Unpleasant experience on thyroid
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@DonkeyDude yes you should not 'play' with it too much. But if it doesn't change after a month or so, it could be just that you're dosing too low.
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When you first start increasing my the level of t3 in the blood, your cells & tissues will become sensitive to any excess adrenaline that is in your system. It’s common for hypothyroidism to be compensated by an excess of stress hormones that your tissues have become desensitised to. Starting thyroid often leads to a sudden increase in requirement for essential nutrients such as magnesium, glucose, ect. Of course, caloric intake should be sufficient, it’s important to keep on top of this as sympathetic nervous tone will lower your appetite and can create a viscous circle.
Don’t disregard the idea that you may not need to supplement thyroid.
Good things are immeasurably costly
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@Ruben said in Unpleasant experience on thyroid:
@DonkeyDude yes you should not 'play' with it too much. But if it doesn't change after a month or so, it could be just that you're dosing too low.
I definitely plan to increase the dose, just going very slowly.
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@skylark said in Unpleasant experience on thyroid:
Don’t disregard the idea that you may not need to supplement thyroid.
I hear you. But I believe I might actually need it. I have suffered from debilitating fatigue from years. My body temperature is low and I feel cold all the time. I'm stressed out all the time for no reason and I have trouble coping with any actual stress. I have many other symptoms fitting those described in Broda Barnes' seminal book on thyroid.
Doctors have not found anything they could help me with (beyond offering SSRIs for depression).
Eating Peaty (low PUFA, high sugar etc.) for 1-3 years definitely did improve my metabolism, but not nearly enough. I've tried progesterone, pregnenolone, various vitamin and mineral supplements including megadoses, cypro, Benadryl, carrot salad and other purported natural gut cleansers, aspirin, and probably many other Peaty and non-Peaty interventions. None had a notable effect. I do think I have a good reason to believe I need thyroid.
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Update: as predicted, the problem has passed. On Sunday I will increase the dose to two drops and continue to report.
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Another update: the problem I've started the thread with has not returned. I have noticed my gyno has shrank (although it's still somewhat visible) and my hairline has somewhat filled in (but I had pretty good hair before Peating, so I wouldn't get your hopes up too much if you're bald). Interestingly, I have also built some muscle despite barely lifting (maybe five light sessions across the whole month).
However, the fourth drop (that brings me a bit above half grain) seems to have some threshold effects despite the fact I started it just this Monday.
I have recently started a stressful job that requires me to wake up way earlier than I prefer. Before, and this has been generally the case since I've turned 16, I could never get a full night of sleep if I needed to get up before 9 AM - I would either fail to fall asleep at all, or would wake up every hour in panic, thinking I've overslept. I also generally found it impossible to fall asleep after being startled at night in any manner. Last two nights I have been woken up by alarm clock and I could easily continue sleeping if I wanted to. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it's a major breakthrough for me.
Also, I feel like some kind of capacity to feel emotions is slowly coming back. For years I haven't experienced much but a kind of general discomfort and annoyance. Only my wife has made me happy, and sometimes I have been too much "locked in" even for her. Past two days I had a moments when I've genuinely laughed at something I've just thought. I feel real hope first time in years.
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I may be wrong here, but you're probably taking too small of a dose. You're giving your body exogenous thyroid hormones, natural production downregulates, but you're not giving it nearly enough to take over.
Also, try to stay on a dose for at least 2 weeks, before switching, or increasing. -
@GreekDemiGod Makes sense. I agree the dose is probably too low, but I wanted to start as low as possible to avoid side effects (I've read some horror stories on RPF, including people who no longer could tolerate any amount of thyroid whatsoever). This theory also seems to be supported by the fact my goiter has lessened - my thyroid used to be somewhat swollen and painful to touch, now it's hard and doesn't hurt anymore.
I am increasing the dose every two weeks - I started with one drop and currently, in week 7, I'm at four.
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Yet another update (I hope this log might be useful for someone looking for info in the future). My wife says I seem to have aged backwards five years since I have started taking thyroid. Apparently my face has became longer, thinner and more masculine. It has also became somewhat easier for me to drive a car - before Peating it was incredibly stressful/overwhelming. This is all despite sleep deprivation and heavy psychological stress I'm currently under.
My need for magnesium has skyrocketed: mag glycinate tastes like powdered sugar and I feel worse if I neglect to take it. I also had several unpleasant sort-of-panic attacks, but it's probably due to aforementioned stress - thyroid does increase adrenaline sensitivity after all, and these don't happen without an external stimulus, so I doubt thyroid is the culprit. I will try eating more sugar during the day and taking magnesium in the morning too to see if I can make them go away competely.
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@DonkeyDude interesting details , thanks , i imagine metabolism fix its like a invisible layer surrounding for years starts to dissipate and let more life in & you into life , in balance
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I have found when taking tyronene, that somrtimesi become almost narcoleptic, barely able to keep my eyes open. I think this is due to not consuming sufficient fuel, because if I made a point of eating or drinking significant glucose, I tend not to have this issue.
It seems like it might also possibly be that it relaxes me so much after years of high cortisol and adrenaline that I simply feel the fatigue all of a sudden. Haidut's kuinone seems to have a similar effect, but only sometimes.
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My wife has made an interesting observation: I seem to feel best on the first week of an increased dose and then I return to my baseline over the second week. By the weekend of week 2 I'm back to usual delusional paranoia and conversations with people who aren't actually there. Every increased dose brings an improvement, but it's still a wavy, cyclical process rather than a straightforward linear increase in health.
My theory is that at first, increased thyroid dose raises my metabolism and I feel better, but then my (likely extremely elevated) stress hormones drop, leaving me at baseline again. This would imply that I need to go through this cycle several times until stress hormones finally drop to normal levels, allowing a linear improvement with an increased thyroid dose.
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thanks for sharing. I've also been struggling with fatigue for years. personally, T3 has been giving me heart palpitations and low blood pressure at night. maybe I also have been taking too low a dose, but the heart symptoms have scared me too much so I'm going to just stop.
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@scamp You might need to use T4 too. Apparently many people have this reaction to T3 monotherapy, and there's a reason neither Ray Peat not any of the "thyroidologists" he cites has recommended it.
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I have neglected the temperature till now, because not much is happening here. My typical sleep-deprived morning temperature has risen somewhat, from pre-thyroid 96.1-96-3 to now 96.8-97. Interestingly, my afternoon temperatures have not increased at all, remaining at around 97.7 to 98. Once, when I could sleep somewhat well, I got a morning temperature of 98.1 or so.
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Some more observations:
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I have detailed dreams with coherent plots that I remember almost every night. Before thyroid I rarely dreamed and it never happened when I was sleep deprived. If only these weren't all nightmares it would be pretty cool;
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my spatial abilities seem to improve in leaps and bounds on their own. I've mentioned an improved driving ability before, but I haven't noticed just how much has changed. For example, before thyroid parking backwards was very difficult for me, because I had no ability to conceptualize what is going on where I couldn't directly see or to accurately estimate small distances. Now I do and it's like gaining a new sense. (Is this where the stereotype of women having a hard time with parallel parking etc. comes from?);
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I have a lot of new hair (baby hairs?) on my head, but it's all gray. I had some gray strands before as a reaction to stress, but now it's more uniform. It's not that noticeable yet, but if the trend continues I'm gonna look like I've dyed the edge of my hairline, leaving the rest my usual black.
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Today is the third day of taking 6 drops of Tyromax (7 are equal to a grain). This evening I've managed to clock a temperature of 98.2, the highest so far outside having a fever.
I feel hungry all the time for something unspecified - I eat eggs, cheese, apples, drink like a gallon of milk a day, dump white sugar down the drain, it's not enough even when I feel stuffed to the gills. I seem to crave starch specifically, I will try to introduce white rice again.
I also started taking niacin again. 250 mg dose has failed to produce a flush, so it seems I'm quite depleted.
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Okay, this came downhill fast.
Now I have 99 after eating and I don't feel good at all. I feel agitated My hands are still cold. My pulse is 80, so I assume I don't have any heart complications. I have also very frequent bowel movements. No other symptoms of hyperthyroidism.
What to do? Just abandon the whole experiment and hope my natural production is not permanently suppressed? Go back to the last dose (4 drops) in which I've felt good and stay on it until I have absolutely no stress symptoms? Ride it out? Add some more supplements (I have been wary of adding niacin to the mix, but maybe I actually need it)? Change the product? Do not attempt to supplement thyroid without dropping my general stress levels?
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@DonkeyDude the ratio of T4 to T3 should be at least 10:1, that’s what I’ve been reading.
Too much exogenous T3 lowers ft4 because it directly suppresses TSH, which in turn, halts your natural T4 production. And the exogenous T4 that you take is not enough.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3821467/
So you either lower the T3 dose, or increase the T4 dose.
Add Levothyroxine on top of NDT.
