Hyper is Winning

After my honey-moon of feeling and testing thyroid levels like a normal human being this past winter, I started to feel crazy again. If you remember, last summer I was diagnosed with Grave’s Disease. I learned too, that Grave’s Disease is its own immunity thing, that causes Hyper-Thyroidism. I thought it was one and the same.

My symptoms present themselves as a pretty elevated heart rate (I do work out and keep active, so it shouldn’t be in the low 100’s while sitting!) I also started having tremors in my hands. I really noticed this while trying to pour some tinctures into their tiny bottles and I was spilling all over! I have also lost 4-5 lbs within the last month (finally, but probbaly not the best way.) My Fitbit shows that I am burning up to 3500 calories some days on the weekends. I understand the elevated heart rate could mess up their algorithm, but obviously I’m running on high.

So I finally relented and asked for a Beta-Blocker persecription. I’m actually glad I did. By day 2, my heart rate was down 10 pts pretty consistantly. I feel calmer and can actually get to sleep faster. It seems to be hanging out in the mid 80’s during the day and the 70’s at night, so that is feeling much better.

I also decided to really look into what I can do to support my thyroid better. Because I was feeling pretty normal this winter, I was eating bread and all the glutens. So, as of today, the day after Memorial Day, I’m on the gluten and soy-free bandwagon again. If you do some reasearch, much of it shows that an immune-comprimised thyroids can be further-annoyed by gluten and soy.

I also spent the weekend looking into vitamins and mineral supplements. I was already taking Selenium since last year (but then I ran out and just didn’t get more!) but other than that, nothing else really. Since my thyroid is getting beat up from both sides, I’m taking things that are over-all supportive of adrenal and cardiovascular systems since Grave’s can wreak havoc on your heart too. So, here’s the list of products that I read up on and just received. I had to get out the daily vitamin organizer container thing because some of these are better taken at different times and with or without (certain) food.

• Glutathione (anti-oxidant, oxidative stress regulation)

• L-Carnitine (cardio-vascular support, metabolism)

• Selenium (thyroid function, lessen chance/symptoms of TED)

• CoQ10 (heart health)

• Vitamin D3 (lower anti-thyroid antibodies, bone health (aparently GD can increase chances of osteoperosis)

• Magnesium Glycinate (reduces inflammation, supports sleep, adrenal functions and cardio-vascular health)

By starting my gluten-free eating and supplement adventure, I’m hoping to not have to take Methemizole for the Grave’s Disease, as its pretty toxic. Maybe I can get my thyroid levels in a nice, happy place…we’ll see. I have to get my labs done again in the next couple weeks.

I’m a Hyper Hypo

It’s been over two months since my last post. On purpose really, I needed a break to recoup and have been pretty busy!

So let’s start with my thyroid.  Last mention, my TSH level was sub clinical at .02. I asked the Dr. to test for Grave’s Disease antibodies and it was confirmed I have them. So weird, “I’m a hyper-hypo!” (referencing an old SNL skit if anyone gets it?!)  https://youtu.be/yGPfCPoca04

I was referred back to my Endo, which it ends up that I couldn’t even get an appt until mid-July (remember, this was in late April.) So instead of attempting to go to a different health system in the area, which I don’t like anyways, I decided to reach out to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, to see if they’d see me.

I had a hunch that they’d accept my case, since I’m Diabetic also and this is such an odd occurrence-though, according to the Mayo Dr., its not altogether rare. I was able to get an appt within a couple weeks of this and got an answer within 15 mins in the appt. After reviewing my previous lab results and files, he said I have concurrent Hashimoto’s and Grave’s Disease, or can just say I have Autoimmune Thyroid Disease.

At that point, my thyroid hormone levels were at normal levels! Essentially like a normal person. He explained that the over-active Grave’s hormone actions were being squelched by the underactive Hashimoto’s hormone reaction, so I’m in stasis mode right now. And since with the thyroid, they are pretty much only treating symptoms with the Rxs available, I don’t need treatment.

He did say that I one or the other of the diseases will eventually present itself with treatable hormone levels, but at the moment, I am just supposed to get tested every 3 months to see where they’re at. I finally got an Endo appt, and she was a little hurt it seemed that I had gone to Mayo. I wasn’t even going to get into it, as it seemed she forgot that at the last 2 appts I’d been complaining about how I felt and showing signs of my TSH bombing…and she wanted to put me on Ozempic.

But, lab results last week were still all at normal levels. I feel good and even my blood pressure and pulse were down, 111/77 and 71 respectively—I’ll take that as a win!

I also don’t feel so crazy-I can focus on work, make decisions and have the mental energy to all the things I enjoy doing, like this here blog and website!

Remember I went and had a blood panel done by the functional medicine Dr? Well, that was at the same time as all the Thyroid issues were presenting themselves, so of course it showed crazy Thyroid results. But also that I was low in a lot of minerals, vitamin D, and had some kind of maybe infection/viral activity, and my inflammation markers were high also, which makes since if my Thyroid is going insane. She did suggest that going wheat free/gluten free has shown to be helpful for a lot of Thyroid patients, so I have been keeping to that pretty well. I noticed that my digestion is a lot better by not eating wheat and other gluten.

I quickly found my favorites for gluten free options; here’s a list of what I’m eating and where it’s from:

Whole Grain Bread: Live G Free (Aldi) -This is my go-to, as it is a normal sized loaf, so a solid piece of toast. It is pretty dry, so eating untoasted makes you want mayo/mustard and a good creamy cheese on your sandwich.

Flat Bread (for Pizza): BFree (Walmart) -These are great for making homemade pizzas, we used them in the Ooni, so they worked great in the high temp pizza oven, no burning and crisped up really well.

10 Grains & Seeds Bread: Schar (Walmart) These are a tiny loaf of brown bread with seedy things in it. Good flavor and great for avocado toast. A little cakey when eating without toasting.

Apple Pie Bars: Pure & Simple (Aldi) Yummy little apple and fig bars that taste pretty good.

Lara Bars

Rice Krispie Treats are making more appearances at our summer events with friends

Live G Free pastas: (Aldi) brown rice/quinoa-pretty good if you don’t overcook them.

Banza Pastas: (any store) bean/chickpea based-also good if cooked properly

--each pasta maker only makes certain shapes, so you do have to shop around if you’re looking for specific shapes. And really they all taste like a whole wheat pasta when comparing to regular flour pastas and don’t have the silkiness attributed to a good pasta.

Changing my eating hasn’t been too hard, I just need to plan ahead a little bit more and pay attention to what I’m ingesting.

Sadly, gluten free grocery items are a whole lot more expensive than “regular” food. Most bread is over $6 a loaf, pasta is double the price and even crackers can be over $4 for a tiny box—don’t even try the cauliflower crackers that Aldi sells. They’re disgusting, and I love cauliflower!  I treat most of the specific GF items I buy as treats; I usually only have 1 piece of bread a day with avocado toast, try to reserve the snack bars for when I need to have a portable snack for work or trips. I’ve been eating more vegetables, since obviously I have a glut of delicious things coming in every day! I also keep cheese sticks and the Simms Turkey sticks (Aldi) on hand for high protein snacking. When my blood sugar is low, I’ve been eating more dried fruit like apricots and cherries for a quick shot of sugar and fiber--I save the glucose tabs for night time and traveling, and they’re sorta terrible anyways.

To make meal prep easier, I try to keep a container of brown rice and/or cooked, diced sweet potatoes available in the fridge so I have a quick base or side for meals. It’s easy enough to sauté a bunch of vegetables and grilled chicken and toss it on some rice or potatoes for a quick lunch. I’ve tried some cauliflower crust pizzas, those are pretty decent for flavor, but not worth the $$ since I’m the only one eating them and the leftovers do not reheat well, so you waste most of the pizza.

I’ve found it’s harder to go out to eat…my son loves McDonald’s for a fast food treat, but really there’s nothing I can eat there. The fries have a wheat ingredient in the flavoring they add to them. So sad. It’s not really worth paying the cost for a bun-less burger if you can’t eat the fries! I stick to corn chips and salsa and such for apps, so that’s always a good option in my book when going out.

On to the garden…

I recently did a late-July garden tour on Youtube, check it out! It’s been a great year for green beans, tomatoes, peppers and onions. Pretty much everything I planted is growing well. We’ve had minimal Japanese beetle presence, so that’s always nice. They really make things ugly.

We’re also working on adding on to the landscaping around the garden and cherry tree. I gave a little peek at the ugly, cardboard-covered area in the video, but I think it’ll be quite nice when we get it finished.

Hopefully this week I’m also going to give a tour of my medicinal herbs I grow and forage from my property. My son is my official editor, so please enjoy the fun intros and outros he creates!

Well that’s that! Hope everyone has a great week!

Thyroid and Endo Results, Answered Not the Way I was Hoping

Results of my labs came back good for some things and not good for others. From my couple months of consistantly going to the gym, limiting my drinking and obsessively tracking my calories and macros my cholesterol was so much better! It’s always been a little on the higher side (since I was 3 to be exact) and Dr. Endo keeps threatening me to go on statins—which I won’t if I have any say in it. Other tests they do for Diabetics include the A1c for glucose average, liver and kidney functions, which were all normal. My A1c is normally pretty good, running around 7 and under for the last 20 years. I even showed the 2 lb weight loss, wearing clothes!

Per the usual, I have too many lows but am higher during the mid day point, so we adjusted my basal insulin rates and changed my I:C ratio. All pretty normal for an Endo appt. But, the lab result that was super surprising was my Thyroid TSH, which I totally knew was going to be questionable because it just doesn’t feel right. It was at .28 which is below normal and is considered a hyperthyroid level. She seemed non-plussed though…but did lower my Levothyroxin dose a bit. I thought, what the hell? I’m supposed to be around 1.something and higher! Its totally weird though, as I have no symptoms of hyper thyroid, which can be tiredness, WEIGHTLOSS, hair loss, etc. So I was a little confused by her lack of concern for that number.

She did listen to my concerns about not being able to lose any weight and said that I’ve tried doing everything myself, blah blah and maybe should consider medication. She suggested taking Ozempic (which is for type-2 diabetics) and see if that works or she suggested a combination of hard core stimulants! Yikes! So I said I’d think about the Ozempic option and do some research over the weekend. How it works is that it affects the part in your brain that in simple terms, likes food. It also slows down your stomach emptying process, to keep you full longer, so that’s how it helps lower A1c is because it lessens the post-prandial blood glucose rising that requires more insulin. So you won’t like or want to eat anything and many people suffer from nausea, vomiting and headaches.

When weighing the pros and cons, it just seems like you’re taking away the pleasure of eating and socializing this (ah yes, many people can’t handle drinking ANY alcohol while taking this) and then because of the slow food absorption, it’s a bit more dangerous for type-1 diabetics when you have low blood sugar and treating it doesn’t work as fast. And I like to have a drink once in a while. And you have to continue to take it, forever it seems, if you want to maintain any weightloss you may experience. It sorta sounds terrible. I think I just made my decision.

What I want is to work at the source of my issues, the terrible metabolism stemming from my thyroid! I want to be able to help it more naturally, without adding drugs that haven’t even been tested long term. My kidneys and liver work just fine, I’d rather preserve them as long as possible! So, I’ll take the lower levothyroxin dose and I have started taking the Selenium, which is a pretty tame supplement. When I asked my Dr. about it, she literally shrugged her shoulders.

-EDIT: I had mentioned getting Iodine supplements also, but upon more reading I found that people with Hashimoto’s shouldn’t take Iodine. So, not taking that for now.

Oh well. I’ll keep on working out harder making muscles! and see what the TSH does after a couple months. If it is still low and I’m still not losing, I am pretty interested in meeting with a functional medicine doctor, or at least someone will dig into the issues I’m fussing over. A relative reached out sharing about her Thyroid issues and how the more-complete testing that her functional doctor did was very helpful for her in finding a treatment that worked along with some lifestyle changes to support it.

Anyone have similar experiences dealing with their Hashimoto’s thyroid and weight loss issues and how you overcame them?

Everybody’s Auto-Issues

Does everyone now have Thyroid issues?

So, I’ll preface this by saying I’ve been a Type 1 Diabetic for over 30 years and have had Hashimoto’s thyroiditis thyroid disease since my teens. A double-whammy of auto-immune issues. I was very young, ate well and wasn’t exposed to anything “bad” in my environment. My immune system decided to go haywire for some reason. I don’t over-dramatize it or “let it define me” as many Diabetics like to say…as they discuss their dramatic diagnosis story ad nauseam.

But all of a sudden everyone else on the interwebs has thyroid issues too! Maybe it’s the vein of my accounts that I follow that lead to a focus on healthy eating, growing your own food, food as medicine, homesteading dreams, etc. Very well could be. But now all the homesteaders have Thyroid and auto-immune issues. I’m casting a wide net here, so don’t be offended. They’re sharing everything about their lives, so health is one of them. But, I receommend speaking with a doctor and getting yourself tested before any self-diagnosis based upon your favorite YouTube or Instagram stars.

The attention is actually convenient for me right now as I recently had an ultrasound of my thyroid because my neck was literally feeling fat, I kid you not. I do have a slight goiter, but it was feeling tight. So they did an ultrasound in December and found three pesky little nodules on my thyroid, all three were large enough for them to want to do a fine needle aspiration to get some material to biopsy. Let me tell you, it’s not the most fun procedure in the world. They do numb your neck a little, but that does NOT help much, at least in my case—I had to have a second shot of lidocaine, which didn’t seem to help at all—because the Dr. doing the procedure literally takes a little hollow needle and repeatedly jabs it in and out of the same spot. I left with a bruised spot on my neck and a bandaid, so it’s not terribly invasive. And results were all benign, so I just have to have an ultrasound in a year or so.

Dealing with that has made me think twice about my thyroid and how I’m feeling in general. My levels are “fine,” albeit a little lower than they’ve been averaging over the years, but still within range. I take 112 mg of Levothyroxin and have been my whole life. It didn’t even change when I was pregnant. But, now I’m a bit older. I cannot for the life of me, lose weight. I don’t know if its now being over 40, but I have been working out and tracking my food (and macros,) drinking all the water, for a month and a half and have lost a total of 2 lbs. Just two. I’ve done all the calculations for my height/weight and what I should eat for calories. I do a mix of cardio, functional exercises and yoga. I have lessened my alcoholic consumption by a 100-fold it feels like, so I was expecting a nice loss just from less booze! Nope. Super frustrating.

So I’ve been reading. And that’s how I realized that the internet has thyroids on the mind! A couple things I read about were taking some supplements, specifically selenium and iodine, to support your thyroid function even if you’re on Levothyroxin. Another was diet, of course. Some of which was going gluten free, and also making sure to over-cook your cruciferous veggies. Which I find the thought of, just terrible. I’ll cook my veggies properly, thank you. The gluten thing I’ve done before, with no results of change. Currently I don’t eat a lot of gluten things anyways, so we’ll say I’m gluten-light right now. I will not give up my brussels sprouts.

I’m going to try the supplements; I probably don’t get enough iodine like many Americans, I don’t use table salt, I use the fancy stuff, which doesn’t have much iodine in it. Selenium is slated to help with thyroid hormone metabolism and with cancer prevention, which I guess is always a good thing.

I conveniently have an endocrinologist appointment Friday, so I’m going to talk with her about starting those and see what else I can possibly do to shed some lbs. I’m also waiting with bated breath on my lab results to see if things are better since I started my health journey (might as well call it what the cool kids call it) this year! Here’s hoping for some good ideas and suggestions!

I may just have to jump on the online-homesteader-social-media-personality bandwagon and start the carnivore diet. Just kidding, I think inflation is going to kill that diet fad real fast.