How to stabilize blood sugar during COVID illness?
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@RPadmirateur, maybe try a different juice such as apple or grape or even coconut water with added white sugar? I know many Ray Peat followers who experience(d) intestinal irritation and bloating from OJ. And if by homemade gelatin you mean from powdered gelatin, maybe try gelatinous broth instead? I know quite a few people who get bloating from the former, but not the latter. The only other things I can think of are vitamin K—Ray suggested it for high BP in an interview (maybe try kale broth?)—your thyroid dose—optimizing our dose of NDT dropped my mum’s dangerously high BP and stabilized my blood sugar (I had hypoglycemia)—or anti-microbials like IdeaLabs’ CamphoSal or Penicillin VK—intestinal bacterial overgrowths are common among those with poor thyroid function.
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It escaped me that your lungs are not well. That is probably what you need to fix. Not only to ensure oxygen supply as I had stated earlier, but also to have the ability for the lungs to deactivate serotonin.
I think it helps to clear your lungs of phlegm that is interfering with your breathing as well as any possible bacteria.
You will sleep better and get the rest you need to be able to heal and recover. But as long as the lungs are compromised, sleep is going to be hard as the serotonin will be keeping you from sleeping well.
It was only after I resolved my lung issues that I started to recover last year from an acute bronchitis. Before I recovered, it got worse for me as the lungs affected my heart, and I had heart failure. It was touch and go for awhile as I recovered in fits and starts. But I learned well enough from that, and this is a perspective I share from surviving that experience.
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Selenium and lung inflammation
You could give a try with selenium, as Dr. Klinghardt stated in an old interview. But only with a nebulizer, not with a spray. Device to be found in a pharmacies.
Note: Proposed for people suffering from asthma.
Two ampoules of liquid selenium (2 mg), twice a day (morning and in the evening)
Labcatal selenium 2 mg, in nebulizer.
Selenium gives miracles on asthma; 3 weeks delay anyway. But it hasn't worked for everyone (feedback from my forum readers) when the pathogen/intruder remains in place. -
This isn't the gospel but. For the way it's transported the sugar concentration's not a big deal for much but GI discomfort. It's the salt I'd watch, including the bicarb.
Experiment with it. Record meticulously your BP and a description of how you feel. And anything else you're already measuring. Vary the concentration between hypo, iso and hypertonic, and see what happens.
The circulatory is quite malleable but seems to have resting states it can pattern in to around behaviour. Which is a function of activity as much as it is what you're eating and drinking. Blood volume in some kind of proportion to vascular dilation.
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@Jennifer Apple juice is too high in pectin, and, unfortunately, the grape juice that I could get without citric acid added is no longer available. Ditto for coconut water. But excellent ideas! It's just that anything with added citric acid causes intestinal irritation, at least for me. And I hear you on the powdered gelatin, I cannot do that either, unless I am really healthy! I do make my own gelatinous broth. My working diagnosis is that the stress of the illness/ adrenalin response, over sensitized me to the T3 I was taking, and at the same time, because I wanted the antiestrogen, anti-cortisol effects of aspirin, as well as aspirin's ability to limit G.I. absorption of tryptophan in the 2+ quarts of milk I have been drinking, I had increased it, (most days, 31/2 - 4 g), up until yesterday morning. Yesterday morning, I stopped all aspirin and Cynomel, because of aspirin causes unbinding of T3 from the protein carriers in the blood, essentially causing hyperthyroidism. http://content-assets.jci.org/manuscripts/106000/106905/JCI72106905.pdf Although I do not have signs of hyperthyroidism except about 10-30 min after drinking milk, o.j. and consuming a small amount of heavily salted gelatin, (my heart rate elevates about 12bpm more than normal), and I get really warm. I think I simply don't have the fuel and the nutrients for the hyperthyroidism to continue, so adrenalin/ cortisol kicks in and my b.p. shoots up. This is a working hypothesis. If it turns out to be true, I will post it as a separate post. I just stopped taking the aspirin and the T3 yesterday morning. I see varying information on the half life of T3, anywhere from 24 hours to 2 1/2 days. And I have not found anything in terms of the length of time that it takes for aspirin to have this globulin knocking off effect of T3. Lmk what you think. Your other recommendations are all good. I have stopped all oral supplements, including PenVK and Doxycycline, as well as the oral vitamin K, due to the intestinal upset, as of yesterday and today, (PenVK was prior to the Doxycycline). I am still going to supplement with topical vitamin K and D, and I rub Progest-E into my gums. Thank you for the reminder for the vitamin K! I might be a bit deficient, even though I was supplementing, and that might help with the BP. As of today, simply drinking less o.j., and a little more sugared milk and gelatin seems to be working. I log when I finish these drinks and start them again an hour later. My bp still goes up by the end of that time, but short of an I.V., it might just be a waiting game. Check out the link and lmk your thoughts. Thank you!
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@ThinPicking Right now, I am just going by taste. The heavily salted broth is very soothing. I have stopped the baking soda, because it may have been contributing to my intestinal irritation....not sure, so many variables. Please read what I wrote to Jennifer and lmk what you think.
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@yerrag I am thinking I need to try cyproheptadine, for its anti-serotonin effects. Yes, serotonin is deactivated in the lungs. Was cyproheptadine part of your healing regime? In a nutshell, how did you heal your lungs?
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@LucH I think the pathogen is irradiated and I am dealing with the aftermath of the effects of the inflammation. I have a new working hypothesis. Please see my response to Jennifer.
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@RPadmirateur You can filter the apple juice using a coffee filter to remove pectin. Also have your tried juicing your own fruits? I know some people cannot tolerate store bought juice but feel fine incorporating fresh-pressed juice.
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@RPadmirateur said in How to stabilize blood sugar during COVID illness?:
Please read what I wrote to Jennifer and lmk what you think.
Do you drink any water?
Not concomitant with anything else, just generally.
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@RPadmirateur said in How to stabilize blood sugar during COVID illness?:
@yerrag I am thinking I need to try cyproheptadine, for its anti-serotonin effects. Yes, serotonin is deactivated in the lungs. Was cyproheptadine part of your healing regime? In a nutshell, how did you heal your lungs?
I had to use nebulization using a combination of cortisone and salbutamol, as well as oral NAC, the kind that fizzles and tastes sweet that is branded (as the unbranded generic one will work but tastes nasty). But this is following my pulmologist, who also gave me some antibiotics such as Clarithromycin for good measure, just in case there was an infection building up.
But I also relied a lot on aromatherapy, where I used essential oils blended into a suppository I made. It involves first using a blend that was both mucolytic and acts as an expectorant. Then followed days later by a blend that was antimicrobial, as removing the phlegm was necessary to make the antimicrobial treatment more effective (lust like taking biofilm busters would make antibiotics more effective). The third blend that was the last, involved healing or restoring the liver, which may have been negatively impacted by the use of essential oils on it. The suppository method works well because it bypaases the liver first pass of detoxing which would lessen the potency of the substances used. Using herbs, where the essential oils come from, also provide multiple pathways of action, unlike pharma's approach of relying on one substance to act. The redundancy makes aromatherapy less subject to treatment failure and side effects.
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@ThinPicking No, I don't drink water. I can barely handle the amount of fluid I am taking in. Even when well, I don't drink water.
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@Serotoninskeptic Great to know about filtering the apple juice! I cannot find ripe oranges, so I think that might be a contributing factor to the intestinal irritation. The cough corresponds to the bloating, gas and diarrhea at this point. Why is your user name serotoninskeptic? I will juice other juices today. I have grapes, watermelon and apple juice, and now I know that I can filter it! Thank you!
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@jennifer I haven't slept the last 2 nights and lots of gas, bloating and diarrhea last night. Temps have dropped, so I guess my working theory about the aspirin and T3 was wrong. What type of NDT do you or does your mum use and how does one go about optimizing it? I will look into the CamphoSal. Thank you!
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@RPadmirateur, whoops. I never received a notification for your other reply. Sorry about that. I take Armour, but if you can’t get your doctor to prescribe it or another NDT like NP Thyroid or ADTHYZA, IdeaLabs makes a standardized desiccated thyroid called TyroMax. You want to make sure that whatever desiccated thyroid you use it’s standardized or else you won’t be getting consistent potency, which makes dosing it properly impossible. It’s slower acting than synthetic thyroid because it has to be digested first to release thyroid hormones that are bound to the protein thyroglobulin so you may find that it works better for you. For dosing, I titrate it up or down by 1/4 grain every two weeks until I reach ideal temps and pulse, and my symptoms have resolved. I hope it helps and you experience relief soon!
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@RPadmirateur said in How to stabilize blood sugar during COVID illness?:
No, I don't drink water. I can barely handle the amount of fluid I am taking in. Even when well, I don't drink water.
You should. As far as I'm aware, Ray didn't say no water. He said a large amount of it arriving in the intestine causes stress. Which is a function of what's there, along with the volume and pressure of what's consumed.
You're getting a fullness from your current volume because it's very tonic. And your intestine's probably a sodium reservoir by now.
Add it back slowly is my advice.
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@Jennifer Thank you! I am very ill/ feel terrible all of the time and barely sleeping and barely functioning at this point. I appreciate your help! I doubt that I could get a doc to prescribe NDT for me, but maybe that's what I need. In the mean time, I am starting ground zero with Cynoplus and Cynomel.
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@ThinPicking With 2-3 liters of milk and a pint of juices a day, and now quite sedentary, water would be disastrous. I crave salt, and I am far from thirsty, and that is a good indication not to drink water.
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@RPadmirateur said in How to stabilize blood sugar during COVID illness?:
I crave salt
It sounded like a lot already for the volume. But maybe it's the opposite. Edit, or maybe you've driven your salt appetite high. More a craving than a physiological need. It can be a moving target. Only ye could figure this out really.
You say "water would be disastrous". But having BP dysregulated and being unable to tolerate whole foods is also a little so. Unless you have kidney problems you'd get some diuresis at worst.
Whatever gets your GI to tolerate whole foods again. If it were me and assuming no other particular discomfort in running a high blood pressure, I'd target that and not the blood pressure for progress. Because the GI itself is intricately involved in BP regulation.
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I talked about CO2, but I assumed there is enough oxygen coursing through your blood.
But what do people share in common having gone through COVID? A residual problem in breathing. If the breathing is all restored, there is still the residual dead tissue matter that gets accumulated and backed up in your system. One thing that is overlooked are the red dead blood cells, which die because of oxygen deficit when suffering from COPD and/or ARDs.
You may see evidence of this waste as sludge in blood vessels, as expressed in high ESR. But you would hardly find evidence of it when this waste is backed up in your lymphatic system.
The heme in RBCs when being broken up release iron, and this free iron is involved with the enzyme heme oxygenase in creating carbon monoxide. Read through Peat's newsletters about this, and make the connection, though it is hard to make the connection without experiencing the effects yourself and to start thinking, instead of just relying on medical studies that just makes you go off kilter and lay the blame elsewhere, as they often do. It gets you off the trail and leads to rabbit holes, where you don't actually find the root cause and end up with endless doctor visits, until a bigger disease leads you to focus on yet another "bigger threat."
What I think is happening I'd that the tissues exposed to carbon monoxide chronically lead to our endothelial vessel linings becoming porous, and they absorb particles, especially water, leading to edema.
This is the start of worse things to come, such as leading to pleural effusion in the lungs and heart failure. I know, I've been down this road before. It had to take me awhile to figure this thing out. And I'm not out of the woods yet (though my case is not COVID though similarly respiratory in nature).
When I'm finally well, I can talk more about it. But right now, it is just my experience and observations against the prevailing conventional wisdom. It is too lengthy to explain, and not worth expounding on as it is going to just be ignored as my n=1 is hardly considered scientific especially to the Ivy League scientist proponents that lie in the woodworks here.
