Digestion, Hormonal balance, Sleep and Skin

ursidae

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21 year old female
In 2020 was diagnosed with PCOS, amenorrhea, a pituitary adenoma, IBS, IgA deficiency/suppressed immunity, high cortisol on blood tests, 2hr-OGTT indicated normal glucose tolerance but insulin resistance. Things have improved since then (period has returned) however I haven't done much blood work and have done no further scans of the pituitary tumour or ovaries. I'm working on increasing my list of foods I can tolerate and being able to handle mixed meals without discomfort. Restful deep sleep, mental clarity, better posture and no skin problems are another goal
 
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ursidae

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my safe diet would be white sweet potatoes, cod, cocoa butter, fruits and vegetable juices (60% of the juice needs to be something bland like cucumber)

Lately whenever I eat a fatty meal I've been getting upper right quadrant pain. Ive been sticking to my safe foods but I really craved some lamb today and there was pain. Taurine or TUDCA taken before the meal doesn't seem to be very effective in alleviating it
 
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ursidae

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I ate some lamb again today but took the TUDCA two hours in advance, it helped prevent the pain. Also didn't use fat to cook it (it was 20% fat mince already so way too much fat to begin with)
Another issue: I suspect sweet potatoes are disturbing my hormonal balance, whenever I have them consistently for a couple of days my libido becomes excessively high like it would for an estrogen dominant person.
 
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ursidae

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woke up today with severe pain under my right rib, will be consulting a doctor about this
 
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went to the doctor, he suspected a gallstone or kidney stone. Took a urine sample, there was some sediment in my urine and a little bit of blood (i'm at the end of menstruation)
prescribed me an anti inflammatory and will be getting a referral for a scan in a couple of weeks.
I think it might be neuralgia as the pain flares up when i move and expand my rib cage. Taking B vitamins, zinc, lysine. My magnesium requirements have increased

Ive been having pretty poor sleep for 6 months now because Ive been cohabiting with 2 nocturnal people and later on one more person that wakes up at 6 joined us. between those staying up until 3 AM and the other person waking very early i was getting 3-4 hours of sleep a night for about 3 months. Made me feel like crap and gave me acne around my mouth and lower jawline. I'll be moving out in three days and I hope I can sleep at my new place and recover the damage this has done to me
 
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ursidae

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pain went away two days later with diligent supplementation of lysine, zinc, B vitamins. Doctor was convinced it was not viral but taking lysine ended it. I continued to follow my safe diet up until 2 days ago and digestively things were okay. It's really hard for me to follow this repetitive diet and cravings become overwhelming so I tried eating lentils the other day and got pretty severe pain in my small intestine. Decided to eat (peeled) chickpeas the day after that and my colon still hurts from that poor dietary decision. On the flip side, eating huge amounts of varied food that I craved that day resulted in the best sleep i've had in months. I'm pretty much stuck on potatoes, juices/coconut water and cod.
 

liam183

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Keep taking lysine and add glycine/gelatin/collagen. This should help a lot of problems, mainly gut. I personally take a digestive enzyme + HCl + ox bile supplement for digestion. It helps a ton for fats as this usually indicates a lack of bile/poor bile flow (might also make sense why there are suspected gallstones). Because of your poor fat absorption, I would suggest fat soluble vitamin supplementation, as this will help prevent nutrient deficiencies. I will compile a list of lifestyle, diet, and supplement changes I would recommend (I have gut issues as well, though I am a male so my hormonal symptoms display slightly differently).

* indicates what I consider to be high priority

Lifestyle:
*-like you said, prioritize your sleep. Leaving an environment in which you cannot get ample sleep is imperative
*-go outside and get a lot of sun, especially at sunrise and sunset. Weather permitting, aim for 15-30 minutes minimum at sunrise, 30+ minutes during the day, and 10+ minutes of sunset. Sunrise is the most important in my opinion for hormonal health. It is also best to ground yourself at this time
*-Block blue light at night. Get a pair of blue light blocking glasses and wear them after the sun goes down. I recommend Midwest Red Light Therapy. Download f.lux on your computer and an app on your phone (for iphones you will have to go into settings to change the screen to red)
-No phones/electronics turned on in your room at night. Phone should be on airplane mode anytime it is on or near your body and you are not currently using it
*-Daily movement. Even if its low-impact or low intensity, just get moving. Weight training 2-3 times a week is more than enough if you optimize your training. For lower impact activities, walking, biking, tai chi, and foundation training are great. Bonus: foam roll and do other tissue release methods to reduce intra-muscular stress
-Relax before meals. Take deep breaths. Don't use your phone or electronics while you eat, and don't eat if you are feeling negative emotions
-Meditate.
-Get a shower filter. This will prevent endocrine disrupting chemicals from being absorbed through your skin
-Epsom salt soaks. Do foot soaks daily for 15+ minutes, or you can do full body soaks in the bath tub. I would stick to foot soaks unless you have a high-quality shower filter

Diet:
*-Avoid soluble fibers and foods high in anti-nutrients. Basically, any sort of lentils, wheat, green crucificerous vegetables, plant milks, etc. These are hard to digest and will feed bad bacteria in your gut and increase gut serotonin. People with IBS are more prone to SIBO, so keep prebiotics (soluble fibers) to a minimum.
*-Optimize stomach acid and bile flow. This can be done several ways. Avoid alkaline substances near meals ie lots of water, baking soda, milk. Before meals, chew ginger and/or digestive bitters to stimulate bile production. Drinking lemon/lime water and putting lemon/lime juice on foods helps a ton. Drinking apple cider vinegar (1 tbsp mixed in 8 oz water. Drink through a straw) will help acidify your stomach
*-Eat insoluble fibers daily ie raw carrot salad, cooked white mushrooms, and bamboo shoots. It helps to combine these with coconut oil to kill off any bad bacteria without killing too much of your good bacteria. The fiber will also carry out excess estrogen and endotoxins! This helps significantly with IBS and endocrine issues.
*-Prioritize gelatinous foods. Homemade bone broth is best. However, it is unrealistic to expect someone to make and consume that much broth. Collagen supplementation and glycine supplementation will help . This also will help stomach lining
-Focus on whole foods, and eat organic when possible. I'd recommend pasture raised eggs daily as well as oysters, sardines, and seasonal fruits and vegetables
*-SALT SALT SALT. Too salty? Add more salt. Seriously. Salt is CRUCIAL for proper digestion and stomach acid production. It will also help rehydrate you and prevent water retention. Just make sure to use high quality sea salt and not table salt. I prefer Crucial Four mSalt.
-Get lots of saturated fats. I understand your fat absorption is compromised, but fats are important. Introduce them slowly. Butter and coconut oil are typically well tolerated. MCT oil from coconut oil is great as your body can use it for energy. Coconut oil is good for bowels as well
-Avoid PUFAs. They are estrogenic, anti-metabolic, and pro-stress
*-Filter drinking water. Either get an RO system or use a deionizer like ZeroWater and then remineralize it with high quality salt (see salt rec. above)
-Eat raw, local honey. This stuff is the Nectar of the Gods. I eat some throughout the day as I want and then every night have around a tbsp right before bed. This will feed your liver and aid in sleep

Supplements:
*-Colostrum. This is great for immunity and will help restore your immunoglobin levels back to an appropriate range. It is also beneficial for your gut
-High vitamin butter oil. Not very Peaty, but Weston A. Price was a huge fan of this stuff. I am too. High in butyric acid as well as your fat soluble vitamins A,D,E, and K
*-Digestive enzymes and ox bile: I HIGHLY recommend Gut Garden. 1-2 capsules with every meal. Great stuff
*-Some sort of milk thistle and dandelion root blend. This will help your liver and gallbladder produce bile. I personally use Tribal Detox by Secrets of the Tribe, though I think you would be better off taking the herbs individually. Get a tincture form, not capsules. Capsules will likely further irritate your gut
*-Vitamin E. I recommend Forefront Health as they have a gel/liquid form. 1-2 pumps 1x per day should suffice.
*-Beef liver and/or Oystermax. Oystermax is a Godsend for women. Seriously. Read the reviews and you'll see what I mean. 4 capsules daily. Beef liver will help in a similar way, though not as much. You don't really need both, but I take both. Beef liver is more affordable, but I would go for oyster if possible. If you do go the liver route, I recommend Perfect Supplements
-Fulvic/Humic blend from BioFulvic. Not a necessary supplement, but has helped me a bit with gut health and minerals. Can also be applied topically for acne
-Forefront Health B complex. Good for lots of things
*-Collagen/Glycine. Perfect Supplements Collagen (powder form) or their gelatin if you'd like to cook with it. They have a great pudding recipe with the gelatin that I enjoy. Glycine powder from SolSupps is good too for a more budget-friendly option, though this is not one I would cheap out on. Perhaps collagen 1 serving a day and glycine 2-3g per day? This stuff will make you sleep like a baby too. It decreases the amount of time it takes to fall asleep. It's also great for skin and hair
-Lysine. 500-1000mg a day for gut health
-Activated charcoal. This will clean out your gut. Good to combine with coconut oil. This isn't really necessary if you are doing carrot salads/mushrooms/bamboo shoots.
-Rhodiola Rosea for stress. Perfect Supplements carries this as well. You could also try Cordyceps.


I know this is a lot, and I don't recommend taking all of those supplements at once. Gradually make changes and experiment a bit. I denoted high priority things with an asterisk. Good luck. It's good to see another young person on here (I'm 19). It's refreshing to see people our age trying to make changes for the better. Let me know if you have questions about anything
 
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ursidae

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it's not a lot because i've done most of this, been at it for 3 years now. Optimising stomach acidity is my obsession. Thank you for the detailed advice
 
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ursidae

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Lots of stress these past few days. had to go a while without heating, not sure what the room temperature was but I could see my breath in the mornings, can't buy a bus ticket either cause everything here is crazy expensive so been walking for 3 hours a day. Price of everything has gotten quite high. I've been having neuralgia flare ups ever since those couple days of no heating, chills and night sweats, also getting cramps which I assume is i'm low magnesium but will be a while until i can buy a supplement. Got swindled so have to go even lower budget . Been eating mostly oats and mince, skin flare ups from the histamine have been pretty bad but more concerning has been the shooting pain i've been getting in the left part of the umbilical region. Could be food poisoning from eating a spoon of yesterdays beef (turned out it was spoiled and I threw it out). Will wait it out and go to the doctor tomorrow if the pain and chills persist
 
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ursidae

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Got back a deposit I made unexpectedly and managed to buy a couple of quality supplements since I ran out of most of my vitamins and started up on my colitis safe diet again. It quickly cleared up the pain in my small intestine
bought:
- magnesium bisglycinate
-B complex
-KI
-vitamin D
-dicalcium malate by Thorne

I have been having digestion issues with most calcium supplements. I invested in this one hoping it's a high quality one and easily absorbed. Couldn't buy it directly from thorne, so I hope it's not a fake one. I opened the capsule and tasted it and it did not taste tart which is what I presume a malic acid salt should taste like. I got a headache an hour after taking it and the label on seems a bit wrinkled.
 
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ursidae

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also, my new flatmate is a vegetarian environmentalist and gives me judgemental and passive aggressive pep talks about the suffering of the cows, the overfishing and the environment every single time I cook and sit down to eat my food which is mostly flesh and imported vegetation because nothing grows this far north. Couldn't bear it anymore and did a vegan experiment for 2 days with lots of oats, red lentils, chickpeas, olive oil, a jar of honey. It was an absolute disaster for my digestion and lead to lots of pain.
What I noted is that during those two days I could finally sleep through the night without waking. It was either the huge amount of calories I ingested or possibly the slow digesting carb heavy lentil dinner is what I need right now to be able to sleep through the night as I don't seem to be storing glycogen effectively. I've started up again on low fat, lower fructose, exercise, taurine and choline to hopefully correct this. The only issue is liver glycogen problem problem did start while I was following a supposedly liver friendly high glucose, low fat diet, so maybe I need to experiment with switching up the amount of fat I eat and the glucose:fructose ratio of my diet
 
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ursidae

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I'm not entirely sure, but I suspect it is indeed the calcium that's triggering headaches. The headache on saturday became quite severe (I only took 250mg), hasn't come back with that severity since as I am no longer menstruating but I can feel it slightly whenever I take calcium.

Invested in getting some safer cookware at my new place, got a stainless steel, low nickel stock pot and a glass steamer basket, will be preparing most of my food this way, along with baking it in a glass tray. Of course I will eventually need to save up for a water filter as the steam must transfer some of the undesirable comonents of the tap water to my food.
 
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ursidae

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I'm talking calcium as I don't tolerate dairy and I'm eating high oxalate foods
Calcium seems to give me issues (headaches, fever, diarrhoea, back pain) and I'm taking very little- 250 mg, 500 mg is unbearable
I don't think it's this supplement in particular, as all calcium supplements give me problems. I'm taking with with Kuinone (2 mg), vitamin D (1000 iu) and Magnesium (133- 266mg)
 

liam183

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I'm talking calcium as I don't tolerate dairy and I'm eating high oxalate foods
Calcium seems to give me issues (headaches, fever, diarrhoea, back pain) and I'm taking very little- 250 mg, 500 mg is unbearable
I don't think it's this supplement in particular, as all calcium supplements give me problems. I'm taking with with Kuinone (2 mg), vitamin D (1000 iu) and Magnesium (133- 266mg)
Perhaps you need more vitamin K
 

liam183

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I'd suggest K2 as K1 isn't used well by humans. A k2 Mk4 and mk7 blend would probably be best. For food sources, high vitamin butter oil, fermented kale, emu oil, natto, ghee, and duck fat. With the digestive issues you've listed, I bet you're not properly absorbing fat soluble vitamins including vitamin k. Plus most diets just lack in them nowadays, so a supplement would probably be smart. Whenever you supplement with D you need adequate K to balance it as they work together
 

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