Complete Menopausal Peat

[Swandattur]

Hey, the overall picture looks very good! All those extra calories and no weight gain is encouraging. Also, it's very nice to have a better memory. Do you wear socks for the freezing feet?

My sister has serious high blood pressure after her last very stress filled years at her job. Now, thanks to being forced to retire early, she doesn't really have enough money to live on. So, that's stressful, too.

 

[messtafarian]

So things are progressing, sort of.

I was in a terrible state starting last month. I was recovering from a surgery that had me unable to get around or exercise much. When I went into the surgery I naively believed I'd be around and about after a couple of days. Oh foolish woman. I was a wreck for weeks. This brought me to the wonderful world of Ray Peat, since I had nothing to do but ponder my health problems.

I started eating directly according to Peat guidelines and got insanely sick as a result. For the first couple days my stomach was wrecked and my bowels were liquid. I realized I could not digest the amount of fruit and milk and orange juice Ray Peat eats and had to dial way back. Now my diet has calmed down a little. I can do nonfat lactose-free milk in coffee but I have to supplement Vitamins C and Calcium a fair amount because I can't tolerate large quantities of the foods that contain them. I am now eating potatoes, cottage cheese, milk and coffee, puffed rice, nonfat ricotta, coconut oil.I haven't attempted to eat much fruit at all which is a bummer since I'm watching the most awesome-looking summer watermelon rot in my refrigerator day after day. My diet is really most carbs and I am not getting enough protein AT ALL.

I bought and am using nosalt potassium salt which I use on my potatoes and cottage cheese. This definitely changes my balance of potassium to sodium and solves that problem but it's a complete drag. This is why heart patients can't comply with their dietary orders -- potassium salt sucks and sodium is where it's at. I am trying this but I'm not sure if it's really going to change my heart problems. I am also supplementing with K2 on a suggestion from Dr . Peat.

Speaking of which, I went through some phases with K2. For a while I didn't understand that I was taking K2 and not K1; and this had very little to do with blood clotting and furthermore it was very difficult -- *extremely* difficult to overdose. K2 works directly on bone formation and inflammation and it's possible in that case that I should dose liberally instead at one or two mgs a day, which is what I've been doing.

Other supplements:

Aspirin without fail.
B12 and folate every three days ( I need to supplement this but B12 can raise untreated blood pressure so I'm holding back on dosing liberally until it improves)
Pregnenolone 30mg every three days
Progesterone on cycle. I am trying a weeklong break since the breast tenderness and stomach discomfort was slowly driving me insane. I'm also kind of wondering if I'll get a period. I'd be kind of glad to see it, if I did.

I am still unable to tolerate very much gelatin. I keep trying - this week I plan on making bone broth and a brisket to increase all protein including gelatin. For a couple days now my protein has been about 30 grams a day. I have never done a food diary with the level of micronutrient calculation that Cronometer has. Without wheat and soy, I just have almost no protein in my diet and now that I think of it it's probably been pretty low for years.

So changing over to this nutritional profile has been a real challenge. The best I can say so far is that I have a little more energy and part of the reason probably has to do with being able to sleep through the night thanks to blessed absence of hot flashes and night sweats. Progesterone fixed that, at least, almost overnight. Also my fingernails look better. I don't mean they're pinker and more attractive. I mean they're not shredding in pieces out of their beds.

 

[j.]

I was also persuaded by the internet to take high doses of K2 (mk4). I felt high whenever I did. Got tired of feeling that way, and stopped. Now I take 1 mg daily. I guess I could try a different brand.

 

[messtafarian]

j did you take K2 for a health problem, or because your levels were low? I am not sure what I am doing with this stuff at all, but I am worried about my blood pressure. It does the *strangest* stuff all day. Diastolic can be anywhere between 67 and 101. I don't know what to make of it; got tested for an adrenal tumor about six weeks ago and was tentatively negative.

 

[j.]

I take it just because it's supposed to have great benefits, it's safe, its main natural source are organs, such as pancreas, and I don't eat that.

 

[HDD]

I take Super K because I take up to 1500mg of aspirin daily.

I suppose if one has high blood pressure the following would apply.


K. S. G. Jie. "Vitamin K status and bone mass in women with and without aortic atherosclerosis: A population-based study," Calc. Tiss. Intern. 59(5), 352-356, 1996. ("The finding that in atherosclerotic women vitamin K status is associated with bone mass supports our hypothesis that vitamin K status affects the mineralization processes in both bone and in atherosclerotic plaques."

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/os ... sis.shtmlq

 

[HDD]

Are you restricting salt because of your blood pressure?

"Despite numerous publications showing that diuretics could cause the edematous problems that they were supposed to remedy, they have been one of the most profitable types of drug. Dietary salt restriction has become a cultural cliché, largely as a consequence of the belief that sodium causes edema and hypertension.

Salt restriction, according to a review of about 100 studies (Alderman, 2004), lowers the blood pressure a few points. But that generally doesn’t relate to better health. In one study (3000 people, 4 years), there was a clear increase in mortality in the individuals who ate less salt. An extra few grams of salt per day was associated with a 36% reduction in “coronary events” (Alderman, et al., 1995). Another study (more than 11,000 people, 22 years) also showed an inverse relation between salt intake and mortality (Alderman, et al., 1997)."

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/salt.shtml

 

[HDD]

I just reread the email Ray Peat sent you. He said ..."Vitamin K, for example, is needed to prevent calcification of the blood vessels, so its function is more basic than the "calcium blockers".

I am curious about the salt and needing more potassium. What prompted your decision? I was trying to increase magnesium and potassium for blood pressure and muscle cramps a while back.

I am curious about solutions as I frequently have hypertension or pre hypertension and my mother had high blood pressure and suffered a series of strokes after being put on a diuretic.

 

[messtafarian]

Well -- I got this recommendation from Peat and immediately ordered vitamin K; not knowing the difference between K1 or K2 or K3. Then started reading here that K was a problem for some people and that it had something to do with blood clotting ( this is the K I know about -- had no familiarity with K2 at all) and also that it could create kidney stones so I resolved to be careful.

Then I read some more and realized I had been reading about the wrong vitamin K :).

But as all this was going on I was dutifully plugging my food into Cronometer. What stood out pretty obviously was that I was eating a ton of sodium and virtually no potassium. Potassium is abundant in OJ -- I can barely drink that stuff without destroying my intestines so that left me without any potassium. It made sense that this was a nutritional problem that might effect my blood pressure so the quest commenced.

I am not as sure about that as I am about the K. I thought I would try it and see if it worked. It's really really too bad about the OJ because when I was trying to drink it my blood pressure was the lowest it had been in years -- just over the course of a couple days. I don't know if it would have stayed that way but it sure went down pretty fast, coincidentally. I was checked at the doctor in the midst of heavy OJ at 122/70.

 

[messtafarian]

Menstruation returns.

It's not ever good news when a woman gets her period but in my case I consider it an improvement. I have not menstruated since the end of June, and had gone into hot flashes/night sweats so severe I really thought I was dying. Found out in the process about my thyroid and my high blood pressure and ended up a total mess of worry and depression.

I started off trying a bunch of stuff from the grocery store -- first something called estroven that has natural estrogen in it. After a day or two of reading just exactly *why* I should not ever take such a thing, I stopped that and went back to topical progesterone; this stuff called Progest. Hot flashes diminished but they were not gone. By that time a month had passed without a period.

I was getting really bummed out. Not because of menopause exactly but because somehow my health seemed totally out of my control suddenly. I got another kind of progesterone called "progestelle" from the internet, and started applying it topically every day; probably for about three weeks. I had taken a one or two day break from the Progest a couple weeks prior.

I was debating whether I should keep taking the progestelle without a break. RP says that postmenopausal women take it cyclically unless " they are treating some condition." I wasn't sure if I was treating some condition or not but frankly by a couple days ago I just had to stop with the progesterone because I couldn't bear to put on a bra.

I was also continuing to take aspirin, pregnenolone, magnesium, K2 and potassium.

That was three days ago. Today I had a period.

I'm ready to be done with the monthly cycle emotionally I think. But -- you guys I am so relieved. I thought had a pituitary tumor.

 

[j.]

Regarding K2, I think most people feel better on MK4 than MK7.

 

[messtafarian]

Conveniently the one I ended up with :)

 

[messtafarian]

I made a separate post announcing that my period came back two days ago; this is how happy I was about it. I should explain that the reason I am happy about it is because I stopped menstruating in June.

So I'm 48. This is no big deal really. Women stop around this time anyway -- and I asked my doctor to do an FSH test to see where I was in all of that; it came back 60. For FSH that is very high and is associated with "perimenopause" so the standard explanation was that I was just all done with having a period and going through menopause.

Okay.

But...it was terrible over there in Menopause. I was sick. Hot flashes were violent and left me wrenched and wretched and disoriented. I could not think straight or remember anything. It was *so different*; that feeling -- especially since I had spent a year or two basically bleeding all the time; I was really worried something else was wrong no one could figure out. This is when I went and got this whole series of workups that had me suspecting, seriously, that I was really on my way to dying or getting irrevocably ill.

So I started progesterone. I've changed my diet -- mostly experimenting with Peatian principles, staying away from PUFA as well as I can, adding sugar back, pregnenolone, lots of coconut oil. I haven't gained any weight but I've had stomach issues with all the milk and fruit, passing bouts of debilitating insomnia....etc.

And even though I've felt pretty terrible -- just about the MINUTE my period came back I started to feel more like myself. And this is no ordinary period. I have fibroids and I bleed like I am about to die. This has been going on now for 48 hours and weirdly, about every 12 hours that passes I feel better and better.

I know whatever was wrong with me is better. I am not sure what it was exactly but for the past week or so I have had NO hot flashes, no insomnia ( really) and no periods of brain fog so severe I would have sworn I had a brain tumor.

Since I have no idea what was *really* wrong I am not exactly sure what exactly is better. But one thing I am wondering is if the industrial level of iron I was ingesting on direction from my doctor was poisoning me. I've lost at least --easily -- a pint of blood in the past 48 hours and given that it's really astonishing how much better I feel.

Like I was in a nightmare I am now waking up from.

Now isn't that weird.

 

[Peata]

I'm happy for you, MF. Glad you are feeling better.

 

[HDD]

That is great news!

Do you mind sharing where your fibroids are located? I have friend who has a mass in her uterus and also growths in/on thyroid.

 

[messtafarian]

I have the same thing -- multinodular goiter and fibroids. Mine are low and to the right; one is the size of a grapefuit. I also had a thickened eardrum/cholesteatoma and as I keep going on about -- high blood pressure. So I'm horribly calcified and fibrotic and up til a month ago had no idea what that was or what to do about it. Doctors told me it was all just a normal part of aging and told me to wait til menopause for the fibroids and do nothing at all about the goiter.


Ultimately what I was offered from conventional medicine was to have everything cut out. I was going to have a hysterectomy and a thyroidectomy; and be put on thyroid and estrogen replacement.

I might end up having to do all that anyway but I want to try this first.

 

[HDD]

Thanks, for sharing. My friend as been given conflicting diagnosis. One Dr. said it was cancer and she needed hysterectomy and treatment. Other reading of tests, not cancerous. I, along with others, helped her with carrot juicing and raw diet (before Peat) a few years ago. I have sent her some Peat articles and information hoping that something would make sense to her with her health. There is just so much natural health cures out there that I think it is hard to discern what is bogus.

 

[messtafarian]

Definitely. I started down this path because I was so confused. I asked specific questions like: what causes thyroid nodules? And they said they didn't know. Then: what causes fibroids? And they said they didn't know. And then I got offered surgery and radiation. I got tons of radiation just so doctors could tell me what they found out after they irradiated me.

I finally realized that if I hung around these doctors very much longer they were going to kill me. People end up on the internet trying to solve their health problems because they don't believe that's all there is to know about why they're sick. They're right.

 

[Swandattur]

messtafarian, Feeling so much better seems like a really good sign. Part of the reason you are feeling better must be from better hormone balance. Hopefully this sort of diet will help with the fibroids and goiter. My nephew's recently ex wife, has a goiter and kidney stones a lot and fibromyalgia. These things have to be connected.

Yes, you can't have any faith in them, when they just seem to be clueless.

 

[Peata]

I also believe many health problems are connected. Some of that comes from seeing how many diseases or illnesses occur more frequently in women. There is often a hormone connection, imo, even in an illness that one usually wouldn't think to find one.

I've also had experience with doctors wanting to cut things out or prescribe pills and never being told WHY I have this or that. They seem genuinely amused when you want to know what caused it or how can it be healed (instead of removing organ or masking symptoms).