Blue Lips

[Potato]

Help,

My lips have almost always bluish color. There are rare times when my lips look healthy pink, like 10 seconds and then they turn bluish again. I have really been watching my lips for a couple of months and can't figure out any relation why my lips look healthy some rare times, but this really lasts seconds at most.

Maybe I don't have enough oxygen in my blood for some reason? Could someone please help me, I'm getting really depressed because of this.

 

[bluewren]

For me, blue lips occurred because of hypothyroidism.

How are your temps? Pulse? How about thyroid blood tests and cholesterol level?

 

[tara]

In addition to bluewren's good questions, how is your breathing at rest?
Relaxed, nasal, diaphragmatic, small?
My first hunch would be to see if you can improve it by raising CO2 levels with breathing exercises or other methods.
Both low metabolism and chronic hyperventilation tend to reduce system CO2 levels, and therefore reduce O2 delivery to tissues.
Have you noticed what you've been doing at the times your lips look a healthier pinker colour?
But there could be other things going on.

 

[Potato]

For me, blue lips occurred because of hypothyroidism.

How are your temps? Pulse? How about thyroid blood tests and cholesterol level?

My temps are good but pulse is really high all the time. Thyroid tests are normal but cholesterol is high, probably because I followed zero carb diet for many months. How could high cholesterol affect lip color?

 

[Potato]

In addition to bluewren's good questions, how is your breathing at rest?
Relaxed, nasal, diaphragmatic, small?
My first hunch would be to see if you can improve it by raising CO2 levels with breathing exercises or other methods.
Both low metabolism and chronic hyperventilation tend to reduce system CO2 levels, and therefore reduce O2 delivery to tissues.
Have you noticed what you've been doing at the times your lips look a healthier pinker colour?
But there could be other things going on.

My breathing at rest is relaxed but my pulse is high even at rest. Where would I get instructions for these breathing exercises? I'm willing to try anything. There really is no connection to anything why my lips very rarely look healthy pink just for a moment. Sometimes it's when I'm at work and walk to a restroom and look in the mirror and they look pink and if I just stay still and wait, they turn bluish again very soon. A couple of days ago I woke at night to pee and my lips looked quite healthy pink and I thought of everything but theres no connection to anything, I haven't done anything special at those times. And all the other times when I wake up at night to pee my lips look bluish.

 

[tara]

Thyroid tests are normal

Do you mean the dr said they were normal? Do you have the numbers?
Here's a related article by Peat, if you haven't seen it - and there are more on that site: Preventing and treating cancer with progesterone..

Have you resumed eating carbs again? There are quite a few people here who found their metabolism suffered after a while on low carb diets. Some have made good recoveries, some have struggled to readapt.

Can you estimate how many calories you are eating in a typical day and how much of that is carbohydrate?

No guarantees about what will be helpful for you, but you might find some ideas worth investigating/experimenting with here:
CO2, Bag Breathing
Personally, I learned a lot from here about breathing and CO2 and Buteyko method (but I wouldn't go by all his advice about diet):
Buteyko Breathing - Buteyko Method How to Instructions
If you read on that site, you can learn how to measure your own Control Pause (CP), which is a way to assess CO2 levels.
Patrick McKeown is good at explaining it, too.

One simple experiment you can try is to go for a walk with your mouth shut, and slow your breathing down or pause between each exhale and inhale for a few minutes to maintain just a slight feeling of air hunger. Make sure you have fuel in you before you begin, including carbs. Then have a look at your lips and see if the colour is better.
Or just hold your breath briefly on the out breath a few times in a row, just long enough to get slightly uncomfortable.
But if the underlying issue is hunger or something else, then that takes priority.

 

[Potato]

Do you mean the dr said they were normal? Do you have the numbers?
Here's a related article by Peat, if you haven't seen it - and there are more on that site: Preventing and treating cancer with progesterone..

Have you resumed eating carbs again? There are quite a few people here who found their metabolism suffered after a while on low carb diets. Some have made good recoveries, some have struggled to readapt.

Can you estimate how many calories you are eating in a typical day and how much of that is carbohydrate?

No guarantees about what will be helpful for you, but you might find some ideas worth investigating/experimenting with here:
CO2, Bag Breathing
Personally, I learned a lot from here about breathing and CO2 and Buteyko method (but I wouldn't go by all his advice about diet):
Buteyko Breathing - Buteyko Method How to Instructions
If you read on that site, you can learn how to measure your own Control Pause (CP), which is a way to assess CO2 levels.
Patrick McKeown is good at explaining it, too.

One simple experiment you can try is to go for a walk with your mouth shut, and slow your breathing down or pause between each exhale and inhale for a few minutes to maintain just a slight feeling of air hunger. Make sure you have fuel in you before you begin, including carbs. Then have a look at your lips and see if the colour is better.
Or just hold your breath briefly on the out breath a few times in a row, just long enough to get slightly uncomfortable.
But if the underlying issue is hunger or something else, then that takes priority.

I'm from europe so don't know if these are the same units as in USA, but here's my numbers. TSH 0.85 mU/l (0.4 - 4.5 mU/l) and ft4 14.9 pmol/l (11 - 21 pmol/l).

I have resumed eating carbs again. For now I eat only potatoes and whole milk until I get my lips solved. The zero carb diet that I was following was very acidic too and my potato and milk diet is the opposite, quite alkaline so I want to see if this helps. I get about 3400 cals per day and 50% carbs.

I just tested my control pause, it's 30 seconds, so not absolutely horrible.

 

[bluewren]

My temps are good but pulse is really high all the time. Thyroid tests are normal but cholesterol is high, probably because I followed zero carb diet for many months. How could high cholesterol affect lip color?

High cholesterol is very closely correlated to hypothyroidism. Search this forum and you'll see what I mean.

 

[Potato]

Oh and one thing I forgot to say is I got my iron levels tested and my serum iron was quite low 67 µg/dl and ferritin was quite high 283 ng/ml. I have read that when your serum iron is low it causes low oxygen.

 

[Potato]

My lips are still blue.. Is it possible that some kind of allergy is causing blue lips and without any eye or nose irritation?