Hi Steve and Chanamo!

I agree with both of you, in that your plans have worked out well for you. I am never saying that what happened to me will happen to anyone else, and I also said that too much estrogen might be one of the causes of the polyps. (They were uterine polyps, btw, not ovarian, if that makes any difference, I don't know)

Body fat also produces estrogen (or causes higher estrogen, something like that), and being so overweight, I also considered that that was one of the causes. I don't know and probably never will.

I still eat tofu once in a while (I never really loved it anyway), and I know another fellow (back in NJ, where I used to live) who was a body builder, and he showed me what he ate every day - all it was was white rice and vegetables! And he was built like a brick house!

Also, at the time when all this happened, I had just turned 50 years old. A lot of my friends are on synthetic thyroid, and I wonder if it just doesn't get like 'burned out' with age.

I am never implying that a vegetarian diet was the cause of my health problems, I just thought it might be, because that was the only thing I did differently, and I had been healthy up till then. It could have been just age creeping up on me, and it was just cooincidental. Also, I had been working very hard that previous year, and maybe that just overtaxed my thyroid.

As far as implementing the vegetarian diet, I tried to get adequate protein, and I found a chart that listed various foods and their amino acid components and suggested what to eat with what to make a complete protein. The diet itself was probably relatively low carb (or at least low GI/GL), with lots of veggies, beans, nuts, and brown rice, barley, oats, etc., not too much pasta, and my weight was a lot lower then. I thought I would be the healthiest 50 year old on the block! (My cholesterol had dropped from 220 to 164! It was great in that respect!)

I will probably never know the exact causes of the polyps or the thyroid, but I just wanted to share my experience, in case it might help someone else.

The bottom line is that everyone has to follow a plan that works best for them, and keep trying different things until they find what makes them be and feel the healthiest.

I feel, live and let live, and I never want to impose my plan on anyone. I just share my story here, as does everyone else. Take what you like and leave the rest.

Also, if you look back to the original post on this thread, I was responding to that question.