@Kvirion with this I would take my chances. It may come tomorrow, or after I die, and I do not think it wise to put everything on indefinite hold and passively wait for a catastrophe. And if some global collapse does happen, I believe I could raise my children to be better prepared to survive and exploit it than most other people. Maybe I end up a progenitor of some post-apocalypse ruling dynasty.
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Posts made by DonkeyDude
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@zawisza said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
I think this is something that a good psychiatrist could help with, though it will be hard to find one.
Well, I'm returning to some kind of psychiatric care soon anyway, maybe it does help. My last stint in a psych ward has enabled me to get over my difficulties with getting a female companion; maybe I need another one to get over my difficulties with becoming a father.
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@Gull said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
Why would they hate you ? I mean outside of the teen phase where it's 'cool' to hate your parents ?
For being losers and failing to provide them with material security. I have met many people who recollect the feeling of shame due to their parents not behaving like adults (I have, no shit, read a post online by a person who wanted to know if arguing "persistent childhood embarrassment due to the father being under influence in public" will get them out of paying old-age support). Then, again, I've also met children of total failures who still idolize them as long as the parent in question was even a little bit warm and loving.
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RE: Unpleasant experience on thyroid
@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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RE: Unpleasant experience on thyroid
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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RE: 80/20 rule which aspect brought most returns
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skim milk as both a primary liquid and calorie source
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not eating vegetable oils, including not eating out/at restaurants
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
I think I have finally realized what my big contention is. I do believe any kids we have will have a massive advantage due to Peaty knowledge and other generally useful skills/philosophy we have picked up over the years. We are basically in the situation of a sports coach that knows everything there is about getting to a championship, yet just doesn't have the physical prerequisites to use this knowledge himself.
Even the money will not be that big of a problem long term - our kids and grandkids stand to eventually inherit from like 20-30 bare branch aunts and uncles, and despite our general loserdom we have put together a nest egg that in time, God willing, should grow enough to enable our kids to perpetually NEET in our basement if they wish so.
What I'm really worried about is that they will hate us for having them. Despite lofty future prospects, their childhood will likely be quite hard and they will have to solve their problems on their own. In a sense, I fell like I'm passing my duty to secure safe and easy life to the next generation. That's probably selfish, and I probably overestimate the problem.
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@Tahodama said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
Are you content with your own upbringing? Can you objectively measure its quality and say it meets a standard worthy of perpetuation?
This was the easiest question in this post, and I can answer it truthfully for my wife too without consulting her: absolutely not. In fact, I have a long list of things not to do that is directly inspired by my own past. And this is a part of my desire to have kids. No matter what I do in life, I will never change my past, my childhood, my formative experiences; I cannot do that for myself, but I can create that gift for someone else, someone new.
@Tahodama said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
I mean, I was born and raised under some pretty piss-poor circumstances, and I still feel obligated to muster gratefulness for the fact. I'm certainly not gonna say my parents committing some sin by creating me.
Cannot one be grateful for their existence and yet contend their parents were incompetent? I'm certainly happy that my wife exists, yet it's pretty obvious to me her parents were not qualified to properly rear and train a puppy, much less an actual person.
But indeed, it does seem that it's hard to come up with an ethical standard for reproduction. It's just too deeply intertwined with mystery of life and existence it general. My hindbrain's reaction to this is to push even more strongly to just take a leap of faith.
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@celestialrestrcn said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
progest e, penicillin, thyroid, cyproheptadine, high dose thiamine/aspirin/K2 Mk4/D3/Egg shell etc?
Out of that list we haven't tried penicillin (I tried azythromycin, but it has caused stomach inflammation) but I don't think our problems are gut related (phenyl salicylate, carrot salad and other stuff in that vein didn't do much) and K2 Mk4 (not available in our country, idealabs is too expensive for a vitamin). We have also tried tons of other stuff, both Peaty and not so much; we have drawers upon drawers full of failed supplements. I have started on thyroid this year and it does seem to have some effect, but it is literally the last possible thing that could help.
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@celestialrestrcn said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
Peat harder. If u were healthy you wouldnt be worrying about any of this
Well that's the point - what if I don't peat myself to health quickly enough, or ever?
As for the rest of the replies: thank you for the thoughtful posts. I need time to digest them and respond.
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RE: Thyroid Log
@GreekDemiGod said in Thyroid Log:
And if she will agree, she will likely prescribe Levothyroxine only, the standard treatment.
Is a T-3 only prescription drug even available in your country? Mine has just T4-only or T3-T4 in standard NDT proportions (and I have yet encounter someone who has actually received the latter), so even if she agrees with you, there might be limited options.
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RE: Unpleasant experience on thyroid
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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RE: Assessing women's thyroid status by temperature
Update: wife's temperature was 97.5/98.4 on the second day on her period, and 98.1 in the afternoon of the third day. Her hands and feet were also quite cold, so I suspect her temperature might be supported by adrenaline rather than thyroid. She is going to have a blood test for total cholesterol and TSH (just to make sure) and then probably get on thyroid.
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RE: Thyroid lab results
@FTMarinetti said in Thyroid lab results:
I was considering cyproheptadine but I'd need to go to France to get it without prescription.
Many French pharmacies sell it online, if you're in the EU it might be worth trying.
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@Gull @VehmicJuryman I actually agree with both of you, what you wrote out matches my own internal conversation. Maybe it's just because both me and missus had parents who were too occupied with their own bullshit to actually parent.
By messed up I mean I had a high score on the IQ test, but I work a minimum wage job I might lose when they finally notice I'm going to the toilet every two hours to wait out a panic attack; our house looks like some junkie den because we don't have energy to clean it properly, and so on.
Maybe I'm overthinking this; after all, tons of actual junkies I know do have kids and I sometimes get this thought that they have already staked their part in the future and we didn't because of some postmodern anxiety. Thanks for participating, it really helps.
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@Gull said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
Being Peaty and knowing about early development shouldn't stop you from having children, on the contrary, as some of the problems of childhood that will arise may be solved with lesser damaging ways.
This is the clou of my problem, basically. I could do so much for my kids with the knowledge I have (and I'm not just thinking about the medical side, there's so much things I wish my parents taught me instead of having to learn everything the hard way)... but how well they can be if they're my kids and I'm so messed up?
You have no ethical obligations to be in the 100% best metabolic shape of your life, just do your best, you have good tools at your disposal.
Maybe not 100%, but how low is too low? I know many people who just shouldn't have children. If I cannot even take care of myself, should I bring new people to the world who will be entirely dependent on me?
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RE: The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
@Norwegian-Mugabe said in The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition:
You should start running around town fucking babies into ladies.
Lol, I'm content with just one lady, I want to be a father, not a 'baby daddy'.
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The ethics of having children while in sub-standard metabolic condition
Not sure if this is the right part of the forum to start this thread. I hope it does not end in the junkyard.
What I want to ask is: from a bioenergetic perspective, is it ever not okay to have children? Ray Peat has written about how the prenatal environment and mother's health impacts the hormonal health of the fetus; how early life conditions are extremely important in shaping metabolism, how elevated childhood serotonin or cortisol levels can stay so indefinitely and so on. This would imply parents have an important responsibility to provide a right environment for their offspring - and that environment might include their own bodies.
Me and my wife have been Peating for some time, but more and more I'm coming to a realization that our high-stress, low-nutrition childhoods might not ever be fully undone, or at least that it won't happen very soon. We are both around 30 so basically either we have kids in the next decade or we never do.
So here's the dilemma: at one hand, my sperm and my wife's eggs and uterus clearly aren't in perfect babymaking shape. The baby might be deleteriously impacted by our high level of stress hormones and low level of protective ones. Our crappy metabolism also implies crappy financial situation: we struggle to hold down minimum wage jobs and would likely rely on generosity of regretful childless relatives and milking government benefits to survive. Poverty in a shitty commie country is not fun at all.
At the other hand, our genetic baggage is not that bad. We do have above-average IQs (in the 120-140 range). My wife in particular does have this huge Tutsi-ish head; and from time to time she has these moments of clarity that reveal how smart she could have been if that big brain was given more food and less punches.
We also have tons of Peaty and other knowledge, and I feel it's fair easier to raise a healthy, thriving person in the first place than to unscrew twenty years of damage. And of course poverty is relative - a medieval peasant would marvel at the living standard of modern paupers. Same with health - if I were a fetus, I would prefer to grow in my wife's belly than in any other woman I know.
I guess many people around here might be in a similar position - a lot of knowledge on how to live a good life and what went wrong in your own, yet unable to easily undo that. At one hand, it seems selfish to risk bringing up a kid that might either have the same struggles as I do and/or suffer from my poor life competence. At the other hand, it's seems a sin to let all this possibility, potential to go to waste. And when I look at my wife I feel there should me more people like her.
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RE: NDT in Europe
I have successfully ordered Tyromax (Idealabs liquid NDT product) to European Union. It definitely works (although some people complain about the inconsistency between batches, I can't speak to that as I've bought one bottle so far) and it allows one to start with a very low dose (7 drops equal one grain). The disadvantage is that the dropper sometimes clogs and some liquid always spills out, so you lose a bit.
In general, you won't find "true" NDT in European Union as the suppliers aren't allow to state the thyroid hormone content of their products if they are to retain the supplement status. On the old forum people have contended that these glandulars have lower hormone content in general and a lower T3/T4 ratio. It might be right for you (some people respond best to lower/no T3), it might not. To get real NDT (standardized for thyroid hormone content) you will probably have to order from the US.
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RE: Is being incel the "new normal" in 2024?
@Ray-Peat-Fanboy said in Is being incel the "new normal" in 2024?:
men who are incel without being aware of it.
How is that even possible? A guy thinks he is having sex, but in reality he is not?