Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help me?

[jb4566]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

The thing about peats work in my opinion is that it is a system that is designed to work together, rather than separately. If you just "add some peat" you will not see the full results, if you go all out peat (2:1 ratio milk to oj, shellfish, liver, eggs, thyroid, pregnenolone, etc..) you will have much better results.

 

[BigPapaChakra]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

I think that's fair to say. I'm currently going through a lot of his audio interviews and I've heard a lot of intriguing things. I don't quite understand how he can say iodine shouldn't be used, though. There are dozens of books on this, Dr. Brownstein is an expert on the iodine-thyroid connection, and many cancers and polyps and other odd problems have been cured by applying iodine. Fluoride, chlorine and bromine all displace iodine in the thyroid, so taking in iodine would detox you from these substances. Not saying I don't agree with Dr. Peat on other issues. I'm thinking of lowering my PUFA content drastically. Other figures in the evolutionary diet realm have recommended 4% or less of calories from PUFAs as well. This goes against what Dr. Kruse says since the o3's are protected by iodine, but I'm still thinking of not eating as much seafood. Maybe more along the lines of Paul Jaminet, 1-1.5lbs of fish a week, then see how I feel.

I'm really wondering if CO2/Sodium Bicarbonate can aid in some of the problems I still face. I can't lie and say that increasing my seafood consumption hasn't made me feel better - it has, and my skin seems to have a glow now as well, but regardless Dr. Peat is the ONLY person I've encountered making a case for CO2, and pregnenolone and progesterone. I don't think I'd need to supplement those since I'm only 18, but finding out how to increase my CO2 would be great.

 

[Rayser]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

Welcome to the forum, Blessedmamato3.

The symptoms you describe are almost textbook estrogen dominance and hypothyroidism. I recognize a lot of them and I can tell you that they are all (some easily) reversible.

First of all: The basal temperature - is that your temperature after waking up and before getting up? Because during the day it's most likely cortisol keeping your temperature up and only faltering after you ate sugar or salt or calcium. The important temperature is the one under your tongue (or armpit) after you wake up. Ideally the thermometer is on your night stand. You wake up, you take your temperature.

What I noticed immediately is that it seems you need more salt and calcium in your diet. I would not recommend whole milk, most people have problems with it, and I would not recommend yoghurt because for several reasons. Ray Peat recommends 1% milk. Maybe you want to try it? Have you ever tried eggshell powder for the gallstones? I know of several people who had gallstones which disappeared completely after using a teaspoon of powdered egg shells daily for a month. If you prefer milk you would need two litres a day. It would be good to use a few grams of baking soda several times a day, too. Have you ever tried bag breathing? There are many beneficial effects and a few times a day for a few minutes goes a long way.

I would try eating carrot salad with salt, vinegar and olive oil every evening about an hour after dinner. The fibers are anti-bacterial, anti-viral and absorb endotoxins in your stomach. By that they lower estrogen, prolactin and serotonin. Right before you go to bed I would try to drink 1% milk with honey (as much as you like) and some salt. You should sleep through the night then. You could also try some aspirin right before bed. All that will lower the stress hormones and keep your blood sugar up during the night. If you can, sleep with some incandescent lights shining on your feet. It will lower stress hormones, too.

I would suggest you focus on lowering estrogen and parathyroid hormone first. I would drink about a litre of fresh pressed orange juice a day (some people strain it, I don't) to lower estrogen. If you use a pinch of baking soda it will not cause any trouble. Also I would suggest using 500mg of aspirin a day. Make sure you dissolve it in water first. I helps to lower stress hormones. The same goes for vitamin B6. Ray Peat recommends 10mg. Have you been using niacinamid? I noticed the positive effects of 100mg a day immediately.

Don't forget to use enough sugar to keep liver function up. Only the liver can dispose of estrogen and it needs a normal blood sugar level in order to work.

I am pretty sure you have too little sodium in your diet. Try supplementing 1 tablespoon a day (you don't have to use it all at once) and make sure it doesn't contain fluoride or iodine. (I would NOT recommend using iodine. It works in many ways which are not fully known yet. Iodine caused hair loss for me and seriously messed up my thyroid by activating stored T4 all at once.) The salt will within a week make the edema better - you will notice that your fingers and toes get slimmer and your tongue will feel more normal.

I had never heard of thyroid Gold but I think it sounds good... Has anybody heard otherwise? I use NDT thiroyd with good results.

Milk, salt and aspirin will help your adrenals recover (you will notice you don't scare that easily anymore) and lower your parathyroid hormone. How much coconut oil (Ray Peat recommends the refined one and I agree) are you using? With that amount of calories you should be able to use at least 3 table spoons. When your thyroid gland works the way it's supposed to your calorie intake will normalize, too. Ray Peat had the same problem once. Somebody posted his answer on the forum.

You mention you eat beef. I suppose, since you haven't added gelatine to your diet yet, you have too much prolactin because of a high intake of tryptophan. I suggest you start to counter it with the other, more beneficial amino acids and make sure you add at least a table spoon of gelatine to every meal you eat. It will lower all kinds of inflammation. Also I would be very careful about the iron intake (excellent article by Ray Peat about Iron's Dangers on his homepage). Always drink coffee (with milk and sugar) or Coca-Cola when you eat meat or other iron rich foods (like oysters).
Have you been eating liver regularly? Or oysters? Both would be highly recommended at least once a week for several minerals and vitamins you might need.

Potatoes are a good source for protein and necessary for the production of progesterone. Have you considered supplementing natural progesterone? I suppose it would be helpful with many of your symptoms.

How were your pregnancies? Any changes you noticed during the pregnancies?

I recommend you try to avoid foods which block the activity of your thyroid gland (goitrogens) like beans and peas a.s.o.

 

[Dan W]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

To clear up any confusion: the above post was intended for another thread, but we left a copy here because it's been helpful to people.

BigPapaChakra, I'm not knowledgeable enough to address the iodine issue, but may I suggest just experimenting to test the predictive power of Peat's ideas vs Kruse's? I found such an experiment more revealing than years (sigh) of digging into studies. In my case, I got bloodwork that alarmed me while on a Perfect Health(ish) Diet. A trial of Peat's ideas dramatically improved it (along with some subjective metrics), suggesting to me that his model was useful, with or without supporting studies.

I think that's why some of us are suggesting an "all-in" approach: a unique thing about Peat is that he's working with a large, cohesive model rather than focusing on "what inputs are good for the body?"

Maybe Kruse has similar attributes, I don't mean this as an attack on him.

 

[Jenn]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

Broda Barnes discussed the thought process that incorrectly substituted thyroid supplementation with iodine.
raypeat.com/articles/articles/thyroid.shtml
raypeat.com/articles/articles/tissue-bound-estrogen.shtml
http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/thyroiditis.shtml
raypeat.com/articles/articles/hypothyroidism.shtml

As for eating more fish, you may be responding positively to the extra protein.

 

[BigPapaChakra]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

@Dan, thanks again for the great input. Last night I was listening to a lot of audio interviews with Dr. Peat and I believe I may start implementing smaller ideas first and seeing how I feel. I want to get blood work done soon to establish a baseline and get a blood glucose monitor as well as some other lil gadgets to quantify a lot of things for this experiment I planned on doing with Jiu-Jitsu. I think a nice VAP test (which can serve as a proxy for other things) would establish a baseline, then I can switch around different things and test again after 2-3 months. Ultimately, though, I think how I feel (mentally/physically/emotionally) and how I look (not necessarily muscle, but skin - do you have bags/dark circles/acne/skin tags) serves as a great marker for how a diet is working. As per Dr. Kruse Letpin Reset, where you eat primarily large meals spaced out by about 4 hours (or even skipping lunch), I was thinking about adding in 'lunch' of a raw carrot shaved with some sea salt and raw ACV and coconut oil and seeing if I feel real nice afterwards.

@Jenn: Thanks for all those links! I will look at them, are you saying "incorrectly substituted thyroid supplementation with iodine," as in she found/believes that one should just supplement with thyroid and that it is a false assumption that iodine can replace eating thyroid glands/supplementing with thyroid? I will read those articles and then look into the associated cites. I have not yet read any of Dr. Brownstein's books, but on Dr. Kruse' boards as well as Marks Daily Apple, there are these GIANT threads with hundreds of pages of replies. Their leading contributor is Grizz, the posts deal with iodine; many people there started supplementing and there are just hundreds of things that have been 'cured' so to speak - although some people did suffer massive detoxes from fluoride/bromine/etc. and have to supplement with other co-factors or do salt water flushes. If you don't mind: https://docs.google.com/document/d/139X ... U92rg/edit this user has a bunch of documents like this for various things such as Vitamin D and other topics.

Not posting any of that to argue with anyone, just to get the whole scope of different issues. Quite frankly, as the title of this post indicates, Dr. Peat and the various threads I've read here have blown my mind, caught my attention without a doubt. I think there are questions that need to be answered that are ignored in the 'paleosphere', which Danny Roddy/Cliff bring up, such as, why are fruitarians so lean if fructose makes people fat? Why are their teeth not falling out? Lot's of times I think studies showing negative effects of fructose are using it in isolation (not from fruit but an isolated source/HFCS) or in the face of massive PUFA intake, especially vegetable oils. I love the thoughts about CO2 and Sodium Bicarbonate, dairy in context (rather than blatantly avoiding it), etc. Hence why I think I can incorporate some ideas of peats while incorporating others from other people (cold showers/ice baths for Cold Thermogenesis, while also doing things to increase CO2).

Thanks for all the links and input, guys (and Jenn :) !

 

[4peatssake]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

Sorry, but I disagree with this.
RP recommends bag breathing to increase production of CO2.
It can be extremely stressful to try to focus on breathing less. It's like telling someone who has never meditated to sit still for 20 minutes and eliminate all thoughts.
Both are skills that take time and bag breathing is a useful tool to retrain oneself to breath correctly and increase production of CO2.
There are similar tools to help people learn to meditate and enter states of no mind.

I'm not sure that I agree that breath reduction can be stressful, challenging perhaps, although perhaps if someone has particularly low energy, the challenge might be experienced as a stress, though surely not anymore stressful than continuing hyperventilation and hypocapnia, if so then bag breathing might be a useful short-term tool.
The reason I favour conscious breath reduction over bag breathing is because it requires greater conscious attention to your own physiology, nervous system, and state of mind, I think this greater level of attention is itself therapeutic.

Ray Peat is not a fan of the idea of breathing less. He advocates rather a deliberate focusing on respiration using bag breathing.

When I first heard of Buteyko's ideas, I saw the systemic importance of carbon dioxide, but I wasn't much impressed by his idea of intentionally breathing less. If the hyperventilation is produced by anxiety, then a deliberate focussing on respiration can help to quiet the nerves. Knowing that hyperventilation can make a person faint, because loss of carbon dioxide causes blood vessels in the brain to constrict, I saw that additional carbon dioxide would increase circulation to the brain. This seemed like a neat system for directing the blood supply to the part of the brain that was more active, since that would be the part producing the most carbon dioxide.

Although it is easy to dismiss Buteyko's emphasis on the "Intentional Cessation of Deep Respiration" as a therapy, his work on the importance of carbon dioxide is sound.

Source

 

[pranarupa]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

I've read Stress and Water, but I remain convinced that intentional breath reduction is an incredibly useful technique, and superior to bag breathing.

Breath based practices are emphasised in almost every system of spiritual development, they require conscious attention, and this tends to enhance our ability to consciously inhabit aspects of of nervous system that the current culture still views as unconscious or automatic, I think this aligns with much of Ray Peat's general orientation.

Bag breathing, whilst requiring a decision to be made to bag breathe, is still relatively unconscious, when compared to the increased focus generated by intentional breath reduction.

Ray Peat is awesome, not infalible.

 

[4peatssake]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

I've read Stress and Water, but I remain convinced that intentional breath reduction is an incredibly useful technique, and superior to bag breathing.

Breath based practices are emphasised in almost every system of spiritual development, they require conscious attention, and this tends to enhance our ability to consciously inhabit aspects of of nervous system that the current culture still views as unconscious or automatic, I think this aligns with much of Ray Peat's general orientation.

Bag breathing, whilst requiring a decision to be made to bag breathe, is still relatively unconscious, when compared to the increased focus generated by intentional breath reduction.

Ray Peat is awesome, not infalible.

My post was not intended to carry on a disagreement with you, clearly we have differing viewpoints.

It was meant simply to clarify Ray Peat's opinion on the matter.

This is the Ray Peat forum.

 

[staytuned]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

@Dan, thanks again for the great input. Last night I was listening to a lot of audio interviews with Dr. Peat and I believe I may start implementing smaller ideas first and seeing how I feel. I want to get blood work done soon to establish a baseline and get a blood glucose monitor as well as some other lil gadgets to quantify a lot of things for this experiment I planned on doing with Jiu-Jitsu. I think a nice VAP test (which can serve as a proxy for other things) would establish a baseline, then I can switch around different things and test again after 2-3 months. Ultimately, though, I think how I feel (mentally/physically/emotionally) and how I look (not necessarily muscle, but skin - do you have bags/dark circles/acne/skin tags) serves as a great marker for how a diet is working. As per Dr. Kruse Letpin Reset, where you eat primarily large meals spaced out by about 4 hours (or even skipping lunch), I was thinking about adding in 'lunch' of a raw carrot shaved with some sea salt and raw ACV and coconut oil and seeing if I feel real nice afterwards.

@Jenn: Thanks for all those links! I will look at them, are you saying "incorrectly substituted thyroid supplementation with iodine," as in she found/believes that one should just supplement with thyroid and that it is a false assumption that iodine can replace eating thyroid glands/supplementing with thyroid? I will read those articles and then look into the associated cites. I have not yet read any of Dr. Brownstein's books, but on Dr. Kruse' boards as well as Marks Daily Apple, there are these GIANT threads with hundreds of pages of replies. Their leading contributor is Grizz, the posts deal with iodine; many people there started supplementing and there are just hundreds of things that have been 'cured' so to speak - although some people did suffer massive detoxes from fluoride/bromine/etc. and have to supplement with other co-factors or do salt water flushes. If you don't mind: https://docs.google.com/document/d/139X ... U92rg/edit this user has a bunch of documents like this for various things such as Vitamin D and other topics.

Not posting any of that to argue with anyone, just to get the whole scope of different issues. Quite frankly, as the title of this post indicates, Dr. Peat and the various threads I've read here have blown my mind, caught my attention without a doubt. I think there are questions that need to be answered that are ignored in the 'paleosphere', which Danny Roddy/Cliff bring up, such as, why are fruitarians so lean if fructose makes people fat? Why are their teeth not falling out? Lot's of times I think studies showing negative effects of fructose are using it in isolation (not from fruit but an isolated source/HFCS) or in the face of massive PUFA intake, especially vegetable oils. I love the thoughts about CO2 and Sodium Bicarbonate, dairy in context (rather than blatantly avoiding it), etc. Hence why I think I can incorporate some ideas of peats while incorporating others from other people (cold showers/ice baths for Cold Thermogenesis, while also doing things to increase CO2).

Thanks for all the links and input, guys (and Jenn :) !

Hey BigPapaChakra, curious if you adopted a Peat protocol and what came out of it? I just am coming off of 6 months following more of the bullet proof model after having some negative side effects and Peat seems to have a bit more credibility... also none of the recent internet-health gurus to surface in the last few years have seriously debunked Peat -- quite telling.

Thanks for sharing your quest here! :)

 

[charlie]

Re: Hello! You all just blew my mind...... how can this help

... Peat seems to have a bit more credibility... also none of the recent internet-health gurus to surface in the last few years have seriously debunked Peat -- quite telling.

Exactly. From what I am seeing it cant be done. He is brilliant.