I'm not sure whether to post this in this forum, or in logs. I've posted about some of my issues before and scoured the forum and various literature for clues but haven't yet fixed my issues and haven't gotten much help. It's been almost a decade now, working with Ray's ideas for over 5 years. It always centered around gut issues - an inflamed, bloated feeling, lack of attuned feeling of hunger, etc. After I started Ray's ideas, my bowel habits changed and I developed lots of diarrhea, though I never felt like I had pooped fully. It was just a constant urge to go, and frequent watery evacuation. Due to life circumstances and experimenting with health stuff, I have been homeless for almost the last half decade as well, which limits the ease of making certain foods. I worked with the limitations and experimented with low PUFA options and never got regular results from anything. Things would work the first time, then stop working. Nevertheless, I noticed that my gut always got better with starch, like rice, potatoes, or sourdough bread, or with other solid foods like proteins. And some Peat supplements helped. I still tried to figure out a more liquidy diet, for example adding thyroid and salt/sodium. Sometimes I would feel good, but the issues never went away. I've tried every type of supplement/vitamin etc. Eventually I got DVT and massive pulmonary embolism. Put on warfarin. Got some lab tests, everything that I was able to get looked ok except low testosterone, prolactin at 10, and iron deficiency (saturation %, ferritin, total iron all very low). After 6 months I tried going off warfarin, using aspirin, Vitamin E, Vitamin K2, and some other things, lasted a little while, but eventually had another DVT & massive pulmonary embolism. Next period on warfarin, I developed severe dizziness, disorientation, confusion, whole body numbness, extremely frightening. At the ERs, forced into a 3rd or 4th CT scan, they diagnosed diverticulitis, gave antibiotics. Antibiotics did nothing at all. After the full course and a total of maybe a month or two with the symptoms I used a bunch of methylene blue and cascara sagrada which apparently fixed the problem. Eventually I tried a third time going off warfarin, tried a variation on supplements, again lasted a little while and then had another near-fatal PE/DVT. Now I've been on warfarin again for several months, and again got the dizziness/disorientation/night-blindness/confusion that's been almost constant for a couple months. It's gotten somewhat better but hasn't gone away. It does seem connected to the gut as it is often not really present in the beginning of each day before I eat, etc, and methylene blue again is helping more than anything (seem to need at least 10-30+mg), but also coffee, niacinamide, antiserotonin drugs, pregnenolone, and Defibron all help sometimes. During this time I've gotten stool tests from a functional medicine doctor that I couldn't get at a normal doctor, which showed high candida species, high citrobacter freundii (which I can't find much information on), and high zonulin. Everything else on the GI-Map test was within the lab ranges. My CRP and ESR were both in the upper normal lab range on a recent blood draw, while these symptoms have been happening. I have been trying Nystatin and not noticing any effect from it. Over time, suspecting things like SIBO and other dysbiosis, I have tried herbal antimicrobials and antibiotics such as penicillin, rifaximin, azithromycin, as well as charcoal and using carrots/mushrooms and not noticed much effect from any of them - funny enough, I notice the most effect of all those from just having the carrot. I was wary of trying tetracyclines only because of my low iron status.
Judging the typical Peat-land things like temperature and pulse has been unfruitful for me, at first because I was getting inconsistent results, and because I have had a chronically high pulse for a very long time (maybe from iron deficiency anemia, maybe adrenaline, or both). Thyroid made me feel amazing a few times fleetingly, but I wasn't able to get the same result afterward. My blood thyroid panel has had normal levels when checked, but TSH was I think between 1-2. A little T3 does help me. Now, the past 1.5 years, I am on warfarin, and it makes judging any markers hard because it messes with metabolism etc in such awful ways. My blood pressure goes very high on it, so I'm sure I'm getting lots of calcium derangement. It also abolishes my libido. I've also had 4 or 5 mid-body CT scans in the last 1.5 years, so I don't know what that could be causing, though again those inflammation markers recently weren't very high, i.e. were in the lab range.
Diet-wise I'm still feeling like drinking a quart of milk and a bunch of low fat cheese is good for me. OJ, coke, rice/sourdough/potatoes, venison/beef, liver, oysters, shrimp, etc. The thing is that beyond the starch/solid food being helpful (does anyone have ideas for me why that is???), dietary changes/elimination (I've tried eliminating each thing) haven't helped, so I'm pretty sure that all these things are not specifically causing me problems, and I usually feel better with them. I've been avoiding PUFA pretty strictly for 5 years (prior to that had tons every day), so I'd imagine that according to Ray I'd be fairly depleted, but I wouldn't know.
One idea I have about all this is that I may have been stimulating my system too much with supplements and so caused the clotting to happen? Maybe aspirin irritated my GI tract and paradoxically caused clotting? These are just speculations.
Also, when I started with Peat stuff, I was extremely underweight (skinny fat), at 6'2" and 122lbs. I gained weight and it didn't bother me until I was over 190. Then the clotting happened, and with all the medical stuff I went through, my weight suddenly shot up to 222lbs and has stayed there. So I am kind of fat now and it doesn't go down at all, seems like regardless of cutting calories or anything. I don't expect much progress while on warfarin though. I believe Haidut said everyone who gains weight on Peat diet has high stress hormones. Well, I did everything to block them - sugar, pregnenolone, cyproheptadine, minerals, etc. I thought it must be microbiome related, and I did find citrobacter freundii and candida high, but antifungals and antibiotics so far haven't helped, though I'd like to try a couple more.
Other weird things: I developed red, inflamed cheeks shortly after starting Peating, and they have persisted to the present. I also seem to have some palmar erythema, though I'm not sure. I think my palms looked different when I was younger. Liver tests have been ok and no hepatitis. Also, over 5 years ago, before any Peat stuff, I had a scary episode where I felt like I sort of lost control of my body for about a month. It was like someone flipped a switch one day and my muscles all suddenly were at 30% of normal strength and I couldn't function. An acquaintance let me rest on his couch and over a month period my strength/function returned. I saw a doctor about it but before I heard much back about the tests I moved out of the area and had gotten better so never got insight on that one.
Other tests I haven't yet gotten: estrogen, NO, cortisol, adrenaline... I wonder if I should get tested for Lyme co-infections?
I don't know what help I might get here, but I felt I needed to write about my story at least because I don't really have people to talk to about it unfortunately. If anyone has any thoughts let me know.
Ok, thanks, have a good day everyone. :)
Judging the typical Peat-land things like temperature and pulse has been unfruitful for me, at first because I was getting inconsistent results, and because I have had a chronically high pulse for a very long time (maybe from iron deficiency anemia, maybe adrenaline, or both). Thyroid made me feel amazing a few times fleetingly, but I wasn't able to get the same result afterward. My blood thyroid panel has had normal levels when checked, but TSH was I think between 1-2. A little T3 does help me. Now, the past 1.5 years, I am on warfarin, and it makes judging any markers hard because it messes with metabolism etc in such awful ways. My blood pressure goes very high on it, so I'm sure I'm getting lots of calcium derangement. It also abolishes my libido. I've also had 4 or 5 mid-body CT scans in the last 1.5 years, so I don't know what that could be causing, though again those inflammation markers recently weren't very high, i.e. were in the lab range.
Diet-wise I'm still feeling like drinking a quart of milk and a bunch of low fat cheese is good for me. OJ, coke, rice/sourdough/potatoes, venison/beef, liver, oysters, shrimp, etc. The thing is that beyond the starch/solid food being helpful (does anyone have ideas for me why that is???), dietary changes/elimination (I've tried eliminating each thing) haven't helped, so I'm pretty sure that all these things are not specifically causing me problems, and I usually feel better with them. I've been avoiding PUFA pretty strictly for 5 years (prior to that had tons every day), so I'd imagine that according to Ray I'd be fairly depleted, but I wouldn't know.
One idea I have about all this is that I may have been stimulating my system too much with supplements and so caused the clotting to happen? Maybe aspirin irritated my GI tract and paradoxically caused clotting? These are just speculations.
Also, when I started with Peat stuff, I was extremely underweight (skinny fat), at 6'2" and 122lbs. I gained weight and it didn't bother me until I was over 190. Then the clotting happened, and with all the medical stuff I went through, my weight suddenly shot up to 222lbs and has stayed there. So I am kind of fat now and it doesn't go down at all, seems like regardless of cutting calories or anything. I don't expect much progress while on warfarin though. I believe Haidut said everyone who gains weight on Peat diet has high stress hormones. Well, I did everything to block them - sugar, pregnenolone, cyproheptadine, minerals, etc. I thought it must be microbiome related, and I did find citrobacter freundii and candida high, but antifungals and antibiotics so far haven't helped, though I'd like to try a couple more.
Other weird things: I developed red, inflamed cheeks shortly after starting Peating, and they have persisted to the present. I also seem to have some palmar erythema, though I'm not sure. I think my palms looked different when I was younger. Liver tests have been ok and no hepatitis. Also, over 5 years ago, before any Peat stuff, I had a scary episode where I felt like I sort of lost control of my body for about a month. It was like someone flipped a switch one day and my muscles all suddenly were at 30% of normal strength and I couldn't function. An acquaintance let me rest on his couch and over a month period my strength/function returned. I saw a doctor about it but before I heard much back about the tests I moved out of the area and had gotten better so never got insight on that one.
Other tests I haven't yet gotten: estrogen, NO, cortisol, adrenaline... I wonder if I should get tested for Lyme co-infections?
I don't know what help I might get here, but I felt I needed to write about my story at least because I don't really have people to talk to about it unfortunately. If anyone has any thoughts let me know.
Ok, thanks, have a good day everyone. :)
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