Withings Led to Levothyroxine

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.

"Dreams Come From Us" -- Roger Ebert

Goodbye, Roger Ebert!

 ***

He was not only my favorite film critic, but indeed, one of my favorite people on the planet, EVER. I would like to honor his memory today, but I am too upset and words fail me. What can I say that has yet to be said?

Because this is a health blog and because Roger’s problems debuted with thyroid issues, I shall compile a brief history of his ordeal.

His generous openness regarding his health issues offer other thyroid sufferers a unique insight...

A story in the USA Today, “Roger Ebert Reviews His Thyroid Cancer, by Mike Falcon, with medical adviser Stephen A. Shoop, M.D., from back in april, 2002, has a few Ebert quotes that echo Ray Peat’s views on radiation being a major risk factor for health.

"I had radiation for an ear infection in the fifties, says Ebert. “At that time it was still common to treat acne, earaches, and other head and neck problems with high levels of radiation we now know are dangerous. As a result there's a little epidemic of people in my age group who are developing this type of problem."

There was Chernobyl, there are still dental x-rays, many of them unnecessary… The American Thyroid Association just issued a recommendation to the effect that special collars should be used when dental work requires x-rays: Policy Statement on Thyroid Shielding During Diagnostic Medical and Dental Radiology 

"Sometime before Christmas I felt a lump underneath my chin while showering," says Ebert. "We had a biopsy done and the diagnosis surprised me. I had a tumor near the salivary gland removed in 1987 and I thought it might be a recurrence."

So, in the beginning there was a salivary gland issue, and then thyroid cancer. Roger got hospitalized and had this new tumor removed, then he underwent the radioactive iodine treatment. He downplayed its importance, at this point, and seemed quite reassured about the future outcome of his illness. 
In a profile story published by Esquire in 2010, “Roger Ebert: The Essential Man”, Chris Jones summarizes the terrible events that followed:

“A year later, in 2003, he returned to work after his salivary glands were partially removed, too, although that and a series of aggressive radiation treatments opened the first cracks in his voice. In 2006, the cancer surfaced yet again, this time in his jaw. A section of his lower jaw was removed; Ebert listened to Leonard Cohen. Two weeks later, he was in his hospital room packing his bags, the doctors and nurses paying one last visit, listening to a few last songs. That’s when his carotid artery, invisibly damaged by the earlier radiation and the most recent jaw surgery, burst. Blood began pouring out of Ebert’s mouth and formed a great pool on the polished floor. The doctors and nurses leapt up to stop the bleeding and barely saved his life. Had he made it out of his hospital room and been on his way home—had his artery waited just a few more songs to burst—Ebert would have bled to death on Lake Shore Drive. Instead, following more surgery to stop a relentless bloodletting, he was left without much of his mandible, his chin hanging loosely like a drawn curtain, and behind his chin there was a hole the size of a plum. He also underwent a tracheostomy, because there was still a risk that he could drown in his own blood. When Ebert woke up and looked in the mirror in his hospital room, he could see through his open mouth and the hole clear to the bandages that had been wrapped around his neck to protect his exposed windpipe and his new breathing tube. He could no longer eat or drink, and he had lost his voice entirely. That was more than three years ago.”

It is hard to not remark the dooming role radiation played, yet again. Just reading this makes me look for comfort — and where else can I find it, but in Ebert’s own words, from the same "Esquire" article:

“These things come to us, they don’t come from us, he writes about his cancer, about sickness, on another Post-it note.

Dreams come from us.”  

Ray Peat's "Autoimmunity As Degeneration" Theory Wins Beauty Contest

Something makes me at the same time suspicious and trusting of Raymond Peat’s theories of what happens at the cellular level: their beauty.

Are they too beautiful to be true or could they be true because life is beautiful and we are programmed to perceive it that way? In other words, is beauty in the eye of the beholder, as in “biologically embedded” and are we "encoded" to recognize truth by its beauty and the other way around? Should we maybe trust beauty as a measure of truth at a biological level? Or should we, on the contrary, regard it as an artifact, an artist’s interpretation of things that can hardly be beautiful in and of themselves?

However, Keats’ “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” seems to chime a background bell throughout Raymond’s Peat elegant articles.

Beauty does appear elsewhere in science as well, and in some of these places Raymond Peat distrusts it. As in the autoimmune disease theory, according to which our own immune system, designed to protect us from external attacks, somehow (mysteriously, because to my knowledge nobody has managed to describe convincingly the process) turns its proverbial “guns” against the self tissues and goes on a rampage, causing the “victim” to suffer sometimes mild, other times life threatening consequences. There is drama in this theory, there is betrayal, there is misfortune, destiny is involved (some of these diseases are genetic, of course!), there are the good guys, the guards protecting the princess, who then, under some yet unknown evil charm, become these abominable monsters who hijack and torture her and there should science come on a white doctoral horse and rescue the poor victim, returning the guardians to their former protective personalities…

Ah, the legendary sound of it! It make a lot of "sense", right? Maybe too much so?  "Metaphysical medicine", as Peat might say... A new theory is needed, one more in sync with... truth, of course! So Ray Peat comes up with the following scenario (dramatization is mine, just to make it easier):

Autoimmunity is simply a monster that creeps in the body under the form of malnutrition. It is the owner of the body who, without suspecting a thing, submits his beautiful innards to the havoc of depletion of all kinds. Stupid fool! As this Dorian Gray with a portrait hidden in his mitochondria parties on, his body is subtly failing, by the day, SADly, until it cannot hold it together anymore, and the chain breaks somewhere and symptoms start. Enter doctors, on their white horses, not much more intelligent than the stupid person in question, and even more dangerous, because armed with bad science. In a big hurry to keep track of all the stupid fools that are waiting in line in all those hospitals and doctor’s offices, they rush to prescribe stupid medication that, added to our stupid fool’s stupid diet breaks even more havoc and the inner chain breaks somewhere else and the poor body starts really acting up, throwing tantrums of its own, and it is good bye health, hello “autoimmunity”! Enter other stupid doctors, causing even more havoc, believing in the stupid theory of the body attacking itself, and they prescribe medication that would kill some of the body but at least prevent pain. Ah, this is too painful to describe to the end, I will leave it here.

But... This is beautiful, too!

So much romanticism, so much drama in these scenarios! Who needs TV shows when we have doctors and bad science? Or do we need TV shows precisely to forget about them?

The important question remains: does good science embed good narratives as well?

I don’t remember physics being so full of drama. Chemistry, however… All those electron exchanges and concatenations and reactions… That’s some serious action.

So… Maybe drama is embedded in our biology. And beauty is a sign of truth. Wouldn't it be nice if it could function as a criteria — if a higher degree of beauty would point towards a higher level of truth?  All we would need in that perfect world would be theoretical beauty contests to decide where our answers are... 

Which theory on autoimmunity do I find more aesthetically pleasing, the commonly held scenario in which the immune system attacks self for unknown reasons or Dr. Peat’s proposed script: we harm ourselves through bad nutrition and then run into degeneration?

I would go for Dr. Peat’s, because I tend to consider people not very smart, on average, and when they get together and create dietary trends, they become totally untrustworthy and likely to go into collective trouble. I believe that the intelligence embedded in our tissues is far superior to the power of our intelligent minds and to our current scientific comprehension. We are more stupid than our bodies, if you will — we have not yet risen to understanding the way they work and we are tragically incapable to sustain and protect their optimal functioning.

So my vote goes to Dr. Peat, whose beautiful theory on degeneration embeds that particular truth.

Aspirin Will Cost Us In the Long Run. Low Estrogen/High Progesterone Exists!

The Peatian news of the day has to be Noah Buhayar's article on Bloomberg.com about aspirin becoming such a burden to the cost of healthcare... because it protects so many from cancer!

I have not started supplementing with aspirin. The idea that then I would have to add K2 to my regimen and balance these guys out is truly not something I look forward to (especially that both can do some damage, in the wrong dose, they are not harmless little substances).

***
Yesterday I started reading Dr. Sara Gottfried's "The Hormone Cure", because I had read the reviews and many raved about how well she explains their interplay.

I took her hormone quizz online and the results hit pretty much where I expected.  So, to all the women out there who think there is no such thing as progesterone dominance or women who are not in need of progesterone, because they would instantly turn it into the evil estrogen, check out my results:

High Cortisol.  It sounds like you are unlikely to have high cortisol at this point, which is great (...)

Low Thyroid.  There’s a good chance you are low in thyroid hormone (...)

Low Estrogen.  There’s a good chance you are low in estrogen (...)

Low Cortisol.  There’s a good chance you are low in cortisol. (...)

Low Progesterone.  You are unlikely to have low progesterone. Congratulations! (...)

High Estrogen.  You are unlikely to have estrogen dominance. (...)

High Androgens.  You are unlikely to have high androgens. (...)

For whatever this is worth, my recommendation for any woman out there considering hormone therapy is to take Dr. Gottfried's test or, better yet, to check your hormone levels before you decide you are "estrogen dominant" and start the "bioidentical hormone" supplementation, be it with pregnenolone or progesterone. Reading Ray Peat's and others' fabulous experiences is one thing, taking the decision to go that route on one's own is another.

Balance the time you spend on forums with time you spend with doctors or reading their books and using their free online resources. Just because you run on a discussion group into a woman who seems smart and knowledgeable and who did some things that worked for her and then she went out of her way to recommend them using Ray Peat's work and quoting his instructions to her as endorsements doesn't mean you have found YOUR answer! Nobody is evil in this equation, everyone is being super nice and tries to be helpful -- but hormone supplementation can have serious consequences and you need all the qualified, personalized help you can get when you do it.

I learned this the hard way, unfortunately! 

Biohackers or Simply Hacks?

“You should know that there’s a different way to live: you can feel delicious, vital, and genuinely content. I’m here to show you that you can live an extraordinary life and that you can feel great—regardless of your age, even if it sounds unlikely or unimaginable.”

(Dr. Sara Gottfried, “The Hormone Cure”, Scribner, 2013)

I would have read such statements with more than a bit of skepticism until a few days ago, when precisely this feeling of vitality and happiness took me by surprise and proved to me more than any book that what I have been experiencing for the past few years were hormonal imbalances.

I will get to the bottom of this and will “biohack” my way into making this glorious feeling permanent, whatever it takes.

I am now sure that my body has not been damaged consistently in any way by any autoimmune disease, that my connective tissues are healthy and that I would be contemplating a second part of my life in perfect health and feeling wonderfully vibrant if only I could find the right paths for my diet and, if need be, dietary supplementation.

I might have caught this at the turning point, where everything goes wrong starting from the most fragile tissues in one’s body: the thyroid gland, perhaps the thymus (more research necessary on this one). And I feel guilty for maybe having brought this upon myself by listening to a bunch of health gurus of the blogosphere: Catherine Shanahan, Mark Sisson, Dr. Jack Kruse, Chris Kresser, etc.

Having been burned once, I will keep a very watchful eye on all the “Ray Peat Practitioners” who write about health and give advice out there. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I am examining their output, their relationships and the complex online marketing system which they are actively building as we speak.

And I am reading as many scientific studies as I can as I go through Dr. Peat’s main theories and advice. 

Thyroid Gland Physiology, Musings, Gadgets...

...by Dr. Adeleke Adesina. More videos like this on http://www.ftplectures.com/:

-- a subscription is required, free for the first three days. Another free video on "Thyroid Storm" can be found on YouTube.

Can a thyroid gland ever come back from Hashimoto's? My ultrasound shows that destruction of the gland has happened. It is not clear to me whether it is still going on. I do have some moments when I feel BETTER, as in almost hyperthyroid... So that would be consistent either with continued destruction and cleaning of debris by antibodies (which have considerably diminished in the past year) or with slow regaining of function and improvement. It will be interesting to have the same doctor perform an ultrasound in the near future and compare the results with the previous ones.

A few studies out there let me believe that the thyroid can indeed be destroyed by incorrect nutrition and rebuilt in the presence of high TSH and low T4.  I have both, as well as normal T3.  My doctor said I should not supplement with thyroid hormones unless I reach a TSH of 10 (I am currently at 7) or I run into serious symptoms.

Since I started eating Peat style, I can say that my energy has increased a whole lot.

I have also had a series of bacterial infections, in my left ear, the last of which has been extremely virulent, to the point that surgery was considered an option. I had very high fever and then...

And then, I don't know if this is temporary or not, but I have been pretty much walking on air! I am still trying to understand how this happened and what is it that makes me feel not good, but GREAT! Again, I hope it was not an episode of thyroid destruction that released lots of T3 and T4 into the bloodstream.

If my next thyroid numbers are awesome, I will attribute this to the Peat lifestyle, without a doubt.

If the antibodies have increased, I will not be too happy -- that means that further destruction has occurred.

But I want to get to the bottom of this diet experience by following Dr. Georgia Ede's example, namely doing readings of blood glucose and frequent blood tests and pulse and tension and recording properly everything that happens to me. I should also keep a serious diary with all this, but I am reluctant to do it here, it might make this blog too messy with a mix of personal experience and science and thoughts about diets and what not. Maybe I should start a separate blog for the daily diet experience, connected here in the upper tabs...

I need to round up some equipment in order to do this. I had set my eyes on the Withings smart body analyzer and their blood pressure monitor. I could do some mean graphs without even trying using those... Besides, I needed a good excuse to get them.

So, lots of work ahead, but that's alright, 'cuz now I've got the energy!

Why This Blog

I discovered Ray Peat's available body of work in the beginning of 2013. I had been doing Paleo for 14 months and my health was on a downward spiral.

Somehow, I clicked with Peat's teachings and I am now on a journey that I hope will lead me to a healthier place. My main concern is my Hashimoto's (TSH over 7, but euthyroidian, at the moment).

The bet is to raise my metabolism through diet.