Carrots: Some Issues & Carotenoid Intolerance
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Over the past 6 months, I have been eating white or yellow carrots instead of orange carrots. Many of these I grew in my own garden. These homegrown carrots I have found to be more potent than store-bought at maintaining digestion.
This morning, I ate a store-bought orange carrot. 3 hours later I was running to the toilet several times with diarrhea. 6 hours later I am experiencing a painful flare-up of scalp psoriasis and dandruff like I have not had in a very long time.
The culprit could only be carotene.
This highlights for me the difference between retinoids and carotenoids. I have dealt with dandruff and seborrheic dermatiasis for 1.5 years now, and did not find relief until I quit orange carrots and moved to white carrots. Relief also coincided with increasing my liver consumption, telling me that retinoids and carotenoids are physiologically very different, despite the tendency of the culture to treat them practically the same. Retinoids heal the skin while carotenoids damage it.
This also brings me to an observation about carrots. Store-bought carrots I find to have little flavor compared to homegrown. In homegrown carrots I can taste the antimicrobial compounds very distinctly and my mouth feels much cleaner after eating, while I find that store-bought carrots have no flavor or effect. I believe this is because carrot varieties are raised in soils with decreased microbial abundance due to modern agricultural practices.
No soil microbes = nothing to stimulate carrots to synthesize antimicrobial compounds.
I am curious to hear if anyone has similar experiences with carotene or homegrown carrots. If you truly want a sterile gut it may be up to you to grow your own carrots.
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Thank you for the high quality post. One question - did you peel and discard the carrot skins? If not, the chlorine bath used to clean some carrots may have contributed to the gastric distress.
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@brad I did not peel them because the skin should contain a high amount of antimicrobials. I was not aware of the issue with the chlorine bath, this could be the issue--I am very sensitive to chlorine!
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@CheesedToPeatYou Yes. They use chlorine and other nasty things at dilute concentration to clean carrots. Sometimes, not always. I wouldn’t recommend you repeat the experiment unless you truly have a dedication to anecdotal science, but perhaps next time you are forced to buy carrots out discard the skins first.
