Depression

juanitacarlos

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Ttramone, in hindsight, did you have any other thyroid symptoms at the time? Cold, fatigue? What thyroid supplements did they put you on?

Yes, stacks of them! Unexplained weight gain, fatigue, scaly skin, hair loss, low body temp, extremely cold hands and feet, aching throat, unable to work full-time, unable to handle minor stress, apathy and on and on and on.

ttramone said:
Then I go to the doc, she notices somethign, and within two weeks I'm operated on and wake up feeling fine. It has to mean something!

Do you think it was the removal of the gland that helped as much as the supplementation?
Thanks for your thoughts.
[/quote]

That is a great question Beebop. One I can't seem to get any answer for. I've tried to research what would the thyroid would be doing to malfunction and actually cause all those symptoms, rather than there being just an issue with T3 production, but have come up with nothing. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them. One of my hippy/new age friends thought it could be that I have stored trauma there (in the thyroid) as I had a traumatic childhood.
 
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Beebop

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So did you notice relief from depression in the time after you had the gland removed but before the supplementation started? Maybe stress hormones played a part if that is the case - but honestly, that sounds like a mystery to me!
 

juanitacarlos

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Beebop said:
So did you notice relief from depression in the time after you had the gland removed but before the supplementation started? Maybe stress hormones played a part if that is the case - but honestly, that sounds like a mystery to me!

Hard to say. I started the meds the day after I had the second op to remove the thyroid completely. It's hard to say exactly what I was feeling as I had two ops in 5 days so was really knocked around physically.

It's a mystery indeed! :confused
 

jyb

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What's the reason why removing thyroid would improve your thyroid related symptoms? I can only see the downsides - how it would make you more reliant on a correct dosage of thyroid supps.
 

Jenn

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A lot of mental issues are lack of B vitamins, which are a by product of proper protein digestion. Supplementing B vitamins,especially niacinamide made the biggest difference for me. Gelatin is anti seratonin, pooping everyday is anti seratonin, getting enough sugar/co2 to the brain helps too.

If he has an ulcer, his pH if off somewhere.
 

charlie

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ttramone said:
So my advice to anyone suffering from depression is to get your thyroid panel checked. Obviously there are other reasons for suffering depression, but that is one simple thing I would focus on first.

Myself, I would rather chart pulse and temperatures as that is more accurate. Thyroid panels could look fine like mine do. But I still have the symptoms and I know for sure I am hypothyroid.

Thyroid supplement for depression. Who would have known? And I agree with ttramone that the relief happens fairly quick.
 

jyb

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Jenn said:
A lot of mental issues are lack of B vitamins, which are a by product of proper protein digestion. Supplementing B vitamins,especially niacinamide made the biggest difference for me. Gelatin is anti seratonin, pooping everyday is anti seratonin, getting enough sugar/co2 to the brain helps too.

If he has an ulcer, his pH if off somewhere.

In previous months I tried small doses of niacinamide, like 100-200mg per day, because that's usually the intent of RP articles. Benefits seemed negligible compared to gelatin, I find a good daily dose of gelatin really necessary for peacefulness and avoiding major insomnia.

I will experiment with 2g niacinamide (or more with niacin) following suggestions made by you and others on the B3 thread...
 

juanitacarlos

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jyb said:
What's the reason why removing thyroid would improve your thyroid related symptoms? I can only see the downsides - how it would make you more reliant on a correct dosage of thyroid supps.

It wouldn't. Beebop and I were discussing how my life-long depression had disappeared after I had a thyroidectomy. We were wondering if that occured because of the thyroidectomy or because I went on thyroid medication. I had never been on thyroid meds prior to that. The other thyroid symptoms disappeared when I finally went on the correct dose of thyroid (NDT).
 

juanitacarlos

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Charlie said:
ttramone said:
So my advice to anyone suffering from depression is to get your thyroid panel checked. Obviously there are other reasons for suffering depression, but that is one simple thing I would focus on first.

Myself, I would rather chart pulse and temperatures as that is more accurate. Thyroid panels could look fine like mine do. But I still have the symptoms and I know for sure I am hypothyroid.

Thyroid supplement for depression. Who would have known? And I agree with ttramone that the relief happens fairly quick.

Yeah agreed Charlie - track your thyroid in whichever manner you feel is more appropriate. I've used them all and they all talk to me in some way. I've literally had a yelling match with an endocronologist because he told me I'm 'in the range' yet I could barely drag my butt to his office because of the fatigue. I pretty much run my own race now, and use my doctor for blood tests and NDT prescription. I change doses as I see fit based on how I feel.
 

HDD

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My son is taking an ssri for anxiety, panic attacks, depression. His tsh was 1.23. Does this # tell me anything?

Btw, he wants to take the Meds. so he can get a job, go to school, have a life.
 

charlie

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Haagendazendiane said:
My son is taking an ssri for anxiety, panic attacks, depression. His tsh was 1.23. Does this # tell me anything?

Btw, he wants to take the Meds. so he can get a job, go to school, have a life.

Have you checked his temperature and pulse? My TSH was low yet I am clearly hypo and have been all my life. Another clue besides temp, pulse and symptoms is my high cholesterol that I have had since being a kid.

We pass on our metabolic rate to our children.

Ray Peat said:
"Although he was a geneticist and bred the mice that demonstrated the inheritance of cancer, he also showed that simple therapeutic measures would not only prevent cancer in a susceptible individual, but would also prevent cancer in many generations of the treated animal's descendants... Inheritance isn't indelibly fixed. A physiological state is passed on…"

Source

Anxiety, panic attacks, depression are all things that stem from being hypothyroid. :2cents
 

jyb

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Haagendazendiane said:
My son is taking an ssri for anxiety, panic attacks, depression. His tsh was 1.23. Does this # tell me anything?

Btw, he wants to take the Meds. so he can get a job, go to school, have a life.

I took SSRI in my early 20s. One day I decided to stop suddenly and move to a strict RP diet. It was one of the best decisions in my life.

Some SSRI are thought to cause more long term damage than others. I was lucky to be put on Mirtazapine (Remeron), because although I became even more on of a zombie on it and would have been much better on a RP diet, it didn't leave much permanent side effects - for example it is thought not to cause impotence like other SSRIs are prone to.

In my opinion a high dose of salt, sugar and gelatin and possibly pregnelonone, and other usual peaty recommendations, can have an effect overnight on anxiety, sleep, libido etc so it didn't take long for me to be convinced.
 

juanitacarlos

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My son is taking an ssri for anxiety, panic attacks, depression. His tsh was 1.23. Does this # tell me anything?

That's not too bad. Peat says this:

"Over a period of several years, I never saw a person whose TSH was over 2 microIU/ml who was comfortably healthy, and I formed the impression that the normal, or healthy, quantity was probably something less than 1.0."

I'm not sure how you would get TSH under 1.0 without thyroid medication, as far as I've seen. Maybe if you were really healthy... But it's definitely not super high or anything like that. But TSH is only one minor indicator of thyroid health. As Charlie said, taking pulse and temps provides useful data. Free T3/T4, reverse T3, and thyroid antibodies are helpful too. So is listing any and all health issues. Knowing what I know now, I had so many hypothyroid symptoms it's not funny.


Btw, he wants to take the Meds. so he can get a job, go to school, have a life.

Fair enough. People should be able to make their own choices without judgement.
 

Mittir

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Haagendazendiane said:
My son is taking an ssri for anxiety, panic attacks, depression. His tsh was 1.23. Does this # tell me anything?

Btw, he wants to take the Meds. so he can get a job, go to school, have a life.

According to RP, TSH should be below 2 and close to 0. One can have normal TSH and T4 but low T3 and high reverse T3.
Even action of active T3 can be blocked by PUFA, rT3 and T4. He also prefer test of total T4 and Total T3. Here is a quote

" Because the actions of T3 can be inhibited by many factors, including polyunsaturated fatty acids, reverse T3, and excess thyroxine, the absolute level of T3 can't be used by itself for diagnosis. “Free T3” or “free T4” is a laboratory concept, and the biological activity of T3 doesn't necessarily correspond to its “freedom” in the test. T3 bound to its transport proteins can be demonstrated to enter cells, mitochondria, and nuclei. Transthyretin, which carries both vitamin A and thyroid hormones, is sharply decreased by stress, and should probably be regularly measured as part of the thyroid examination.

When T3 is metabolically active, lactic acid won't be produced unnecessarily, so the measurement of lactate in the blood is a useful test for interpreting thyroid function. "---- TSH, temperature, pulse rate, and other indicators in hypothyroidism

http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/hy ... dism.shtml
 

HDD

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Thank you all for your input. I am going to see if he will read your responses. He might even like tracking his temperature and pulse.

He doesn't really want to be on the medicine but when this started I really didn't know what other options there were. I have been telling him that people on the forums I read have similar symptoms to his and some of the supplements might help him.
 

Swandattur

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As a person who has endured several episodes of major depression and in the last years something like cyclothymia or dysthymia, I think it's wonderful to find something that cures anyone's depression. I have been taking Wellbutrin many years, and it isn't completely effective, but it is not an SSRI. Doing some Peat diet things has been really making a difference for me. Also, I think staying totally off starch has helped. After all starch really feeds the bacteria which make endotoxin. There seem to be certain foods that bring on depressed mood. I think chocolate, nuts (not Peat anyway), and any food that is somehow irritating causes mood problems for me. Right now very much dairy seems to cause allergy symptoms, maybe due to histamines. So, I think it can contribute. Maybe later on when I'm in better health lots of dairy will be okay. I don't know.

I felt like the walking dead when I had major depression, because I felt like I was in hell watching everyone else living their lives. I was on an SSRI for five years when I went into a major depression that lasted for a year. I kind of wonder if it caused it, especially since, if I remember correctly, I was kept on an SSRI while other things were added. At least I was on some sort of SSRI continuously along with many other medications and given ECT. I think the thing that finally brought me out of the murk was Adderall that was added in small amounts over about three months.

I would think that a thyroid gland that was cancerous could have been causing problems for a long time. Finally getting the hormones straightened out would surely help a lot.
 

Asimov

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Haagendazendiane said:
My son is taking an ssri for anxiety, panic attacks, depression. His tsh was 1.23. Does this # tell me anything?

Btw, he wants to take the Meds. so he can get a job, go to school, have a life.
The fact that he's on SSRI's tells me that he's at LEAST 3x more likely to commit suicide than if he were depressed but on no drugs.

At least consider having a talk with the doctor about going off SSRI's and onto MAOI-B drugs for the time being.

After watching my girlfriend puke her guts out for a week straight after coming off SSRI's and the knowledge I have about increased suicide risk, I consider prescription of the drugs criminal negligence. There's no reason....absolutely NO reason....for a person who is depressed to take a drug that makes them MORE likely to kill themselves.......
 

Rayser

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I couldn't agree more with Asimov.

A friend's sister committed suicide years ago after only a year on the drug. We'd noticed the changes in her. She used to be hyperactive before and sometimes a little shrill. There must have been more to her problems but I didn't notice anything else. On SSRI she hardly looked you in the eyes anymore, became extremely introverted. When you approached her she would react defensive though nobody was attacking her. You said hi and she would look at you as if you were car lights and she the deer on the dark road before you.
Her sisters told me once (after the suicide) that she'd noticed her behavior herself and hated it. One of the last conversations the sisters had, she used the sentence "People scare me."

Wouldn't it strike you as odd that right now there are two kinds of drugs on the market for treating the same conditions? One kind keeping serotonin in your blood stream (but not only. They don't really know what SSRI do. Therefore the name: Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. That's short for: I have no bloody idea whatsoever in which way those **** up your mind.) and the other kind suppressing the production of serotonin.

I have used the serotonin blocking drugs (ondansetron) and within a week I was my former self with all the cockiness and self confidence and love for life.
 
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Beebop

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Rayser, would you say it is beneficial, important maybe, to take an anti-serotonin drug if one has taken SSRI's at any point in their lives? Can the body regain balance without taking something to counter the effects of SSRI's?

RP has recommended cyproheptadine to my friend, and he's considering it.
 

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