Heart Defect/Damage & Cytomel - Advice Needed

[cmdshiftdel]

Hello all,

I've been taking Cytomel for months now, in a dose of half a 25 mcg pill per day. Out of no where, about a week ago I started getting a racing, pounding heart at times, lightheadedness, and almost felt like I would faint.

The first time it happened I thought I had too much wine with dinner. It was horrible, but it passed. The 2nd time, it was while just standing around. The 3rd time it was in the morning while cooking. After the 3rd time (this all happened within a time period of about a week) I went to see a cardiologist who found a heart murmur & thinks I have Mitral Valve Prolapse (echocardiogram scheduled to confirm).

Did the Cytomel cause this? Has Ray Peat talked about this? I was settling into a regular Peat groove and did not expect this to happen.

Do you think Cytomel supplementation is absolutely necessary to continue seeing improvements? Are there safer alternatives? I bought a bottle of Cynoplus but never really tried it and now I'm afraid to.

I am very likely going to be stopping the Cytomel supplementation altogether - has anyone else on here stopped T3 and if so what was it like? Did the positive benefits reverse or maintain?

 

[Shrimp]

How much magnesium do you get in your diet? Do you supplement it? I've read about magnesium helping MVP. Taking thyroid increases your nutrient requirements, and perhaps you aren't getting enough magnesium.

How are your temps/pulse overall? Did you have bloodwork indicating hypothyroid before taking the medication? It shouldn't be much of an issue to stop that small of a dose, but I would probably still taper it off instead of going off cold turkey if you do go that route.

 

[lindsay]

Every time I've tried to take cytomel for any length of time, I have ridiculous adrenaline sensitivities. So I never continue using it (I currently take 1/2 a Cynoplus pill divided into thirds throughout the day). I've heard that supplementing extra sugar helps with the adrenaline, but I just didn't want to go that route.

In echoing Shrimp, are you hypothyroid for sure (or do you have endocrine issues that warrant thyroid usage)? If not, then I would be careful dealing with trying to manage thyroid supplements on your own. It will drive up your nutrient requirements and T3 is especially more powerful, I think.

Additionally, someone on Peatarian had an issue involving the heart - here is the thread. He said magnesium seemed to help the Pleurisy:
http://peatarian.com/48053/pleurisy-fro ... 092#c48092

 

[tara]

I think Peat stopped using T3 only because he got heart symptoms (can't remember if it was a murmer or a flutter or what), which improved when he used T4 + T3.
Funny heart rhythms/misbehaviour I think is one of the reasons drs are scared of prescribing thyroid. Certainly was the one my GP mentioned when I tried to talk with her about it.
Don't know whether it would contribute to a mitral valve prolapse. You don't want one of those.
If your cardiologist went by hearing a murmer, he could be right, but might not be. Unfortunately, I think echocardiogram is quite invasive, but I don't know if there is another way to confirm or deny.

I think there may be problems with supplementing thyroid without eating enough protein etc to support it. Don't know if this could be related. I wonder whether heart valve damage could be one of the possible consequences of severe restrictive eating - not sure if this is you. If so, it could be that there's been damage for a while, and the T3 helped it show up.

 

[tara]

I don't know enough about thyroid dosing to advise, but I wonder whether in the short term, till you figure out more, whether you could take this as a sign to back off the T3 slightly. Did the disconcerting events happen close to taking T3? Are you taking a tiny dose often (eg 1mcg or less every hour or two), or a larger dose less frequently (eg 3-mcg x3)? T3 half- life is only a few hours. The body normally produces about 4mcg/hr. Tiny and frequent is likely to be less disruptive than a larger dose.

 

[cmdshiftdel]

Hi all - thanks for all the responses. I was diagnosed as low thyroid, not hypothyroid exactly but literally on the line, and high estrogen by bloodwork. I was never able to take small frequent doses - could never get the pill smaller than 1/4 size without it turning to dust. After taking it for months 1/4 at a time, I went to 1/2 at a time with no ill effects for weeks. Then this.

I looked into MVP and it looks like maybe I've had this all my life, at least from symptom perspective. Interestingly enough, cold hands & feet are one of the side effects of MVP - might explain why T3 never warmed them up and why I could never get my temps up consistently. I'm thinking the T3 may have aggravated a pre-existing condition.

I'm just not sure how to proceed, at least as far as supplementation. I'm getting more tests on Thursday. For now I have backed off the T3 cold turkey, nothing to report yet as far as withdrawal.

As for magnesium, I have been supplementing with 300-400 mg a day for a month now after Cronometer revealed that no matter what I ate I was always short. Has done wonders for my headaches, but this still happened. I also found an article recommending supplementation with magnesium for MVP. It also recommended Acetyl l carnitine, CoQ10, Thiamin & Niacin, and B6.

I've been taking the Mag, Coq10, Thiamin & Niacin - but I'll have to do more research on the carnitine & B6. If I remember correctly - carnitine isn't very Peat.

 

[tara]

If a leaky valve is reducing the amount of blood the heart can pump, that could account for a lot of problems. I don't know if there is any way to restore such a valve naturally without surgery.
It seems possible that the high T3 doses could have triggered a reaction. If you are not feeling worse for stopping it, that seems like a reasonable approach. If you start missing it, i think it would be much safer to try to get smaller doses - even if it means just getting a fraction of a powdered tablet.
Best of luck - let us know how your tests go if you want.

 

[tara]

Hi Isabella83,

Did you see this quote north found? It mentions mitral valve prolapse?
viewtopic.php?f=56&t=5368#p63408

Btw, after reading the replies here about myxedema etc i read some stuff about it and found this in the Ray Peat 1996 interview thread:
"It's been known most of this century that in areas where they eat beans as a staple of the diet, such as in China, many types of beans, including soybeans, but in the Andes region, just ordinary beans are the major cause of hypothyroidism, because of various anti-thyroid factors in beans, lentils, and certain nuts -- peanuts, for example.

In eastern Europe, the cabbage and turnip staple diets were major causes of cretinism and chronic goiter and myxedema. Myxedema is the name for one type of hypothyroidism that develops in adults, in which mucousy material forms in the tissues, makes the tongue thicken, the skin gets coarse and inelastic -- but variations of myxedema can cause a lot of strange diseases that are put down to genetic causes more often than hypothyroidism, but you can cure them, in sometimes a week or two, with the right dose of thyroid.

For example, certain types of mitral valve prolapses are just from an accumulation of a mucous-like material in the valve, making it thick and inefficient. Glaucoma in low thyroid involves a swelling and overproduction and increased thickness of the fluids in the eyeball. Some types of Graves' disease, which most doctors think of as hyperthyroidism -- but hypothyroidism, which causes the pituitary to become overactive -- hypothyroidism very predictably tends to cause bulging eyes, because the thyroid stimulating hormone from the pituitary causes a mucousy material to form in the area behind the eyeball, causing a protrusion of the eyeball.

The mucousy materials that are overproduced can also cause blood vessel inefficiency and rigidity, and contributes to things like varicose veins. When this material gets in the joints, it causes cartilage deformities. The old textbooks used to show teenagers with deformed joints that caused the same deviation of the bones -- at the elbow joint especially, and the knee joint especially, with knock knees for example -- but in old people you see the fingers deviating to one side, because the cartilage is getting deformed.

The right balance of thyroid and the youth associated hormones -- progesterone and pregnenolone, and to some extent, DHEA -- will rebalance the production of these mucous-like molecules -- the glycoproteins and mucopolysaccharides, they're called -- and in just a week or two, you can often correct the deformity in a permanent way, so that the joint functions without pain or distortion." - RP

 

[cmdshiftdel]

Hi all - Thanks for all the replies. I have undergone extensive blood testing and went off thyroid for a little while. My findings:

1. It appears possible that my palpitations were from a daily supplement of Potassium Chloride or the combination of this and too much thyroid in the form of T3. I was supplementing with Potassium because Cronometer kept saying I was severely under the daily recommended dose. I have since stopped this.
2. After going off thyroid for a little while before taking blood tests (I didn't want my doctor to freak out), thyroid still came in "normal" even though several things had happened:

* I had become severely depressed, or I should say that the severe depression I remember struggling with all of my life until I went on thyroid returned.
* I became quite lethargic, didn't even want to get out of bed. Uncertain whether this was from depression or fatigue or both.

I was able to fight off the depression by going back on thyroid, and I only needed a fraction of the dose I was taking before to feel better. Before the MVP diagnosis I was taking about 12.5 mcg - 18.75 mcg/day (1/2 to 3/4 pill). After the diagnosis, I started taking only about 6.25 mcg/day (1/4 pill) of T3 and the depression was under control in a few days.

I had a few days where I had still had some crazy palpitations, but I noticed a connection between these days and more than usual caffeine intake. I have switched to Half Caff coffee and try not to have more than 200mg caffeine per day from my coffees, preferring to stick to around 100 instead. This has done the trick, for now.

The most startling find is how much T3 affected my mood. I never really put 2 & 2 together on this - I always thought that I overcame my depression with "wisdom". It appears it was actually the T3 I was supplementing with for other reasons that actually fought the depression and won.

Tara - Interesting quote! I certainly feel better on T3 than off, its good to know that I am likely helping the condition rather than making it worse. For awhile there I was devastated that maybe I had done something drastically wrong by going on T3. I just need to watch the amount of T3 & caffeine & potassium I'm ingesting.

 

[tara]

Hi isabella,
Not sure if mitral valve is left or right side of heart, but this extract about serotonin from an interview transcript may be interesting?:

It’s a defensive chemical everywhere. It’s one of the primitive protective reactions, for example in the bowel it causes spasms that clean out the bowels. When you eat something poisonous, it causes diarrhoea and that’s protective, but in process if it keeps up too long, it increases serotonin, 95% of it being produced in the bowels, and only 3, 4, 5% in the organs, such as the brain, and if the irritation of the bowel keeps up very long, the circulation in the blood stream becomes a problem systemically and it will cause vascular spasms, vascular leakiness, inflammation, for example when you have prolonged irritation of the intestines, tumors begin to promote serotonin release, starting mainly in the appendix. The lower part of the bowel is where it is likely to be overproduced, and that systemic effect hits the right side of the heart, primarily, and then the reason it is worse for the right side of the heart is that the lungs have the enzymes that destroy serotonin, so the platelets pick it up from the intestines in the blood stream and carry it to the lungs, where if it is working they can pretty much destroy all of the serotonin arriving in the lungs. If the lungs fail to detoxify it, then the whole body can be affected, but the right side is where it goes first, and it is pumped from the right side into the lungs. So the right side gets it in its crude form and then the rest of the body, if your lungs are efficient, the rest of the body has a much lower level.

viewtopic.php?f=73&t=5433