Posts made by T-3

@LucH Good post. From those studies, do we think there are actionable dietary strategies or supplements that would specifically help keep reverse-T3 levels low or reasonably "under control"? Making sure there's plenty of selenium and (from the posts by @BroJonas, @DavidPS and @DonkeyDude ) total cholesterol>160 (or greater). Does that match your interpretation of what those studies and Peat's quotes imply about what can be done to promote pro-metabolic, well-functioning Deiodinases-3 and limit antimetabolic/high levels of reverse-T3? What else?

@Mauritio said in Methionine/Cysteine restriction increases longetivity AND energy expenditure:

Methylobacterium sp.

Are you considering trying to source Methylobacterium-sp for research/experimentation? I hope anyone who finds a source or undertakes an experiment will share details and provide reports -- to see if methionine/cysteine restriction could be achieved by methionase or a methionase-generating bacterium.

Two sources come up on the first results page from a not-so-thorough search:
https://webshop.dsmz.de/en/bacteria/Methylobacterium-sp-oxid-48.html

https://www.atcc.org/products/baa-1243

@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.

@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.

@yerrag Beautiful observations about cultural priors filtering or limiting the way we understand any phenomonon of interest and, in particul, our bodies' materialist vs. bioenergetic/bio-electric vs. "other" nature.

In a related vein, Gigerenzer (1991) argued ("From Tools to Theories: A Heuristic of Discovery in Cognitive Psychology" -- link to pdf below) that statistical tools like linear regression were later re-interpreted as "models of mind" where, for example, the influence of personality traits, demographics, etc., exerted additive, linear effects on the likelihood that a decision maker would choose A instead of B. We speak in everyday English about what "weight" the decision maker places on a particular factor. In so doing, we are already invoking a highly structured view based on additive separability rather than seeing factors as multiplicative or exerting or exhibiting nonlinear interdependencies.

Similarly, Gigerenzer argued that computer hardware like random access memory (RAM) chips became metaphorical/analogical "models" of how the human mind worked, prompting (or at least occurring roughly in chronological sequence) psychologists and behavioral scientists to rigorously measure human differences in memory (e.g. random digit recall tests became widely used in studies as a way to compare people with above- or below-average "memory") and then theorize mind in mathematical models where something analogous to digit recall (interpreted as a "human capacity") was thought to play an important explanatory role. Later critics pointed out that not all dimensions of human memory are additive or comparable and that, in healing and forgiving, forgetting could be beneficial (i.e. having the "inverse capacity" to beneficially stop remembering or not place any attention on a past experience).
https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3054012_3/component/file_3054013/content

I think Yerrag's examples were much -- of materialist (e.g. mechanistic fly-wheel) theories of human physiology (recalling Ray's critiques of "receptor" theory drawing on Ling's critique of cell membrane theory) versus bioenenergetic or electrical theories (ala The Body Electric).

Do we think that the bioenergetic or electrical theories are far less developed and that their major contributions are yet to come? Or is it that these theories have been developed already to an impressive degree -- not the least of which have been by Ray and some of those he cited -- but have been obscured? For example, there's another thread on BEF by @Amazoniac posting open debates about gaps in our understanding of the basics of mitochondria and ATP -- and the role of "folded" mitochondria (in heart tissue) that, when folded in the right way, can generate 10x the ATP.

Is there now room in the top-ranked science journals for structured-gel bioelectric theories of ATP to be published, be seen, and be followed/studied by us on BEF?

Yerrag, this general stream of bioenergetic-friendly or bioenergetic-open research now (maybe?) appearing in otherwise mainstream science journals would entail (or at least not preclude, a priori) salamander-like regenerative capacity, or at least explain the demanding set of conditions that enable it (which humans may or may not normally possess), would it not? Hopefully someone starts a thread where we can pin down specifics about salamanders' regenerative capacity and how much is theoretically within humans' reach.

I'm hoping that this forum will serve as a highly functional aggregator of bioenergetic science and names of investigators that help balance or exceed the stifling narrowness of the "materialist" approach that Yerrag's previous post referred to.

https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_3054012_3/component/file_3054013/content

@b1 I don't think we have the kind of data we'd like to have (or think we have) to really know whether smoking untreated tobacco leaf (organic roll-your-own) is detrimental. The major confound is all the toxic crap most commercial tobacco is laced with. Even with those toxins, there were threads at RPF with "pro-tobacco-smoking points of view" posting studies about how difficult it was to give rodents, dogs and other animal models lung cancer by exposure to tobacco smoke.

I think many of us here have unusually well-attuned bullshit detectors (especially after seeing how "pushed", exaggerated and propagandized the industry-or government-promoted vaccine-mandate studies were pushed and conflicting information was suppressed). It's easy to see pro-tobacco-smoking studies as "industry propaganda" but I now think perhaps the same players, in some cases, control both sides.

We know that nicotine patches (without smoke) provide measurable pro-metabolic gains for IBS, preventing neuro-degeneration and dementia-causing illness. So by that measure, nicotine has a pretty substantial evidence base to support it.

Five years ago, I would have thought anyone saying a good word about smoking tobacco being healthy was industry-funded propaganda or bunk. Now I'm not so sure. I think a close look at the studies reveals something surprising: how difficult it is to find persuasive open-and-shut-case evidence for harms associated with smoking. I don't think there have been any RCTs (or ever could be due to ethics-committee rules) showing that smoking dried tobacco leaves with few or no additives causes lung problems, respiratory stress or anything else harmful.

I think the jury is out on this question more than we might have thought (those of us who once thought -- wrongly, I now believe -- that there is a conclusive evidence base showing that smoking tobacco is harmful). I think if you can afford very high-end roll-your-own tobacco with minimal additives, then smoking it may in fact be net beneficial. It's so expensive however that it's probably a bad idea for most people to consider starting. How would we know until we try (e.g. eating Peaty, being metabolically and scientifically attuned, and smoking high-end organic leaf tobacco) -- maybe it's worth considering for those can afford it. Yolo.

@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?

@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?

@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.

@Sippy I feel best on an all-T3 protocol nibbling through one or one and a half 25-mcg tablets per day.

Sometimes I switch to high-dose NDT (two or three grains per day).

I think the high-dose T3 experiment following the core idea in the Wilson protocol did “unblock” my deranged T4-to-T3 conversion process. I can now feel good on NDT for about two months or more. Then if I get a counterintuitive hypo signal from high-dosing NDT, I conclude (without testing reverse T3, i.e. guessing) that my T4-to-T3 conversion in the liver is mucked up again. Then I switch back to all-T3.

The NDT protocol is more convenient (not having to nibble the T3 tablet all day or go hypo when I forget to or can’t reach for my meds). I feel consistently warm for about 2 months of NDT at 2 grains in summertime or 3 grains in wintertime – when it’s working. When it doesn’t, I go back to T3-only, which has the advantage that there’s no risk of conversion to reverse T3.

I never get hypo symptoms from taking T3 only (provided nutrition and calories are adequate). With T3-only, there’s no 4-week accumulation of T4 to worry about, so the feedback and learning, leading to a temporary equilibrium (i.e. good-feeling) T3-only dose, is relatively (compared to T4) quick and easy (although still challenging) to dial in (without the accumulation of T4 to worry about).

On T3-only, my blood work freaks out my doctors: suppressed TSH; above-range free-T3; very very below-range free T4.

Do we need free T4? I guess that’s an open question. I’ve never heard a convincing theory as to why free T4 is independently of any importance. But if a person has the goal of using exogenous meds to emulate a euthyroid person’s bloodwork, then the T3-only protocol long-term does NOT achieve that, because you’ll likely get the results I mentioned above.

Personally, I don’t care about my abnormal bloodwork on T3-only. As long as I’m organized enough to keep up with very frequent T3 microdosing throughout the day (some sloppiness is ok for me, with a few larger doses of 5 or 10mcg now and then won’t hurt -- but may be a “shock” away from euthyroid equilibrium)…then I like the feel of T3-only with no drawbacks aside from going somewhat hypo when I stop taking T3 for 8 hours or more. But that’s easy to correct.

I hope this discussion of pros and cons of NDT vs T3-only (or mixing a bit of the two) – all three of which I sometimes do and can feel good on, depending on weather, stress, diet, context, etc – might be helpful.

@Sippy I’m not a medical doctor. I think you’re idea to increase tyronene and stick with a T3-only protocol for a while until your reverse T3 is cleared would be a good idea very much in keeping with the main idea of the Wilson protocol. I would do so carefully, however, to make sure you are comfortable with the hyperthyroid symptoms you will experience and do not panic when your heart rate is speeding. Consider it a training protocol where you titrate up gradually just to suss out what hyperthyroid symptoms feel like.

Before warming up to try the high-dose T3 for a few days, I would make sure someone had experience feeling how their heartrate and reflexes respond to smaller doses of T3, titrating up 2mcg, 4mcg (per hour ok) and then try 10mcg or 25mcg at a single time to learn what supraphysiologic dosing feels like.

Peat said anything greater than 4mcg at one time was supraphysiologic. So caution should be taken going above 4mcg in an hour.

My own experience was to try a daily 25mcg (single dose) a few times; then 50mcg in a single serving; or 100mcg (even 100mcg 2x per day for a couple of days). The heartbeat races. The reflexes will feel faster than normal (i.e., twitchy).

I don’t think it’s likely people will get afib and hurt themselves, although the orthodox endocrinology literature seems to think afib and permanent heart problems from over-dosing thyroid meds is a real problem. Personally, I doubt that (barring other risk factors). I think it’s more likely that people taking supraphysiologic doses will SCARE THEMSELVES and go to the emergency room, worrying that they’re having a hear attack. These hyperthyroid effects should typically fade after 3 or 4 hours max.

It's been a long while since I read the Wilson protocol in detail. I did at the time I was experimenting with it. His idea was that a high dose of T3 for a relatively brief time would clear reverse T3 and “unblock” the endogenous T4-to-T3 process that euthyroid people enjoy.
[@Sippy, Would you please read up and refresh our memory as to how long Wilson recommended that the high-dose T3 stage of the protocol should last???]

@Sippy
Does anyone have statistics on allergic reactions to NDT? I would have thought that is exceedingly rare and unlikely.

@Sippy said in Thyroid inflamation after months of supplementing:

tyronene

@Sippy
I'm very sympathetic about the challenges you're having with thyroid blood-test numbers not responding as wanted/expected and suffering with hypothyroid symptoms even on a relatively high dose of NDT. Many of us have found ourselves confused and frustrated by the complexity of the task of figuring out how each of us might benefit from exogenous thyroid meds -- and continue adjusting as our environments and bodies change.

All I meant about "oversimplified" was that my own very brief summary of what I took away from reading about the Wilson protocol 8 or 10 years ago probably omitted a lot of detail that Wilson would regard as important, although I do think the main idea is: temporary high-dose T3 clears revers-T3 and unblocks a deranged T4-to-T3 process in the liver. I didn't mean any slight on the Wilson protocol as being “oversimplified”. I recall that he used a number of criteria and advised his patients to do different things AFTER the acute high-dose T3 phase of the treatment. I think Wilson wrote that some of his patients got off of exogenous thyroid altogether after the high-dose phase; some continued on sustained-release T3; others used mixed T3/T4 after the acute high-dose phase, depending on a few factors. I'd suggest not to worry about that complexity but only focus on the main idea of clearing reverse-T3 by using supraphysiologic T3 dosing temporarily. I never followed Wilson's recommendation to use slow-release T3. I think it can be ignored without undermining his main idea.

I don’t think anyone will be able to say with much confidence what caused your liver enzymes to rise. I wouldn’t focus on determining the cause. I would try to clear the reverse T3 and address the hypothyroid symptoms, and then check again to see if the liver enzymes

@annis
Thanks for this info re polyphenols in corn and the possibility of gut irritation. I've always felt good eating corn but also circumspect, wondering if, by failing to heed Peat's more cautious approach to corn, I was inadvertently consuming more PUFA or causing endotoxin issues that Peat warned of, which could become a drag on health even if imperceptible to me at the time (feeling good eating corn).

How do we interpret the polyphenol content in the abstract you posted? That it's an antinutrient, therefore a (potential) gut irritant, and avoiding corn (except for the nixtamalized) is best?

@Sippy
As others have said, my first thought would be that T4->reverse T3 is an issue to address (now apparently confirmed by your blood tests).

Therefore, why not stop NDT and synthetic T4 (as a temporary measure along the healing path) and try T3 only for maybe 8 weeks? Then re-test and check that TSH has been suppressed, which should mean reverse T3 has been, or is still, clearing. If you can afford it, another reverse T3 test would help confirm.

Once reverse T3 is cleared, then you can think about titrating up with NDT again and see if your response is better next time. Or stay on T3-only at 2 to 4mcg per hour.

The Wilson protocol (over-simplified) is to use T3 acutely to clear reverse T4 and re-boot the T4-to-T3 mechanism (mostly in the liver), followed by more moderate dosing of T3 (or mixed T3-T4 dosing ala NDT or no exogenous thyroid whatsoever, depending on the person and context).

@annis
Is there a PUFA problem to worry about eating popcorn, frozen corn or fresh corn on the cob? I like corn, and I'm sure I eat significantly more corn than Peat did -- and very likely more corn than Peat would have recommended.

Thoughts about downsides of eating popcorn versus other corn, or downsides of eating whole-kernel corn in general?

@annis Yes, every month or two, I crave popcorn and pop 8 to 10 liters (popped) in coconut oil, primarily (or so I thought before you posted the good info about insoluble fiber and B1) as a medium for my favorite salt: very finely powdered sea salt from Okinawa (yuki-shiyo 雪塩).

"Snow salt, or yukishio（雪塩） in Japanese, is powdery, snow-like salt made from the underground seawater of Okinawa. If you've ever been to Okinawa, you may have seen yukishio displayed in souvenir shops or eaten snacks made with it. ... There are over a dozen minerals in yukishio, including sodium, magnesium, potassium, calcium, and iron."
https://sakura.co/blog/snow-salt-from-okinawa-why-is-it-the-best

"By passing seawater through Ryukyu Limestone, which is a natural "filter", impurities are removed and at the same time, the calcium contained in the coral dissolves into underground seawater. Yukishio is salt that can only be produced from seawater that takes advantage of the underground characteristics of Miyakojima."
https://exotic-jp.com/en/products/yukisio110gx2-pieces#:~:text=By passing seawater through Ryukyu,the underground characteristics of Miyakojima.

@dan-dominic For the last 10 years, thanks to Ray's advice and statements by many strong advocates for sunshine at RPF, I adjusted my work schedule to be outdoors as much as possible and during the high-noon hours 11am-2pm as much as possible. I think this has improved mental and physical health in many significant ways. I now crave outdoors time and sunshine to such an extent that my friends at work go along with my requests for 'walking meetings', my friends (who avoid sunshine) indulge my desire for sun exposure by finding outdoor seating with me in the sunshine and them under an umbrella, etc. It's not always easy, as so much of my professional life is in an office, and my commitment to being outdoors has probably caused me to attend fewer midday meetings and make some choices in favour of health at the cost of workplace productivity.

Miles Mathis has a theory that photon/electron flow from space energizes us whenever we are outdoors, even sleeping on an outdoor bed at nighttime. If you're fortunate enough to have a place to try it out, I'd recommend it highly. Feels noticeably better waking up after sleeping outdoors.

Nutrient-dense food

Child-like curiosity about food and other sensory inputs (asking Ray's empirical question 'Are these effects helpful in my present context?') rather than applying a drill-sergeant mindset or 'self-medicalization of food' mindset, where, in the past I prescribed or forced dietary constraints on myself without being sufficiently curious or sensitive to the informationally-rich feedback that the experience of food generated

Ditching willpower (aside from avoiding seed-oil-containing food that may sometimes appear appetizing): not only 'salting to taste' but also 'eating to taste' (i.e. intuitive dieting and experimenting playfully with 'approaching satiation points' rather than having ad hoc 'stopping rules' or portions); this made me love food and removed all stress from my relationship with it

@bubble That's a very nice result for mood and mental tone. My dad suffered from ulcerative colitis since I was a kid and I am highly sympathetic as to what it's like being at work or in public while trying to keep one's gut happy. Challenging is an understatement. Hopefully there will be improvements quieting that inflammation forthcoming.

Do I understand you correctly that, despite your digestive tract sensitivities, taking T3 on an empty stomach while at work is causing no digestive irritation?

I always thought T3 was as easy on the gut as any supplement/med. Of course it would be good to know if others have experienced otherwise.