Cortisol Losing Muscle Gaining Fat

[Efesto]

Well It was 5 days no carb , 2 days high carb.

But I am no more on that.

My problem was getting fatter on chest and belly and loosing muscle. I was in this situation 6 months... Probably because of high cortisol. Only this week labs reveal that it's lowered


My diet today
Yogurt whey oats

Fruit yogurt

Chicken sweet potatoes

Peaches and 5 Brazilian nuts

Banana and bread with egg

Octopus with patatoes and broccoli

Whey before and after training

No alcool no sweets , two cofeeS

 

[tara]

It looks delicious (other than the whey). Are you having some of your carbs with your whey protein? And with your coffees?
Estimated total calories and total carbs? Can't quite get a sense of how much you are eating from this. Unless you were eating goitrogenic quantities of high-brix brocolli, I suspect you may be running low on calcium.

Once you've read Peat on sugars and fats, you might be interested in this one on tryptophan:
Tryptophan, serotonin, and aging

 

[Efesto]

Doctor thinks i am insulin resistente and have chronic hipercortisolism.
I dont buy the insuline resistance theory.
Which labs parameters should i check ?
Cause my triglycerides and insulineia are just a bit above the minimum range ....

She abolish from my diet any carbo besides fruitas and sweet patato at night.. only healthy fats , real protein and veggies... No diet sodas, no breads, pastas , oats, no sweets.
I think she wants my body to reeducate carbo hydrate metabolism, but i think this is a way of losing more muscle ...
everytime i dont eat carbo and go for a run i lose 2 pounds (its almost phisically imposible, but its true) ...
she abolish aerobic work for 1 month.
can loosing weight be a psychossomatic disease ?

i am run out of theorys ...

 

[tara]

I dont buy the insuline resistance theory.

Which part of it are you skeptical about? It basically means that despite moderate or high insulin levels, the glucose is having trouble getting into the cells and being oxidised, right?

can loosing weight be a psychossomatic disease ?

I'd consider the straight physical first or too - I don't think you've ruled them out yet. :)

Diabetes is a wasting disease.
So is anorexia.
A heavy parasite load can steal the nutrition, too.
Some failure of digestive enzymes could be reducing your absorption of nutrition you eat.
One of the effects of high cortisol is to turn proteins into sugars for energy. So chronically high cortisol could presumably be a candidate for muscle etc wasting.

How many calories a day as a rough average?

Drs advice to avoid grains and highly refined sugars still leaves lots of scope for a few hundred grams of carbs in fruits and roots (and tubers) and milk. They tend to give you more useful minerals anyway.
I'm not saying you should or should not follow her advice - use your own experimentation and judgement and the knowledge you are gaining to assess what works for you.
Peat tends to favour carbs from fruit, milk, honey over grains too. And while he tends to be more positive about fruit/sugar, he seems to generally put potatoes over grains.

 

[Efesto]

Well my main question is that I have normal low values on triglycerides insulemnia and glicemia. Shouldn't I have high sugar blood if I had insuline resistence ?

Cortisol is going down. One month after stoping taking that particular brand my cortisol has come down 600 to 100 ( Max 60)

 

[Efesto]

Well this is theory of the ortomolecular doctor. She is the only that has a theory. All the others can't explain it ...

 

[Efesto]

Yes u are right I am loosing calcium on urine

 

[haidut]

Yes u are right I am loosing calcium on urine

The liver is the main organ for inactivating cortisol. So, if you have liver issues that can lead to higher cortisol but I have never seen anybody with cortisol that high due to just liver issues. It may be helpful to ask the endocrinologist to perform the so-called "dexamethasone suppression test". This test will show if the high cortisol is from the pituitary of from another part of the body. Cortisol can some from many places and there is something called "ectopic Cushing syndrome" when cortisol is not due to pituitary dysfunction. Anyways, I think it would help to rule out some conditions. Once again, I am surprised/shocked that an actual endocrinologist would not suggest standard tests performed in cases of high cortisol...

 

[Efesto]

I've done all the tests. Dexamethasone. I failed all of them because I was taking tamoxifen ( because I thought fat chess was gyno).
I was Ingressed in a hospital. Cushing disease was ruled out.
But nobody seemed to understand the reasons for that cortisols.
Finally I stopped whey and cortisol is now almost normal.
Yes during August I was convinced I had a tumor ( that didn't show at MRI ). I was a false positive in the blood exams because of cbg protein that attaches basal cortisol and doesn't allow dexamethasone supression . I was a false positive because of the strogenic effect of tamoxifen.

 

[Efesto]

In resume ... I had an alimentary intoxication because of whey that increased my cortisol. Strange story. It took me 6 months to figur out the reasons of why I was losing weight and had insomnias and osteopenia.

 

[Efesto]

I did more than 10 urinary cortisol and all of theme above 400.
I failed to supress 1 mg dexamethasone 4 times
I supressed high dexamethasone 1 time
2 negative RMIs on hipofisis ( but was assymetrical, so even there I had bad luck).
Gyno was only chest fat. So taking tamoxifen didn't solve anything , just increased liver transminases , put me with stratospheric testosterone levels ( and reduced libido) and made me false positive in dexa tests.
Believe it was a living nightmare. Doctors didn't know what's going on and I had the prospect of a surgery n in my head to find a tumor that didn't showed up.
I was almost doing an IPSS test when finally the cbg and strogenic effect of tamoxifen came along

 

[Efesto]

Even knowing my story, orthomolecular thinks I have insuline resistence.

 

[tara]

Shouldn't I have high sugar blood if I had insuline resistence ?

Yes, I guess you would expect high blood sugar with insulin resistance. Have you had hypoglycemia confirmed by measurements (blood or urine), or going by symptoms?

Wonder if you could have some personal allergy or intolerance to the whey that throws up stress hormones?

 

[Efesto]

Since I stopped whey my urinary cortisol is going down. It's almost normal now. It s 100.
It seemed it was a whey intoxication that me lose all mucle and gained belly and chest fat.of course since I was losing weight I start consuming even more weight.
Now I am on a diet trying to reequilibrate my organism and I am allready losing fat. 5months to discover what was the problem. Lost 12 kgs!
But I'll recover and get better. Even my libido has improved

 

[Efesto]

Still losing muscle and geting fat lumps on chest.
I am on a insuline resistence diet ... No starch no cereals no milk , reducing processed food at max.... Basically protein broculli and healthy fats and two pieces fruit a day. Only water and coffee to drink ...
Hormones are great , but even so something is happening and I don't have a clue ... Any ideas ?

 

[tara]

I would have expected severe carbohydrate restriction to increase cortisol, and to potentially reduce lean tissue?
High fat, if that is what you are doing, could be worsening insulin resistance?