My hormones are nonsensical and I haven't taken roids before. What do?
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@Ray-Peat-Fanboy I eat quite a good amount of that, probably too much when I was younger if i'm being honest
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@Stinky-bill-19 your thyroid is not extra active. High TSH means your thyroid gland is not responsive to TSH. Anything over 2 is definitely problematic in Peat’s experience. Having such an high upper bound like 4.5 for the reference range is one of the great follies of modern medicine. Take waking pulse and temp to make sure but you are likely hypothyroid. Check waking temp (before getting out of bed) with an old-fashioned thermometer in your armpit for 10 minutes and if it’s less than 97.8 you are confirmed hypothyroid. If the temp is above this number and it drops after you eat breakfast then this is a sign of high adrenaline which also indicates hypothyroidism. If you want to see where I’m getting this from read “Hypothyroidism/The Unsuspected Illness” by Broda Barnes.
As for the high free T3 I understand this is a sign of less-than-optimal liver function. TOTAL T3 and T4 would be more relevant. Reverse T3 should also be measured for a coherent picture of what’s going on. But the TSH already suggests sub-optimal thyroid gland function. So the most reliable thing you can do at this point is check waking temperature and pulse.
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Why not post the whole lab? How's your cholesterol, how are your kidneys doing, did you get prolactin tested, hows your iron panel, bloodcount..
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@laoa this is all that was tested sadly
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@vocedilegno Will do, Ill update tomorrow. Thanks for the input. I thought high T3 would have indicated the opposite.
I do take vyvanse so perhaps that has an impact?
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More is better when it comes to carbohydrate. There is no limit. I eat 500 - 600 gram carbohydrate a day.
Even if you eat carbohydrate to the point of de novo lipogenesis when it starts converting into fat its still good , because then it converts to palmitic acid and that will improve your SFA:PUFA ratio
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@Stinky-bill-19 Blanchard had a theory that when the glandular T4 production is lagging the body can sometimes compensate with greater peripheral T3 conversion. But T3’s effect is blunted when reverse T3 is high. Any/all of that may play into this.
As I understand it Vyvanse is an amphetamine and anmphetamines are a well-known cause of liver damage. From my vantage it’s the first likely culprit for why have high free T3 and high bilirubin. (LDL levels are also low especially in relation to testosterone, and your HDL is high in relation to your LDL, and neither of those are a good sign for liver function either. HDL as I understand it is a sign that cholesterol is getting shuttled around to repair tissue damage which is why it goes up after drinking. [EDIT: this is wrong because I read the HDL and the LDL in reverse]) And with high TSH and low testosterone it’s not super likely that the LDL is low because it’s all getting used to make steroids. More likely the liver doesn’t have the energy and/or substrate to produce LDL efficiently.
If you need ADHD meds to function it could be a sign of metabolic deficiency. There’s strong reasoning which suggests that ADHD is a symptom of energy deficiency in the brain. T3Uncoupled on Twitter/substack has posts which address this. I am not an expert nor a doctor and this is not medical advice however it would seem thyroid is the thing which is lacking.
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@vocedilegno So you'd suggest I take thyroid?
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@Ray-Peat-Fanboy Interesting, everything i've been taught says that carbs cause you to get fat and I'm already skinny fat so I'm worried about getting fatter.
are you telling me that eating more carbs will help me lose weight by fixing my thyroid? If so I assume you are referring to fruits and honey specifically rather than candy and breads.
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@Stinky-bill-19 yes, instead of the ADHD stuff, but as Peat says, not before reading Broda Barnes’ book, and not long term without getting your total cholesterol higher. Peat wrote about how TSH is in itself inflammatory and how it’s good for health to have it down at 0.4 or lower. Taking thyroid lowers it. But taking thyroid also uses cholesterol. But then again thyroid also gives the liver the necessary energy for the synthesis of cholesterol.
Thyroid hormone in the context of nutritional sufficiency (vitamins and minerals but also carbohydrate!!!) helps with lean mass and reduces the estrogen burden by improving the liver’s detoxifying capacity and by accelerating digestion. But done carelessly, in the context of nutritional deficiency, it has the potential to exacerbate stress.
With regard to the testosterone it might make sense to measure it again and also test LH and prolactin to see if either of those are related. LH is supposed to stimulate testosterone synthesis and prolactin can suppress it if high enough.
EDIT: please ignore what I wrote about your HDL and LDL in the previous post. Doesn’t apply to you — I read your cholesterol numbers backwards. But LDL of 91 still slightly on the low side in general I think.
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@vocedilegno i plan on buying some TyroMix and using a drop a day. Is this what you suggest? a friend of mine suggested the same thing.
it's relatively cheap, so im gonna give it a shot.
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@Stinky-bill-19 Just too the temp and it fluctuates between 100.3 and 98.5. I don't have an old-fashioned thermometer though, so maybe this isn't entirely accurate. Also after eating breakfast it went up in temp, not down.
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Yeah I agree that your liver is struggling bc elevated bilirubin, elevated albumin, high free t3 and lowish shbg. Low thyroid functioning doesnt help. As said above, more carbs and thyroid supp could help with the liver but doesn't adress the thyroid itself directly, though a healthy liver makes way for healing the thyroid (and other organs), but is your diet in general kind to your liver, GI tract and thyroid to begin with? Look a bit into Ray's reasonings why certain foods can be (un)helpful.
Keep an eye on cholesterol when going on thyroid, it shouldn't go any lower as it is now.
Also kidneys dont exactly seem super healthy bc of high creatinine (and thus lowish egfr) and high potassium or did you just do some heavy exercise or take creatine hours to a day before the labs maybe?
Prolactin, LH and rt3 would've been helpful labs indeed.
Your doctor is most probably very wrong in thinking you need trt in the future. -
@Stinky-bill-19 thats good temps, but not necessarily due to good thyroidfunction I think. The Vyvanse could be giving higher temps, do you smoke or drink coffee before measuring? Edit: also hows your peripheral temp, do you have cold feet, nose etc?
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@laoa i drank coffee after, not before. I'm not on any medication today or yesterday
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@laoa i was dehydrated when i got the test done, dry mouth. This was likely caused by the vyvanse since I was taking it then.
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@laoa I haven't supplemented creatine in months
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@Stinky-bill-19 before you start taking exogenous thyroid it might be worth it to try eating things which have zinc and copper and selenium like liver and oysters, and eating coconut oil and more carbohydrate, maybe also vitamin D and more calcium to see if you can get some endogenous thyroid going and lower the TSH. I haven’t tried Tyromix but I hear that alcohol is not the best delivery vehicle for thyroid hormone. The Mexican stuff is what I’ve tried and most swear by it.