Hello!
I'm just finding my way to Ray Peat's work via first a deep dive into the Autoimmune Paleo diet following recent discovery that I have lots of all three thyroid antibodies (TPO, TGab and TSI) and a hypervascularized inhomogeneous thyroid (would like to know more about this morphology, too). I have cracked my old college biochem book (never dreamed that would happen), but it's slow going and I could use a hand!
I have tons of questions but will start with just a few.
1. In spite of supposedly having "Grave's Disease" I've never felt particularly hyperthyroid and Ray's view on most hyper being hypo makes sense to me. In fact I refused to take Thymiazol in spite of 0.003 TSH and slightly high FT3 and FT4 since I felt so hypothyroid and didn't want to go further down that road. That said, just starting with temps and pulse and I do often have resting heart rate well over 100. Even mild exertion-- a few steps up at subway or even chopping mushrooms!-- puts me around 120+. Temps aren't especially low so far.
Can someone help me understand the cortisol/adrenalin governing metabolism and how this feels and what to do about what I'm guess are adrenalin symptoms?
2. main symptom (in addition to others for sure) is mega muscle weakness. like I get lactic acid muscle burn from brushing hair or emptying dishwasher. I'm sipping OJ all the time since clearly my liver isn't able to maintain my sugar well, but Ray talks so much about lactic acid and lactate. How can I regain even basic exercise tolerance and what is the meaning of omnipresent or easily appearing lactic acid? What's difference between la in blood and in muscle and elsewhere?
3. AIP Paleo people seem to present the diet working based on lowering immune stimulation via removing sensitive food items and keeping them out of bloodstream via leaky gut thereby lowering inflammation. But what I understand so far of the RP view (via Haidut on a generative energy podcast) is that by nixing sugar you get immune suppression via cortisol (like taking cortosone). But all these AIP people are supposedly working with functional doctors, doing functional labs and "managing stress." Wouldn't appearance of stress metabolism on functional labs make people think twice, i.e. are people doing these kind of diets really walking around with measurable stress control of metabolism (and how would this look according to functional labs-- how to interpret the day profile for cortisol for example? is it simply that there's too much of it?). Would you have to be in proper ketosis and how often to get into adrenalin/cortisol control? Is this itself maybe a kind of sliding scale depending on other variables and general metabolic health? Also, how could such a diet ever help someone with thyroid issues, even in short term? For me the first month of AIP was basically hell-- I developed what in retrospect I see was mega blood sugar issues including parched mouth and constant peeing (makes sense in light of how poorly my liver is able to handle life in general). Adding in a bit more sugar helped and cutting grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, nightshades, etc. definitely useful.
4. with a lot of hesitation I submitted to a thyroid scintigraphy (I think they used technetium-99m) and learned nothing I didn't know subjectively: that in spite of what visibly looks like "thyroid inferno" with all the extra blood supply it's basically working more or less OK (i.e. uptake was in normal to low range). I assume this constitutes ionizing radiation? Anyone know what have I done to my already beleaguered thyroid with the radiation?
Thanks much for thoughts!
I'm just finding my way to Ray Peat's work via first a deep dive into the Autoimmune Paleo diet following recent discovery that I have lots of all three thyroid antibodies (TPO, TGab and TSI) and a hypervascularized inhomogeneous thyroid (would like to know more about this morphology, too). I have cracked my old college biochem book (never dreamed that would happen), but it's slow going and I could use a hand!
I have tons of questions but will start with just a few.
1. In spite of supposedly having "Grave's Disease" I've never felt particularly hyperthyroid and Ray's view on most hyper being hypo makes sense to me. In fact I refused to take Thymiazol in spite of 0.003 TSH and slightly high FT3 and FT4 since I felt so hypothyroid and didn't want to go further down that road. That said, just starting with temps and pulse and I do often have resting heart rate well over 100. Even mild exertion-- a few steps up at subway or even chopping mushrooms!-- puts me around 120+. Temps aren't especially low so far.
Can someone help me understand the cortisol/adrenalin governing metabolism and how this feels and what to do about what I'm guess are adrenalin symptoms?
2. main symptom (in addition to others for sure) is mega muscle weakness. like I get lactic acid muscle burn from brushing hair or emptying dishwasher. I'm sipping OJ all the time since clearly my liver isn't able to maintain my sugar well, but Ray talks so much about lactic acid and lactate. How can I regain even basic exercise tolerance and what is the meaning of omnipresent or easily appearing lactic acid? What's difference between la in blood and in muscle and elsewhere?
3. AIP Paleo people seem to present the diet working based on lowering immune stimulation via removing sensitive food items and keeping them out of bloodstream via leaky gut thereby lowering inflammation. But what I understand so far of the RP view (via Haidut on a generative energy podcast) is that by nixing sugar you get immune suppression via cortisol (like taking cortosone). But all these AIP people are supposedly working with functional doctors, doing functional labs and "managing stress." Wouldn't appearance of stress metabolism on functional labs make people think twice, i.e. are people doing these kind of diets really walking around with measurable stress control of metabolism (and how would this look according to functional labs-- how to interpret the day profile for cortisol for example? is it simply that there's too much of it?). Would you have to be in proper ketosis and how often to get into adrenalin/cortisol control? Is this itself maybe a kind of sliding scale depending on other variables and general metabolic health? Also, how could such a diet ever help someone with thyroid issues, even in short term? For me the first month of AIP was basically hell-- I developed what in retrospect I see was mega blood sugar issues including parched mouth and constant peeing (makes sense in light of how poorly my liver is able to handle life in general). Adding in a bit more sugar helped and cutting grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, nightshades, etc. definitely useful.
4. with a lot of hesitation I submitted to a thyroid scintigraphy (I think they used technetium-99m) and learned nothing I didn't know subjectively: that in spite of what visibly looks like "thyroid inferno" with all the extra blood supply it's basically working more or less OK (i.e. uptake was in normal to low range). I assume this constitutes ionizing radiation? Anyone know what have I done to my already beleaguered thyroid with the radiation?
Thanks much for thoughts!
Last edited:
