How can I cure my alopecia areata?

dd99

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I hope someone can help. For about 7 years, I have had alopecia areata in one spot on the side of my head. It's a round bald patch about 2 inches in diameter. I ate Paleo for quite a few years in an attempt to heal this autoimmune disorder - no grains, heaps of meat, bone broth, kefir and sauerkraut every night - but it never changed. It's still just a smooth round bald patch that makes me very self conscious.

As far as I can tell, Ray Peat suggests the carrot salad and daily broths for autoimmune disorders, which I am doing. For the past ten weeks, I've been drinking 1L pulp free OJ, 1L goat's milk and coffee with sugar or honey, and eating fruits (grapes, citrus, watermelon), gelatin or bone broth, eggs, fage yogurt, and meat or white fish every day, and a small amount of rice or potatoes some days. I also occasionally have liver or shellfish. I take 5 drops of Estroban (vitamins A, D, K2 and E) most days - although I have reduced the amount recently, so I'm not deficient in anything according to Cron-O-Meter.

The reason I am asking about alopecia areata now is that after 10 weeks of Peating I am developing a new bald spot near the existing one. My eyebrows are also looking a bit patchy, which has never happened before. What could be causing this? I am freaking out a little. I would be very grateful for any suggestions.

I took 50mg of pregnenolone daily for about 6 weeks, but have stopped in the past week after I saw the new patches develop.

(I have posted an almost identical thread on the Ray Peat Q&A site. I am very keen for some help!)


I have attached my 7 day average nutritional intake from Cron-O-Meter, excluding any supplements. (Please let me know if you'd like me to post the one including supplements - and I've been getting a fair amount of sun, so the D figure is way too low.)
 

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dd99

dd99

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I'm 36, male. I eat salt to taste, but it's been about 2000mg a day - which seems much more than I used to eat.
 

ilovethesea

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Maybe you just need to bite the bullet and take thyroid supplement instead of trying to do it naturally. (Not that I think thyroid is unnatural... I think it is magic.)

Do you measure your pulse and temperatures?
 
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dd99

dd99

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Yes, I have been monitoring my metabolism. My temperature is around 36.2C when I wake up, doesn't drop after breakfast and is between 36.5 and 37.2C around 4pm. My pulse rises from 65ish in the morning to 75-80ish in the afternoon. Those are both big improvements over my previous Paleo intermittent fasting days, where I was always cold and my pulse was around 55.

I'm concerned that one (or some) of the changes I have made have restarted my alopecia areata, which was dormant (okay, it wasn't healing, but it wasn't worsening) and that if I start thyroid now it could send me faster in the wrong direction.
 
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Hi dd,

Here is what RP has done himself to eliminate allergens or endotoxins:

First, in small meals throughout the day, try eating safe foods that do not contain allergens: cane sugar, milk or farmer's cheese, coffee and aspirin. And before bed, try cane sugar, gelatin, a tablespoon of coconut oil and aspirin. Supplement with a few ounces of beef liver, and fresh squeezed orange juice, removing all the pulp. Be careful to avoid all plants that live above ground because they contain so many little-known allergens that the plants seem to be mounting a chemical counter-attack against the plant-eaters (well-cooked skinned potatoes and a raw carrot are ok).

Second, to filter out allergens or endotoxins that remain, try drinking a 1/4 to 1/2 tablespoon of activated charcoal mixed with water, once a day, a few days each month.

Lastly, consider that your own body may itself produce endotoxins, in response to some hormonal imbalance that may have begun when you were a child or even an infant, and developed over time. Not to worry, with RP, it is really very simple to correct a hormonal imbalance, no matter your age.

First, with each small meal throughout the day, try taking 100 mg of pregnenolone powder (or StressNon), 10 mg of progesterone (or Progest-E), and about 1/8th of a tablet of thyroid extract (or Thyroid S).

Second, try increasing these amounts slowly, until you've doubled everything. After that keep increasing only the pregnenolone, up to about a tablespoonful, or until your imbalance goes away.

Third, try spending as much time as you can with your skin exposed to a 250 Watt incandescent red glow lamp, whose light contains the very same red spectrum of sunlight that our red blood absorbs.

That's it. It's simple but you'll be able to tell it's working if you can breathe calmly all day, and sleep soundly at night. Best to you.
 
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dd99

dd99

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visionofstrength, thank you so much for your very helpful response! There is so much to digest, but I do have a couple of immediate questions about your supplementation suggestions.

Should men take progesterone? And should I jump into taking thyroid without having a thyroid panel done?

I have ordered some activated charcoal. Should I also use cascara, or is the charcoal better (or do they achieve different things?)?

Edit: I also noticed you didn't mention the carrot salad for endotoxin removal. Do you not rate it?
 

tara

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Activated charcoal absorbs whatever is in the gut and carries it out the other end. It's good for reducing endotoxin and estrogen load. Best used away from meals and supplements. Some people find it slightly constipating. Drink water with it. Cascara sagrada helps reduce gut inflamation and makes it easier for it all to pass through - helps resolve constipation. They do different things and both can sometimes be useful. Carrot salad does a similar job to charcoal, and is suitable for many people daily.
 
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dd99

dd99

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Thanks, tara, that's very helpful and clear.
 
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RP's idea is that we all benefit from small amounts of thyroid extract, taken with food throughout the day, since thyroid is simply a food sought out by traditional peoples for thousands of years, in the form of fish head soup, the tamale of lobsters, sweetbreads or ris made from the thymus gland, and many other traditional delicacies. It just so happens that, until our benevolent despots say otherwise, thyroid extract is available to the public without a prescription at a remarkably low cost. Let's count our blessings. It's RP's basic hypothesis that all degenerative illness is a result of a long-term deficiency of the thyroid.

Males with a healthy libido can take up to a gram of progesterone a day, in combination with food and aspirin, without noticing a diminished libido. Now, if one doesn't have a healthy libido to begin with, that's a hormonal horse of a different color. Though the same program outlined above may well work for that, too, perhaps only adding in the supplement lisuride.
 

jyb

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visionofstrength said:
First, with each small meal throughout the day, try taking 100 mg of pregnenolone powder (or StressNon), 10 mg of progesterone (or Progest-E), and about 1/8th of a tablet of thyroid extract (or Thyroid S).

visionofstrength, I like your posts.

Why do you recommend progesterone for a male on top of thyroid and pregnenolone? Is that to help pregnelonone or DHEA gets converted to the right hormones, or because pregnelonone might not convert to enough progesterone?
 
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Thanks, and I like yours. It's been great to find a community like this of folks open to RP's ideas, when much of what is taught to university-trained professionals across all disciplines may be wrong if RP is right.

I think RP's idea is that a sufficient quantity of progesterone may resolve your hormonal imbalance quickly, within 10 minutes or so, and acts in the short term, while pregnenolone is a long-term actor. And so yes, both are protective in combination.
 

jyb

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visionofstrength said:
I think RP's idea is that a sufficient quantity of progesterone may resolve your hormonal imbalance quickly, within 10 minutes or so, and acts in the short term, while pregnenolone is a long-term actor. And so yes, both are protective in combination.

I think that agrees with my experience. I take progesterone in emergency situations when my brain is foggy and I feel like a piece of wood, progesterone restores clarity within an hour. I assume its because it turns into allopregnlonone, a brain steroid which I may be deficient in due to low thyroid and steroid production. I also find DHEA can have a fast effect, within a few hours I notice less appropriate stress response (after walking up stairs, heart rate will return to normal faster than usual, so maybe it's reducing cortisol), maybe that's the normalizing of the glands effect that RP wrote about pregnelonone.
 
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dd99

dd99

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Thanks, visionofstrength, you have convinced me to start taking thyroid.

Something I forgot to ask: as my metabolism improves and my body's nutrient demands increase, is it sufficient for me to target the RDAs for nutrients, or are there some that I should be getting more of?
 
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Yes, RP's idea is that as your metabolism improves you may find you need more nutrients than the RDA to feed your increased energy demand. There are some prominent examples where Peat seems to be right. For one, Olympic swimmers with peak metabolism have a nutrient demand of 12,000 calories.

Toxinless.com is good reference for sources of nutrients, where you can find supplier information for the supplements we've been discussing.

PS. I'm sorry I see that I failed to mention before that Peat also suggests you try adding table salt to taste, too, since sodium is a necessary metabolic nutrient; and that for trace minerals, such as iodine and selenium, you try oysters once a week.
 
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I cured mine within 2 weeks by burning the area with some type of acid solution. It's just like example of the bald guy who burned his scalp in an accident and grew headful of hair. Many people had success with this method. After that, I started taking t3 and progest-e to deal with hypothyroidism and to prevent the further AA problems.
 

Kray

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I cured mine within 2 weeks by burning the area with some type of acid solution. It's just like example of the bald guy who burned his scalp in an accident and grew headful of hair. Many people had success with this method. After that, I started taking t3 and progest-e to deal with hypothyroidism and to prevent the further AA problems.
Just finished reading this thread- can you report on question asked about what acid you used for your balding issue? Thank you-
 

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