Let's Talk About Thyroid -- My Personal Story (Pt. 3/3...for now)

The first post in this 3-part series explored thyroid function in general, including what the different thyroid-related hormones are, the signs & symptoms of hypo- and hyperthyroidism, and what should be included when you have your thyroid hormones measured. (Reminder: TSH and T4 are not enough!) In part 2, we looked at the potential effects of low carb diets on thyroid function. As promised, here in part 3, we’ll do a deep-dive into my own personal experience with hypothyroidism. 

We’ll get into the gory details soon. But as Sam Beckett said in the final episode of one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Quantum Leap, “Instead of ‘once upon a time,’ let’s start with the happy ending.’” I started thyroid medication in January 2017 and here’s what’s happened since then: I’ve lost 17 pounds. My chronic constipation is gone. My hair no longer falls out in alarming clumps daily. My severe, longstanding, and unremitting depression is 89% gone.

This medication has been nothing short of life-changing for me. I still have a ways to go in several respects, but let’s just say that the reason I’m writing about thyroid at all is because, having gone through this experience, it is now almost like a religious mission to me to provide whatever information and help I can to people who are currently, right this minute, feeling as awful as I felt until recently. And I kind of hate saying that. I am as far from a religious (and low carb) zealot as a person can be. And yet, I now feel a compulsion to educate people so they can help themselves. As passionate as I am about the myriad benefits of low carb, and as much as I sometimes want to grab people at the grocery store and talk some sense into them, that is now far eclipsed by my fervor for proper thyroid assessment and treatment.

There’s so much to cover, I don’t know where to start. If you come to my blog for sensible information on low carb and ketogenic diets and don’t give two hoots (or even one hoot) about my thyroid odyssey, skip the rest of this post and wait until next time, when I’ll be back to posting my usual fare. On the other hand, if you suspect you have a thyroid problem, or you know you do and your medication is not getting you where you want to be, this is for you, my dears. You’re not alone.

Back to Basics (a.k.a. Things I Didn't Learn in Nutrition School)

Hey all!

Didja catch the news story not long ago about the kid who subsisted solely on graham crackers and chocolate milk, and whose doctors ran a kazillion expensive and fancy-schmancy tests only to finally, finally figure out this poor little guy had scurvy? SCURVY, for crissake. In the United States of America, circa 2016. This didn’t happen on some British Royal Navy ship 200 years ago, where all the sailors started having bleeding gums and a ship’s doctor realized lemon and lime juice seemed to put a quick & easy end to that. It happened here. Now. (All I know is, as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, the second I saw “bleeding gums” in the headline, I said to myself, “scurvy.” I read the whole article only to confirm what I already knew.) I can only imagine if this boy’s diet was so absolutely devoid of vitamin C to the point that he landed in the hospital with freaking scurvy, that there are probably several other essential nutrients he’s deficient in. I would love to write a scathing post about child nutrition someday, but that will have to wait. (Plus, since I don’t actually have any children, I sort of figure I’d be attacked like crazy for daring to even suggest that I have thoughts on the matter, so I’ll hold off for now. [But really, what does that even matter, anyway? What makes someone an “expert?” There are lots of male OB/GYNs. They don’t even have vaginas! But I digress…])

Since we’re on the topic of the most basic, obvious, fundamental aspects of nutrition, let’s talk about something I am an expert on: ME!

Funny story:

I am a proud carrier of O-negative blood, which makes me a “universal donor.” This means that anyone with any other blood type can receive my blood and be good to go. (Unfortunately, the reverse is not true: O-negatives can receive only O- blood. Heaven forbid I were in some sort of accident and needed blood, stat, if I got any kind of A, B, or AB blood, I would quickly face some seriously fatal juju. As an O-, my blood is in serious demand in blood banks, hospitals, and vampire drive-thrus. (Also, mosquitos. Those things love me. My blood must taste something FREAKING DELICIOUS to them, because if I’m outside for more than four seconds without being covered in a protective coating of industrial-strength DEET, I will receive no less than 8 to 10 mosquito bites. But I digress. Again.)

My point: I am a regular blood donor at the American Red Cross. As someone who is not routinely engaged in heroic acts nor generally doing anything positive whatsoever for mankind (unless ranting on my blog counts), donating blood is probably the single most important and satisfying thing I do. (Plus, as they say, “The life you save could be your own.”)

SO: I went to donate a blood several weeks ago and I got rejected because my hemoglobin was too low. (Not hemoglobin A1c, just regular hemoglobin.) This was the second time this has happened this year, and probably the third or fourth time overall. According to the Mayo Clinic, the “normal” range for hemoglobin in adult women is 12.0 to 15.5 g/dL. In order to be eligible to donate blood, the American Red Cross requires that you be at or above 12.5 g/dL. During this attempt to donate, the first reading was 12.0. They ran it a second time, taking the blood from a different finger, because, well, the human body is just funny like that sometimes. The second reading was even lower: 11.5.

Seriously?

Seriously?   

Me?

Low hemoglobin?

Um, it’s not like I’m a vegan or anything. I eat plenty of red meat. I don’t eat a ton of it, but I certainly don’t avoid it. So I was pretty stunned when I left the office with all my blood still inside me, and without my free cookies and juice. (KIDDING, of course. I usually just take water and then leave. No need to load up on liquid glucose when you’re pretty well fat-adapted. [See here.]) As far as I knew, I had no signs or symptoms of low hemoglobin, but considering it had happened a few times before, something had to be up, and I wanted to know what that something was.

Chronic Constipation (a.k.a. The Poop Post!)

Since I write a lot about nutrition and health, I mostly talk about what we put into our bodies: food, beverages, supplements, etc. Today, let’s change gears a bit and talk about what comes out of our bodies. Or, rather, what doesn’t come out. Yes, that’s right: we’re talkin’ chronic constipation. It’s the poop post!

Well, not really all the poop. Just constipation. It is beyond the scope of one lil’ post to cover all the details of what does or does not happen in the small and large intestines (and the gallbladder!) that could result in diarrhea, gas and bloating, steatorrhea (“fatty stools,” a.k.a. science-speak for oily poop), black or tar-colored stool, or even clay-colored/whitish stool. (Yikes!) If you want to learn more about different kinds of stool and what they mean, start with the Bristol stool chart. You can find modified versions of it in two of my favorite health books: Paul Chek’s How to Eat, Move and Be Healthy, and Diane Sanfilippo’s Practical Paleo, in which she paid homage to Chek’s version, which was the inspiration for her own.

We’re going to leave all the other poop stuff aside and just talk constipation. I have to assume that if you’re reading this, you experience chronic constipation or want to help someone who does. So there’s no point in me going on about diarrhea or “ideal stools” anyway. If you had either of those, you wouldn’t be wasting your time with this blog post. Unless, of course, you just enjoy my writing and would read anything I write (in which case, thanks! [And you obviously have good taste]), OR, you have an odd fascination with difficult defecation, even when you, yourself, don’t experience it (in which case…well, perhaps I’m not the blogger for you; there are lots of other people who specialize in freaky fetishes, hehheh).

Better than 80/20 - Supplements

Hello again!

Welcome to the first of three posts wherein I detail what I’ve been doing differently that has me feeling better than I have in years. As promised last time, today’s installment: supplements.

I call myself a nutritionist. So why am I starting off talking about pills, and not food? Well, things started getting a little better when I cleaned up my diet, but what has really made a difference—a huge one—is my new supplement regimen. (And yes, the word we want for this is regimen. Not regiment, which is a military unit, and not regime, which is a political entity [usually a dictatorship], as in, “the Pinochet regime.” [Okay, actually, that last one can be used in the same context, but it’s weird. Don’t do it.] Regimen. Regimen. But none of my intelligent readers is saying “regiment” or “regime” in comments and on forums like the great grammatically unwashed, right? Right. The same way you never talk about how “your” not “loosing” weight.)

I am eating a bit differently than I was back when I posted about 80/20 being a step up from where I was, but in my somewhat educated opinion, I think the supplements are having the biggest impact. Well, no, not exactly. I think the changes to my diet and movement are having a big impact on my body, while the supplements are working their magic in my head.

So back to the pills: Sure, real, whole, unprocessed foods are generally the way we want to go, but when you’re already doing pretty well in that area and you feel like things are still a little off, it’s entirely possible that your healthy diet is falling short somewhere. This is especially true in 2014 America, where we’re chronically stressed, chronically worried, chronically sleep-deficient, and chronically joy-deficient. Sometimes our bodies—and even more so, our minds—need a little somethin’-somethin’ that even the best diet either isn’t providing at all, or isn’t providing enough of.  

When this is the case, there is no shame in supplementation. No shame. Better to admit that you need a little help than to resign yourself to feeling less-than-optimal because you think your sauerkraut, bone broth, and cod liver oil “should” be getting you all the way there. News flash: sometimes they don’t.

Being that the way I’ve been feeling for a few weeks now is like night and day from where I was a while back, clearly my body—and mind!—are now getting something—probably multiple somethings—that they were desperate for.

Digestion for (not-so) Dummies: Large Intestine, Pt.2

The large intestine. We meet again. As I mentioned last time, even though the large intestine is much shorter than the small intestine, apparently it’s still big enough to warrant more than one post. So here we are, tackling a few more issues before we’re officially done with digestion. Actually, we were pretty close to being done with digestion before we even got to the large intestine. Like I explained in the previous post, almost no further breakdown and absorption of nutrients occurs in the large intestine. Those are really the jobs of the stomach and small intestine. But there is some food breakdown here in the colon. We’ll get to that in a bit. Before we do, we’ve got some unfinished business on constipation from last week. (Get it? Unfinished business! Indeed, I’ll try to pepper part 2 of large intestine function with a little humor the way I did part 1. ‘Cuz let’s face it: poop jokes never get old. And with that in mind, let’s get started with “number two on number two!”)

Digestion for (not-so) Dummies: Large Intestine Pt.1

We’ve come to the end today! Literally and figuratively! Ha! You can tell right from the start here this post is going to be full of colon-related double entendre. (You're welcome.)

Yes, here we are, finally, at the last stop on our long train journey north to south through digestion and the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. If you’re just tuning in, you might want to check out the previous entries in this series. We’ve covered the major organs and glands involved in breaking down the foods we eat into the amino acids, fatty acids, and simple sugars our bodies can absorb and do something with, and some of the snags that can happen along the way when those organs and glands aren’t performing at their best.

I ended the most recent post by saying that the colon, or large intestine, is large and in charge. And I said I would explain. So here goes. (Note: I will use the terms colon and large intestine interchangeably.)