggesting that sodium fluoride is the same as calcium fluoride.

The scale of time is important. Auto-immune disorders have not always been around. 100-200 years is not 2 million years. But 100-200 years certainly fits within our modern agricultural era, and the era of diseases of civilization. It's not just a new disease, it's a new environment. But that post also points out the very recent and dramatic rise of those diseases, so it's not just new, it's very new.

So, with auto-immune, the immune system is obviously involved. Well, vitamin A is essential for proper immune function, so the immune system is obviously involved here too.

So, I suggest vitamin A can become toxic if we don't eat enough fat. Not eating enough fat is kinda like drinking water in this era of low-fat high-carb standard American diet, everybody does it, some do it very well. Anyways, fat is required for absorption and metabolism of vitamin A. Not enough fat means we don't absorb it. Not enough fat means if we do absorb it, we don't metabolize it. If that's the case, it can become toxic because it lingers where it shouldn't. If this is what's happening, the simplest solution is to eat more fat, not just once or twice, but at every meal. Basically, we go low-carb.

Now what if we do eat enough fat, but then we supplement with vitamin A, but then it appears to be toxic with a bunch of symptoms? Well, it's not a matter of lingering vitamin A anymore - we eat enough fat, we metabolize it. It must be something else. So, we went low-carb, right? But it didn't fix everything.

Back to the immune system, cuz we're talking about auto-immune, and we're talking about vitamin A being essential for proper immune function. Now if we've determined it's not a problem of not eating enough fat, and it's not a problem of lingering vitamin A, then it can't be a problem with vitamin A, and it can't be a problem with proper immune function. It must be something else. In fact, we can't call it auto-immune anymore.

So, it must be a problem with the tissues and organs that are being attacked by a properly functioning immune system. So, what's the problem? Is it some genetic defect in those tissues and cells? Is it an infection we can't detect with the usual methods? I dunno what it is, but that's where the logic brings me.


It's just an alternative point of view, it's just how I see, not necessarily how it actually works. Take it with a grain of salt. But at least to me it makes sense to question the common view, or any view even my own.

All vitamins function in a U curve.

I wanted to add something about low-carb and auto-immune. If I'm not mistaken, low-carb improves a bunch of those symptoms. Why? Is it cuz we cut out a bunch of carbs, or upped the fat, or both, or something else, or all of the above? I'm not sure, but if it's true that a bunch of symptoms improve with low-carb, I'm gonna go with cutting carbs as the most likely, upping the fat as second most likely, and the rest as not very likely. I mean, we don't really change our environment, but we do change our diet quite a bit and the biggest change we do there is cut the carbs.

More food for thought:

Vitamin A Saga
https://www.westonaprice.org/health...vitamin-a-saga/

Linus Pauling Institute
https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-A

I thought these charts were interesting:

Vitamin A and Ruminants
https://www.dsm.com/markets/anh/en_.../vitamin_A.html

Which charts in particular? That page is unbelievably long.

On other topics, M Levac, I still have not reviewed your journal. I just had the time to get all the way through the Generaux post and comments. After reviewing that, and looking at the comments on his 'the four year update' post, I think he's misguided. And that's putting it kindly.

On his long vitamin A post, someone commented how vitD helps reduce vitA toxicity more quickly and he kind of ignored it. On his 'the four year update' post, someone asked him to take a vitamin D test to see whether or not he's deficient, and he just went on and on about how the government bans the vitamin A test, or at least won't pay for it.

Then the commenter offered to pay for Genereaux's vitamin D test, and his response was basically he felt he was D replete because he'd gotten plenty in his diet (huh?), said he wasn't concerned about his D levels, and said he'd pay himself and that he'd let the commenter know as soon has he could get the tests done.

Not holding my breath. I think he's misguided and sincerely believes vitamin A is causing people's problems. Given what we know about D and A competing/interacting, this does not make a lot of sense.

On the plus side, if he turns out to be right, we all know now we can just up our D to A ratio and remove A from our diets when applicable. Even though many of us already knew we could up our D to A ratio long before he came along.