Aspirin Fatigue And Muscle Weakness

[Jon]

Hey all,

Had some questions on experiences with aspirin causing fatigue and muscle weakness as that is my experience so far, even with a low dose 80mg lol. First a quick bio of me:

I've been doing natural bodybuilding for 11 years, done messed up my already poor metabolism (confident I have been hypothyroid since single digit age). Despite that poor metabolism have done well with athletics all my life and have had great success with body composition goals and strength/hypertrophy goals through training and macronutrients manipulation (I.e. Counting calories). But I'm ready to get my health on track and rectify mymetabolism and thyroid issues. I'm 28yrs old; a short dude lol 5'6"146.6lbs@13-14%bf; glucosereadings average 110-120 fasted and have for the last 10 years (perhaps even before that); bp 110/70; AMTemp 96.4F PM temp 97.8F; Ampulse 47bpm; Pm Pulse 49bpm.

I know I'm very stress ridden, not an uptight guy but life has been hard for the last couple years, been sleep deprived, recently got out of a job working swing shift, over trained for a number of years until now and have sleep maintenance issues. Those are things to keep in mind with my questions.

So now for the questions:

1) upon one dose of aspirin in the am preceding a workout by 2 hrs I became very weak, missing a weight I'd normally rep for 12 and only getting it for 6. Has anyone expierienced muscle weakness on aspirin?

2) after that initial dose of aspirin my limbs went cold and vascularity completely diminished (I am always very vascular otherwise) this all occurred despite the fact that I had about 120g carbs, 40g protein, and 20g fat with the aspirin. Was this a sign of hypoglycemia? I didn't feel hungry or brain foggy, just totally hypothyroid.

3) despite the negatives I felt I took another dose pre bed, didn't sleep great, but I don't normally. I usually sleep for 4 1/2 hrs then wake up, then go back to sleep for 2 1/2 hrs. I took one more dose the next day of 80mg aspirin and noticed my muscles were extremely sore, way more than usual. That night I came home from work @ 5:00pm and crashed out! I slept about 6 hrs straight, woke up to pee and get some water, went back to sleep and though I woke up another once or twice I got roughly 13hrs of sleep! Was still pretty damn sore from my failed workout earlier but was amazed at how much I slept and how deep it was. Was this a by product of the aspirin decreasing my stress hormones? That's the only thing I could come up with other than possibly another hypoglycemic episode but I wasn't ravenous so I doubt that.

Thanks for the help any and all! Since those first 2 days of aspirin I have ceased its use. Being weak and cold is not something I felt was conducive to my stress levels lol but if I can gain more education and insight on how to use aspirin to improve my metabolism WOTHOUT these negative I would love to throw it back in!

 

[DrJ]

Hi @Jon, I would strongly suspect that your metabolic rate has been set by the stress hormones for possibly quite some time. Your heart rate is too low to be running off thyroid. My guess is that you've been running off cortisol, and when you took the aspirin, it inhibited cortisol, and lacking the ability to run on thyroid if you are hypo, you then switched over to adrenaline to set your metabolism. Adrenaline would explain the cold extremities and slowed muscle repair.

I'm not sure how to interpret this effect from aspirin if you did indeed have 120g carbs. That would seemingly be enough to provide sugar to prevent hypoglycemia induced by aspirin causing low blood sugar. Maybe there is some liver/glycogen storage trouble also? You could try sipping on orange juice steadily throughout the day with small doses of aspirin to try to provide a steady supply of sugar in the case your liver cannot. This would also hopefully help move you in the direction of thyroid metabolism. Of course there's other important nutrients involved that Peat frequently talks about, so be mindful of those, too.

Coming from intermittent fasting, it took me at least 6 months to get my metabolism somewhat repaired, so you might need to be prepared to be consistent and patient for results. I also have been weightlifting for a while, and also lost my vascularity - particularly in my forearms - when I started peating despite maintaining the same weight and (visually judged) body fat percentage. I haven't completely figured it out, but it seems that vascularity might be related to NO production, which is actually not good and a sign of stress, so I think that less vascularity is actually a good sign in the long run. Hope that helps.

 

[Jon]

Hi @Jon, I would strongly suspect that your metabolic rate has been set by the stress hormones for possibly quite some time. Your heart rate is too low to be running off thyroid. My guess is that you've been running off cortisol, and when you took the aspirin, it inhibited cortisol, and lacking the ability to run on thyroid if you are hypo, you then switched over to adrenaline to set your metabolism. Adrenaline would explain the cold extremities and slowed muscle repair.

I'm not sure how to interpret this effect from aspirin if you did indeed have 120g carbs. That would seemingly be enough to provide sugar to prevent hypoglycemia induced by aspirin causing low blood sugar. Maybe there is some liver/glycogen storage trouble also? You could try sipping on orange juice steadily throughout the day with small doses of aspirin to try to provide a steady supply of sugar in the case your liver cannot. This would also hopefully help move you in the direction of thyroid metabolism. Of course there's other important nutrients involved that Peat frequently talks about, so be mindful of those, too.

Coming from intermittent fasting, it took me at least 6 months to get my metabolism somewhat repaired, so you might need to be prepared to be consistent and patient for results. I also have been weightlifting for a while, and also lost my vascularity - particularly in my forearms - when I started peating despite maintaining the same weight and (visually judged) body fat percentage. I haven't completely figured it out, but it seems that vascularity might be related to NO production, which is actually not good and a sign of stress, so I think that less vascularity is actually a good sign in the long run. Hope that helps.

Thanks for your time man! Your assessment sounds spot on. I'm sure I'm running off cortisol primarily. SUCKS . Did you notice any weakness at all during training during your period of lost vascularity?

I've had similar effects to the aspirin from other supps as well. I don't use any of them anymore and didn't when I tried aspirin but ALA and berberine did the same things to me.

I'm now trying therapeutic doses of b vitamins which don't seem to be so aggressive in their results BUT do seem to be doing some beneficial things. Especially niacinamide, last night after one dose of 500mg my temp went up and stayed at 97.8f and my pulse went up to 73 and also stayed for 5 hrs.

 

[DrJ]

Did you notice any weakness at all during training during your period of lost vascularity?

No, but I started taking a small amount of DHEA at the same time so if anything I felt like I could lift more.

 

[Sucrates]

The downregulating aspirin does will inhibit hypertrophy at least, though the amount of strength loss seems pretty dramatic. Ray has said that aspirin inhibits lipolysis, that limits the amount of energy you can muster from FFAs, and that could be the issue. Taking in some more sugar during workout might mitigate this slightly. I take a lot of aspirin so can't tell if it makes a difference to me, a high dose (>100mg) of niacinamide is noticeable however.

Decrease in vascularity is from lower serotonin and/or nitric oxide, that's definitely a good thing for health.

 

[Jon]

The downregulating aspirin does will inhibit hypertrophy at least, though the amount of strength loss seems pretty dramatic. Ray has said that aspirin inhibits lipolysis, that limits the amount of energy you can muster from FFAs, and that could be the issue. Taking in some more sugar during workout might mitigate this slightly. I take a lot of aspirin so can't tell if it makes a difference to me, a high dose (>100mg) of niacinamide is noticeable however.

Decrease in vascularity is from lower serotonin and/or nitric oxide, that's definitely a good thing for health.

Thank you for the insight! I was afraid of the aspirin being a hypertrophy inhibitor :/ I just read such great things about it and wanted to try it. Clearly though, I am dealing with a large pool of stress hormones.

Since you sound like you have a background with niacinamide as well, do you think its effects are similar to aspirin? Albeit maybe less aggressive? I ask because I tried two separate doses of 500mg yesterday split by 6hrs and it kept my temp higher than normal (97.8f) and my pulse higher (71bpm). This gave me hope that I could maybe use niacinamide instead of aspirin to perhaps slowly change my metabolism instead of the reckoning force aspirin seemed to have lol.

 

[Sucrates]

Thank you for the insight! I was afraid of the aspirin being a hypertrophy inhibitor :/ I just read such great things about it and wanted to try it. Clearly though, I am dealing with a large pool of stress hormones.

Since you sound like you have a background with niacinamide as well, do you think its effects are similar to aspirin? Albeit maybe less aggressive? I ask because I tried two separate doses of 500mg yesterday split by 6hrs and it kept my temp higher than normal (97.8f) and my pulse higher (71bpm). This gave me hope that I could maybe use niacinamide instead of aspirin to perhaps slowly change my metabolism instead of the reckoning force aspirin seemed to have lol.

I think they're similar in terms of metabolism and downregulating FFAs. The inflammation/hypertrophic limiting effects of aspirin aren't a factor with niacinamide. I find I need a lot of food with niacinamide or I get what feels like hypoglycemia so I'd be inclined to start with much lower doses, but some people do great with high doses.

 

[Andman]

Just stumbled over this thread, how are you doing @Jon ? any updates?

I have most definitely encountered reduced performance / recovery in the weight room, its almost like a lot of the adaptions ive built up over the years have been reversed to a large degree - for example my hands are a lot more sensitive to pain from a bar or grippers, certain movements feel „off“ etc - it almost feels like im a beginner again in some ways, without any significant training breaks actually

Might actually be a good thing from a health/anti-aging perspective, since most of said adaptions are after all a reaction to years of (training) stress

 

[DaveFoster]

It's known to decrease strength output. Taking it after a workout will increase insulin sensitivity.

 

[Andman]

good to know, thank you!