Thank you from me too Lisa - for sharing this extremely helpful information. It will make a good bit of difference for us.

Wouldn't you know it, but my husband's thryoid is out of whack now after LC'ing for a couple of years. Your wise experience and hard-won knowledge is very important and useful, and I really appreciate reading your posts.

Originally Posted by Wyvrn

No, I don't think you can just dismiss it like that. Exercise can have a profound effect on multiple factors affecting thyroid hormone metabolism, especially on muscle and hepatic insulin resistance and adrenalin/cortisol. In combination with a low carb diet, high intensity exercise in small, infrequent doses can rapidly reverse muscle and hepatic insulin resistance via glycogen depletion, more than just a low-carb diet alone, without chronically elevating cortisol, which frequent, large amounts of low-moderate intensity exercise ("cardio" and high rep weight lifting) will do. Chronically elevated cortisol is another enemy of good endocrine functioning. I think it's very likely that this is a good part of the reason I've always gained weight, both muscle and fat with exercise, especially as I got older: I was working out too much, too often.

It may not work for you, because you are obviously a special case with your hypothermia, elevated cholesterol and unexplained weight gain. I understand your enthusiasm for having found a possible solution, I hope it works for you and for people in the same situation, and am interested to hear how it comes out, but endogenous hormones is a hammer I'm not willing to use on my system unless it's clear that I actually need to. In the absence of other signs and symptoms, simply being in a weight loss stall however long IMO doesn't indicate a problem of that magnitude.

I did not dismiss it in any way. I simply stated the facts: I exercise the same way you do. When I first began it made me gain weight because of undiagnosed metabolic problems. I've begun to fix those problems, and as a result when I returned to doing what you do, I no longer experienced the weight gain, but instead am experiencing the benefits.


It is working just fine for me now, thanks. That's what an accurate diagnosis does: allows you to fix the problem. Nor am I a 'special' case. There are thousands of women like me, many of whom do the same exercise and eat the same VLC and have the same thyroid or other metabolic problems -- either because of, or in spite of -- their WOE.

And there was nothing 'unexplained' about my weight gain. It was caused by becoming hypothyroid with a rT3 problem caused by eating VLC for an extended period. I understand the weight gain completely, and because my diagnosis was accurate, am happily in the process of reversing it.


I never said it did. I said only that it might be a possible cause. I also listed the precise test you can easily have done at your next physical to either rule it out or discover its existence. You can do the test or not do the test; that's your call.

I also said that if you do NOT do the test, but only do the TSH and T4 tests, you cannot state that your thyroid is fine. You can only surmise that it is, even if no symptoms have made themselves apparent. Lots of people think their BS numbers are fine because they have no diabetic symptoms. Then they do a fasting glucose or fasting insulin and discover otherwise. Ditto for believing you have normal blood pressure without doing a BP reading. In science, you cannot prove a negative.

Lisa

I have a whole variety of medicinal quality supplements that relate to thyroid type hormones. I have studiously avoided taking ANY of them, aside from 'kelp tablets' and those only once in a rare awhile, because I am utterly petrified of doing something that will cause my thyroid to NOT put out hormone or become 'dependent'. I've always been told that when people begin thyroid via doctor they are dependent for life on it. For (distorted) personality reasons, the idea of being dependent on any drug nearly gives me hives, so I have avoided this subject almost entirely. Every woman in my family has a known thyroid issue and since I am fatter than all of them I tend to assume that I do as well. However, I am -- slowly, I'm afraid -- losing weight, so I guess I can't say that there is some inexplicable hormonal problem responsible for my weight, or at least not entirely.

Of the many supplements and more, which is the one(s) that allegedly would "clear out rT3"? Is there one?

PJ

What you wrote was: "It doesn't", when you really meant "It doesn't work for me". Is that correct? If so, thanks for clearing that up.

I was referring to what you said in a previous post:
I have gained weight on VLC, but it was easily explained by the fact that I was simply consuming too much alcohol, and when I reduced it, the weight gain not only stopped but I dropped ten pounds in about two weeks. I believe the weight loss had not much to do with the calories (since I probably increased my food intake slightly anyway) than with the effect on my hepatic function.

Dropping my net carbs from 40g to 20g, eliminating soy and increasing my fat intake from 80g to 160g is what fixed my hypothyroid & hypothermic problems after 25 years. It is probably the high-carb low-fat low-cal diets I followed that caused my problem because I had never tried vLC before my body temperature dropped and stayed at 2 degrees below normal (as my daily high). Thyroid hormone supplements just gave me a host of side effects - intermittently spacey & dizzy with hot flushes. I don't believe funding the lifestyles of pharmaceutical billionaires is always the answer; I'd rather fix the root cause than treat symptoms.

Nope. I was referring to your statement: "I have always packed on the pounds when I exercised. The protocol I'm doing now (HIT) is the first time I've actually maintained my weight while building muscle. The fact that I'm only exercising for 10-12 minutes a week may have something to do with that." --- and letting you know that it only had 'something to do with that' for you.

Since my comment was simply factual (that it worked for you and not for everyone) and not dismissive, glad we got that cleared up at last.

Lisa

That's true for Synthroid only, which is pure T4. Not the case for pure T3 (if you take it for the correct reasons and only until your rT3 reservoir is emptied) or dessicated whole thyroid extracts like Armour or the even better Nature-Throid. I expect to be on T3 for 12-16 weeks, and then on nothing whatsoever.

Lisa

I don't think that makes your personality "distorted", it just seems wise to me. I'm not particularly interested in my rT3/T3 numbers either. They could be as meaningless in isolation as LDL. There's an awful lot of uncertainty still on the subject, but what IS known is that there are a myriad of lifestyle-related factors that could cause hypothyroid symptoms, from chronic stress, to liver disease to insulin resistance to selenium deficiency to various metallic and organic pollutants to chronic insomnia to menopause. I haven't even begun to address some of those in my own life, so there are a bunch of things I'd try before assuming I have problem that can only be solved with pharmaceutical intervention.

Not to say that Lisa or anyone else who needs them isn't justified in trying supplemental hormones... but most people have other areas of possible improvement that aren't as radical.

Deirda -- unfortunately there is no one hypothyroid problem. There are T4 problems, T3 problems, rT3 problems and even pituitary and adrenal/cortisol problems masking as hypo.


Sounds like it was, for you. I ate VLF/HC for years with zero thyroid problems. I also ate HF and moderate Carbs with no problems. VLC though? That's not only a textbook cause -- it was my cause. When I gained the 10 pounds after losing and maintaining for a long time, it wasn't because I ate more. It wasn't because I drank alcohol. It wasn't because I ate more or less fat. It was simply and exclusively because I ate too few carbs for too long a time.


Exactly. Draining my rT3 reservoir and thereby allowing my T3 cell receptors to signal again by taking pure T3 supplementation for a few months, will treat fix the root cause and return my metabolism to its full normal function.

Lisa

There is a lot of uncertainty on the subject in general, but none whatever about very low calories or VLC over extended periods causing a rT3 problem.


You are correct. I had none of those other factors though believe me I tested each and every one of them and many you haven't named. It was, in my case, VLC eaten over an extended period of time and nothing else.


Unless they have a rT3 problem, which cannot be resolved or cured without T3 supplementation.

Lisa

I didn't add "for me" at the end because I thought it was pretty darn obvious that I was talking about my personal experience since I used the personal pronoun ("I"/"my") throughout the paragraph... guess that wasn't good enough?

I have the utmost respect Lisa for your clear articulation of this and how it happened for you.

I am curious if you saw other opinions besides supplementation on resolving an excess of rT3.

Because there is probably an underlying seeking of homeostasis, and if the body can make that big of a reservoir of rT3, there is probably some physiological method of draining it too. For example if the message of rT3 is "slow down the metabolism, there is stress or famine" perhaps the way to undo it is lots of rest and fat (the opposite of stress and famine.)

Just cogitatin'

Thank you. Solving this mystery has been a year's journey for me in research, testing, and more research and more testing.


Of course that's a perfectly logical train of thought and was my first one when I finally realized that I had a thyroid problem (as opposed to adrenal, pituitary, cortisol, excess food, not enough food, etc. etc. etc.) problem -- and then I discovered the precise nature of the problem. But what in nutrition, especially the HFLC, eat fat to get thin world, has ever been anything but counter-intuitive?

It might help to think of the problem as a blocked door. You understand that if you can just get the door open -- you can get the signals on one side of the door to reach the cell receptors on the other side of the door again, and all will be well.

What's blocking the door is a moat. It's wide and it's deep. You can increase calories, you can increase carbs, sure -- and they send out some lovely signals. Unfortunately, those signals end up at the bottom of the moat!

Now, if I had years of good eating ahead of me, I suppose I could try filling up the moat with so many good signals that a sort of bridge could be built once I ate enough to have the signals rise to the top of the moat -- but, um, after waiting two years to figure this out, I'd just as soon empty the moat in about 3 months, and send the signals directly through what will then be an accessible open door. Make sense?

EDIT: I forgot to add that guarding the moat are two dragons: Ferritin Level and Cortisol. These dragons are woken for guard duty by the stress that the diminishing T3 and the rising rT3 put on the entire adrenal system, often without anyone knowing they're there. So if you discover that you do have a rT3 problem and want to take T3 (cytomel) for it, you can't do so until you put the dragons back to sleep, or your body will not even tolerate the cytomel. First you have to test the Ferritin Level. If it's too low (and if the rT3 problem has gone on a while, it likely will be), you must raise it with good iron supplements. If the Cortisol levels are too high or too low, you must take steps to bring them within normal bounds. All this alone requires lab testing and then several months of treatment. Then, and only then can you take T3.

I hope I've managed to convey a sense of how really complex the thyroid and the peripheral metabolic hormone system is, and why simply throwing food at it -- no matter how good or healthy -- is unlikely to fix the problem. You may alleviate the hypo symptoms a bit with dietary changes and stress-reduction methods, but neither of those can reach the root cause or vanquish it.

Lisa