j2mugs
Member
Sorry in advance for this long post. I'm looking for any thoughts on how to help my wife Suzanne.
We have been peating since the fall of 2014. We have both had tremendous health improvements over that time, but I'm beginning to believe that my wife's estrogen dominance might be a rather severe case and I'm looking for any thoughts on how to help her get her back on track.
We have struggled with infertility for our entire 14 years of marriage. My wife would seldom have a period (maybe 1-2 per year) and was (pre-Peat) diagnosed with PCOS - although they never found any cysts.
She saw many health improvements from the dietary changes but was unable to loose weight or have consistent periods. I spoke with Ray Peat near the beginning on 2017 and he suggested some dosing for Cynomel and Progest-E. Over 2017 Suzanne saw tremendous improvements. She lost more than 30lbs without a change in diet or exercise and had a normal 28 day cycle by August of 2017. She actually got pregnant in November of 2017 and we were both dumbstruck! Unfortunately she found out almost exactly a year ago that that the baby's heart beat had stopped and we lost the baby at 12 weeks. She wasn't miscarrying naturally so she had a D&C on Feb 1, 2018.
Ever since then things have not been able to get back on track. She had her first period in March 2018 (which was shocking that it happened so quickly) and we resumed her thyroid and progest-e at that point.
Every cycle since has now been 16-20 days long. She has tried upping her progesterone but CANNOT get her cycle to stop or even delay. Flow lasts no more than 5 days but it seems unstoppable now - in complete contrast to her earlier issues. She has gained back about 20 pounds over the year (again with no diet change) and has struggled to get her pulse and waking temps back up. Her hands are cold all of the time again and she is experiencing facial flushing, cold sores, PMS, and other symptoms that were largely gone during 2017.
She has always seemed to need very large doses of anything to make something happen. When we started the Cynomel in the winter of 2017 she started with a half tablet (12.5mcg) and would up the dose every two weeks until we got her waking temp into the right range. She was at 5.5 pills (137.5mcg) before her waking temps finally rose to 97.9-98.0 and he resting pulse was around 80. To give you context - when we first started peating her waking temp on some days was as low as 94.9 (I know that is hypothermic, so I was shocked to see the thermometer, but it happened multiple times). She eventually backed down her Cynomel to 4 pills per day (by late October of 2017) because she was able to maintain her temps and pulse without feeling winded.
She also needed very high doses of progesterone to get her cycles to stabilize initially. She would take 25 drops of Progest-E (~75mg) daily for her cyclical two week run when things were working properly in 2017.
Since Cynomel has been impossible to get she has been on Ideal Labs Tyronene (since Ray had recommended a straight T3 for her when I spoke to him). We have been dosing the same way as before and she is currently taking 1 drop every hour from 9am to 9pm (96mcg) per day. We've also been trying to test the upper limits of her progesterone intake to see if we can get a period to miss. She is currently taking 1 drop of Progest-E every 20 minutes totaling around 115mg per day. We pushed it to 120mg one day and she felt like she was drunk so I'm pretty sure her upper limit is around there.
We have been trying to stop this period for the last 10 days and it will not stop coming. She is spotting everyday (more in the morning and less by night so the progesterone is having some effect), but it seems like something is still pushing hard back against it. And since she is hitting an upper limit for progesterone intake there must be something else at play that I can't figure out.
Because these doses are so high and they seem so far beyond what most people talk about on the forums I wanted to reach out to see if anyone has any thoughts on something that we might be missing. Below is a list of everything that we are currently doing. These were all added one at a time over the years and were being done concurrently when she experienced the most success during 2017.
PUFA free diet
8-9 hours of sleep each night
4 glasses of 1% organic milk every day
4-5 glasses or orange juice every day
1 cup of coffee with milk, sugar, 1 tsp of coconut oil
Random snacks of cheese and fruit through out the day
Raw grated carrot salad with coconut oil and apple cider vinegar
~90 grams of protein per day
Liver weekly
Bag breathing 3 times (~2 minutes each day)
Red light ~10 minutes on thyroid each morning
Takes 8 drops of Estroban each day (A,D,E,K)
Takes 20 drops of Magnoil each day
No formal exercise but we have 4 young kids (adopted) and two of them are (twins) 2 year olds so needless to say she doesn't need exercise. :)
5ml of vitex daily (taking her days of flow off each time)
96mcg of Tyronene
100mg of Pregnenalone every 4 days (She is 34 - maybe this is too much?)
75mg of caffiene
300mg of niacinamide
400mcg of Methylene blue per day
An anecdotal observation as well. The moment they rolled her back into the room after her D&C she looked like everything had rolled back 8 months of progress. She was swollen all over looked like she had gained 15 pounds immediately. That has not gone away since the surgery. So my gut tells me this is just an insanely high estrogen response and I'm not sure what else to do.
I've also attached a photo so you can see the difference in her face shape over this period of time.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks so much!
We have been peating since the fall of 2014. We have both had tremendous health improvements over that time, but I'm beginning to believe that my wife's estrogen dominance might be a rather severe case and I'm looking for any thoughts on how to help her get her back on track.
We have struggled with infertility for our entire 14 years of marriage. My wife would seldom have a period (maybe 1-2 per year) and was (pre-Peat) diagnosed with PCOS - although they never found any cysts.
She saw many health improvements from the dietary changes but was unable to loose weight or have consistent periods. I spoke with Ray Peat near the beginning on 2017 and he suggested some dosing for Cynomel and Progest-E. Over 2017 Suzanne saw tremendous improvements. She lost more than 30lbs without a change in diet or exercise and had a normal 28 day cycle by August of 2017. She actually got pregnant in November of 2017 and we were both dumbstruck! Unfortunately she found out almost exactly a year ago that that the baby's heart beat had stopped and we lost the baby at 12 weeks. She wasn't miscarrying naturally so she had a D&C on Feb 1, 2018.
Ever since then things have not been able to get back on track. She had her first period in March 2018 (which was shocking that it happened so quickly) and we resumed her thyroid and progest-e at that point.
Every cycle since has now been 16-20 days long. She has tried upping her progesterone but CANNOT get her cycle to stop or even delay. Flow lasts no more than 5 days but it seems unstoppable now - in complete contrast to her earlier issues. She has gained back about 20 pounds over the year (again with no diet change) and has struggled to get her pulse and waking temps back up. Her hands are cold all of the time again and she is experiencing facial flushing, cold sores, PMS, and other symptoms that were largely gone during 2017.
She has always seemed to need very large doses of anything to make something happen. When we started the Cynomel in the winter of 2017 she started with a half tablet (12.5mcg) and would up the dose every two weeks until we got her waking temp into the right range. She was at 5.5 pills (137.5mcg) before her waking temps finally rose to 97.9-98.0 and he resting pulse was around 80. To give you context - when we first started peating her waking temp on some days was as low as 94.9 (I know that is hypothermic, so I was shocked to see the thermometer, but it happened multiple times). She eventually backed down her Cynomel to 4 pills per day (by late October of 2017) because she was able to maintain her temps and pulse without feeling winded.
She also needed very high doses of progesterone to get her cycles to stabilize initially. She would take 25 drops of Progest-E (~75mg) daily for her cyclical two week run when things were working properly in 2017.
Since Cynomel has been impossible to get she has been on Ideal Labs Tyronene (since Ray had recommended a straight T3 for her when I spoke to him). We have been dosing the same way as before and she is currently taking 1 drop every hour from 9am to 9pm (96mcg) per day. We've also been trying to test the upper limits of her progesterone intake to see if we can get a period to miss. She is currently taking 1 drop of Progest-E every 20 minutes totaling around 115mg per day. We pushed it to 120mg one day and she felt like she was drunk so I'm pretty sure her upper limit is around there.
We have been trying to stop this period for the last 10 days and it will not stop coming. She is spotting everyday (more in the morning and less by night so the progesterone is having some effect), but it seems like something is still pushing hard back against it. And since she is hitting an upper limit for progesterone intake there must be something else at play that I can't figure out.
Because these doses are so high and they seem so far beyond what most people talk about on the forums I wanted to reach out to see if anyone has any thoughts on something that we might be missing. Below is a list of everything that we are currently doing. These were all added one at a time over the years and were being done concurrently when she experienced the most success during 2017.
PUFA free diet
8-9 hours of sleep each night
4 glasses of 1% organic milk every day
4-5 glasses or orange juice every day
1 cup of coffee with milk, sugar, 1 tsp of coconut oil
Random snacks of cheese and fruit through out the day
Raw grated carrot salad with coconut oil and apple cider vinegar
~90 grams of protein per day
Liver weekly
Bag breathing 3 times (~2 minutes each day)
Red light ~10 minutes on thyroid each morning
Takes 8 drops of Estroban each day (A,D,E,K)
Takes 20 drops of Magnoil each day
No formal exercise but we have 4 young kids (adopted) and two of them are (twins) 2 year olds so needless to say she doesn't need exercise. :)
5ml of vitex daily (taking her days of flow off each time)
96mcg of Tyronene
100mg of Pregnenalone every 4 days (She is 34 - maybe this is too much?)
75mg of caffiene
300mg of niacinamide
400mcg of Methylene blue per day
An anecdotal observation as well. The moment they rolled her back into the room after her D&C she looked like everything had rolled back 8 months of progress. She was swollen all over looked like she had gained 15 pounds immediately. That has not gone away since the surgery. So my gut tells me this is just an insanely high estrogen response and I'm not sure what else to do.
I've also attached a photo so you can see the difference in her face shape over this period of time.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks so much!