new, need help single mom: thyroid and progest-e

[sunmountain]

I actually have activated charcoal capsules, but I don't know what to use them for! :)

So they can be used for diarrhea...what would you consider a large dose?

thanks, Tara!!

 

[tara]

It soaks up whatever is in your gut. Medically, it also gets used against poison/medicine overdoses, as well as bad bugs. Best used away from meals and other supplements.

I don't know about capsules. I've used 2-3 heaped tsp of powder mixed in water in a bottle (helps keep the dust down - not good to breath dust). It makes everything it touches black, so I brush teeth after.
I use it occasionally as another tactic against endotoxin and estrogen reabsorption - I haven't had to try it myself against a bad tummy bug since I got it last year, so I'm not sure how much would be needed for that.

I wouldn't use it every day over an extended time, because it can absorb stuff you want to keep from your diet.

 

[Mittir]

Didn't sleep much last night (after eating watermelon), and got quite bad diarrhea today. I think lotsa adrenalin going on...but why?

Can't figure out why diarrhea. Too much salt? (About 2 small pinches today.) Is progest-e dose too high? Feeling a bit shaky right now.

I think it is well known that watermelon fiber can cause digestive problems.
I think combination of salt and watermelon is causing your problem.
I have tried drinking strained watermelon juice, which looks almost transparent,
and still had minor problem.

 

[Peata]

Didn't sleep much last night (after eating watermelon), and got quite bad diarrhea today. I think lotsa adrenalin going on...but why?

Can't figure out why diarrhea. Too much salt? (About 2 small pinches today.) Is progest-e dose too high? Feeling a bit shaky right now.

I think it is well known that watermelon fiber can cause digestive problems.
I think combination of salt and watermelon is causing your problem.
I have tried drinking strained watermelon juice, which looks almost transparent,
and still had minor problem.

This could be. I had diarrhea on Sunday after eating watermelon. But I'd had some other foods earlier and so I didn't know what to pin it on.

 

[sunmountain]

Thanks for the replies. Even though my digestion took a beating yesterday, I slept through the night. My waking was again 97.2 and 78! The fatigue has definitely improved, though there is still ways to go.

Today I've not eaten much so far, but did take 2 charcoal caps around 8am this morning. Took day off from work to recover. Have not taken any supplements so far, including salt. Am a bit concerned at nothing appealing to eat because it doesn't seem to satisfy long.

Had usual breakfast (oatmeal with CO, honey, milk; tea with gelatin, honey, milk), then about 4oz OJ and 4oz milk this afternoon, buttered toast with cheese, an egg and potato scramble with salt, some cantaloupe, and seemed ok, maybe a slight bloat after milk, but not too bad. Then I had a sip or two of watermelon juice, and felt some growling etc. so backed off. Probably the salted egg/potato followed by watermelon juice. Duh.

Morning BM was normal, but the first thing I ate mid-morning (don't remember what) led me to the bathroom. Semi-loose BM with green color (thanks charcoal). Another just now after watermelon juice.

Peating seems to be changing my gut. It was rare for me to get diarrhea before that. I think the recent switch to much more fruits and juices is when the mild occasional diarrhea began, with it peaking yesterday due to salt plus watermelon. I might go back to lentils/beans for a while, though they don't seem to hold the same appeal right now. I guess my taste buds are changing too.

I'm thinking about what might appeal to eat right now, and drawing a blank. Non liquid cuz I can't tolerate a lot of liquid right now. Also something that keeps hunger at bay for more than an hour or two. Going to nibble on some dates, then maybe ice cream. Then what? It seems all day long I'm thinking about what next to eat.

 

[sunmountain]

Awake tonight with some hot flashing. I did not take my full dose of progest-e today.

I can now tell my "estrogen" days from my "progesterone" days. Estrogen days I have very negative thinking. Very dooms day, very repetitive. I'm living in the past including past traumas or predicting a terrible future. Progesterone days, which I experienced more recently on progest-e, my mind is calm. I'm in the present. No racing thoughts.

The difference is stark.

Got the cypro today from RiteAid, but did not take it as I have to write reports at work this week. Will start later this week or weekend in case it makes me groggy. Will start with 0.5mg, which is what RP recommends.

Now I'm going to take some progest-e to try block the estrogen.

 

[sunmountain]

So last night after writing the previous post, I squirted a nice amount of progest-e on gums. Soon after, I fell sleep. Woke in morning feeling groggy. Eventually got out of bed, and then was fine all day. No feeling of fatigue or low mood.

So what I discovered this morning is that if I increase my progest-e dose even higher, it will put me to sleep!

I had been wondering why I could not sleep on progest-e, when everyone else was saying they could. I'm already squirting a lot 4-5 times a day, but I will now increase my bedtime dose even more.

So now I'm wondering what to do about the cypro. If progest-e resolves the insomnia, should I still use cypro? Does progest-e block histamine and serotonin like cypro does?

Thanks!

 

[sunmountain]

The progest-e is still inconsistent with respect to insomnia. Unless I take a massive dose, filling my mouth with it, maybe. I think this is what some forum members might have done. That would be expensive.

I started cypro two nights ago. Last night I took about 1mg but couldn't fall asleep. After a long time awake, I realized I hadn't taken bedtime dose of progest-e, so took that. Then after a while I slept, and slept into the morning, awaking groggy. Been groggy all day.

Tonight I'll take the cypro and bedtime progest-e earlier.

I also seem to have acquired permanent diarrhea -- as soon as I eat or drink fruit, I have to go. It seems less so with more "solid" foods: egg and potato scramble, pasta, etc. On the plus side, I am enjoying a cup or more of milk everyday.

 

[sunmountain]

Cypro questions --

Last night I slept late around midnight, but then slept through the night with 1mg cypro plus a large dose of progest-e. Woke up not too groggy but it has lasted through the day.

I notice that since I started cypro, the fatigue is back. Is this just the body adjusting, and anyone else experience this when they started cypro?

My waking today was 96.9 and 73 -- which are below my new baseline of 97.2 and 77 which was established when I introduced progest-e.

I read the thread on possible change in progest-e. I am a bit surprised myself at how massive the doses I need to take to feel any effects.

 

[sunmountain]

Guys, I think I have SIBO. Or "seebo" per pboy!

All the symptoms: gas, bloating, diarrhea. Last couple days getting worse.

The bloating is back. Salt helps some, but if I take it too often, I get diarrhea. But I have diarrhea even without salt. I get to go every time I eat something.

The combination of symptoms is new. Also I've never had chronic diarrhea before. Last night when I woke up, I browsed the forum and found Big Peatowski's garlic remedy. This morning after breakfast I followed the remedy and downed several cloves crushed garlic in water. It burned a bit as it went down. I was a bit scared and thought I'd definitely have to call in sick to work. But then I sat around for a few minutes, discovered I wasn't dying or anything, and went to work.

Guess what? I'm feeling fine. FINE. No stomach pain that would indicate WW3 going on in there between bacteria and garlic. No bloating. No gas.

I'm gonna repeat the garlic this evening.

I'm gonna add ceylon cinnamon too per Haidut's post.

PRAY for me. Send me GOOD thoughts and LOVING messages.

Thank you.

 

[sunmountain]

Bloating came back as soon as I ate lunch: apple juice with baking soda, a slice of bread with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes and salt, a tiny bit of quinoa salad with carrots and cucumbers (I had quinoa a week or two ago no problem). I'm not sure it matters much what I eat right now.

Took off from work, came home and downed another garlic elixir. Much harder to down this time, burned way hell down. 2-3 hours later still bloated.

Desperately scrounging forum. I read megadoses of B-1 every 4 hours might help stomach problems. I read B-12 might help. I'm taking 100mg of B-1 about 2-3 times a day. Could try mega B-1. I'm not taking any B-12 supp. I don't eat meat, but am eating quite a bit of Great Lakes green every day (5-7 T).

I'll do garlic again tonight, but less quantity. Anyone care to comment on B-1 and B-12 for stomach? And anything ELSE?

Re ceylon cinnamon, I happen to have it, but afraid of lowering blood sugar.

Cups of tea with milk and sugar or honey and gelatin comfort me.

 

[tara]

There are lots of possibilities for what is aggravating your digestion. Could be bugs, could be particular foods, could be physical aggravation, could be adjusting to changes in what you are eating. Are there some foods that seems reliably OK?
Personally, wheat seems to give me mild diarrhea. I seldom eat it. For some people, tomatoes are tough.

If you are worried about cinnamon dropping blood sugar, can't you just include a bit of extra sugar with it?

 

[jyb]

Bloating came back as soon as I ate lunch: apple juice with baking soda, a slice of bread with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes and salt, a tiny bit of quinoa salad with carrots and cucumbers (I had quinoa a week or two ago no problem). I'm not sure it matters much what I eat right now.

When I used to eat those food items you listed, after a few hours it would cause me some kind of digestion signs like gas or feeling a bit too full whereas there's actually not much calories.

Have you considered baking soda and maybe apple juice as a possible problem? Baking soda gives me diarrhea and apple juice very smelly gas.

 

[sunmountain]

Thanks Tara and jyb for helping me think this through.

First to note is that this combination of symptoms (diarrhea, bloating, gas, fatigue) snowballed over the last week and last couple days. It started maybe a couple weeks ago when I consciously started eating more fruit and fruit juices and less "solid" and "traditional" food. Perhaps it was the combination of more liquid overall (which my body dislikes since the low carbing days) and fruit sugars that precipitated it.

The other thing to note is that I had gas even while low-carbing, and the fatigue started with the onset of hypo, and never really went away. It's possible that I had bugs all along but they had nothing to feed on while I was low-carbing so there was just gas. But now with all the sugar I'm eating -- I've never had so much sugar in all my life -- the bugs are being fed and happy. And they make me not digest the liquids.

One other thing of note. About 15 years ago, a doctor did some tests and found that I had no gut flora. I remember him saying how odd that was. I don't remember the tests. I took some probiotics but they never resolved the symptoms then.

The new symptom is diarrhea since the last few days.

Apple juice I've been on since a month or more now. It causes no more bloating than does OJ -- it's the fluid that's the problem.

I don't remember how bloated I was before the baking soda and apple juice. I could try eliminating things one by one.

Among the more recent food additions have been a particular brand of honey that I really like, and milk. Milk introduction has been gradual, and I always had some in tea and oatmeal. I've slowly increased to a cup or two per day now.

In terms of what is reliable, I think breakfast is usually fine, and I do fine until mid-morning when I start to have juice or a bit of fruit. For breakfast I always have steel-cut oatmeal with a bit of milk and honey, tea with 2T gelatin and milk and honey, and supplements.

The bloating starts mid-morning and peaks at lunch and more or less stays rest of the day as I keep grazing. Sometimes salt supplementation helps, and sometimes leads to diarrhea.

Today I did garlic 3 times, and it has stopped the diarrhea but not the bloating. The morning garlic worked great, but the lunch and dinner doses caused more bloat if anything.

There is no physical aggravation as I have become completely sedentary.

I also started cypro last Friday. I started with 0.5mg and am up to 2mg tonight, as I am still waking up at night.

I'm continuing with very large doses of progest-e. My supps are A, D, E, K, Haidut's B elixir, Niacinamide 100x3, B-1 100x3, CS, vitex.

I took B-1 500x2 today since the evening.

I didn't think of taking cinnamon with sugar. I can take it at breakfast in oatmeal. How much is recommended -- to taste or half teaspoon?

I can try eliminating things one by one. How long should each item elimination last before I eliminate the next item? I could start with baking soda, then apple juice, then OJ, then milk... I usually have a slice of bread at lunch and have never reacted to it before, which is not to say it might not have been feeding whatever bugs I might have. If anyone has any insights into the elimination sequence, that would be helpful.

Thanks!

 

[sunmountain]

3 days of garlic therapy was enough.

Can't do it any more. Enough.

I even took garlic press to work and hid in office and squeezed out garlic in 2oz water.

Giving up SIBO theory. Going back to "recovery from restrictive eating" theory. That's right. My body is just in phase one or two or whatever. Eatopia says the symptoms can come and go.

The diarrhea is a bit better. But the bloating is BAD. My stomach gets so bloated, it's hard to move. Hard to sit. Tonight even salt is not helping.

If anyone has any advice for BLOATING, or EDEMA, or WATERLOGGING, please, please, forward it. It's hard to focus at work. It feels like there is WATER IN MY BRAIN.

The only thing I keep doing is trying to meet my 2000/day goal. I meet it most days per crono. It takes me forever to get my lunch bag together in the mornings. I have to remember all my supps: salt, gelatin, honey, B's, progest-e, blah blah. Whatever. At this point, I'm just a soldier marching on.

I'm visualizing all the extra water draining from my body. My body feels normal again. I feel energetic and motivated again.

Sounds good. The waiting is hard. The march is hard. The terrain is tough: walking through deep mud and rain. The mind plays tricks, with hope especially. So just keep putting one foot forward.

 

[tara]

Hi Sun, if as you guess it's a matter of recovering from under-eating, and if the youeatopia advice is good, then 2000 cals may not do it. It may not give you the surplus you need to repair your body, including your digestive system. What is your appetite like? Are you getting any urges to eat more?

I've not gone through this process myself, but I think Gwyneth's view is that the quickest way through the bloating phase is to get on with it. Going back to restriction to avoid the bloating would just add to the damage and prolong the process. Did you read her Tummy Troubles article? Can't remember if your height puts you in the 2500+ range or the 2300+ range. And more anytime you are hungry for more.

My current tentative view is that a combination of eating enough calories per MM guidelines, aiming to hit all the protein, mineral and vitamin targets, and using Peat's ideas to help guide the choice of foods where they work for you, and aiming for the higher calorie target might be a goer. But maybe not comfortable along the way. Some kind of balance between eating optimal foods from the point of view of easy digestion, low PUFA, high nutrition, etc, but not so rigidly as to reinforce undereating - ie give yourself permission to eat other stuff if you feel like it, rather than go hungry or under the minimum. This is speculation on my part - no guarantees about how it would work for you.

By physical aggravation, I was meaning inside the digestive system eg from hard bits of food like cucumber etc.

 

[tara]

If you are feeling water-logged, it could be that the food and drink isn't quite calorie-dense enough for you - ie drinking too much for the amount of food you are getting in. Can you bump up teh solids and reduce the liquids? Not sure how much you are drinking.

Garlic is good at killing bugs, but it can be rough on the system on the way through - so you might get a little after-effect of that for a few days.

 

[sunmountain]

Hi Tara, I'm not sure if I feel hungry more often now than while LC, but the difference is that I eat until satiated now. I eat when I feel hungry, but I also eat when I'm not feeling hungry in order to meet my 2000+ goal. I'd like to eat more than 2000, but the bloating makes that hard right now.

I did reduce fluids the last couple of days. I think fluids have been a problem from the beginning of peating/recovery. I just need to identify more calorie-dense foods as I have only just noticed this concept. For example, I recently discovered from browsing some posts that I could up my intake of honey to increase carbs. That is a big help for me as I have lowered fluids. I also plan to increase dates and gelatin, though I'm already doing about 6T gelatin.

I love milk, and part of the bloating might be caused by it. I keep backing off and coming back to milk. Lately though I just decided to keep at it -- just a cup to a little more than a cup a day because I noticed I was bloated even on days I didn't have milk.

I could try some of the probiotics mentioned in Tummy Troubles. I read it just now, though it's hard because of focusing issues, but I think I get the gist.

I'm 5'2". What are MM guidelines? So far I'm doing at least 250 C, 80 each P and F, though F tends to be less than that.

I wish I could increase thyroid like Peat says every two weeks, but my body refuses. Fortunately, my body has accepted progest-e, so I dose nice big amounts of that. In fact it raised my metabolism a bit, though not enough obviously. I wonder if increasing even more to a bottle a week might improve metabolism.

After about a week or two on cypro, it's now working well for me for insomnia. I take about 4mg at bedtime along with a double dose of progest-e and sleep through the night mostly.

Recently whether because of cypro or bloating, my waking came down a bit from 97.2 and 77 to 96.9 and 75.

It could be that I also have SIBO...I just don't know, and it's hard to tell due to recovery from LC.

I do have a really fabulous and cooperative doctor, who works WITH me in letting me try out different things. I could ask her to do tests, but not sure what tests to ask at this point. She just called in the cypro when I requested it for insomnia.

 

[sunmountain]

Had usual breakfast, and felt hungry before noon, so ate about 1/2 to 3/4 musk melon. Very delicious. Unfortunately got the runs, bad case, couldn't even make it to bathroom...awful.

I had forgotten I can't a lot of fruit.

I also had 1T honey before the melon.

Breakfast was a couple hours earlier: oatmeal, tea, 2T gelatin, 2T honey, dash milk. Followed by supplements A, D, E, K, B's, cascara 1 capsule, vitex 1 capsule, progest-e, salt.

Wait...today 1 added 1 tablet magnesium glycinate...I think 200mg with breakfast. But I don't think that caused it.

I think I can't handle a lot of fruit on its own.

After runs, I was still hungry, so ate half boiled potato fried in CO with one egg scrambled, a large corn on the cob with lotsa butter and salt, and cup of tea with 2T gelatin and 1T honey. Seem to be holding it so far.

 

[tara]

Here are the guidelines for when 2500 calories applies as a minimum daily intake for recovery:
You are a 25+ year old female between 5’0” and 5’8” (152.4 to 173 cm) and,
The regular menstrual cycle has stopped and/or,
You have other symptoms of starvation: feeling the cold, fatigued, foggy headed, hair loss, brittle nails, dull skin and/or,
Even if you were only underweight/dieted for a very short space of time (a few months), these guidelines apply.

http://www.youreatopia.com/blog/2011/9/ ... ories.html


People seem to vary a lot in reaction to magnesium supplements. I seem to be able to take a bit without runs, but some people are more sensitive.