Hello I was reading some of the posts here a couple years back when I was curious about the work of Ray Peat, I also made this account but never posted anything. I chatted a little with XPlus and Charlie yesterday and decided to make a post today so here goes.
So I had this strange and horrible experience a couple years ago while going high carb low fat vegan for 4 months, I wrote about it back then on a forum called vegsource luckily because it would probably been hard to remember some things now otherwise.
So I'll just repost what I posted there 2 years ago along with link to the forums:
(read this if you want or scroll down to get to the point faster)
From: Illu
Subject: Very strange, testicles shrunk when I went vegan
Date: September 25, 2013 at 10:28 am PST
Ok this is very strange, I was told by some guy on a forum I
could ask Doug directly about this. I was hesitant at first
because this is very strange but he said Doug has probably
got questions in the past that were more weird so here goes.
The thing is I tried being a vegan high carber (811 style)
for only 4 months.
The shocking thing happened to me only 2 months in, my
testicles shrunk by around 50%, massive testosterone
decrease??? Not right nutrients to produce sperm???
Sexdrive also dropped dramatically, I’m 30 years old and was
in excellent health before I started and was eating pretty
low carb paleo.
Now I’ve heard of many stories of sexdrive dropping but I
haven’t heard really any story out there about testicles
shrinking so not sure what to think of this.
Also this happened so fast (2 months vegan, I quit vegan
after 4 monts), I transisioned into vegan from very high fat
low carb in just 2 weeks, maybe it was too agressive for the
body?
Could this have some link with women losing their period
when going vegan?
If talking about testicles shrinking most people would think
like steroids, had no idea this could happen just by doing a
little vegan experiment.
Now did the inclusion of starchy foods make matters worse?
I also started getting wrinkles on the palms of my hands and
started feeling depressed, depression is the only big health
challenge I've had in my life previous.
Then I fainted on 2 random occations and I was not even
standing up or doing anything particular that could explain
why this happened. Body temperature decreased, cold hands, I
always used to be a guy who tolerated cold weather really
well before.
I was eating massive amounts of fruit but was also eating
lots of rice with some lentils, potatoes, oat, grains, leafy
greens, veggies and stuff you know, for additional carb
sources.
I bought organic produce as much as possible, bananas, rice,
grains, vegetables,apples, oranges. Some foods like
different types of melon I could not find organic, dates I
could not find organic nor fresh so I bought dried. I did
not consume any soy products, mostly avoided wheat and
refined sugar.
I was drinking water when I woke up, usually half a litre, I
always was drinking water troughout the day, probably around
2-3 litres per day and at night if I woke up.
My sleep was at least 8 hours per night.
I was excersising, some walk/running in forest, weigths,
just basic stuff like 3-4x week but was cutting back on
excersise after 3 months because I felt weaker.
I had usually 3 big meals a day
Meal examples:
breakfast - 10 bananas or 15 date smoothie, sometimes 2-3
plates of oatmeal, corn, buckwheat porrige mix with berries
and ricemilk or oatmilk.
Lunch - 2-3 plates of rice with some red lentils blended in,
chickpeas on top with tomato sauce and sallad/veggies.
Sometimes I had potatoes instead with maybe broccoli, quinoa
blended with veggies. Sometimes fruit but I did not mix the
grains with fruits, only grains with veggies.
Dinner - Usually more fruit, maybe watermelon, peaches,
figs, mangoe, bananas, dates, maybe nuts occationally,
sometimes spelt bread with sallad and veggies.
I avoided coffee, which I had been drinking usually 2 cups a
day before, I avoided alcohol which I only used to consume
occationally before (maybe once every 2-3 months). I also
avoided any forms of drugs and cigarettes which I don't have
any habit of using in any case.
I was not on any type of medication, last time I had any
type of medication was over 2 years ago when I was on
sertralin (antidepressant) for only 2 weeks.
I'm thinking since I'm living in the north, and I've been
having meat and saturated fat in my diet for so long my body
is not able to adapt to being vegan.
I would like to hear your take on this Doug.
I mostly went vegan because I had become convinced in that
we humans look alot like herbivores and ethical reasons. I
also thought it makes sense this would be healthy also but
my body seems to disagree.
from: http://www.vegsource.com/talk/raw/messa ... 43661.html
So to put it simply my testicles shrunk while eating a hclf vegan diet and it happened only 2 months in, when it happened it happened in a very shocking way overnight after libido had already been very low for some time. I basically woke up during the night and my first thought in my head was like "I lost something" I went down my pants like if I knew, even though there was no pain or anything it was just a feeling something happened down there.
The decrease in size of my testes was kinda dramatic, it looked like near 50% to me and it can't be a good thing along with the other symptoms I had like libido decreasing from amazing (at 29 years old) to very low, feeling more and more depressed, fainting on 2 occations for no apparent reason, joints felt like they were starting to rub against each other (because no fat I guess).
Before this I was on a pretty low carb high fat omnivorous diet and was feeling better than I've ever felt at 29 years old and I was incredibly happy because not only was I totally pain free, my sleep was amazing, libido was consistently high and my anxiety depression was not only gone but I had this almost constant orgasmicly good feeling in my body.
Which brings me to the next interesting point, I had been trying to rise my serotonin levels with various foods like eating lots of cashew nuts which have lots of tryptofan which is the precursor to serotonin I heard. Interestingly I managed to get this amazing tingly feeling in my body, like I was high on something, exactly same feeling like when I was taking antidepressants like sertralin awhile back. Only now this was without that numbing libido decreasing feeling that I usually got from antidepressants, everything felt just amazing. I was in this state of pretty much constantly feeling great for like 3 months before I was stupid enough to start experimenting with the vegan low fat high carb diet.
Interestingly when I switched back to my previous eating habits this great pulsating feeling like if my body was lighting up with joy along with my libido was coming back only to spiral down to a horrible depression soon after. So I desperately tried different things before balancing out things a bit with some of Ray Peats weird tricks like sugar, milk, gelatin and finally getting a bit better sleep and libido back, I just haven't been able to get back to where I was at the end of 2012 though.
Anyways I would be very curious if some of the people here on these forums could give me some type of Peat view on what actually happened to me since it's very hard to find any info on something as dramatic like testicle shrinkage without looking for steroid stories.
Also the way I was feeling great on what probably was high serotonin for awhile was interesting but I have heard Peat say something about people briefly maybe feeling great on elevated stress hormones. Interestingly theres was also some study done recently in Sweden (where I live) at Uppsala University where they had come to the conclusion that people with anxiety and social phobia have high serotonin levels, which offcourse again contradicts the belief about serotonin being the feel good hormone.
So just looking for some info and perspective on things here since I see that there seems to be alot of people here with great knowledge and willingness to share knowledge and experiences.
So I had this strange and horrible experience a couple years ago while going high carb low fat vegan for 4 months, I wrote about it back then on a forum called vegsource luckily because it would probably been hard to remember some things now otherwise.
So I'll just repost what I posted there 2 years ago along with link to the forums:
(read this if you want or scroll down to get to the point faster)
From: Illu
Subject: Very strange, testicles shrunk when I went vegan
Date: September 25, 2013 at 10:28 am PST
Ok this is very strange, I was told by some guy on a forum I
could ask Doug directly about this. I was hesitant at first
because this is very strange but he said Doug has probably
got questions in the past that were more weird so here goes.
The thing is I tried being a vegan high carber (811 style)
for only 4 months.
The shocking thing happened to me only 2 months in, my
testicles shrunk by around 50%, massive testosterone
decrease??? Not right nutrients to produce sperm???
Sexdrive also dropped dramatically, I’m 30 years old and was
in excellent health before I started and was eating pretty
low carb paleo.
Now I’ve heard of many stories of sexdrive dropping but I
haven’t heard really any story out there about testicles
shrinking so not sure what to think of this.
Also this happened so fast (2 months vegan, I quit vegan
after 4 monts), I transisioned into vegan from very high fat
low carb in just 2 weeks, maybe it was too agressive for the
body?
Could this have some link with women losing their period
when going vegan?
If talking about testicles shrinking most people would think
like steroids, had no idea this could happen just by doing a
little vegan experiment.
Now did the inclusion of starchy foods make matters worse?
I also started getting wrinkles on the palms of my hands and
started feeling depressed, depression is the only big health
challenge I've had in my life previous.
Then I fainted on 2 random occations and I was not even
standing up or doing anything particular that could explain
why this happened. Body temperature decreased, cold hands, I
always used to be a guy who tolerated cold weather really
well before.
I was eating massive amounts of fruit but was also eating
lots of rice with some lentils, potatoes, oat, grains, leafy
greens, veggies and stuff you know, for additional carb
sources.
I bought organic produce as much as possible, bananas, rice,
grains, vegetables,apples, oranges. Some foods like
different types of melon I could not find organic, dates I
could not find organic nor fresh so I bought dried. I did
not consume any soy products, mostly avoided wheat and
refined sugar.
I was drinking water when I woke up, usually half a litre, I
always was drinking water troughout the day, probably around
2-3 litres per day and at night if I woke up.
My sleep was at least 8 hours per night.
I was excersising, some walk/running in forest, weigths,
just basic stuff like 3-4x week but was cutting back on
excersise after 3 months because I felt weaker.
I had usually 3 big meals a day
Meal examples:
breakfast - 10 bananas or 15 date smoothie, sometimes 2-3
plates of oatmeal, corn, buckwheat porrige mix with berries
and ricemilk or oatmilk.
Lunch - 2-3 plates of rice with some red lentils blended in,
chickpeas on top with tomato sauce and sallad/veggies.
Sometimes I had potatoes instead with maybe broccoli, quinoa
blended with veggies. Sometimes fruit but I did not mix the
grains with fruits, only grains with veggies.
Dinner - Usually more fruit, maybe watermelon, peaches,
figs, mangoe, bananas, dates, maybe nuts occationally,
sometimes spelt bread with sallad and veggies.
I avoided coffee, which I had been drinking usually 2 cups a
day before, I avoided alcohol which I only used to consume
occationally before (maybe once every 2-3 months). I also
avoided any forms of drugs and cigarettes which I don't have
any habit of using in any case.
I was not on any type of medication, last time I had any
type of medication was over 2 years ago when I was on
sertralin (antidepressant) for only 2 weeks.
I'm thinking since I'm living in the north, and I've been
having meat and saturated fat in my diet for so long my body
is not able to adapt to being vegan.
I would like to hear your take on this Doug.
I mostly went vegan because I had become convinced in that
we humans look alot like herbivores and ethical reasons. I
also thought it makes sense this would be healthy also but
my body seems to disagree.
from: http://www.vegsource.com/talk/raw/messa ... 43661.html
So to put it simply my testicles shrunk while eating a hclf vegan diet and it happened only 2 months in, when it happened it happened in a very shocking way overnight after libido had already been very low for some time. I basically woke up during the night and my first thought in my head was like "I lost something" I went down my pants like if I knew, even though there was no pain or anything it was just a feeling something happened down there.
The decrease in size of my testes was kinda dramatic, it looked like near 50% to me and it can't be a good thing along with the other symptoms I had like libido decreasing from amazing (at 29 years old) to very low, feeling more and more depressed, fainting on 2 occations for no apparent reason, joints felt like they were starting to rub against each other (because no fat I guess).
Before this I was on a pretty low carb high fat omnivorous diet and was feeling better than I've ever felt at 29 years old and I was incredibly happy because not only was I totally pain free, my sleep was amazing, libido was consistently high and my anxiety depression was not only gone but I had this almost constant orgasmicly good feeling in my body.
Which brings me to the next interesting point, I had been trying to rise my serotonin levels with various foods like eating lots of cashew nuts which have lots of tryptofan which is the precursor to serotonin I heard. Interestingly I managed to get this amazing tingly feeling in my body, like I was high on something, exactly same feeling like when I was taking antidepressants like sertralin awhile back. Only now this was without that numbing libido decreasing feeling that I usually got from antidepressants, everything felt just amazing. I was in this state of pretty much constantly feeling great for like 3 months before I was stupid enough to start experimenting with the vegan low fat high carb diet.
Interestingly when I switched back to my previous eating habits this great pulsating feeling like if my body was lighting up with joy along with my libido was coming back only to spiral down to a horrible depression soon after. So I desperately tried different things before balancing out things a bit with some of Ray Peats weird tricks like sugar, milk, gelatin and finally getting a bit better sleep and libido back, I just haven't been able to get back to where I was at the end of 2012 though.
Anyways I would be very curious if some of the people here on these forums could give me some type of Peat view on what actually happened to me since it's very hard to find any info on something as dramatic like testicle shrinkage without looking for steroid stories.
Also the way I was feeling great on what probably was high serotonin for awhile was interesting but I have heard Peat say something about people briefly maybe feeling great on elevated stress hormones. Interestingly theres was also some study done recently in Sweden (where I live) at Uppsala University where they had come to the conclusion that people with anxiety and social phobia have high serotonin levels, which offcourse again contradicts the belief about serotonin being the feel good hormone.
So just looking for some info and perspective on things here since I see that there seems to be alot of people here with great knowledge and willingness to share knowledge and experiences.
