denise
Member
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2013
- Messages
- 301
I'm hoping to get some ideas about wft my gut has been doing recently. I'll need to give some background, so I'm sorry in advance for the length:
2009 - I started smoking to help cope with my world ending. Just 1-2/day for a couple years , then went up to 3, then 6. After I became a stepmother in 2013, I went up to 9/day...
2013 - Confirmed I had uterine fibroids. I'd always had painful periods, but at least they were short. They'd been getting longer, and I had a definite lump in my pelvic area, so I figured that's what was going on.
- Also discovered that I had a large goiter. It was pushing on my trachea and needed to be watched, lest it kill me either by cutting off my oxygen or cutting off the blood supply to my heart...
2014 - By this time, my quality of life had been destroyed by the fibroids. I was bleeding 14 days each month, and had another week of PMS and extreme bloating. Also, this year, I suddenly started having totally liquid BMs. I had one normal BM in the 10 months I was paying attention. It says something about my state of mind (wrt the fibroids) that this diarrhea thing hardly fazed me.
Late in 2014 I had uterine artery embolization done. It was the best thing I ever did for myself, but it hurt like a mother f*cker. As a bonus, the antibiotics that they gave me stopped the diarrhea.
Somewhere in here, because I was researching thyroid stuff almost incessantly, I came across this forum. I ended up curing my hypoglycemia simply by drinking OJ first thing in the morning. Suddenly I could eat anything for breakfast without crashing or getting sick. I hadn't been able to eat anything but eggs/bacon for many years, and couldn't drink coffee until I'd eaten something.
Almost exactly one year ago, I had surgery to remove most of my thyroid. It was growing out of control, and there really didn't seem to be any other option at this point. It was HUGE. It was going to kill me.
Fast forward to this spring. My TSH is still not normal (for me; it was 3.5, when my normal is 1.4), but I haven't decided the best thing to do yet. I don't like the idea of having to take something for the rest of my life. (Plus my local ENT has fired me as a patient...)
March 2016 - I decide to quit smoking. I do it easily by reading Allen Carr's book. (That man is a genius.) Seriously, I quit smoking as soon as I finished reading the book and haven't looked back (sort of--keep reading).
Here's where the problems started. Within a few days, my appetite went through the roof. I could eat any quantity of anything and not get full. Also, my hypoglycemia came back, goddammit! And to top it off, I was bloated constantly, no matter what I ate. I went online and found that this is more common than you might think (even on thyroid boards people saying that when they quit, they went hypo again). Lots of people like to play psychologist and say that ex smokers are just transferring their addiction from smokes to food. bull****. This was hunger unlike anything I'd ever experienced, not some kind of coping mechanism. After a couple weeks, I decided to try the potato hack. I was curious about it anyway, and I figured that if I could only eat potatoes, I could eat as many as I wanted and still have a relatively sane calorie count.
What I didn't expect is that after 24 hours of eating potatoes, the bloating was GONE. And it stayed gone until about 24 hours after I started eating normally again. I got interested in all the fiber/resistant starch/probiotics stuff and have been playing around with that ever since, but without the results I was hoping for. (Yes, I realize this is an anti-Peat approach.)
So I quit smoking (which was supposed to be GOOD for me) and now I'm bloated and gained over 10 pounds. To be quite honest, I'm pissed. I try to do the right thing, and this is how I'm rewarded.
So here I am asking for suggestions--not necessarily what to do but WTF do you think happened?? I just don't understand it. If I knew what was going on, I could devise a strategy. The only strategy with any merit is to start smoking again...
Oh, also in June/July I tried taking T3 and felt no benefits whatsoever. All it did (when I took too much) was make me fatigued.
Thanks to anyone who actually read all this. And TIA for any suggestions.
Denise
ETA: I forgot to mention my depression, PMS, brain fog, lack of motivation, etc. that came along with all of this. I've read that cigs actually suppress estrogen, and I think that's true, because my periods were PERFECT for a year--until I quit smoking. Grrr. I'm terrified it'll just keep getting worse. I think I have actual trauma from my fibroid experience. Fortunately, at least the voracious hunger has largely passed. It happens now only occasionally.
2009 - I started smoking to help cope with my world ending. Just 1-2/day for a couple years , then went up to 3, then 6. After I became a stepmother in 2013, I went up to 9/day...
2013 - Confirmed I had uterine fibroids. I'd always had painful periods, but at least they were short. They'd been getting longer, and I had a definite lump in my pelvic area, so I figured that's what was going on.
- Also discovered that I had a large goiter. It was pushing on my trachea and needed to be watched, lest it kill me either by cutting off my oxygen or cutting off the blood supply to my heart...
2014 - By this time, my quality of life had been destroyed by the fibroids. I was bleeding 14 days each month, and had another week of PMS and extreme bloating. Also, this year, I suddenly started having totally liquid BMs. I had one normal BM in the 10 months I was paying attention. It says something about my state of mind (wrt the fibroids) that this diarrhea thing hardly fazed me.
Late in 2014 I had uterine artery embolization done. It was the best thing I ever did for myself, but it hurt like a mother f*cker. As a bonus, the antibiotics that they gave me stopped the diarrhea.
Somewhere in here, because I was researching thyroid stuff almost incessantly, I came across this forum. I ended up curing my hypoglycemia simply by drinking OJ first thing in the morning. Suddenly I could eat anything for breakfast without crashing or getting sick. I hadn't been able to eat anything but eggs/bacon for many years, and couldn't drink coffee until I'd eaten something.
Almost exactly one year ago, I had surgery to remove most of my thyroid. It was growing out of control, and there really didn't seem to be any other option at this point. It was HUGE. It was going to kill me.
Fast forward to this spring. My TSH is still not normal (for me; it was 3.5, when my normal is 1.4), but I haven't decided the best thing to do yet. I don't like the idea of having to take something for the rest of my life. (Plus my local ENT has fired me as a patient...)
March 2016 - I decide to quit smoking. I do it easily by reading Allen Carr's book. (That man is a genius.) Seriously, I quit smoking as soon as I finished reading the book and haven't looked back (sort of--keep reading).
Here's where the problems started. Within a few days, my appetite went through the roof. I could eat any quantity of anything and not get full. Also, my hypoglycemia came back, goddammit! And to top it off, I was bloated constantly, no matter what I ate. I went online and found that this is more common than you might think (even on thyroid boards people saying that when they quit, they went hypo again). Lots of people like to play psychologist and say that ex smokers are just transferring their addiction from smokes to food. bull****. This was hunger unlike anything I'd ever experienced, not some kind of coping mechanism. After a couple weeks, I decided to try the potato hack. I was curious about it anyway, and I figured that if I could only eat potatoes, I could eat as many as I wanted and still have a relatively sane calorie count.
What I didn't expect is that after 24 hours of eating potatoes, the bloating was GONE. And it stayed gone until about 24 hours after I started eating normally again. I got interested in all the fiber/resistant starch/probiotics stuff and have been playing around with that ever since, but without the results I was hoping for. (Yes, I realize this is an anti-Peat approach.)
So I quit smoking (which was supposed to be GOOD for me) and now I'm bloated and gained over 10 pounds. To be quite honest, I'm pissed. I try to do the right thing, and this is how I'm rewarded.
So here I am asking for suggestions--not necessarily what to do but WTF do you think happened?? I just don't understand it. If I knew what was going on, I could devise a strategy. The only strategy with any merit is to start smoking again...
Oh, also in June/July I tried taking T3 and felt no benefits whatsoever. All it did (when I took too much) was make me fatigued.
Thanks to anyone who actually read all this. And TIA for any suggestions.
Denise
ETA: I forgot to mention my depression, PMS, brain fog, lack of motivation, etc. that came along with all of this. I've read that cigs actually suppress estrogen, and I think that's true, because my periods were PERFECT for a year--until I quit smoking. Grrr. I'm terrified it'll just keep getting worse. I think I have actual trauma from my fibroid experience. Fortunately, at least the voracious hunger has largely passed. It happens now only occasionally.
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