Dr. Garrett Smith, known as the Nutrition Detective, joins the PricePlow Podcast to discuss his journey into the world of vitamin A toxicity and its connection to numerous health issues. This is an impactful episode, as we’re learning how damaging this fat-soluble class of molecules is — especially when consumed in excess over time — and how difficult it is to remove from the body.
Is there a Vitamin A Toxicity EPIDEMIC? Dr. Garrett Smith joins the PricePlow Podcast for Episode #150 and dives into the dangers and symptoms of Vitamin A toxicity — and how to detox it for better overall health. We also get into the dangers of calcification and joint pain from vitamin D3 supplements, making for a very informative and potentially controversial episode.
Dr. Smith is having tremendous success in supporting those who begin restricting and detoxifying vitamin A, relieving numerous health maladies from basic joint pain and skin conditions to reversing kidney, liver, and thyroid diseases. Followers of his program are also having great success in areas of fertility.
Dr. Smith also shares his views on vitamin D supplementation and its potential negative effects, which is how Mike started to follow him in the first place, having noticed that vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) supplements were contributing to his joint pain. At the end of the episode, Mike explains that he’s been restricting vitamin A and D since January 2023, with incredible success.
Vitamin A: An extremely toxic family of molecules in excess
The conversation explores the pathway of vitamin A in the body, from its sources in plants to its conversion into retinaldehyde, retinol, and retinoic acids, and the toxicity of all of these molecules. Dr. Smith also explains the liver’s role in filtering toxins and producing bile, as well as the importance of bile in detoxification.
Sadly, there’s no commercially-available lab test to determine vitamin A toxicity, since retinol is kept in a tight homeostatic range in the blood and the rest is kept in the liver, but the men discuss ways to determine that you may be having some subclinical issues without getting a dangerous liver biopsy.
Introducing Toxic Bile Theory
The concept of toxic bile theory is introduced, which is a new paradigm/framework on health and disease that explains how countless diseases are caused when toxic bile damages the liver and leaks into the bloodstream.
Low Vitamin A Diet
Dr. Garrett Smith is known as The Nutrition Detective
The low vitamin A diet includes avoiding organ meats, pork, dairy, eggs, and high vitamin A plant foods. Animal protein sources like red meat and poultry are preferred. The diet also includes white or light-colored plant foods, cooked beans, whole grains like oats and barley, and select fruits like bananas, apples, green grapes, and pears.
In the final part of the conversation, Mike and Dr. Garrett Smith discuss their personal experiences and perspectives on nutrition and supplementation. They touch on finding balance, the role of minerals in the body, and the benefits of removing toxins from the body rather than adding more supplements.
Dr. Smith also shares information about his Love Your Liver Program and the testing and consultation services he offers, and he sells an incredible mineral supplement called Keystone Minerals that Mike gives to his family, as well as a very popular topical magnesium lotion.
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https://blog.priceplow.com/podcast/dr-garrett-smith-vitamin-a-toxicity-150
Video: Learn about the Vitamin A Toxicity Epidemic with Dr. Garrett Smith
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:59:11 — 109.1MB)
Detailed Show Notes: Dr. Garrett Smith on Vitamin A Toxicity
Detailed Show Notes are in Progress
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00:00 – Introductions
Mike and Ben welcome listeners to the PricePlow Podcast and introduce their guest, Dr. Garrett Smith, who Mike has followed for nearly two years now.
Dr. Smith’s background is introduced, focusing on his expertise in health, nutrition, and detoxification. He comes from a background of strength training, having begun weight lifting at age 11. This led to nutrition, and he realized how food affected his health.
He was a personal trainer, got a degree in physiology and a minor in chemistry and nutrition. He worked in a supplement store, then headed to naturopath medical school.
Dr. Smith has now been practicing for 18 years, and explains many “phases” that everyone goes through, blaming numerous factors for their diseases (heavy metals, carbs, etc).
The main topic of discussion is revealed: Vitamin A toxicity and its potential effects on health, and how the liver and bile are connected in sickness.
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03:45 – Discovering Grant Genereux’s Work on Vitamin A Toxicity
Dr. Smith mentions a Canadian engineer named Grant Genereux who went through chronic kidney disease, jaundice, and brutally painful eczema. He was heading to dialysis, but then realized that nearly all “eczema foods” were all high in vitamin A! So Grant decided to go on a very low vitamin A diet consisting of just beef/bison, white rice, and beans.
Grant’s jaundice, eczema, and kidney disease completely went away once he eradicated vitamin A from his diet. He wrote two books, Poisoning for Profits and Extinguishing the Fires of Hell.
After reading half of Grant’s first book, and connecting vitamin A with many of his patient’s issues, Dr. Garrett Smith realized that he had to change everything he was doing.
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06:30 – Reconsidering Vitamin D Supplements (Calcification and Joint Pain)
This wasn’t the first time Dr. Smith had reversed course on using a vitamin/supplement/nutrient. He did the same thing with Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) in 2013, after realizing through his patients’ hair mineral tests that:
- Vitamin D3 supplements raise calcium levels
- Vitamin D3 supplements lower potassium levels
- Vitamin D3 supplements induce hypothyroidism
Dr. Smith claims to be “one of the most anti-vitamin D supplement people out there”. He doesn’t think it’s good for people.
He states, if you have a lot of pain:
- Get off of the vitamin A supplements
- Get off of the vitamin D supplements
- Stop eating nightshades (which also contain calcitriol, the active vitamin D)
Give the above three a chance for a month and watch pain go down.
Knowing that our listeners may be caught off guard hearing that vitamin D is toxic, Ben asks Dr. Smith to rewind a bit and go deeper.
While we do need sunlight and ultraviolet light, do we know that it’s through oxidized cholesterol as cholecalciferol? People have been sold an assumption about this, and it doesn’t pan out in the research when you just give cholecalciferol to unhealthy people.
Vitamin D raises the calcium levels in the blood. It either increases calcium absorption from the gut, or it’s going to take it out of your bones. Men have been shown to have lower bone density after 4 years of vitamin D supplementation.[CITATION REQUIRED]
Vitamin D overdose induces hypercalcaemia.[1-4] He instructs everyone to look up Vitamin D bone resorption. Ultimately, if you’re stiff in your joints, cracking/popping, increase magnesium (the anti-calcium) and remove vitamin D3. Think about it: X-rays look for calcium. Mammograms look for calcium. Calcification is a problem – most diseases involve it.
Dr. Smith isn’t into ingesting fat-soluble (fat-storable) vitamins and/or metabolites. We should let the body control metabolite production.
So getting patients — and himself — off of vitamin D started helping everyone feel better. He tells a personal story about how he became constipated from his over-dosing of vitamin D.
The whole point is that this was a mea culpa where Dr. Smith had to reverse course.
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15:00 – Improving Health with a Low Vitamin A Diet
Back to Grant Genereux’s work, despite being a doctor, Dr. Smith was still having issues with BPH (benign prostatic hyperplasia — enlargement of the prostate gland), insomnia, lower back pain, and a bit of psoriasis. Urinary and prostate issues at age 25 were certainly concerning given the fact that his dad had died of prostate cancer.
After taking vitamin A out of his diet (but not to the extreme that Grant goes), avoiding eating liver at all costs, and stopping vitamin A / beta-carotene supplements, his health began to greatly improve. And so did his patients who also followed this recommendation.
Fast forward to 2024, Dr. Smith has been restricting vitamin A consumption for six years, and Grant recently celebrated ten years with extremely little vitamin A consumption.
The onslaught of vitamin A is fierce. We get it from:
- Cosmetics
- Supplements (beta-carotene, cod liver oil, liver pills)
- “Eat the rainbow”
- Eggs
- Dairy
Note: Mike will later point out some of the data on beta-carotene, cod liver oil supplementation, and heavy egg consumption that shows a lot of increased disease.
The toxicity can get handed down via pregnancy. The more toxic someone becomes, the slower their detoxification is. One thing not mentioned here that we missed is how glyphosate slows retinoid metabolism as well![5-7]
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19:30 – Vitamin A and Carotenoids
Ben gets to interject and ask a bit more about Vitamin D, but also asks a general question — are all carotenoids bad?
Dr. Smith first says that there is no such thing as a zero vitamin A diet. It would be too unhealthy, there are just not enough foods and they’d have no other nutrition. He doesn’t think carotenoids are necessary, he’s not convinced it’s essential. FDA doesn’t really support any health claims with them.
In general, it’s just a math problem — we want the amount we’re ingesting to be less than the amount we’re excreting.
Dr. Smith will later state that there is no animal-based vitamin A in the world without carotenoids first. Provitamin A carotenoids (beta-carotene, alpha-carotene, and β-cryptoxanthin) are the precursors.
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23:15 – More on Vitamin D, Sunshine, and Health Effects
Back to vitamin D, another general issue: are studies talking about levels, or are they talking about cholecalciferol consumption? Dr. Smith agrees that someone with higher vitamin D levels and isn’t supplementing will have better health.
However, there are numerous reviews showing that vitamin D supplements don’t have that many net benefits.[CITATIONS REQUIRED]
Those who eat carotenoids have been known to turn orange,[8-10] and liposuction patients who try to “eat healthy” have fat that looks orange.
What does sunshine do? Dr. Smith claims that it oxidizes vitamin A, and that his patients get less sunburnt over time.
Vitamin A and D are also antagonistic to each other.[11] So are we “vitamin D deficient”, or are we really vitamin A toxic?!
But the big issue is when we start supplementing metabolites. These are fat-soluble, fat-storable molecules! More is not better. The liver is forced to store these!
He then makes fun of a prominent doctor (Dr. Ken Berry) who said that the liver doesn’t store toxins,[12] which is verifiably false and has been known for a very long time.[13-15]
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27:45 – The Biochemistry of Vitamin A and Carotenoids
Detailed Show Notes are in Progress!
Where to Follow Dr. Garrett Smith (@NutriDetect on Twitter)
Thank you very much to Dr. Smith for spending the time to educate our audience.
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