Thyroid inflamation after months of supplementing
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@cs3000
This is important information to consider: that deiodinase 3, and not RT3, inactivates T3: "(hyperthyroidism often has high rt3 too and they still have hyperthyroid effects)"The explanation in the two links you kindly provided, with good cites of the studies supporting their claims, is excellent (new to me and I think new to many on RPF who have circulated what these links claim is a misunderstanding: namely, that RT3 is a “metabolic brake”.
[from your first link]: “a paradox occurs in cases where RT3 and FT3 are both high-normal. In some people on desiccated thyroid (NDT / DTE) therapy, RT3 can climb to high-normal or high levels. In many of these people with high-normal RT3, illness and/or hypothyroid symptoms occur, even though their FT3 is high-normal at the same time. “I’d never seen this before. Thanks! And the more general point that “RT3 blocks T3” is invalid. Good that we correct this misunderstanding and base our analysis on the deiodinase 1, 2 and 3 – although we don’t have direct blood tests to directly measure any of these as far as I know.
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@cs3000 What, then, is the mechanism that explains why high-dose T3 can re-set one’s metabolic set point and improve hypothyroidism and “adrenal tone”? I guess that high-dose T3 could downregulate or decrease deiodinase 3? I pasted some relevant passages below.
I can’t recall all of my own details about high-dose T3 precisely because I did this 7 to 10 years ago. Then I was on T3-only at more moderate doses for 5 years or so before experimenting with NDT. But I think it worked for me. We are, of course, all different.
I think it was several weeks of extremely high-dose T3 that worked for me, after which I felt a clear resolution of hypothyroid symptoms and noticeably improved mental/psychological “tone”.
What did the Wilson protocol prescribe for the short-term high-dose T3 intervention? How long was it supposed to last?
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@Peatful I consulted with a naturopath who did recommend trying 4mcg t3 and maybe a half grain of NDT. I am not an established patient of hers, though. I just get blood work done at her practice and she will do short phone consults. I mostly have been working slowly upping the Tyromax dose and then I decided to try some T3. I have been monitoring temps and pulse, which remain about the same. The main symptoms I struggle with are numbness in my arms and legs (which has gotten worse), constipation, heaviness in my chest, and feeling awful in the morning despite getting 8-10 hours sleep.
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@cs3000
Would it be worth considering trying 50mcg or 100mcg in one go for several days in a row to see if you get a clear response?Or would the deiodinase 1/2/3 mechanism that is theorized at the links above suggest more moderate dosing or shorter duration for the temporary high-T3 intervention?
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@T-3 I was thinking it could be more of a histamine response than an actual allergy. I am recovering from toxic mold exposure for many years, so this could be a possibility. Any dried product is high in histamines.
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4 options i see you could try dosing t3 only as others mentioned , even tho your t4 is low idk might be worth a go, or smaller doses at once, or higher overall dose. or if not then focusing on attempts to lower deiodinase 3 and see if get a response
@cs3000 are you meaning just T3 with all of these options? I was wondering if T3 only still made sense with my T4 still being low.
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@Sippy said in Thyroid inflamation after months of supplementing:
@Peatful I consulted with a naturopath who did recommend trying 4mcg t3 and maybe a half grain of NDT. I am not an established patient of hers, though. I just get blood work done at her practice and she will do short phone consults. I mostly have been working slowly upping the Tyromax dose and then I decided to try some T3. I have been monitoring temps and pulse, which remain about the same. The main symptoms I struggle with are numbness in my arms and legs (which has gotten worse), constipation, heaviness in my chest, and feeling awful in the morning despite getting 8-10 hours sleep.
Ok. This is helpful.
Anything of significance in your pmhx?
That’s past medical historyI have something to add
But
I’d also like to hear from you about your dietary historyJust briefly
Nothing in depth required -
@Peatful I was a vegetarian from age 9-30. Was a raw food vegan for some of that time. I was so sick eating that way. Then when I got pregnant I started eating meat (and raising it myself) and did GAPS type diet. I'm 40 now and have been back and forth with restricting sugar in the past 10 years, while trying to heal my gut. In the past 3 years, I have cut out most PUFAs and increased my sugar intake- mostly raw honey, coconut water, and some fruit. I eat lots of raw egg yolks and fresh goats milk. Goat, lamb and some beef. High collagen cuts mostly. Organs. Coconut oil, ghee, butter, raw cheese.
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@Peatful also, I have had lots of mold exposure my whole life, as well as Lyme and Bartonella. Most of my family is diagnosed with Hypothyroidism and on thyroid. After I had my daughter, my TSH was 60. I was only put on thyroid once by a naturopath when I was 19 or 20. It was Armour and she just kept on increasing the dose because I felt nothing. Eventually I stopped getting my period for almost a year and then decided to stop taking it. I was reluctant to try again until finding Peat's work.
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@Sippy said in Thyroid inflamation after months of supplementing:
@Peatful I was a vegetarian from age 9-30. Was a raw food vegan for some of that time. I was so sick eating that way. Then when I got pregnant I started eating meat (and raising it myself) and did GAPS type diet. I'm 40 now and have been back and forth with restricting sugar in the past 10 years, while trying to heal my gut. In the past 3 years, I have cut out most PUFAs and increased my sugar intake- mostly raw honey, coconut water, and some fruit. I eat lots of raw egg yolks and fresh goats milk. Goat, lamb and some beef. High collagen cuts mostly. Organs. Coconut oil, ghee, butter, raw cheese.
Where do I begin here
I will be direct or to the point
But unfortunately- now I have many pointsSo:
If you were ever on the Ray Peat forum
I speak a lot about this
Some directly
Most indirectlyBeing on supplemental thyroid is hurting you
You saw it once
And your seeing it again
The evidence is there for youYou’re the classic case of restrictive eating and then the stress (of pregnancy) really tipped you over
Thyroid currently is revving your engine
But nothing is in the tank
This is destructiveBtw
As I understood Ray
He never endorsed supplementing thyroid the way allopathic medicine does
But that’s an asideYou have been basically undernourished since the age of 9 ish
Your body has been (mal)adapting for you
Mainly using a stressed metabolic pathway vs bio energeticUsing thyroid now with no firm foundation has pushed you deeper into a stressed state
And a stressed metabolism cannot heal -
@Peatful To clarify, I was pregnant 10 years ago. I have improved my diet tremendously, specifically increasing calories and carbs over the past 3 years. I feel 10 times better than I did at 30 but I still struggle with constipation, low pulse and numbness in my extremities. I didn't want to supplement thyroid at all, but I thought it might be necessary to improve some of my symptoms. How long would you wait until you add a thyroid supplement?
I also would love to have another child before I'm too old and was thinking supplementing thyroid would be wise to figure out before trying to conceive.
I am interested in your approach to healing metabolism and thyroid. What has worked for you? Did you have hypothyroidism and did you ever take thyroid? I have read a lot on the old RPF and some of Ray's writing. I still don't have a clear idea of the best approach when you know you've been hypo your whole life. I do favor food over supplements.
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I hate answering with what I did- because your needs may differ from mine
What we do know is that the supplemental thyroid isn’t working for you
I would personally
Set it aside
And get my diet in order
As well as anything else that keeps me in the stressed laneBlood sugar regulation is really really important here
40/30/30 c/p/f at each meal is a good goal
Plus eating five or six versus three meals a day to stay steady is wiseWith just this alone
You may see the tingling or numbness subside, temps go up, increased energy and possibly your bowels begin to moveIt takes intentionality and time
It’s a bit laborious
But it really helped me looking backFor reference:
I started on 120 NDT
Got down to 30 pretty quickly
And now im on nothing for two or three years now
As you said- I use food as medicine -
@T-3 can I please jump in and ask, why could even 2-3mcg of T3 per day induce severe hair shedding? Thank you.
(I've been applying Ray Peat's principles since 2014.) -
@Emilia I don't know. Based on what Peat wrote responding to people responding poorly to exogenous T3, I guess you've probably already given detailed consideration to the possibility of nutrient deficiencies, imbalanced ratios (copper : zinc, phosphorous : calcium, methionine : glycine, etc.) or high estrogen, prolactin, or Peaty approaches to treating PCOS (which may not be relevant at all, as I'm only guessing).
Based on my own experience, it's hard for me to imagine such negative symptoms in response to such a small does (2 or 3 micrograms of T3). But then again, I fully acknowledge that we're all different. Our beautiful heterogeneity (albeit sometimes frustrating in the context of not finding the benefits of a Peat experiment that others have posted about) should be kept front of mind. I'm mindful here to avoid overgeneralizations or one-size-fits-all pronouncements regarding how T3 can be used -- or may not be needed -- to achieve whatever we're individually after regarding whatever constitutes good metabolic health.
I can imagine how frustrating this is and don't mean to second-guess, but I have to ask:
--How confident are you that your hair loss is caused by 2mcg of T3?
--Have you tried NDT? If so, did it feel similar? Did it lead to similar problems?I'm with @Peatful in thinking that it's wise to stop anything that seems to be repeatedly causing negative symptoms. I wouldn't want you soldiering through without pausing and coming at it from a different angle.
On the other hand (at the risk of sounding like an uncritical promoter), I think it bears repeating that there's a lot of exaggerated fear-mongering by the medical establishment and in alt-health circles overstating (alleged) risks of T3 and NDT, while ignoring profound benefits (e.g., deliberately obscuring or discounting the work of Broda Barnes). The profoundly under-appreciated therapeutic potential for T3 notwithstanding, it seems it's not working well -- not a good match for your context -- at this time.
If you're willing to start a thread giving more detail about what you eat, what brought you to Peating, what health challenges led you to want to experiment with thyroid, how frequently you've experimented with the 2 or 3 mcg of T3, and more details about other things you may have noticed when experimenting with it, then this board would probably generate some further thoughts on what's going on.
The basics (which I'm guessing you've already thought about intensively after a decade of Peating) would be to introduce T3 when you're:
-- very well-fed overall (eating ample portions of whatever energy-dense foods you particularly enjoy);
-- getting plenty of salt;
-- eating good amounts of foods that provide the B vitamins and aminos that Peat talked about frequently;
-- consuming enough tropical fruits, ice cream, other sweets that would be generally protective against the paradoxical adrenalin/cortisol responses to T3 that Peat wrote about some people experiencing in the initial days or weeks when experimenting with thyroid meds.I hope that you'll achieve what you're wanting to achieve with exogenous thyroid, should you decide to revisit T3 or NDT -- or perhaps, better, finding a way to use food to achieve it.
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@T-3 Thank you so much for your thoughtful and knowledgeable response.
In terms of my current dietary approach, I typically consume around 1,500 - 2,000 mg of calcium daily, mostly from raw or unhomogenised organic milk, and quality cheeses; milk powder pancakes, fruits, honey, medjool dates, 100% dark chocolate, coffee, gelatin, organic meats, seafood (recommended by Dr. Peat), and eggs. I would occasionally eat well-cooked greens or drink their cooked juices. I follow a starch free diet 99% of the time with occasional mashed potatoes or homemade nixtamalised tortillas.
I've experimented with cynomel and cynoplus on and off over the years, following advice from Dr. Ray Peat on dosage. While I initially saw positive results, I now face challenges even with small amounts of thyroid, despite a nutrient rich diet and adequate caloric intake.
My current supplements include Progest-E, magnesium, vitamin D and K2, colostrum powder, placenta, bee pollen, B complex, pine pollen, acerola cherry powder, and powdered oyster extract when fresh oysters are unavailable.
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Low cholesterol comes to mind as a possibility for thyroid intolerance.
How are your temps anyway? Maybe extra thyroid isn’t really needed for u
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@BroJonas thank you for your response. My cholesterol levels aren't low. I often have cold hands though, classical symptoms..
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@BroJonas I have some genetic markers for thyroid hormone resistance.
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@Emilia Your diet sounds on-point, delicious and brilliantly pro-metabolic. I'm glad you mentioned about your cholesterol levels being adequate (for endogenous youth-steroid production), which is another important consideration when trying to rule out mechanisms that may lead to unwanted symptoms in general and to thyroid supplementation in particular.
Warm temperature in the hands and fingers, reaction speed (moderately quick "twitchiness" in the heel/hands/wrists) and absent brain fog (cognitive tone that wants to "see new possibilities", hungry for new insight, sensitive to aesthetics, e.g. 5-sense sensory pleasure of being outdoors, at least some fleeting moments of child-like "wonder", as Peat repeatedly mentioned) are among my most reliable "intuitive" indicators of good thyroid/metabolic status. Now I better understand your frustration: having on-point pro-metabolic diet for years on end and yet cold fingers as a persistent sign of (or consistent with) hypothyroidism or some metabolic block to achieving comfortably warm body temperature.
Just on a hunch: might you consider trying a quarter or half a grain of NDT?
I mostly prefer T3. But for whole-body warmth, there are times when NDT outperforms, especially in wintertime. I think NDT is more complex. I've had paradoxical responses to it after being on it regularly for multiple months, which brings me back to nibbling a T3 tablet as the simplest and most direct way for me to achieve the pro-metabolic markers I'm able to perceive. I use NDT sporadically every winter, usually for a spell of 3 or 5 days every few weeks if I don't get as much sunshine as I'd like, or am unusually busy with a work project that keeps me stuck in the office or sleep-deprived (e.g., international travel).
Please let us know if you figure anything out (with or without exogenous thyroid) that returns warmth to your hands and achieves the pro-metabolic markers you're wanting.
