My body is a mess - euthyroid sick syndrome?
I'm not sure if this is in the right place or not but I will start here:
For some history, I was here once before and lost 70 lbs on low-carb (25-50 g/day) . Life happened and I gained it all back by about 2 years later.
Since that time I've been sort of half-azzed low carb - always watching them and trying not to go beserk, with occasional benders of way too many carbs for too long. Bad, I know.
My weight has been mostly holding steady at 240 (I am 5'9").
Just after New Years this year I decided to go back and try to dump the weight again once and for all, starting out at 20 g a day .
I FEEL LIKE CRAP since I did that. Shakes, tachycardia, brain fog, water retention, high blood pressure (am on a low dose of Losartan for it now), low body temperature (96-97), shedding hair, weight not budging (lost 2 lbs of water but thats back now), insomnia at night, hoarse voice.
My thyroid was tested - my TSH is in the normal range at 1.44. Doc refuses to test further as "your thyroid is fine".
I had a catscan of my head for an unrelated issue and I have no nodules there.
I felt so bad I even went to the urgent care last week feeling like I was going to collapse. Everything was fine there too (EKG and bloodwork). Diagnosis = "fatigue".
A compounding factor has been that I have been chronically iron deficient for the last 5 years because of a bleeding hiatal hernia, which I am on PPIs for (I hate them but its that or that nasty surgery where they wrap your stomach around itself and I'm not prepared for that yet).
My blood counts are currently fine but I AM low on ferritin and I am working on that with iron pills. So that is a factor but not the whole story.
Yes, I am eating enough (1800-2200 cal/day), yes I am eating enough fat (most of it), yes my electrolytes are ok as I have been drinking Zero carb electrolyte drinks and not sparing the salt on my food despite the blood pressure.
After feeling this bad for nearly 2 months I caved this week and started adding carbs back in - not a ton but up to 15/g per meal for a total of about 60 per day.
My temp has gone up a bit, the blood pressure is going down some and the brain fog is better but the insomnia is still there and I've gained two pounds.
I read that you need carbs to convert T4-T3 , and I have a strong feeling that I am exceedingly short on the active thyroid hormone (because all my symptoms look like hypothyroid even though my TSH is fine) , and when I eat carbs it starts converting better and the symptoms improve, for a little while .
And when I'm too low carb the brain seems to run out of glucose and the sympathetic nervous system cranks itself up, dumps adrenalin into me and my bp goes up and I can't sleep and start to shake.
And whats really bizarre is that I was RAVENOUS on the 20 g carbs a day but now am no longer starving now that I boosted the carbs up. I was constantly snacking with the carbs that low as I was hungry 2 hours after bacon and eggs (completely opposite to how it was when I first started low carb 7 years or so ago). Adding a half cup of oatmeal (14 g carbs) to that bacon and eggs now keeps me not-hungry for 5 hrs or so.
And for the record, when I lost all the weight on Atkins the first time I never really adapted to it all that well, I just toughed it out. I had the same shakes and brain fog that time for nearly the full 4 months that I was on it but not the blood pressure issue (which honestly has been down right scary this time - 160/100 when its bad).
So NOW what the hell do I do? It looks like I cant tolerate keto anymore but I cant lose weight any other way, or couldn't in the past.
This has got to be more than just the Keto Flu because it never goes away , but I can't try to just tough it out because I cant be walking around with stroke-level blood pressure on 3 hours of sleep for months on end.
I'm at the point where I dont even care about the weight, I just dont want to feel like brain-dead dung anymore.
My regular doctor is utterly useless, so i have an appointment at a naturopath on Monday .
Has anyone had problems like this? Any ideas?
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