Surrogates For Thyroid Hormone

superhuman

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I asked RP about niacinamide when trying to loose weight. This is his answer

"RP: In a moderate amount, such as 150 mg/day, it will reduce the stress and help the liver to excrete some fatty acids."

So i think both niacinamide and aspirin are great supplements when trying to loose fat and clean the liver
 

superhuman

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from FPS:

It’s beneficial. I suspect that the role aspirin plays depends upon the immediate state of the organism.

The increased cellular energy effects (bioenergetic), anti-estrogen, and PUFA-protective properties make it ideal for long-term health management and body composition changes. The lipolytic nature of aspirin (or thyroid) occurs during times of stability and low energy demands rather than during the high energy demands of stress.

Inhibition of lipolysis by aspirin (or niacinamide) during duress is helpful because it’s the release of PUFA from the tissue during the high-energy demands of stress that keep the metabolic rate down by interfering with the thyroid and glucose oxidation, raising estrogen, and increasing inflammation (prostaglandins).
 
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haidut said:
I think my slightly elevated liver enzymes were the result of exhaustive exercise and muscle damage. Only my AST was elevated and I was told that it is actually used as a marker for muscle damage from overtraining, including damage to the heart muscle in heart attacks!
Anyways, I think my problems with metabolizing sugar were due to years of low-carb Paleo diet and "aerobic" exercise. Then then I switched to the Peat diet I piled on some weight like many other people here. Then my doctor asked me lose weight, which I never have a problem doing through exercise, but it seemed to make my sugar/insulin resistance worse due to burdening the liver even more. So, I stopped the running and started taking caffeine and K2 which normalized AST, lowered the other enzymes by 40%-50% and now I seem to be able to eat sugar without getting a sugar crash or storing as fat. My blood glucose levels also went down and my blood pressure normalized as well. Blood pressure was not high before but it would shoot high after not eating for a while, most likely due to adrenalin and cortisol. Now it is fairly stable.
Not sure what else I can add, but liver health seems to be crucial to handling sugar and I think it also affects thyroid. You can have a perfectly good thyroid producing T4 and if the live is not converting it into T3 then you have an issue no matter how much supplemental NDT you take. Also, with burdened liver the sugar you are loading up with hopes of converting more T4 into T3 will likely fatten up the liver instead. So, get liver working well and estrogen / sugar should not be an issue any more.

I understand you favour caffeine partly because of its astounding positive effects and partly because you've had problems with T3. Have you come across anything that points to T3 having a similar effect however?

I have problems with caffeine but not with T3.

The only thing I've found is a study done on mice that reversed NAFLD using T3:

To investigate whether T3 could also reverse fully established fatty liver, rats were fed a CMD diet for 10 wk and then cofed T3 for 1 wk. Coadministration of T3 resulted in a complete regression of liver steatosis associated with a decrease of lipid peroxidation, cyclooxygenase-2 expression, and activation of phospho-STAT3 and phospho-SAPK/JNK.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18434432
 
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cantstoppeating said:
haidut said:
I think my slightly elevated liver enzymes were the result of exhaustive exercise and muscle damage. Only my AST was elevated and I was told that it is actually used as a marker for muscle damage from overtraining, including damage to the heart muscle in heart attacks!
Anyways, I think my problems with metabolizing sugar were due to years of low-carb Paleo diet and "aerobic" exercise. Then then I switched to the Peat diet I piled on some weight like many other people here. Then my doctor asked me lose weight, which I never have a problem doing through exercise, but it seemed to make my sugar/insulin resistance worse due to burdening the liver even more. So, I stopped the running and started taking caffeine and K2 which normalized AST, lowered the other enzymes by 40%-50% and now I seem to be able to eat sugar without getting a sugar crash or storing as fat. My blood glucose levels also went down and my blood pressure normalized as well. Blood pressure was not high before but it would shoot high after not eating for a while, most likely due to adrenalin and cortisol. Now it is fairly stable.
Not sure what else I can add, but liver health seems to be crucial to handling sugar and I think it also affects thyroid. You can have a perfectly good thyroid producing T4 and if the live is not converting it into T3 then you have an issue no matter how much supplemental NDT you take. Also, with burdened liver the sugar you are loading up with hopes of converting more T4 into T3 will likely fatten up the liver instead. So, get liver working well and estrogen / sugar should not be an issue any more.

I understand you favour caffeine partly because of its astounding positive effects and partly because you've had problems with T3. Have you come across anything that points to T3 having a similar effect however?

I have problems with caffeine but not with T3.

The only thing I've found is a study done on mice that reversed NAFLD using T3:

To investigate whether T3 could also reverse fully established fatty liver, rats were fed a CMD diet for 10 wk and then cofed T3 for 1 wk. Coadministration of T3 resulted in a complete regression of liver steatosis associated with a decrease of lipid peroxidation, cyclooxygenase-2 expression, and activation of phospho-STAT3 and phospho-SAPK/JNK.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18434432


If you are producing enough T4 then I don't think it is justified to take thyroid supplement since the issue seems to be conversion into T3, which is almost entirely dependent on liver health and somewhat on muscle mass. So, if T3 makes you feel fine and your T4 is low then it's probably OK. But if your thyroid is making enough T4 I see no reason why you should inhibit it by taking T3. A thyroid that has been inhibited by taking T3 sometimes can take months to recover into producing normal amounts of T4 and while it is recovering TSH will likely become very high. On the other hand, I would not take pure T4 either since if liver is not converting it into T3 you are making the situation worse. I guess what I am saying is that there is a valid reason for supplementing with thyroid but if the issue lies somewhere else down the pathways like conversion of T4 into T3 then a person should focus on fixing that issue rather than loading up on T4/T3 combo just to make themselves feel better.
 

tara

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haidut said:
If you are producing enough T4 then I don't think it is justified to take thyroid supplement since the issue seems to be conversion into T3, which is almost entirely dependent on liver health and somewhat on muscle mass. So, if T3 makes you feel fine and your T4 is low then it's probably OK. But if your thyroid is making enough T4 I see no reason why you should inhibit it by taking T3. A thyroid that has been inhibited by taking T3 sometimes can take months to recover into producing normal amounts of T4 and while it is recovering TSH will likely become very high. On the other hand, I would not take pure T4 either since if liver is not converting it into T3 you are making the situation worse. I guess what I am saying is that there is a valid reason for supplementing with thyroid but if the issue lies somewhere else down the pathways like conversion of T4 into T3 then a person should focus on fixing that issue rather than loading up on T4/T3 combo just to make themselves feel better.

This makes sense to me, for people producing enough T4. But if TSH is above 2, that probably means insufficient T4 production, right? So in this situation, thyroid supplement might make more sense than extra caffeine, which could lower T4 even further?
 
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tara said:
haidut said:
If you are producing enough T4 then I don't think it is justified to take thyroid supplement since the issue seems to be conversion into T3, which is almost entirely dependent on liver health and somewhat on muscle mass. So, if T3 makes you feel fine and your T4 is low then it's probably OK. But if your thyroid is making enough T4 I see no reason why you should inhibit it by taking T3. A thyroid that has been inhibited by taking T3 sometimes can take months to recover into producing normal amounts of T4 and while it is recovering TSH will likely become very high. On the other hand, I would not take pure T4 either since if liver is not converting it into T3 you are making the situation worse. I guess what I am saying is that there is a valid reason for supplementing with thyroid but if the issue lies somewhere else down the pathways like conversion of T4 into T3 then a person should focus on fixing that issue rather than loading up on T4/T3 combo just to make themselves feel better.

This makes sense to me, for people producing enough T4. But if TSH is above 2, that probably means insufficient T4 production, right? So in this situation, thyroid supplement might make more sense than extra caffeine, which could lower T4 even further?

Yeah, I agree. All I am saying is that I think people need to be more careful when experimenting with thyroid so they don't end up more hypothyroid than when they started. I see several people complaining of this happening to them and it took them months to recover.
 

tara

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haidut said:
Yeah, I agree. All I am saying is that I think people need to be more careful when experimenting with thyroid so they don't end up more hypothyroid than when they started. I see several people complaining of this happening to them and it took them months to recover.

Yes, this makes sense to me.
 
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cantstoppeating said:
...

I have problems with caffeine but not with T3.

The only thing I've found is a study done on mice that reversed NAFLD using T3:

To investigate whether T3 could also reverse fully established fatty liver, rats were fed a CMD diet for 10 wk and then cofed T3 for 1 wk. Coadministration of T3 resulted in a complete regression of liver steatosis associated with a decrease of lipid peroxidation, cyclooxygenase-2 expression, and activation of phospho-STAT3 and phospho-SAPK/JNK.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18434432

As an update to my previous inability to handle caffeine, I've been experimenting with 200mg caffeine combined with 330mg of l-theanine (maintaining a 3:5 ratio between caffeine and l-theanine as described in this study) and have noticed no adverse effects. I can now handle caffeine comfortably which is perfect since I'm using it doses of 800mg+ to mimic DNP's uncoupling effects.
 

Bluebell

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haidut said:
I don't use much caffeine right now aside from what I get from 2-3 cups of coffee. I stopped feeling the effects of larger dosages (800mg+) so I took that to mean the liver has flushed its fat.

Haidut, I was wondering why you stopped the aspirin + niacinamide + caffeine combo? Because you felt so amazing on it at first. Did it just stop making you feel good?

And the same questions for the rest of the people that reported great effects - Did you stop taking the combo? Is it not giving the same effects any more?
 

Peata

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I stopped taking it because it only made me hungry and have headaches. I thought I had the proper food foundation back then, but now I'm not so sure. Anyway, I was also afraid it might hinder weight loss, and I'm still not clear on that. I do occasionally take aspirin in the form of Alka Seltzer though. Adding - I drink coffee daily, no problems with it.
 

Filip1993

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I'm still taking coffee+aspirin every day and will probably do it for the rest of my life. I have dropped niacinamide since I don't like taking too many supplements and didn't really notice any effects from taking it.
 
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Bluebell said:
haidut said:
I don't use much caffeine right now aside from what I get from 2-3 cups of coffee. I stopped feeling the effects of larger dosages (800mg+) so I took that to mean the liver has flushed its fat.

Haidut, I was wondering why you stopped the aspirin + niacinamide + caffeine combo? Because you felt so amazing on it at first. Did it just stop making you feel good?

And the same questions for the rest of the people that reported great effects - Did you stop taking the combo? Is it not giving the same effects any more?

I needed to lose weight and I thought that niacinamide and aspirin were hindering it. Now that I have lost the extra weight I do take aspirin as per Peat's recommendations (every couple of days or so).
 

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cantstoppeating said:
As an update to my previous inability to handle caffeine, I've been experimenting with 200mg caffeine combined with 330mg of l-theanine (maintaining a 3:5 ratio between caffeine and l-theanine as described in this study) and have noticed no adverse effects. I can now handle caffeine comfortably which is perfect since I'm using it doses of 800mg+ to mimic DNP's uncoupling effects.

Did you notice any particular effect so far? It's interesting that one can handle large doses of caffeine by just combining with L-theanine, but I wonder about the benefits. I'd be interested to know how it compares to other thyroid like agents such as aspirin and thyroid supplements.
 

Bluebell

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Thanks for the replies.

I've been taking 50mg caffeine x2, in addition to coffee. I just started it very recently. I got really good clean energy from it, much more than from coffee for some reason. I was wondering about whether the effects will go down over time for the same dose as I get used to it.

Right now I'm also taking aspirin 320mg x 4 or even 6 a day. It helps with pain & generally makes me feel better. I also want to lose about 14 pounds but I decided to go with feeling good as the priority for now, while keeping my calories at 2500 and exercising. Seems like I am dropping a little weight.

Thinking about adding niacinamide twice a day too.
 
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jyb said:
cantstoppeating said:
As an update to my previous inability to handle caffeine, I've been experimenting with 200mg caffeine combined with 330mg of l-theanine (maintaining a 3:5 ratio between caffeine and l-theanine as described in this study) and have noticed no adverse effects. I can now handle caffeine comfortably which is perfect since I'm using it doses of 800mg+ to mimic DNP's uncoupling effects.

Did you notice any particular effect so far? It's interesting that one can handle large doses of caffeine by just combining with L-theanine, but I wonder about the benefits. I'd be interested to know how it compares to other thyroid like agents such as aspirin and thyroid supplements.

Nothing in particular, just the standard effect from caffeine i.e. mild euphoria/go-get-em mood, increased temp and pulse. I feel fine with about 800mg of caffeine + l-theanine a day, any more than that and start getting what seems like nerve pain i.e. mild pain in my shoulder down to my arm, stiff neck, knee pain. My guess is that any more than 800mg, for me, activates stress hormones.
 

Parsifal

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Haven't read the whole thread but for people with congenital hypothyroidism (myxoedema, low body temps and hearth pulse, etc), would it replace totally the benefits of a true thyroid supplement?
 

TeslaFan

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If the word "thyroid" is replaced with the word "magnesium" in Ray Peat's writings, most of it would still be true.
 

tara

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Parsifal said:
post 110523 Haven't read the whole thread but for people with congenital hypothyroidism (myxoedema, low body temps and hearth pulse, etc), would it replace totally the benefits of a true thyroid supplement?
Are you speculating that your hypothyroid trouble is genetically determined? Seems to be explainable by environmental factors after conception.
 
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Parsifal

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tara said:
post 110601
Parsifal said:
post 110523 Haven't read the whole thread but for people with congenital hypothyroidism (myxoedema, low body temps and hearth pulse, etc), would it replace totally the benefits of a true thyroid supplement?
Are you speculating that your hypothyroid trouble is genetically determined? Seems to be explainable by environmental factors after conception.
I would say epigenetically determined because my mother and grandmother both have huge hypothyroid symptoms and I was hypothyroid right from birth. But you may be right, I'm not a genetic determinist, still have a lot to study in that field.
 
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