Posts made by Jennifer

The most life-affirming for me have been those moments when faced with the choice to stay down or get back up and having chosen the latter. These songs in particular have been life-affirming for me:

I Will Get There ~ Boyz II Men

I've been wanderin' 'round in the dark
Been lost somewhere
Where no light could shine on my heart
I have known a pain so deep
But I know my faith will free me

And I'll get through this
I'll find my way again
So don't tell me that it's over
'Cause each step just gets me closer
I will get there

I will get there
I will get there somehow
Cross that river
Nothing's stoppin' me now
I will get through the night
And make it through to the other side
Get there
Get there

I've been in these chains for so long
I'll break free and I'll be there where I belong
Hold my head up high, I'll stand tall
And I swear this time I won't fall

I will do this
No matter what it takes
'Cause I know no limitations
And I'll reach my destination, I will get there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us5X1BOQNQY

Walk ~ Foo Fighters

Do you remember the days
We built these paper mountains
Then sat and watched them burn
I think I found my place
Can't you feel it growin' stronger
Little conquerors

Learnin' to walk again
I believe I've waited long enough
Where do I begin
Learnin' to talk again
I believe I've waited long enough
Where do I begin

Now
For the very first time
Don't you pay no mind
Set me free, again
To keep alive a moment at a time
But still inside, a whisper to a riot
To sacrifice, but knowin' to survive
The first to climb another state of mind
I'm on my knees, I'm prayin' for a sign
Forever, whenever, I never wanna die
I never wanna die, I never wanna die
I'm on my knees, I never wanna die
I'm dancin' on my grave, I'm runnin' through the fire
Forever, whenever, I never wanna die
I never wanna leave, I'll never say goodbye
Forever, whenever, forever, whenever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQU0QOmwHFA

Dare You to Move ~ Switchfoot

Welcome to the fallout
Welcome to resistance
The tension is here
Tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be, yeah

I dare you to move
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened before

Maybe redemption has stories to tell
Maybe forgiveness is right where you fell
Where can you run to escape from yourself
Where you gonna go
Where you gonna go
Salvation is here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5Gvdgs_R1c

@nothingclever, have you tried products containing urea or adding a low concentration of urea to your homemade formulas? Urea is unique in that it exfoliates and moisturizes. If I’m not mistaken, the Ray Peat inspired skincare line Saturée has at least 2 products containing urea. Another thing to consider is your thyroid function. Dry skin is a common symptom of hypothyroidism.

You’re welcome, @secondkelping. I’m so happy to hear you figured out the cause. It makes sense that your NDT stopped working for you because Forefront’s isn’t standardized so there’s no way of knowing how much hormones it actually contains from batch to batch. With synthetics like Tyronene and TyroMix, you know what you’re getting but with NDT, you don’t if it’s not standardized/USP like Armour, Nature-Throid, NP Thyroid, ADTHYZA, TyroMax etc.

@nothingclever said in natural deodorant:

Would love suggestions for smelly armpits. I have tried every natural deodorant under the sun and they now all seem to make my armpits irritated and sometimes break out in a rash. I believe I have some systemic fungal issues that may be contributing to this, which I'm working on. I've used just lemon with some success though it burns a bit.

I think you’re right to suspect an underlying reason for your smelly armpits. I notice a difference in my scent, depending on my diet and medications—I have no scent while taking antibiotics. On animal-based and starch-based diets my scent is musky but on a fruit-based diet, its sweet. I’ve done backpacking trips that involved intense climbs where I was sweating profusely and even without bathing for a week, all I and my companions could smell on me was a faint scent of melon. I was consuming a lot of cantaloupe during that time. lol When I still needed deoderant, I used witch hazel. I have sensitive skin and all other natural deodorants I tried like baking soda and magnesium caused irritation and rashing.

@Mossy, yeah, wild oregano from Greece is one the best and most potent. The carvacrol content of the one I had was insane. It should have come with a warning. lol Marjoram, savory and thyme are also good sources of the phenolic compound so even though they’re typically used for flavoring, culinary herbs are also medicinal. That’s one of the many reasons why I trust my tastebuds. Regarding knowledge, I found it ironic that the more I learned about health, the unhealthier I became. It took a lot of unlearning to gain actual knowledge., i.e., the wisdom that comes from experience and not from the pages of medical journals or theories from claimed experts.

@Mossy, I think you’re wise to go by what herbs appeal to you. That’s something I do and something even Dr. Morse, a man who has a love for all herbs, suggests. In regards to oregano’s potency, I’ve used pharmaceutical grade oregano oil from Greece that leaked and melted the plastic box it came in, it was that strong, and it was just as harsh on my insides (lol) so I understand what you mean. The only way I will take oregano now is in the form of an infusion/tea or the raw herb sprinkled in my food for flavoring.

Some assume the greater the potency, the greater the healing or that if it’s natural, it’s inherently safe, but that’s not always the case. One herb that comes to mind is belladonna. Prior to supplementing thyroid, when I still had gallbladder disease and daily gallbladder attacks, a friend I had on the old RPF asked Ray for suggestions and he said atropine to relax the bile duct. Belladonna contains atropine—it’s the source of the crude drug—but is highly toxic to domestic animals and at certain potencies has been shown to poison humans—early humans made poisonous arrows from it—so I bought some belladonna homeopathic pellets knowing that the amount of belladonna they contain is minute and they worked! It took thyroid to overcome the gallbladder disease—Ray said in an interview that anyone with gallbladder disease is without exception chronically hypothyroid—but the belladonna pellets brought relief until I was able to convince a doctor to prescribe me thyroid.

@Mossy, I think your plan is sound. If you find you aren’t tolerating bloodroot or even the Heal All tea, as mentioned above, there’s always oregano. It’s effective for oral conditions like gum disease and raising progesterone levels and in an email exchange, Ray said it’s one of the safest spices:

“[Oregano oil] It's one of the safest spices (low allergenicity, not mutagenic or carcinogenic), so if it isn't combined with harmful excipients it seems worth trying.” Ray Peat

https://expulsia.com/health/emailexchanges#Oregano_Oil

You’re welcome, @Mossy. Yes, solely from ingesting the Heal All. It works systemically, and we want it to work systemically because every symptom/condition is a manifestation of overall dysfunction within the body so, for example, if there is atrophied tissue like that of gum disease, there’s likely to be thyroid dysfunction, since the thyroid/parathyroid glands are the main glands responsible for the integrity of our tissues.

Dr. Morse includes bloodroot in his most aggressive formulas for conditions like cancer, and it’s the active ingredient in the potentially caustic drawing salve 'black salve.' People have used it to draw out tumors and left burns, holes even, in their skin, and it has strong laxative properties so you may want to use caution with it. In my experience, there are more forgiving herbs for oral health and progesterone production. Dr. Morse has endocrine formulas, and one specifically for women that raised my progesterone level, confirmed via blood work, just as well as high doses (a bottle a week) of Progest-E, but without the side-effects I get from Progest-E.

@Mossy said in Best remedies and interventions for receding gums?:

@Jennifer
Really appreciate the detail. Would you mind sharing the routine you used for your dog? I don't bark too loud, but I'm thinking of trying it!

Haha! Well, Bee was following the same program as me, even ate a similar diet, so humans can certainly benefit from it, too. He started out on the Heal All tea—about 1/4 cup added to his food 3x a day, then I switched him over to the Heal All glycerin tincture out of convenience. For dosing the tincture, there's a guide on the back that goes by weight. Bee was a little guy, a Maltese no more than 18 lb, so he got 1/4 of a dropper full 3x a day or 3/4 of a dropper full all at once, first thing in the morning, if I wasn’t going to be home to administer multiple doses. For comparison, at 99 lb, I was taking 1 dropper full 3x a day. His diet was composed of all his favorite foods that fit within Dr. Morse’s and Ray's dietary recommendations for dogs, as well as Dewitt's, a member on the old Peatarian forum whose family raised German Shepherds, and info I found on the website rationalmonofeeding.com. He ate melons, bananas, apples, squash, cucumber, carrots, green beans, sprouted peas, baby lettuces, young coconut meat, coconut cream, eggs, sea scallops and to drink, he loved raw coconut water, and I supplemented his diet with eggshell powder.

You’re welcome, @Aniciete.

@secondkelping, my pleasure. It could very well be your dose or even how you’re dosing it, i.e., dosing beyond a physiological amount of T3–more than 4 mcg per hour—or not taking it with food if you do? Do you feel a sense of calm and relaxation, even a need to nap, after a dose of thyroid? Along with a higher temp (including temp of extremities) and pulse rate, that’s usually a good indication that your dose is optimal, especially napping if stress hormones were compensating for poor thyroid function. The only other things I can think of as triggers are low blood sugar and allergenic and/or irritating foods, the latter circling back to lipopolysaccharides and serotonin.

@Mossy, he only uses wildcrafted and consciously cultivated herbs so he occasionally makes substitutions based on availability, however, the herbs in his Heal All formula have stayed consistent. I’ve been buying it since 2015 and the product you posted doesn’t have the same label:

Going by his new website, he’s creating a new line so my thinking is he may have sold the old line to one of his sources for herbs:

https://handcraftedbotanicalformulas.com/

@Pooooop, Amazon, Etsy and pet supply stores sell eggshell powder. I have this one:

https://www.amazon.com/Eggshell-Powder-Calcium-Supplement-Membrane/dp/B0BPR6XN39/ref=sr_1_2

@zaaku said in Milk vs Eggshell powder:

I've been drinking 2 quarts of milk daily for a while and while I have noticed a slightly calming effect from it, it doesn't even come close to the same, almost sedative, feeling I get after using eggshell powder. The anti-excitatory effect of calcium that Ray mentions about is super noticeable after even just 300-400mg of calcium (from ~1g of eggshell powder). Is this a common experience?

The milk I'm drinking tastes fine and digests well but this experience is making me doubt its quality. Does anyone know of a reliable home test for milk quality? Or is lab testing the way to go?

Maybe use a refractometer to check its Brix—a measurement of dissolved solids, i.e., sugars and minerals? I experience a calming effect from milk, but not eggshell powder, however, I have read several accounts like yours. In my case, it’s constipating and triggers migraines and more so when I make it at home, I think because I can’t get the powder fine enough with a coffee grinder for it to not irritate my intestines.

@SpaceManJim said in Best remedies and interventions for receding gums?:

Has anyone had this and been able to make positive progress reversing (not just halting) the issue? (Didn't find anything on search for this site.)

What would make sense to do besides switching to a softer toothbrush?

Hopefully we can put together some info that'll be helpful for others as well.

Cheers

Not human but I had success reversing my dog Bee’s gum recession with an herbal tincture called Heal All developed by Dr. Robert Morse, a doctor whose protocol I was following at the time. Bee’s gum recession was so bad that the roots of his canines were visible and despite routine brushing and a high quality diet, his teeth became caked with plaque after a surgery to remove a lump on his eyelid so the vet scheduled him for a tooth extraction and cleaning, but within just 2 days of giving him Heal All once a day his halitosis was gone, and within months all plaque was gone too and his gum recession had fully reversed, and at his follow up visit the vet made no mention of the fact that Bee had been scheduled for a tooth extraction and cleaning just months prior, his dental health was perfect. I’ve used it with success for many conditions. It contains the herbs white oak bark, plantain leaf, black walnut hull, chaparral, burdock root, marshmallow root, comfrey leaf and root.

@AnxiousMess said in Appetite loss:

When experiencing stress related loss of appetite should you force yourself to eat or simply wait for the desire to return?

For me, it depends on the stress, i.e., if it’s the result of low blood sugar, and if the stress is acute or chronic. If the stress is not the result of hypoglycemia and is acute, I wait until the stress has passed before I consume anything or else it will upset my stomach and exacerbate my stress, but if it’s chronic, I consume frequently and in small portions easy to digest, stress reducing foods—for me that means a combination of simple sugars, saturated fat and salt so something like salted caramel ice cream or fruit juice with a chunk of raw goat cheese.

Hi @nicemushroom17, due to thyroid disease that went undiagnosed and untreated for years, I developed gallbladder disease and a severe case of SIBO and gastritis, which caused histamine reactions to most foods and since dietary, antimicrobial and vitamin interventions weren’t enough to improve my thyroid and gallbladder function, eliminate the overgrowth and heal my intestinal lining, I went on an elimination diet of gelatinous proteins (mainly scallops and gelatinous broth), easy to digest, simple sugars from fresh pressed fruit juice (mainly honeydew melon) and coconut water, and gallbladder friendly, medium chain fats from coconut, and started supplementing thyroid (NDT—WP Thyroid), then slowly reintroduced foods as my condition improved. It took a few months of optimizing my thyroid dose before the gallbladder and adrenaline attacks ceased, and it was about a year before I was tolerating most foods again so supporting my thyroid was of greatest importance.

I haven’t researched finasteride, but does it have an immune suppressing effect? If so, that may be why a lot of your histamine issues went away while taking it?

Do you have poor sugar metabolism/hypoglycemia and/or allergies? I used to experience ear flushing from a surge of adrenaline when my blood sugar was rising after having been low (cold extremities often preceded it) or a histamine reaction if I consumed something allergenic (itchiness often accompanied it). Prior to supplementing thyroid and optimizing my diet, I experienced pretty severe hypoglycemic episodes to the point of convulsing and passing out daily and by tracking my blood sugar (testing my urine with a refractometer) throughout the day, I determined that my BS was crashing around 10 am and 2 pm and was highest (normal) in the evening, when my previously cold ears would warm up with the rest of my extremities. It felt like my ears were on fire.

@Insr, the udders and equipment are treated with a (natural) disinfectant, yes. I don’t know of any farm here that doesn’t disinfect them, but the majority sell raw dairy so maybe they’re extra cautious to prevent contamination and/or it’s a law. I’m not sure. It will be interesting to see if your prolactin also comes down. I noticed yours is at the higher end for a man. I had in my notes that Ray said a normal range for men is 4–7. Mine averages between 10 and 11.

You’re welcome, @Mossy. Fingers crossed you get to try the heirloom soon.