InChristAlone
Member
Here is my back story:
I had just had a baby when I began to seriously follow Ray and was breastfeeding both my 3.5 yrs old and my 2nd. He was extremely fussy. I had been doing the WAPF thing during his pregnancy and had nausea and acid reflux all the way til delivery. But he was otherwise healthy and strong (despite the lack of sleeping due to wanting to nurse 24/7 for two yrs straight) and I owed that to making sure I did get protein and good fats. And lots of sugars towards the end. Of course this confirmed for me that this stuff works! So I started on the journey of boosting my thyroid and metabolism.
There was a seemless transition between WAPF and Ray Peat as I was doing raw milk, butter, eggs, you know all the so called traditional foods. But the Ray Peat stuff made me super lazy about it. Now instead of baking my own sourdough bread I could just have milk and OJ! And I stopped consuming 'gut irritants' like whole grains and beans and of course now had a license to not eat vegetables. And now soda was like medicine lol. I grew up addicted to soda. Horrible horrible mistake. I have three important chewing teeth gone thanks to all the sugars and acids. Calcium, vitamin A nor K2 or D cured it. It was mostly due to lack of dental hygiene because I thought fluoride was toxic and had many skewed beliefs surrounding teeth thanks to Weston A Price (drinking fluoride is toxic but I now use Dr Ellie's system).
I think the biggest change was realizing what I had been doing was not working back in 2016 when I had a reoccurrence of panic attacks after trying to drink coffee again. I was also supplementing with retinyl palmitate every week or so, and then switched to dessicated liver leading up to my crash. I began using high dose vitamin C and cyproheptadine every single night (I had taken it off and on for a yr). And no caffeine! It was enough to give me the energy we needed to get our house repaired, so we could sell it. It had mold. The mold is definitely part of my story. But I don't focus on it because I still have problems despite being out of there for 6 yrs. Right before my crash I developed an itchy anus. It was so bad I was scratching til I bled at night. I thought fungal, so I treated it that way many times but nothing ever worked and the skin turned into some kind of eczema that has never left, but has spread up my crack and I have a small dry patch on my eyelid as well.
In the middle of 2018 Matt Stone found Grant Genereux who believes vitamin A is a poison. He eliminated all of it from his diet and reversed kidney disease and severe eczema. So I stopped consuming liver and any added vitamin A. That was a huge change for me. I thought vitamin A was necessary for steroid production, for good teeth (ha!) (my WAPF baby has horrible teeth too), for good eyesight and liver was a super food. I am waiting to see if Grant ever loses his eyesight. So far 9 yrs in he is close to zero serum retinol and his eyesight is great. Have we been duped all these years?! I guess we won't know until more try it out. I think most of the studies done are confirmation bias. When in fact the reason for problems is due to malnutrition, protein or zinc deficiency. No study has ever been done as far as I know on well fed people. Its's always some crazy diet like chicken nuggets and bread for 10 yrs. Of course Grants diet isn't zero vitamin A as that's impossible, so if it is needed to prevent blindness then he's getting enough in the bison meat. I do think meat is an essential component of doing a low vit a diet correctly. This interests me greatly. Nothing has been more controversial. Even the carnivore diet isn't as controversial because they still think vitamin A is a vitamin and many are consuming liver.
Unfortunately, I have not seen any benefits with my skin going lowish vitamin A for the last several yrs. I still eat butter and ice cream on occasion and was eating plenty of cheese as well. I have now cut down on all of that. I also dropped OJ finally. I think the cause is mostly sludgy bile for me. Leaky gut. SIBO. Possibly still fungal from living in mold and having a high sugar diet. And I think I seriously messed myself up by not eating fiber on the Ray Peat diet. I didn't do the raw carrot salad because it honestly just tastes toxic to me. Carrots are full of beta-carotone. And I was biased against fiber too because I have had IBS-C since I was a kid and too much fiber is my trigger. I now believe it's due to toxic bile. The fiber causes a bile dump. Going so low fiber for so many yrs only made it worse. They give SIBO to animals by blocking their bile ducts.
I live in a place with high UV and this summer I got into native wildflower gardening so I was in my yard pulling weeds by hand for hours a day. I didn't see any benefit with my skin or sleep, but I think it did have positive effects on my mood and energy levels. I tanned pretty well so I guess I have plenty of copper despite high dose vitamin C for 7 yrs (I think it actually protects copper from oxidizing).
I am not bashing those who did recover their health by simply using a thyroid supp. I am so happy they found the magic bullet. I don't believe I have a bad thyroid, though my liver may be suffering. I used 1 grain dessicated thyroid for a yr back when I had my second child and wasn't monitoring labs I ended up burnt out severely, this was when I wasn't getting enough sleep and breastfeeding around the clock. I didn't know I was burning myself out until it was too late. By that time I had a temp of 98.8 and pulse of 110 most of the time. Near constant anxiety and adrenaline. I was so sensitive to adrenaline I couldn't watch a movie without a panic attack. It was hell. That lasted for yrs until I just focused on eating food and sleeping and not boosting thyroid with caffeine and sugar. That was probably the biggest mistake I made with the Ray Peat stuff. You can't burn the candle at both ends! I also used progest-e from 2014-2018, it regularly caused pounding heart at night so I went off.
Improvements over the last 1.5 yrs since I was gone from the forum: I have way more energy, I don't have much anxiety, I am able to process emotions better, and my allergies are mostly gone (I might still sneeze when grass pollen comes back in my yard), I think it's due to using the betaine HCL with meat meals (trimethylglycine) which was recommended to me a few yrs ago. Methylation is clearly important! So is good digestion.
Symptoms:
Needing to use acids to digest bigger meals
Waking up a lot at night around my period, particularly at the liver crash time of 3 am (cypro used to help me with that)
Headaches
Inability to eat much fiber without completely binding up my digestion and causing hypothyroid symptoms
Eczema, sick of the itch in my buttcrack
IBS cramping with whole grains, nuts and beans
I still take a small amount of vitamin C, trialing niacin, using coffee enemas daily, and trying to add black beans to my diet which isn't going well. Keep going back to ice cream for relief of symptoms.
Will be getting my yearly CBC and cholesterol panel along with a vit A blood test next week. I know that won't tell me much, but I'm not going to spend a bunch of money chasing labs.
I had just had a baby when I began to seriously follow Ray and was breastfeeding both my 3.5 yrs old and my 2nd. He was extremely fussy. I had been doing the WAPF thing during his pregnancy and had nausea and acid reflux all the way til delivery. But he was otherwise healthy and strong (despite the lack of sleeping due to wanting to nurse 24/7 for two yrs straight) and I owed that to making sure I did get protein and good fats. And lots of sugars towards the end. Of course this confirmed for me that this stuff works! So I started on the journey of boosting my thyroid and metabolism.
There was a seemless transition between WAPF and Ray Peat as I was doing raw milk, butter, eggs, you know all the so called traditional foods. But the Ray Peat stuff made me super lazy about it. Now instead of baking my own sourdough bread I could just have milk and OJ! And I stopped consuming 'gut irritants' like whole grains and beans and of course now had a license to not eat vegetables. And now soda was like medicine lol. I grew up addicted to soda. Horrible horrible mistake. I have three important chewing teeth gone thanks to all the sugars and acids. Calcium, vitamin A nor K2 or D cured it. It was mostly due to lack of dental hygiene because I thought fluoride was toxic and had many skewed beliefs surrounding teeth thanks to Weston A Price (drinking fluoride is toxic but I now use Dr Ellie's system).
I think the biggest change was realizing what I had been doing was not working back in 2016 when I had a reoccurrence of panic attacks after trying to drink coffee again. I was also supplementing with retinyl palmitate every week or so, and then switched to dessicated liver leading up to my crash. I began using high dose vitamin C and cyproheptadine every single night (I had taken it off and on for a yr). And no caffeine! It was enough to give me the energy we needed to get our house repaired, so we could sell it. It had mold. The mold is definitely part of my story. But I don't focus on it because I still have problems despite being out of there for 6 yrs. Right before my crash I developed an itchy anus. It was so bad I was scratching til I bled at night. I thought fungal, so I treated it that way many times but nothing ever worked and the skin turned into some kind of eczema that has never left, but has spread up my crack and I have a small dry patch on my eyelid as well.
In the middle of 2018 Matt Stone found Grant Genereux who believes vitamin A is a poison. He eliminated all of it from his diet and reversed kidney disease and severe eczema. So I stopped consuming liver and any added vitamin A. That was a huge change for me. I thought vitamin A was necessary for steroid production, for good teeth (ha!) (my WAPF baby has horrible teeth too), for good eyesight and liver was a super food. I am waiting to see if Grant ever loses his eyesight. So far 9 yrs in he is close to zero serum retinol and his eyesight is great. Have we been duped all these years?! I guess we won't know until more try it out. I think most of the studies done are confirmation bias. When in fact the reason for problems is due to malnutrition, protein or zinc deficiency. No study has ever been done as far as I know on well fed people. Its's always some crazy diet like chicken nuggets and bread for 10 yrs. Of course Grants diet isn't zero vitamin A as that's impossible, so if it is needed to prevent blindness then he's getting enough in the bison meat. I do think meat is an essential component of doing a low vit a diet correctly. This interests me greatly. Nothing has been more controversial. Even the carnivore diet isn't as controversial because they still think vitamin A is a vitamin and many are consuming liver.
Unfortunately, I have not seen any benefits with my skin going lowish vitamin A for the last several yrs. I still eat butter and ice cream on occasion and was eating plenty of cheese as well. I have now cut down on all of that. I also dropped OJ finally. I think the cause is mostly sludgy bile for me. Leaky gut. SIBO. Possibly still fungal from living in mold and having a high sugar diet. And I think I seriously messed myself up by not eating fiber on the Ray Peat diet. I didn't do the raw carrot salad because it honestly just tastes toxic to me. Carrots are full of beta-carotone. And I was biased against fiber too because I have had IBS-C since I was a kid and too much fiber is my trigger. I now believe it's due to toxic bile. The fiber causes a bile dump. Going so low fiber for so many yrs only made it worse. They give SIBO to animals by blocking their bile ducts.
I live in a place with high UV and this summer I got into native wildflower gardening so I was in my yard pulling weeds by hand for hours a day. I didn't see any benefit with my skin or sleep, but I think it did have positive effects on my mood and energy levels. I tanned pretty well so I guess I have plenty of copper despite high dose vitamin C for 7 yrs (I think it actually protects copper from oxidizing).
I am not bashing those who did recover their health by simply using a thyroid supp. I am so happy they found the magic bullet. I don't believe I have a bad thyroid, though my liver may be suffering. I used 1 grain dessicated thyroid for a yr back when I had my second child and wasn't monitoring labs I ended up burnt out severely, this was when I wasn't getting enough sleep and breastfeeding around the clock. I didn't know I was burning myself out until it was too late. By that time I had a temp of 98.8 and pulse of 110 most of the time. Near constant anxiety and adrenaline. I was so sensitive to adrenaline I couldn't watch a movie without a panic attack. It was hell. That lasted for yrs until I just focused on eating food and sleeping and not boosting thyroid with caffeine and sugar. That was probably the biggest mistake I made with the Ray Peat stuff. You can't burn the candle at both ends! I also used progest-e from 2014-2018, it regularly caused pounding heart at night so I went off.
Improvements over the last 1.5 yrs since I was gone from the forum: I have way more energy, I don't have much anxiety, I am able to process emotions better, and my allergies are mostly gone (I might still sneeze when grass pollen comes back in my yard), I think it's due to using the betaine HCL with meat meals (trimethylglycine) which was recommended to me a few yrs ago. Methylation is clearly important! So is good digestion.
Symptoms:
Needing to use acids to digest bigger meals
Waking up a lot at night around my period, particularly at the liver crash time of 3 am (cypro used to help me with that)
Headaches
Inability to eat much fiber without completely binding up my digestion and causing hypothyroid symptoms
Eczema, sick of the itch in my buttcrack
IBS cramping with whole grains, nuts and beans
I still take a small amount of vitamin C, trialing niacin, using coffee enemas daily, and trying to add black beans to my diet which isn't going well. Keep going back to ice cream for relief of symptoms.
Will be getting my yearly CBC and cholesterol panel along with a vit A blood test next week. I know that won't tell me much, but I'm not going to spend a bunch of money chasing labs.
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