Pseudotumor Cerebri Support Group
Pseudotumor cerebri (PTC) is a neurological disorder that is characterized by increased intracranial pressure, in the absence of a tumor or other diseases affecting the brain or its lining. Diagnosis requires brain scans and lumbar puncture. Characteristic symptoms are headache, transient visual obscurations or transient visual loss in one or both eyes usually lasting...
For those of you who have gone vegan or at least cut way back on your animal products, how do you avoid the massive amounts of Vitamin A found in vegetables? I'm trying hard but anytime I eat anything with a lot of vitamin A in it I get horrible headaches. I am trying despretely hard to eat very healthy in hopes of helping myself and even have decided to live with the awful stomach feelings I get when I eat vegetables (always felt like this) and I avoid the big contributors of vitamin A like spinach and carrots but even Romaine lettuce has a LOT of vitamin A (1 cup serving has 106% of your daily needs). Everything I look at (veggie wise) has a lot. Initially it didn't bother me but after a few weeks I started noticing horrible headaches after eating garden salads for lunch. They would last all day and definitely pressure related. So for grins and giggles I switched to iceberg lettuce and took out the veggies and basically was eating iceberg lettuce and a little bit of dressing and the headaches quit coming on.
Do any of you have a hard time with the Vitamin A in food? How do you avoid it and eat healthy? I feel like if I avoid it in veggies and avoid it all in animal products I am stuck with bread, fruit and water to eat....(for the rest of my life.... :-(
Any suggestions?
Danielle
Do any of you have a hard time with the Vitamin A in food? How do you avoid it and eat healthy? I feel like if I avoid it in veggies and avoid it all in animal products I am stuck with bread, fruit and water to eat....(for the rest of my life.... :-(
Any suggestions?
Danielle
With all the confusion regarding green vegetable intake and Vitamin A contributing to worse IIH symptoms, i decided to email IHRF to ask if they ever heard vegetable being bad for IIHers. here is what they said..
Hello David,
You should discuss what diet you doctor wishes for you to be on. Most doctors do not recommend restriction of a normal intake of Vitamin A which is essential for health. There is no research that indicates IIH patients should not eat green leafy vegetables or that they make IIH worse. Excessive anounts of vitamin A
( hypervitaminosis A ) can cause intracranial hypertension but that does not occur in eating a normal healthy diet of fruits and vegetables.
The 7 DVDs of the last IHRF patient conference covers 2.5 days of every presentation, all panel sessions, Q&A sessions with audience questions, break out sessions, etc. It the largest and most complete IIH information avaialble from experts in a number of fields.Do not know if there is a discussion of diet or not as there are many topics discussed and covered. It may have been covered in one of the sessions or part of a presentation?
Danielle
Sorry to hear you are suffering from healthy eating, which sucks bad time if you are trying to eat better and lose weight. Have you spoke to your doctors or nutriitonalist? Maybe you are allergic to one particular vegetable?
have you thought about eating the same salads again but organic ones to see if your headaches would come back? Or maybe eat each vegetable from your salad during separate weeks to isolate that specific problem green vegetable you might be allergic to?
I am just curious to find out why why why.
David
Everyone please look up the difference between preformed Vitamin A (animal product derived) and provitamin A (veggie derived carotenes). The problem with animal forms - attached to fat - is that this form of Vitamin A is absorbed without discretion by the body and *can* cause Vitamin A toxicity, which most definitely causes IH. That's the issue with eating polar bear liver.
That's not to say that eating a balanced diet with preformed Vitamin A (animal products) will cause *all* IH'ers problems, but you won't know if it causes you problems unless you test it by cutting it out and challenging with occasional re-introduction.
Moreover, a strong theory about the cause of IIH is that it's not idiopathic; there is a retinol binding protein issue. There is also a strong suspicion with Vitamin A toxicity that Vitamin A will bind to Vitamin D receptors, causing low Vitamin. And, the more fat one has, the more Vitamin A they are going to have, and most with IH are overweight.
Massive carotene consumption does not cause Vitamin A toxicity, and since the body doesn't make retinol out of carotenes unless the body needs it (barring a malfunction in this area), so even if there is a RBP issue, carotenes should not affect IH'ers.
This is also not to say that something other than carotenes in vegetables might not be an issue for IHers. Many "migraine" folks (some of whom may well be IHers without paps, so no IH diagnosis) cannot eat veggies high in salicylate. One of my worst "headaches" came from eating a can of green olives, which is very high in salicylate and tyramine.. I might as well have taken a few aspirin.
There are few, if any, doctors I would discuss diet with since most doctors know very little about diet. Even dietitians have limited knowledge about biochemistry, although some educate themselves beyond what they are taught to stay current with the vast amount of new information reported weekly.