Frozen Feet

[member 2106]

@waldenpond

Yes, my gut and digestion didn't improve until I vastly increased caloric intake.

No matter what I did - restrict food groups (pufa, wheat, dairy, meat, etc), restrict calories, take supplements, NONE of that worked. In fact my digestion was getting worse and worse until I was basically only consuming juice, and finally I hit rock bottom.

There is all sorts of ridiculous strategies here that are way too complicated, and don't even work except in edge cases, and even at that, most of them have to take those supplements for life.

I just increased my caloric intake to godlike levels. Slowly my issues seem to be resolving one by one. Digestion has never been better. And I take zero supplements. I have zero anxiety, and I usually have mild to even large amounts of euphoria in the evenings.

On days I've had close to 10,000 calories (not a typo), my euphoria is so high that I'm laughing at EVERYTHING. If that's not a sign of a high metabolic rate I dunno what is =)

Are you avoiding any types of food?

 

[Cirion]

Are you avoiding any types of food?

Nope. I eat ANYTHING I want, yes that means even things like donuts, cake, cookies.

That said, an interesting thing is that nowadays I crave more or less peaty things like cheese, yogurt, milk (chocolate), occasional meat, soda, and juice.

I do still often have somewhat processed foods (like canned soups) but nothing too "evil" as you might imagine. Weirdly, I really don't crave things like donuts anymore. I think your body is smart and will guide you to the right foods as it has me.

What you're seeing on these forums is people getting orthorexic and ignoring their food cravings to their own detriment. I was one of them for a long time. From my food cravings lately, I think "the peat diet" gets a lot of things right, but it also is unnecessarily orthorexic and forbids you from eating "evil" foods even if you crave them.

In the past I was super orthorexic, and it just made me sicker not better. I was doing all the right things - gelatin, low pufa, milk, OJ, some meat and shellfish, cheese, fruit. I wasn't getting better though until I just let go and ate anything with no restriction.

To be clear, I'm not cured yet, but I am finally turning over a new leaf slowly but surely. Weight is finally dropping, digestion is better, I have moments of euphoria almost every evening. Physical energy level isn't yet there, not gonna lie, but I'm told that mental energy comes before physical energy from other people following this approach, which I can verify seems to be the case.

 

[Herbie]

Yeh when in doubt, just take more aspirin lmao. Figure out the real cause? Nah screw that, just pop that aspirin baby.


Try B2 + folic acid together spaced throughout the day. Always annoyed by the cold extremities despite food intake. B2 + folic acid sealed the deal now they are warm constantly.

Hahaha nice one

 

[baccheion]

Nope. I eat ANYTHING I want, yes that means even things like donuts, cake, cookies.

That said, an interesting thing is that nowadays I crave more or less peaty things like cheese, yogurt, milk (chocolate), occasional meat, soda, and juice.

I do still often have somewhat processed foods (like canned soups) but nothing too "evil" as you might imagine. Weirdly, I really don't crave things like donuts anymore. I think your body is smart and will guide you to the right foods as it has me.

What you're seeing on these forums is people getting orthorexic and ignoring their food cravings to their own detriment. I was one of them for a long time. From my food cravings lately, I think "the peat diet" gets a lot of things right, but it also is unnecessarily orthorexic and forbids you from eating "evil" foods even if you crave them.

In the past I was super orthorexic, and it just made me sicker not better. I was doing all the right things - gelatin, low pufa, milk, OJ, some meat and shellfish, cheese, fruit. I wasn't getting better though until I just let go and ate anything with no restriction.

To be clear, I'm not cured yet, but I am finally turning over a new leaf slowly but surely. Weight is finally dropping, digestion is better, I have moments of euphoria almost every evening. Physical energy level isn't yet there, not gonna lie, but I'm told that mental energy comes before physical energy from other people following this approach, which I can verify seems to be the case.

What led you to a place where so much could be eaten without weight gain? More brown fat? What supplements did/do you take?

 

[Amazoniac]

Try B2 + folic acid together spaced throughout the day. Always annoyed by the cold extremities despite food intake. B2 + folic acid sealed the deal now they are warm constantly.

Yeh when in doubt, just take more B-vitamins lmao. Figure out the real cause? Nah screw that, just pop those Bs.. because it works.

+1

When PTH is high metabolism is less efficient and blood sugar is used disproportionately rapidly for a given level of activity leading to excess adrenaline/cortisol.

I think Dr. Peat would recommend lots of calcium + vitamin D to suppress PTH.

It should increase the temperature, but (as you know) for killcium to be deposited properly it needs phosate, yet a prolonged elevation of PTH leads to its excretion. One of the inconvenients of killcium carbonate is that you can't solubilize it without dealing with alkalinization. Therefore such suggestion is obtaining a lot of killcium when phosate is possibly out of proportion, while alkalinizing the body (deposition) and getting plenty of venom D. The sharp appearance of plain killcium in circulation will be taxing on the wasteful excitatory state, after the all it takes energy to move killcium to where it should be. Suppression of PTH is alright as long as it's not turning the person into the marble statue.

It's curious that heavier clothing doesn't solve cold extremities, isn't it? Why would it not when there's sufficient coverage? A yogurt that has just been prepared and wrapped with an insulating layer should conserve the heat for a good while; a person (along with the conservation) will be generating more. It has to be dissipating somehow, otherwise it would not make sense to overheat where you don't need at the expense of extremities. Sweating should be counterproductive, hence the advice of taking off clothes in case you has to cross a river in the wild. If you become a chamber, the expect'd distribution to prevent overheating would be to warm up extremities again. What's going on?

 

[Lilac]

Even when I was a child, my feet were cold. I wore socks to bed. In the years before I found Ray Peat, my feet would be icicles soon after lying down to go to sleep. So maybe a lifetime of hypothyroidism, and a parathyroid problem, too, later in life?

I never found one food that warmed me up consistently. But after following Ray's advice for a couple of years, I don't have cold feet, and I rarely use my collection of sweaters and robes. I think eating a lot and gaining weight were important factors. Luckily, my weight gain seems to have topped out at about 20 pounds. I wish I could have healed myself without the weight gain. I wish I could lose the 20 without a hit to my metabolism. I don't know if that goal will happen. If I had to bet, I would bet no.

 

[redsun]

Yeh when in doubt, just take more B-vitamins lmao. Figure out the real cause? Nah screw that, just pop those Bs.. because it works.

You got me

 

[lampofred]

Yeh when in doubt, just take more B-vitamins lmao. Figure out the real cause? Nah screw that, just pop those Bs.. because it works.


It should increase the temperature, but (as you know) for killcium to be deposited properly it needs phosate, yet a prolonged elevation of PTH leads to its excretion. One of the inconvenients of killcium carbonate is that you can't solubilize it without dealing with alkalinization. Therefore such suggestion is obtaining a lot of killcium when phosate is possibly out of proportion, while alkalinizing the body (deposition) and getting plenty of venom D. The sharp appearance of plain killcium in circulation will be taxing on the wasteful excitatory state, after the all it takes energy to move killcium to where it should be. Suppression of PTH is alright as long as it's not turning the person into the marble statue.

It's curious that heavier clothing doesn't solve cold extremities, isn't it? Why would it not when there's sufficient coverage? A yogurt that has just been prepared and wrapped with an insulating layer should conserve the heat for a good while; a person (along with the conservation) will be generating more. It has to be dissipating somehow, otherwise it would not make sense to overheat where you don't need at the expense of extremities. Sweating should be counterproductive, hence the advice of taking off clothes in case you has to cross a river in the wild. If you become a chamber, the expect'd distribution to prevent overheating would be to warm up extremities again. What's going on?

PTH is tricky because it can be a vicious loop to get out of. The higher your phosphate is, the more calcium/Vitamin D you need but the higher your phosphate is, the more damaging calcium/Vitamin D will be if you suddenly increase them in the diet. I think coffee helps to break out of the loop though because of how it increases metabolic efficiency, the more coffee you drink the higher doses of calcium/vitamin D you will be able to handle until you stabilize at a lower PTH level and no longer need the coffee.

And high doses of vitamin K will help to reverse the mild calcification that will inadvertently happen, even if you are making sure to drink lots of coffee.

 

[baccheion]

PTH is tricky because it can be a vicious loop to get out of. The higher your phosphate is, the more calcium/Vitamin D you need but the higher your phosphate is, the more damaging calcium/Vitamin D will be if you suddenly increase them in the diet. I think coffee helps to break out of the loop though because of how it increases metabolic efficiency, the more coffee you drink the higher doses of calcium/vitamin D you will be able to handle until you stabilize at a lower PTH level and no longer need the coffee.

And high doses of vitamin K will help to reverse the mild calcification that will inadvertently happen, even if you are making sure to drink lots of coffee.

What about magnesium and K2? Magnesium counters calcium and can also lower PTH.

 

[thomas00]

Along with me feeling like absolute crap, it always amazes me when people say different foods warm them. My feet are frozen often. No matter the socks, blankets or whatever I have on, they are like an icicle. No food has ever come close to warming them up.

hypothyroidism can't be solved with diet, for the most part

 

[lampofred]

What about magnesium and K2? Magnesium counters calcium and can also lower PTH.

I'm guessing that's a big part of why coffee is helpful for getting out of the bad loop, RP says it's one of the most effective things for raising magnesium. He also said magnesium retention has to do a lot more with the state of your metabolism than with absolute intake of the mineral.

Sometimes I'm just in shock/awe of RP at how he discovered all these things and figured out how they all interconnect... My metabolism would be utter garbage right now if I had to read the studies & do the experiments on my own, without him giving the distilled info.

 

[boris]

@iLoveSugar I think you already know, it is like thomas00 said. Getting out of hypothyroidism for good will probably require thyroid supplementation. The diet will support the treatment and make sure thyroid does it's job properly, but it's hard to cure it with diet alone, especially in a suboptimal environment.

If you only want to do it with a doctors supervision like you mentionend in the other thread, you can print out Peats information and resources and try to convince your doctor to prescribe it to you.

 

[Amazoniac]

PTH is tricky because it can be a vicious loop to get out of. The higher your phosphate is, the more calcium/Vitamin D you need but the higher your phosphate is, the more damaging calcium/Vitamin D will be if you suddenly increase them in the diet. I think coffee helps to break out of the loop though because of how it increases metabolic efficiency, the more coffee you drink the higher doses of calcium/vitamin D you will be able to handle until you stabilize at a lower PTH level and no longer need the coffee.

And high doses of vitamin K will help to reverse the mild calcification that will inadvertently happen, even if you are making sure to drink lots of coffee.

Indeed. A cavern is that a chronic elevation of PTH will stimulate bone dissolution, releasing killcium and phosate, yet if the diet isn't providing enough killcium, the body will try to retain it while getting rid of phosate (as one of its functions). Provided that the balancing systems are still operating right, I'm not aware of phosate accumulation in an usable pool that could mix with what's coming from diet to be deposited on bone.

Imbalanced meals are a concern, leaving the body in a complicated situation (the opposite of our concern: not being able to deposit for lack of killcium), but the body deals with the mess and moves on. In other words, you can't make up for the past by going heavier on killcium, adjustments took place to the extent that was possible and what went wrong can't be currently fixed this way.

In kidney disease people are in a different position because phosate excretion decreases, so a continuous increase in killcium while attempting to lower phosate is beneficial.

In case the person wishes to increase killcium without phosphorus (because killcium phosate should be fine), I would avoid chronic bolus dosing of killcium carbonate for the sake of warming up, better to keep it at lower doses at a time and try to supplement in meals with greater phosate content. Organic acids salts of killcium do not impose the alkalinization, the ligand (whose adsorbption tends to be nearly complete as opposed to killcium) can be metabolized in such way but also put to other uses like synthesis of fatty compounds, in the meantime serving to prevent killcium precipitation.

 

[postman]

@waldenpond

Yes, my gut and digestion didn't improve until I vastly increased caloric intake.

No matter what I did - restrict food groups (pufa, wheat, dairy, meat, etc), restrict calories, take supplements, NONE of that worked. In fact my digestion was getting worse and worse until I was basically only consuming juice, and finally I hit rock bottom.

There is all sorts of ridiculous strategies here that are way too complicated, and don't even work except in edge cases, and even at that, most of them have to take those supplements for life.

I just increased my caloric intake to godlike levels. Slowly my issues seem to be resolving one by one. Digestion has never been better. And I take zero supplements. I have zero anxiety, and I usually have mild to even large amounts of euphoria in the evenings.

On days I've had close to 10,000 calories (not a typo), my euphoria is so high that I'm laughing at EVERYTHING. If that's not a sign of a high metabolic rate I dunno what is =)

What kind of foods are you eating? Just all kinds of things? I think a lot of people here have tried Matt Stones recommendation of just eating as much as possible and not caring about what you're eating, without success. He doesn't seem to believe in it anymore either.

 

[iLoveSugar]

A couple things from my foggy mind. Sorry, I had a very stressful surgery today and I dont really do well recovering from anesthesia. I had a mass on my left tonsil and a mass behind my nasal divider on the right side, both of which were removed and sent for pathology. I'm foggy as hell, but just a few things:

- I've been eating recklessly and putting on all sorts of weight that has led to other issues (painful feet, painful shins, breathing issues, big gut, etc). I think RP is basically saying that I need to get my metabolism up or I will continue to eat, even on a caloric deficit diet.

- I am very restricted with what I eat. I'm only 34 and have already been hospitalized many times in life, and had 8 colonoscopies. So many foods make me bleed and give me tremendous pain.

- I've tried all sorts of diets, lots of milk, no milk, sugar, no sugar, very basic diets, etc.

 

[Jing]

Meanwhile, I'm over here consuming 6-9,000 calories a day and losing weight. The very amusing thing is the more I eat the more I lose.

Are you sure you just don't have a really good metabolism lol? I couldn't imagine losing weight on that many calories, I was eating 4000 calories for awhile and my belly was just getting too big so recently I've dropped down to max 2300 calories to try lose the fat . I have lot some weight but can't notice a difference yet.

I'm sceptical you even can lose weight on that much, thinking about powerlifters they eat a ***t ton of food but they don't lose weight.

 

[boris]

Are you sure you just don't have a really good metabolism lol? I couldn't imagine losing weight on that many calories, I was eating 4000 calories for awhile and my belly was just getting too big so recently I've dropped down to max 2300 calories to try lose the fat . I have lot some weight but can't notice a difference yet.

I'm sceptical you even can lose weight on that much, thinking about powerlifters they eat a ***t ton of food but they don't lose weight.

Hypothyroidism has many different compensatory mechanisms and malfunctions in people. Some peoples bodies downregulate all functions and try to store as much as possible so they gain a lot of weight even when eating a tiny amount of calories. Other people can't metabolize all the nutrients from the food they eat. Ray Peat ate 8000 calories on a working day back when he was hypometabolic, after supplementing thyroid and raising his metabolism he only needed half of that.

@iLoveSugar
Hypothyroidism also means your cells are in a state of degeneration and can't produce enough energy to start the regenerative processes and produce the protective hormones. It will be hard to heal anything if you don't fix your metabolism.

 

[aquaman]

What led you to a place where so much could be eaten without weight gain? More brown fat? What supplements did/do you take?

in previous posts he’s said he’s very overweight

 

[Jing]

Ray Peat ate 8000 calories on a working day back when he was hypometabolic, after supplementing thyroid and raising his metabolism he only needed half of that.

Doesn't really make sense, hypo should mean you gain weight with less calories, thyroid supplements should mean you can eat more without gaining weight and make you burn more calories .

 

[boris]

You should read the articles here : www.raypeat.com