alywest
Member
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2017
- Messages
- 1,028
I recently had labs done and my morning fasting cortisol was below normal range. Estrogen was 44 which is high for the follicular phase of the month. Of course doctor didn't order progesterone labs and had I known that I would have asked him to include that, but oh well.
Anyway, I'm just confused because I thought high estrogen translated to high cortisol.
The low HDL (40) and high 'HDL to total cholesterol ratio' (4) hasn't changed much in the past few months. Before my HDL was right on the cusp of normal (46), but the ratio hardly changed since the last labs in October 2017 when it was 3.9 Overall cholesterol is only 160.
The doctor of course advised me to eat more salmon (5-6 times/week! lol) and to drink alcohol which i really don't do anymore. Apparently that will make me healthier. He also told me that my mild endometriosis is caused by eating sugar. The funny thing is, how would he know if the endometriosis is new or getting better? I used to have more pelvic pain during intercourse and now I really don't, so I suspect that has actually improved. Apparently the only reason they will do surgery for endometriosis is if the pain you experience is overwhelming. Otherwise they just leave it alone.
Other weird lab results were super high FSH, LH and low Vitamin D (which is nothing new.) I did see recently that low vitamin D can be associated with low cortisol which makes sense because I have taken Vitamin D supplements by the gallon and barely got it up over 32 over several months. I don't know if estrogen, FSH and LH are up from before since it wasn't tested in the past. I am not taking as much progesterone as I used to but I take between 125 and 200 mg/day.
Other weird things: I had stopped taking thiamine for sleep apnea because it seemed better but then it started to get bad again so I resumed 1,500 mg of thiamine, and my blood pressure which had been hovering around 140/100 went down to a respectable 120/80. Just from thiamine and a couple of nights of decent sleep! Perhaps with a long stretch of better sleep all of my labs will improve. I was honestly not even getting any deep sleep for a while because whenever I did get there I would start having nightmares which stemmed from not breathing, so I would wake up just completely suffocating.
Another suspicion with the really low HDL is that I've been taking too much thyroid, although I had similar labs in October and I am taking a completely different thyroid supplement now. Back then I was taking random doses of NDT that I was basing on how I felt. However, my TSH was like a 5.6 around that time. Recently I've been taking 88mcg of levothyroxine and 25 mg of cynomel/day. I was thinking about cutting down to a half pill of the levothyroxine and maintaining the cynomel because frankly if I don't take that amount I feel like crap. Soon after I started the 88mcg of levo I lowered my TSH to 2.4.
So if anyone has any expertise to share I would greatly appreciate it! I mean something more Peaty than eating more salmon and drinking alcohol.
Anyway, I'm just confused because I thought high estrogen translated to high cortisol.
The low HDL (40) and high 'HDL to total cholesterol ratio' (4) hasn't changed much in the past few months. Before my HDL was right on the cusp of normal (46), but the ratio hardly changed since the last labs in October 2017 when it was 3.9 Overall cholesterol is only 160.
The doctor of course advised me to eat more salmon (5-6 times/week! lol) and to drink alcohol which i really don't do anymore. Apparently that will make me healthier. He also told me that my mild endometriosis is caused by eating sugar. The funny thing is, how would he know if the endometriosis is new or getting better? I used to have more pelvic pain during intercourse and now I really don't, so I suspect that has actually improved. Apparently the only reason they will do surgery for endometriosis is if the pain you experience is overwhelming. Otherwise they just leave it alone.
Other weird lab results were super high FSH, LH and low Vitamin D (which is nothing new.) I did see recently that low vitamin D can be associated with low cortisol which makes sense because I have taken Vitamin D supplements by the gallon and barely got it up over 32 over several months. I don't know if estrogen, FSH and LH are up from before since it wasn't tested in the past. I am not taking as much progesterone as I used to but I take between 125 and 200 mg/day.
Other weird things: I had stopped taking thiamine for sleep apnea because it seemed better but then it started to get bad again so I resumed 1,500 mg of thiamine, and my blood pressure which had been hovering around 140/100 went down to a respectable 120/80. Just from thiamine and a couple of nights of decent sleep! Perhaps with a long stretch of better sleep all of my labs will improve. I was honestly not even getting any deep sleep for a while because whenever I did get there I would start having nightmares which stemmed from not breathing, so I would wake up just completely suffocating.
Another suspicion with the really low HDL is that I've been taking too much thyroid, although I had similar labs in October and I am taking a completely different thyroid supplement now. Back then I was taking random doses of NDT that I was basing on how I felt. However, my TSH was like a 5.6 around that time. Recently I've been taking 88mcg of levothyroxine and 25 mg of cynomel/day. I was thinking about cutting down to a half pill of the levothyroxine and maintaining the cynomel because frankly if I don't take that amount I feel like crap. Soon after I started the 88mcg of levo I lowered my TSH to 2.4.
So if anyone has any expertise to share I would greatly appreciate it! I mean something more Peaty than eating more salmon and drinking alcohol.