Estrogenic effects from t3 and progesterone
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Anyone else who gets really severe estrogenic effects from small doses of t3 or progesterone? Breast growth (male), edema, immediate gain of pounds of weight (water?), emotional, depression... Even 1 mcg of t3 or just a few milligrams of progesterone causes it and it takes weeks to go away from just a single dose of either one
why is this happening? any input appreciated
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@pineapple not enough carbs leading to elevated FFA in turn leading to excess estrogen and prolactin, not enough vitamin B1 or magnesium leading to PDH underactivity, not enough vitamin A, not enough zinc leading to elevated estrogen/testosterone ratio, not enough vitamin E leading to elevated estrogen and prolactin, not enough vitamin D and calcium leading to systemic inflammation, not enough vitamin C causing elevated cortisol leading to elevated estrogen?
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@vocedilegno my diet is very good, nutritious and pretty high in carbs for many years. I don't think I'm lacking those nutrients. i spend a good deal of time in the sun
I have tried supplementing with those vitamins and minerals at different times, they didn't do anything good and I just gut side effects from them...
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Do you eat liver and oysters? And do you get enough calcium Vit D and magnesium?
Those are the questions
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Many supplements are allergenic
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@Jakeandpace Yes I eat liver and oysters. I spend time in the sun and had my vitamin d tested which was 42 ng/ml. Get lots of milk, orange juice, cheese....
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@pineapple In my personal experience this has been due to having levels of cortisol and other stress hormones that are too high by adding supplements that increase the metabolism when the body is under stress is like adding fuel to the fire.
I can only take T3 when i also take a supplement to reduce cortisol levels such as Progesterone but i always take progesterone with a few mg of DHEA which helps to reduce the chance of conversion of progesterone into estrogen.
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@pineapple also curious why you take T3? Do you have low pulse and/or temperature? Is it possible that you are already in great health with good thyroid function and therefore don’t need T3?
Do you get hypoglycemic symptoms as well when you take T3?
I suspect that the T3 is elevating FFA or stressing you out in some way. T3 is known to be “permissive” of adrenaline and other catecholamines which is why Peat mentioned some people needing to take a beta-blocker with T3 when experimenting with it for the first time (hat-tip to T3Uncoupled for that info). Adrenaline can cause high FFA which in turn, I’m guessing, will lead to higher estrogen and probably prolactin as well.
In a similar vein, and in line with Verdad’s reply above, Broda Barnes recommended the use of cortisone along with NDT for those prone to suffering from hypoglycemia while using thyroid. I can’t remember whether that was from “Hope for Hypoglycemia/It’s Not your Mind, It’s Your Liver!” or “Hypothyroidism: The unsuspected illness” but I remember it clearly and those are the two books of his which I own.
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@vocedilegno I agree with this here. Don’t supplement it if you’re getting adverse reactions. Find what works. Maybe low dose Niacinamide if your trying to get your temps up
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@Jakeandpace I had thought of Niacinamide and had meant to include it in my above reply, thanks for that!! As Georgi has shown, Niacinamide is a great fatty acid oxidation inhibitor. FWIW I’ve had amazing results with higher doses, 500mg (Thorne brand).
@pineapple WARNING: I can imagine a situation where if you take Niacinamide WITH T3, blocking fatty acid oxidation, and also opposing the effects of cortisol, you could have a hypoglycemic crisis and become very uncomfortable in not even the worst case. So be careful. I’m thinking the experience could be similar to when I dropped 12 drops of Pyrucet in my navel in the morning without any food and had the most severe adrenaline reaction I’ve ever had in my life — nuts pulled up so hard against my body and I was panicking like crazy. Or it could be like the bodybuilders who die of hypoglycemic coma from taking insulin not knowing they have to eat carbs when they inject it.
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@Verdad I thought it was the other way round. Progesterone stops DHEA from converting to estrogen. Progesterone is never converted to estrogen but it can flush estrogen from the tissue into the blood ready to be excreted, if all is working well.
@vocedilegno Do you have a reference for where Dr. Peat said to take beta-blocker with T3? Thanks
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@Peatly I also heard it that progesterone is what prevents estrogenic activity of DHEA, not the other way around. I got the bit about Peat recommending beta blockers for first time T3 use from https://t3uncoupled.substack.com/p/thyroid-supplementation-simplified
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@vocedilegno Thank you.
Do you know which Ray Peat source the quote is from? T3uncoupled has provided 2 references at the end of the article but has not specified which ‘Ray Peat 2021’ this quote is taken from. A search of the newsletters doesn’t yield results for beta blockers (I may not have all the newsletters). It could be from an interview or a personal correspondence. If so, it would be good to get some context. As beta blockers are prescription drugs, it’s possible there was a context specific reasoning behind the recommendation. It is not the usual advice from Dr. Peat for lowering elevated adrenaline.
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@Peatly looking it over again, it does seem that it’s from personal correspondence, doesn’t it. In which case I would agree that it’s likely a very context-specific advice to have the beta-blocker on hand
It’s always seemed clear to me that T3Uncoupled knows and loves Peat’s work more deeply than most of us, and that’s the only reason I didn’t question it or hunt down the primary source.
Corroborating the utility of the idea, a friend of mine experimented with T3 (Cynomel) for his high cholesterol not more than a couple of months ago at my suggestion and had very off-putting heart palpitations. That happened before I had come across the article we’re discussing, perhaps just before T3Uncoupled had published it.
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@Peatly by the way, your signature quote is absolutely fantastic and explains so much about certain people I’ve encountered in my life. Thank you
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@pineapple said in Estrogenic effects from t3 and progesterone:
Anyone else who gets really severe estrogenic effects from small doses of t3 or progesterone? Breast growth (male), edema, immediate gain of pounds of weight (water?), emotional, depression... Even 1 mcg of t3 or just a few milligrams of progesterone causes it and it takes weeks to go away from just a single dose of either one
why is this happening? any input appreciated
I have experienced that and I am relatively certain that this has to do with suboptimal liver function.
I still experience edema , mood swings and depression when I mess up my T3 dose or liver function.
The "Peat diet" is great with a good liver ,but can lead to weight gain and other issues quickly, when liver function is suboptimal.BTW I had to start out with 0.1mcg of T3 because that was all I could tolerate. And even that I could only tolerate after I had lost 20kg which leaned out my liver.
Thyroid requirements can vary drastically. -
@Mauritio what did you do to tolerate t3? Im skinny but cant handle even a dose smaller than what you mentioned, get same side effects. Now that you tolerate it better, what benefits is it giving you? did you solve any health problems with using t3? The whole idea from what I read is it should reduce estrogenic symptoms and edema, so I can't really figure out how it does the opposite in some people
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@pineapple I think you should narrow it down if it was the t3 OR the progesterone. It's very unlikely that both caused the same thing.
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@tubert I have tried them separately with months apart (not taken together). Both produces immediate weight gain, edema, bloating, and the other symptoms I wrote. Small differences exist in how they feel, but my main point is, what is the reason they can produce symptoms that look like high estrogen, when they are supposed to lower water retention, estrogen...
Do most people just get the expected effect where it lowers estrogen symptoms?
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@pineapple from what I have read in the literature, if you have a calcium deficiency, progesterone can cause undesirable effects such as estrogen dominance
