I love the new Withings toys.
They allowed me to move on.
Seeing my diastolic pressure so high and hearing about those awesome post-fever days helped my doctor make up her mind and put me on T4 supplementation -- despite new results indicating a decrease in TSH, from 7.12 to 5.21! I didn't even have to bring it up, she decided quite firmly that it was time for me to go on that route.
So I started on the 13th of April with 25 mcg of Levothyroxine. I will double it to 50 mcg in a few days and then go check my free T4 and TSH again.
The first three days were quite amazing, but not in the "after-fever" way I described previously. My body accelerated pace. However, harmony is still not here and I am left to actively search for that elusive balance I have been experiencing for a while.
There are things I don't like about myself in this way of eating, something is clearly off and I can't quite pinpoint it. I feel better and more energized than on the Paleo diet, but some nights are not that great and I sometimes feel this strain. It's hard to describe. I can feel my rib cage, if it makes any sense -- hence, my compulsive measurements on the Withings BP monitor. Who knows... I was probably developing something and this diet causes it to stand out more? Or is it from the diet itself?
I am not sure what I should give up in order to feel better. I am reluctant to give up sugar, my newly rediscovered friend. If I give up dairy there is nothing much left to eat... Coffee? It would be such a pity!
I already don't feel like eating starches anymore, they have quickly moved into "irrelevant" territory for me. It's funny, really, from one of my favorite (forbidden) foods when low carbing, potatoes have become again a massive bore. Like when I was a child and they were this personal enemy on my plate -- just massive "foodstuff", lacking all taste, a lot like pasta and bread... Yucky fillers people had to eat for unfathomable reasons...
Rice (with milk, sugar and vanilla flavor) is the only starch I still eat, in small quantities. So, I guess I am doing a cross between a Peat diet and a PHD diet. Which brings me on a rather balanced dietary route, really -- the more so as I have never really started the Peat-crowd-favored supplements -- no pregnenolone, progesterone, K2, aspirin, niacinamide, cascara sagrada, etc. I even gave up on the baking soda baths after noticing they brought about episodes of high diastolic BP, after an initial relaxation.
I will start experimenting again with some of those maybe -- just never again with pregnenolone and progesterone. Reading a bunch of articles and books really calmed down all desire to believe that "bioidentical" progesterone is in any way better than progestins (no studies to show it) and when I looked into the Nurses' study results I was stunned -- progestins looked way worse than even evil estrogen, so... I don't get Ray Peat's position on this one.
Why he would maintain that progesterone and pregnenolone do not metabolize into estrogen is another mystery. All science points in that direction. If those things are in any way "bioidentical" they should act like the original hormones, so?..
When a well meaning scientist patents and then advocates a certain product for decades there are many defense systems at play preventing that person to recognize the fact that the said substance can prove truly dangerous to many people out there...
I honestly wish the future might prove Ray Peat right and all the others wrong but, until that moment, I will definitely stay away from both pregnenolone and progesterone.
I think Peat is right on a whole lot things (more knowledgeable than most out there) but I still think you need to treat on an individual basis and under the guidance of someone more knowledge than yourself. Peat recommends progesterone only short term unlike many out there. Your thyroid readings look similar to mine. My antibodies have been sky high and it scares the s*** out of me. I know if antibodies are high = bone and other collagen tissue thinning is happening. I think the most useful supplement has been pregnenalone. I think it is a godsend for high stressed individuals like myself. For many, it is simply not practical (even though it would be life-saving) to remove stress from life. You simply can't walk away from your children, financial responsibilities. It is your duty as a parent no matter what the toll on your health until the child is independent. These days children hang around for a bloody long time. Pregnenalone is the only supplement that gives me back my strength physically and mentally to battle all the drama's they dump on me. This includes my husband along with the elder care. This is after years of being zero sugar and low carb. I now know the answer to the chronic fatigue - f*** I was running on empty. I was told it was in my mind, that it was because I was a new mother, I was making it up blah, blah, blah How could I like so many have been so wrong. Thank god for Peat. I am unable to buy DHEA so I take large doses of the pregnenalone in the hope I am converting excess to DHEA. Peat is a physiologist and even though I am a molecular biologist, Peat has finally given me the courage to castaway the dogma on genetic determinism and focus on what is happening at the cell membrane. More dogma that was force onto us leading us down dead ends. I now teach physiology to first year undergraduates and I am only now starting to understand why those small basic molecules of life and energy are important. Yeah physiology seemed so boring and tedious at time we were learning, but perhaps if we had lecturers like Peat at the time, he would have alerted us to pay more attention, rather than just learning by rote to pass the exam. As for the antibodies, how can anyone not have an inflamed gut when under so much stress. Peating might make us fat but it sure does make us more resilent - damn! Well at least now I have the energy to exercise instead on sleeping on the couch.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your journey.
MM
Hey, MM, thanks for sharing your experience and the good wishes!
ReplyDeleteI take it that you are not buying into the theory that sky high antibodies (my Anti-TPO is around 500 nowadays, from over 900 one year ago) are harmless and they are just indicating simply ongoing loss of thyroid tissue and need to clean up those debris? While the tissue destruction has other causes (nutrition imbalances, H2O2, etc. -- see Haskell's video series)? I still like that part a whole lot...:)
I hear you about the elderly care and family dramas...
I was not doing well on pregnenolone, unfortunately. I have low cortisol, low estrogen -- so I think precursor hormones furnish those gaps in my case, primarily. A few days ago I used some Progest-e on my finger, after burning myself around the barbecue... No more than three drops. I can feel the estrogen today and had a very hard time going to sleep last night, I guess from the cortisol surge it gave me. Truly amazing. I know they advise in cases such as mine to top off the estrogen and then feel the benefits of progesterone, but I'd rather get rid of as much estrogen as I can, so... I am stuck, I think, on this no precursor hormones path.
I find it fascinating that you have access to all that body of knowledge and that you teach physiology!
Good luck with everything!
When you say that I am not buying into the theory re high antibodies, I guess you mean that I don't believe in the body is attacking itself or that somehow it gets confused and thinks it is attacking a virus instead of self. I don't think the body gets confused - the body knows what it is doing. There is intelligence beyond what we can comprehend. When there is low energy in the body, viral genes are upregulated (express themselves). These viral genes are widely spread throughout the genome. When there is low energy, harmless endogenous friendly bacteria turn pathogenic. It is reassuring to know that thyroid tissue can be regenerated along with liver, thymus and pancreas (Peat), unlike some tissues like the cornea of the eye. My life long work has been as a researcher in corneal thinning disease. The cornea like bone and cartilage are similar. The holy grail for me is that if bone and cartilage can be regenerated so too corneal tissue. What is also of interest is that this corneal thinning condition occurs around the teen years when estrogen comes into the body and there appears to be a strong link to stress. Not a good mix. Same occurs around menopause. These transition periods are fraught with complications in the presence of a high stress environment and poorly nourished body. If only I had known about Hans Selye's work earlier in my life - but I am sure no-one would have listened to such ideas and so, we are still fumbling around in the dark looking for genes. This is were Peat is interesting - he is not only a physiologist but his research is in endocrinology. He is an expert on the Thyroid. I agree with Peat, that they, the research community very well know how important this gland is. Researchers guard their intellectual property closely. Perhaps Peat is one such researcher, he keeps the best bits tightly guarded. We all do it.
ReplyDeleteAntibodies tell us that there is cleaning going on but what worries me is why is the tissue being broken down in the first place. Yes antibodies do worry me especially when it is happening at tissues sites that don't rebuild faster than they break down or don't rebuild at all. But maybe with enough sugar and gelatin we can get them to rebuild faster, it is an interesting thought.
You say you have low cortisol and low estrogen - so why would you not do well on pregnenolone? You say you can feel the estrogen - how and where do you feel it? I know if I eat foods that contain phytoestrogens such as flaxseeds, I feel it in my breasts around the nipple area. Not that I do this now because anything that is interacting with receptor sites in breast tissue can not be a good thing. The estrogen that Peat talks about is intracellular estrogen which is upregulated any time there is inflammation and not clearing estrogen fast enough by the liver. So you can have low estrogen outside the cell but high estrogen inside the cell. Estrogen testing is not reliable and there is huge variation in those saliva assays. We think if we can do more testing right down to the molecular, genetic, proteome, metabolome or microbiome level that we would be wiser. Yeah, that's what I used to think but maybe not so anymore. Energy seems to me like a good marker - either you have plenty and life is great or no energy and life sucks.
It sounds like your body is in a catabolic state which is a clue for the cortisol spike in the early hours of the morning. Have you tried gelatin broth before going to bed at night. Sleeping through is something I would work on first because if you are having deep sleep then you know you are regenerating. Progesterone helps with sleep but I would do milk with syrup (making sure there is plenty of glycogen stores in the liver) and gelatin first and see whether you sleep through. I would attack any break down in muscle, bone etc aggressively.
Best of luck with your journey.
I hope you find your Holy Grail -- what a worthwhile pursuit!
ReplyDeleteAs to the estrogenic effect -- for me, too, breast tenderness is the first symptom and it worries me, especially that they saw all kinds of strange things at the mammogram and had to do an IRM to make sure I didn't have anything. Having an elevated CA 125 marker doesn't help things.
When I took a lot of Progest-E though (three drops a day for more than a week, I can't remember how many days exactly) the estrogenic effect was way more pronounced -- bloating and swelling and fat (or water retention?) patterns forming where there had never been any... My entire shape changed in a "voluptuous" manner, if you want, but I did not appreciate that one bit. Sorry! "They could not pay me enough to be twenty again"... And I thought it was weird to look in a way I didn't look at 20. Clearly, my natural balance had never been THAT and I felt sorry I messed with things. Now, I am back to my normal shape, more androginous if you will, which I can recognize and prefer by far! Maybe it is an idiosyncratic view, but I somehow trust it.
I have a friend who allowed this estrogen topping off to happen to her. I hadn't seen her in years and when I did I felt so... sorry, I guess. She looked very young at 40, but she didn't look like herself at 20, she looked like a partially inflated version of her old self. Cheeks like balloons... there was this unnatural look about her, hormonal puffiness all over -- although she was not overweight. Just... re-arranged patterns. Estrogen pumped to the max. I would rather have wrinkles... but maybe I'll change my mind when wrinkles do attack me...:)
My sleep patterns have improved a lot -- I used to go to bed at 3 a.m., even later on summer holidays. So the fact that I sleep between 12:00 until 7:00 or 8:00 is already huge and I am working to make it better. It might just take more time before I am able to go to bed at 10 or 11 p.m.?
Now I have these blood sugar issues to worry about I don't even know how to eat anymore.
I even called a house doctor when I had a numbing phenomenon happen -- I lost feeling many parts of my body -- feet from knees down, back, face, top of my head, hands from elbows down... I could still move, but it was extremely annoying and weird. I think it was going on internally as well, because nothing felt quite right. The doctor thought it was a panic attack and told me to get more magnesium. I don't think I buy that, who has panic attacks while reading peacefully? Plus, it happened the following day as well, as I was taking a baking soda bath, around the same time (5 pm-ish). It lasted even longer, but I was not that scared anymore. Yesterday I didn't have it. Today I'll see my doctor, see what she makes of it. Could that be a manifestation of the catabolic pattern you mention? You don't have to answer that, you do sound like you have more important things to do..:)
I hadn't tried gelatin at night, I'll give that a go...
Thank you for all the advice and fingers crossed so you may discover how corneal tissue can be regenerated! I wish I could help you with THAT! :)