Quote from Dr. Garrett Smith on November 9, 2018, 10:31 pm

In the real-world experiences of my clients, Grant Genereux, Matt Stone, and others, it was noticed that three foods in particular that didn't seem to have much (if any) Poison/"Vitamin A" content caused people going through the Poison/"Vitamin A" and Glyphosate Detox Program some problems...exacerbations of their old issues that had been getting better up to that point.  These three foods were:  UNrefined/virgin coconut oil/fat, fatty cuts of beef or other red meats (or fatty ground meats where the fat was not drained), and cocoa butter (either topically on the skin or eaten in chocolate).

Grant originally postulated in his first book that it might be the palmitic acid in the coconut oil, as palmitic acid is part of retinyl palmitate, a very common retinyl ester form of Poison/"Vitamin A" that the body likes to store in the liver.  How might this work?  Well, if you have Poison/"Vitamin A" floating around, and it meets up with a FREE fatty acid, then the body will bind the two to form a retinyl ester, which then sends them back to the liver for storage (to get it out of circulation) or they float around the blood.  Both are bad for your system.  Palmitic acid IS likely part of the problem.  That said, there is another part to this issue that I will cover below.

I found some very interesting research on retinyl esters in both humans and ferrets, and both of them point in the same direction.  I'll go over the ferrets first.

High concentrations of vitamin A esters circulate primarily as retinyl stearate and are stored primarily as retinyl palmitate in ferret tissues.

Thus, the primary form of vitamin A that circulates in the blood of ferrets is retinyl stearate, whereas the primary storage form of the vitamin in tissues is retinyl palmitate. Concentrations of total vitamin A in ferret serum and other tissues were 3-73 times greater than those reported for their corresponding human tissues.

Takeaways from the above are, that in ferrets:

• Retinyl stearate is the primary retinyl ester form floating around in the blood. This is made from stearic acid plus Poison/"Vitamin A".
• Retinyl palmitate is the primary retinyl ester form deposited into the liver and other tissues. This is made from palmitic acid plus Poison/"Vitamin A".
• If the total Vitamin A was 3-73 times higher in ferret serum and tissues than the same tissues in humans, do you think they were giving the ferrets Poison/"Vitamin A" toxicity too?  Once you realize that there is an epidemic of Poison/"Vitamin A" toxicity in LAB MONKEYS, which means that it is all the scientists' fault and nothing else, you might start to realize that all of our animal friends are getting poisoned with this stuff too!

So now that we went over ferrets, let's go over similar research in humans.  There are VERY IMPORTANT parts to this study, so I will be interjecting.

Retinyl ester (vitamin A ester) and carotenoid composition in human liver. (PDF attached below)

Surgical liver biopsy samples from seven diseased and five healthy human subjects, 3-33 years of age, were analyzed by reversed-phase high-pressure liquid chromatography for retinol (vitamin A alcohol), retinyl esters (vitamin A esters), and carotenoids.

Important things to know:

• Liver biopsy is the GOLD STANDARD of diagnosing Poison/"Vitamin A" toxicity.  It is what everything else is based on.
• 7 of the 12 people were considered "diseased".
• Ages ranged from 3-33 years old.

Total liver vitamin A values ranged from 7.8 to 2860 nmol/g liver (2.2 to 817 micrograms/g).

In the liver biopsy test for Poison/"Vitamin A" toxicity, the toxic level begins at 1.0 micromol/g.  From the above quote, 2860 nmol/g translates to 2.86 micromol/gram.  This means there where people showing liver Poison/"Vitamin A" levels almost 3X higher than where toxicity begins!

As a percentage, liver retinol decreased with increasing liver reserves of vitamin A.

This part is very interesting.  Many people note that in the literature, there seems to be a correlation between decreasing serum retinol ("blood Vitamin A") and certain diseases.  What's going on with that?

This study is showing that there is also a decrease in liver retinol as the body becomes MORE toxic with stored Poison/"Vitamin A"!

This is not because of a "Vitamin A deficiency", it is simply because the Poison/"Vitamin A" has been transformed into other forms--like retinoic acids and retinyl esters--that are even MORE TOXIC than retinol, and the serum retinol test is NOT measuring those!  Do you see the pattern matching up?

It's really hard to find something one isn't looking for, right?  This is exactly how nutritional medicine claims that "Vitamin A deficiency" is everywhere, yet I am finding it quite easy to link all these diseases to chronic Poison/"Vitamin A" toxicity elsewhere!

Serum retinol is the test that is most widely available, and it must be interpreted PROPERLY and VERY CAREFULLY if it is to be made use of.

Retinyl palmitate was the predominant vitamin A ester (57 to 83 mole%) in all samples, with retinyl stearate (5.5 to 11.4%), oleate (4.9 to 17.2%), and myristate plus palmitoleate (pair not resolved; 3.3 to 11.9%) next most common. Lesser amounts of retinyl linoleate, linolenate, and arachidonate were found. Normal livers had significant amounts of several carotenoids: lutein (0.2 to 16.2 nmol/g), lycopene (10.2 to 55.1 nmol/g), alpha-carotene (3.0 to 7.3 nmol/g), and beta carotene (5.8 to 25 nmol/g). Total carotenoid values ranged from 26.5 to 67 nmol/g in normal liver samples. There was no correlation between liver vitamin A and individual or total carotenoids in normal livers.

This is only an abstract...and I find it interesting that they didn't talk about the DISEASED livers at all.

From the above, it seems that in humans, retinyl palmitate is #1 everywhere (blood and tissues), while retinyl stearate came in #2.  Similar enough to the ferrets above...if retinyl palmitate and retinyl stearate are the most highly present retinyl esters, then it is quite possible that palmitic acid and stearic acid are the most related to increasing Poison/"Vitamin A" problems.

When I heard about people (including myself) having what looked like Poison/"Vitamin A" issues from chocolate (the darker the chocolate, the more problems) and also from fatty cuts of beef (the fattier, the more problems), I went looking for a common fatty acid between those three things.

It should be noted first that free fatty acids as a whole increase inflammation and insulin resistance:

Free fatty acids, not triglycerides, are associated with non-alcoholic liver injury progression in high fat diet induced obese rats

Liver TG [triglyceride, three free fatty acids BOUND to a glycerol backbone] accumulation does not cause cellular injury in the liver; rather, FFAs [FREE fatty acids, aka UNBOUND] or their metabolites are responsible for liver injury via increased oxidative stress.

A Subpopulation of Macrophages Infiltrates Hypertrophic Adipose Tissue and Is Activated by Free Fatty Acids via Toll-like Receptors 2 and 4 and JNK-dependent Pathways

Obesity and type 2 diabetes are characterized by decreased insulin sensitivity, elevated concentrations of free fatty acids (FFAs), and increased macrophage infiltration in adipose tissue (AT).
[...]
Together our results show that FFAs can activate CD11c+ myeloid proinflammatory cells via TLR2/4 and JNK signaling pathways, thereby promoting inflammation and subsequent cellular insulin resistance.

I noticed stearic acid popping up as a commonality between all three of those bolded foods above, much as Grant originally noticed Poison/"Vitamin A" compounds in 7 of the 8 foods associated with aggravating eczema (a definite Poison/"Vitamin A" toxicity disease).  So, as I do, I went searching in the research, and lo and behold:

Stearic Acid Induces CD11c Expression in Proinflammatory Macrophages via Epidermal Fatty Acid Binding Protein.

Specifically, we demonstrated that stearic acid (SA) significantly induced CD11c expression in monocytes through activation of the nuclear retinoid acid receptor.
[...]
Altogether, our data demonstrate a novel mechanism by which saturated FAs promote obesity-associated inflammation through inducing E-FABP/retinoid acid receptor-mediated differentiation of CD11c⁺ macrophages.

So stearic acid promotes inflammation via a retinoid acid receptor mechanism.

Beef tallow/fat is approximately 14% stearic acid by weight.

Cocoa is approximately 7% stearic acid by weight.

Coconut oil is approximately 4% stearic acid by weight.

As examples of dietary sources of stearic acid, this website lists these as specifically high sources of stearic acid:

• Beef
• Butter
• Cocoa butter
• Lard
• Mutton

And if Poison/"Vitamin A" is associated with chronic disease, and stearic acid increases its retinoid/retinoic acid receptor activity, the next paragraph from that same link makes sense:

However, cholesterol is not the only marker for heart disease, and adverse effects of stearic acid have been reported. In one large study, stearic acid increased coronary artery disease risk more than lauric, myristic, or palmitic acid.¹ Apparently, stearic acid may reduce good HDL cholesterol, increase Lp(a), which is another risk factor for heart disease, increase certain blood-clotting factors, and result in lipemia (excess fat in the blood) after eating.^{2, 3}

I heard that stearic acid / stearates used topically, on the skin, seems to aggravate acne issues greatly for some people.  I don't believe this is a "comedogenic" (pore-clogging) issue, I think it is a Poison/"Vitamin A" activity related issue.  Remember that megadosed synthetic forms of Poison/"Vitamin A" are used to treat acne...read the Duration Paradox rule in the other thread, look into the connection between zinc deficiency and acne (Retinol Binding Protein Rule), and then you will start to see how this can all connect.  Acne will be a topic for the future, I'm just connecting dots for now.

Am I saying to avoid stearic acid, palmitic acid, and all other free fatty acids completely?  Not at all, you can't.  However, there are specific things mentioned in the Poison/"Vitamin A" and Glyphosate Detox Program that help people to reduce/minimize/avoid it...and when they do, they often see quick improvements in their Poison/"Vitamin A" related issues.  It may simply explain why, when there is excess Poison/"Vitamin A" floating around in the system, either from excess intake, or during the detox phase/cycles, people will notice more issues from it, especially as their intake of free fatty acids increases.