Did I permanently alter my metabolic and hormonal function by going on keto for 3 months + fasting?

[TopGun1911]

To get to the nitty-gritty, I went on the ketogenic diet for 3 months and threw a bunch of fasts during that time frame, and at the end of that period I decided to quit because I was experiencing incredibly adverse effects. One of the most immediate ones was my heart pounding outta my damn chest. My hair noticeably thinned everywhere and felt really dry and brittle. My libido took a drastic hit, which was surprising because for as long as I could remember, I suffered from the exact opposite problem. I also became significantly more depressed and subject to low moods. Most disturbing of all was that I felt like a walking zombie who got a lobotomy for a couple months after. My working memory, attentive cognition and verbal memory were all in the damn gutter. I'm a 23 year old male at a healthy weight in case you're wondering.

I took a TSH - T4 panel and the results came out as 3.8 mIE/L TSH and 19 pmol/L FT4 (I took it a few weeks after going off the diet). I haven't taken a T3 test yet but I doubt it's anything out of whack. Am I the only one here who is suffering from the aftermath of a keto diet? I've been off of it for a good five months now and I've been improving somewhat with the help of Peat's dietary suggestions little by little since.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

my heart pounding outta my damn chest. My hair noticeably thinned everywhere and felt really dry and brittle

Had this too.
More than 1 year later, my liver and thyroid are still affected by a few months of low-carb & carnivore.

 

[rr1]

I'm in the same boat too, but nearly a year of chronic over-exercising to the point I would nearly collapse, fasting and major calorie deficit, while getting minimal sunlight and stuck in an office all day staring at a computer screen. Also experienced the same as you in regards to hair, energy, libido, memory, cognition. I'm not sure if thing's will ever reverse back to how they were.

 

[TheBeard]

Had this too.
More than 1 year later, my liver and thyroid are still affected by a few months of low-carb & carnivore.

How do you know the liver has been affected?
What are your symptoms?

 

[laleto12]

yep. 7 months of carnivore gave me exact symptoms that you mentioned. Im 21 btw still trying to fix my metabolism. (I think it was already broken before carnivore though so... )

 

[keytothecity]

I had the same from undereating + exercise. I think the fasts are more of a problem than the keto in principle.
Eat, sleep, nofap and no workout until things get better. Took months for me but apart from the extra hair I lost (hairloss sped up) everything is back to normal.

 

[TopGun1911]

Had this too.
More than 1 year later, my liver and thyroid are still affected by a few months of low-carb & carnivore.

I'm in the same boat too, but nearly a year of chronic over-exercising to the point I would nearly collapse, fasting and major calorie deficit, while getting minimal sunlight and stuck in an office all day staring at a computer screen. Also experienced the same as you in regards to hair, energy, libido, memory, cognition. I'm not sure if thing's will ever reverse back to how they were.

yep. 7 months of carnivore gave me exact symptoms that you mentioned. Im 21 btw still trying to fix my metabolism. (I think it was already broken before carnivore though so... )

Damn, it makes me so angry that doctors and people with media presence are irresponsibily hyping up low carb diets when they can severely negatively impact young healthy people who don't have a clue. Anyways, I think my symptoms are improving day by day. I suffered from pretty bad fatigue early on but it's more or less gone now. My hair is getting better too and so are my temps. My libido still feels tanked, but it comes and goes. I'm considering experimenting with oral pregnenolone, but I don't know yet.

 

[LOL]

Yes, although I've become a lot better I'm still prone to extreme oscillations in energy/mood from small stress whereas I was extremely robust before. During recovery I tried a lot of the different pro-metabolic supplements recommended here, with no noticable difference. I've put in an order on Pyrucet from idealabs to see if FAO inhibition and high carb can start the necessary signal cascades.

On another note: after going back on carbs I had a craving for canned tuna in water. I used to detest the taste of it, but for a few weeks it was the most delicious food in the world and gradually it started to taste bad again. I figure this was from mineral deficiency and might be a good place to start recovery

 

[Lollipop2]

Yes you can repair - honestly it takes years.

 

[pro marker]

fellow 23 year old on a healthy weight here.
when i was 22 i started a keto diet. ive always been into self improvement so i jumped right in to dieting without doing my research. ofc the first thing that comes up when a 20 something-year-old googles how to eat healthy is "keto". it sucked and after 3 months i switched to a carnivore diet with intermittent fasting. it felt great, i was nearly euphoric, life was good. then after 5 months it wasnt so great anymore and i started loosing lots of hair, no energy, low blood sugar etc... i then started including more carbs, potatoes fruit and after 3 months or so i was on a ray peat style diet. ive been slowly getting better since then. i think for us young people following any protocol is really dumb. now i eat whatever i feel like and im feeling much better. blood sugar is more stable, more energy. eating lots of sugar, eating very often and not to much has been most important for me. i still have really bad brain fog and feel like ive lost 20 iq points. its horrible, and pretty scary, but it might also be due to my depressing life situation and horrible sleep. dont follow any protocol man, learn from the first time you made that mistake. i am much more healthy now than i was before i ever started dieting so i consider the keto diet a necessary sacrifice, a learning experience.
today i ate:
1,5 liters milk
10 dates
1 egg
some clementines
black rice (tried it for the first time today, feels good so far)
6 cooked apples
300ml maple syrup

i dont think 3 months did permanent damage, plenty of your ancestors went longer than that without enough food.


hey man send me an update in a month or two, tell me how youre doing

 

[KTownSatfats]

fellow 23 year old on a healthy weight here.
when i was 22 i started a keto diet. ive always been into self improvement so i jumped right in to dieting without doing my research. ofc the first thing that comes up when a 20 something-year-old googles how to eat healthy is "keto". it sucked and after 3 months i switched to a carnivore diet with intermittent fasting. it felt great, i was nearly euphoric, life was good. then after 5 months it wasnt so great anymore and i started loosing lots of hair, no energy, low blood sugar etc... i then started including more carbs, potatoes fruit and after 3 months or so i was on a ray peat style diet. ive been slowly getting better since then. i think for us young people following any protocol is really dumb. now i eat whatever i feel like and im feeling much better. blood sugar is more stable, more energy. eating lots of sugar, eating very often and not to much has been most important for me. i still have really bad brain fog and feel like ive lost 20 iq points. its horrible, and pretty scary, but it might also be due to my depressing life situation and horrible sleep. dont follow any protocol man, learn from the first time you made that mistake. i am much more healthy now than i was before i ever started dieting so i consider the keto diet a necessary sacrifice, a learning experience.
today i ate:
1,5 liters milk
10 dates
1 egg
some clementines
black rice (tried it for the first time today, feels good so far)
6 cooked apples
300ml maple syrup

i dont think 3 months did permanent damage, plenty of your ancestors went longer than that without enough food.


hey man send me an update in a month or two, tell me how youre doing

Wow, good work! Weird how your hair got loose though!

 

[GreekDemiGod]

nearly a year of chronic over-exercising to the point I would nearly collapse, fasting and major calorie deficit, while getting minimal sunlight and stuck in an office all day staring at a computer screen

Brutal

 

[gaze]

happened to me but instead of keto, i cut dairy in high school, then went low calories plant based sometime in college, got the 3 rounds of HPV vaccine (even though i'm a guy) which cumulated into extreme stress and then had a 107.5 fever from what i now suspect to be an endotoxin storm and nearly died (antibiotics saved me). my tsh in a similar range. calcium, sodium, vitamin D are the most helpful in feeling normal again. i find even one meal of starch can completely throw off my mineral balance and mess up my bowels, which i think is the TSHs fault. basically the exact peat diet is what i find to be the safest for high tsh people to avoid another endotoxin overload

 

[TopGun1911]

To be clear guys, I went from 2/10 of wellbeing after coming off keto and now I’m hovering at 6-8/10 depending on the day. My hair looks better now as well. Just wanted to create this thread so lurkers and other people with similar backgrounds can gather and share their experience with low-carbing/fasting.

happened to me but instead of keto, i cut dairy in high school, then went low calories plant based sometime in college, got the 3 rounds of HPV vaccine (even though i'm a guy) which cumulated into extreme stress and then had a 107.5 fever from what i now suspect to be an endotoxin storm and nearly died (antibiotics saved me). my tsh in a similar range. calcium, sodium, vitamin D are the most helpful in feeling normal again. i find even one meal of starch can completely throw off my mineral balance and mess up my bowels, which i think is the TSHs fault. basically the exact peat diet is what i find to be the safest for high tsh people to avoid another endotoxin overload

Sorry to hear that. Do you have this experience no matter the starch? I ate a lot of starch with protein as part of my recovery program and it helped me quite a bit. It was only a problem when I ate a ton of potatoes in one sitting without anything else, that I experienced bad crashes.

 

[rr1]

Brutal

Yeah, there's always someone worse off than yourself I've learned.

The sad thing is that I was only trying to be healthy, or what I thought was healthy. As soon as I got out of my stressful job with 2 monitors shining blue light on me all day under the already blue lights in the office and next to 4 WIFI routers, I would go running, because running is HEALTHY. Of course I would skip breakfast, because you should also do intermittent fasting if you want to lose a bit of fat, and 'just eat less'. Also don't put sugar in your coffee, drink it black! And make sure you are eating tuna and salmon, stay away from the carbs.

To my absolute dismay, my 14 year old cousin wasn't eating his Christmas lunch today, because him and his friends are doing 'one meal every day'. These people with social media platforms pushing this stuff on people who don't know any better is disgusting.

 

[keytothecity]

Yeah, there's always someone worse off than yourself I've learned.

The sad thing is that I was only trying to be healthy, or what I thought was healthy. As soon as I got out of my stressful job with 2 monitors shining blue light on me all day under the already blue lights in the office and next to 4 WIFI routers, I would go running, because running is HEALTHY. Of course I would skip breakfast, because you should also do intermittent fasting if you want to lose a bit of fat, and 'just eat less'. Also don't put sugar in your coffee, drink it black! And make sure you are eating tuna and salmon, stay away from the carbs.

To my absolute dismay, my 14 year old cousin wasn't eating his Christmas lunch today, because him and his friends are doing 'one meal every day'. These people with social media platforms pushing this stuff on people who don't know any better is disgusting.

Let them emf, pufa and fastmax while taking advantage of your knowledge. In years you‘ll be ahead of the pack.
Your cousin is cucking himself rn though, anabolism is crucial for him. Our grandmas had it always figured out: „did you eat already today?“
You should probably link him this forum, zoomers quickly change their mind when they are presented powerful knowledge structures such as this forum
On the other hand, it sucks to get mogged by your own family, too, lol

 

[pro marker]

Wow, good work! Weird how your hair got loose though!

my hairloss stopped when i upped my carbs. hairloss on keto diets is very normal. i did the av raw primal diet for a bit and my hair was coming out like crazy. the detoxing is real.

 

[KTownSatfats]

my hairloss stopped when i upped my carbs. hairloss on keto diets is very normal. i did the av raw primal diet for a bit and my hair was coming out like crazy. the detoxing is real.

Oh, I’m glad to hear that, the reversal I mean. So it was more like you were losing your hair than having it be loose.

 

[rr1]

Ray is planning to write his next (January) newsletter on the mechanisms involved in changing the direction of bad epigenetic changes. This should be a great resource for most of us in this thread.

 

[pro marker]

Oh, I’m glad to hear that, the reversal I mean. So it was more like you were losing your hair than having it be loose.

yeah.