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Induced insatiable Hypokalemia and Methylfolate Insufficiency

Sam7777

Senior Member
Messages
115
In these health plans there was no doubt who we were working for, the plan trustees for the benefit of the plan members. Getting rid of the 1% worst providers, and controlling the contracting with the insurance companies and some other things each year allowed about a 10% incremental savings each of the first 3 years.

Freddd you have more confidence than I do in the HMO design if you were even willing to evaluate and challenge them. In my mind I mostly already tried, judged, juried and convicted them of fraud. I have not agreed with how it is set up and do not look forward to how the Health Care Act will complicate this. As many people say, it will likely strongly deprive people of options. Mostly those who are dependent on the actual insurance, though since you will be forced into the insurance system and every doctor will have to subscribe to it. . . well the outcome seems bleak.

What I fear most of course is not being able to order non prescription OTC supplements from the internet or local health stores. . . As I have mostly exclusively treated things with cash to health professional or self treatment and self diagnosis. I guess you could say I have no faith in the system, and you have devoted your life and career to trying to uphold the system despite it being over run with fraud.

The problem is always that of selection. One of the main driving forces of the HMO design is that a person is typically at far more risk from over treatment than under treatment. My father, going against what he had lived and breathed for 40 years, had a parathyroid surgery that only benefit was one less pill a day.

My medical costs are nil. I did the reading and research for 4.5 years, rather than spend 30,000 $ on doctors. This is what you see in the alternative health crowd on the internet. People who are victims of fraud from the established HMO design and from genuine quackery or some combination of the two, since some holistic doctors are on HMO. Frankly, I never regretted not having insurance. My aunt had insurance, and still could not get any reasonable care. Yet she continued to go to doctors and ignore my theories even when I pointed out the evidence. She has repeatedly had the quacks push bariatric surgery on her. It was HMO that caused my stepmother to receive shock treatment. I am pretty sure the insurance preference for high risk high expense treatment was what ultimately killed my father. They chose to use the most invasive surgery to give him a colestemy bag, the cortisol steroids, and high doses of anti-biotics against a great deal of opposition from his family. By the time his family had gone to other sources of opinion it was just about too late.


I think that mercury is over hypothesized by at least 2 orders of magnitude.

This seems pretty probable. And I made many examples of other cases above. My remaining challenge is probably going to be teasing apart what is and what is not mercury.

For true believers in mercury we might as well be talking "man influenced climate change". It is strictly "don't show me the statistics, results, bad outcomes etc because they always have their one patient who had a genuine problem.


And I essentially try to go by the results of the discussion boards of those who have tried Cutler's protocol. What makes Cutler a little more believable, is that he does mostly just post all his advice on the internet, since he is not a health care provider and is not invested in it. Shade is also not a MD. I pretty much run from MD's screaming.They are too institutionalized.

Cutler's boards on yahoo cover about 12 years. This makes me at least consider something is going on. I have studied, and have several books on Autism. I can definitely conclude it's sole cause is not mercury. But mercury plays a nasty involvement.

Another problem with heavy metals is that they enhance the toxicity of much more dangerous chemicals. You may not have enough heavy metals in you to create symptoms, but it might be enough to derail functions in the body that allow to detox solvents, plastics, etc. This combined with the processed diet, sets up a very nasty situation.

Given the MANY MANY benefits of R-LA, I do not see a lot of harm in trying to prophylatically treat heavy metal toxicity. R-LA will not even affect certain metals. I am at least currently interested in Shade's MicroSilica. I cannot say beyond a doubt or a proof that it is not a fraud. But I have a background in environmental remediation, and have read technical papers where microsilica was used in remediation cleanup jobs. I am willing to experiment. It doesn't pose much of a threat.

R-LA and microsilica are most likely to remove mercury, and also least likely to bother other minerals. I have not been sold on DMPS or DMSA, and even less on the other chelators. The quackery comes in with the IV chelation doses quite a bit.

The only real danger in trying to treat heavy metal toxicity are these IV chelations with chemical chelators, or the misuse of RLA in those who REALLY have heavy metal problems.

I have one tooth I suspect is an issue, and I am going to an oral surgeon on May 30th to get it removed. It is far easier to pay cash to have it extracted than deal with restorations or HMO's.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
My point was that the conventional wisdom that reaction to nac and ala means mercury tox is not always correct. You the approach this by citing two people who have no reaction but have mercury problens. So? My point was never intended as proof. It was intended simply that there is no firm rule regardless of what people preach. And besides I guess I did not make clear enough how i was laboriously tested otherwise but that is a separate point. I also tried to want people about the racrmic mixture of ala. It is not just that I can tolerate r-ala but that I feel much better taking it. So how do interpret that at least for myself?
My post wasn't directed towards you even though I was sort of responding to it. I know you don't have mercury issues. We went over this a few months ago. And it sounds like we're in agreement that a reaction to NAC and ALA isn't an accurate measure. You used yourself as an example as a false positive and I mentioned two examples of a false negative. That's it.
In my own case maybe mercury is an issue. But I have done everything including actual high priced chelation with testing of the output urine and still negative. So if it is a problem it is undetectable, invisible and ethereal. What the heck do I do with that?
I thought you said you didn't have amalgams so I didn't think mercury was very likely in that case, but I don't know enough about the issue. It sounds like you've had some bad luck with doctors if 2 of them pushed the mercury angle. I went to a doctor a few years ago for candida and his response was that it was from heavy metals and I needed chelation. He didn't mention mercury specifically or ask if I had amalgams (I didn't at the time). I have no doubt based partially on what you told me and my own experiences that it's overdiagnosed in some instances, but I also believe there are many times where it's underdiagnosed.

You seem to have been wondering if you have mercury issues for a long time. If so then get it tested. Maybe get a hair and urine analysis. If you still have questions try cutler's ala chelation for a few weeks and then do a urine test. If all negative you can move on. If you test positive you can try to attack the problem imo instead of being caught in between.
I stopped ALA and NAC and I might also stop chlorella. I'm being cautious until I figure out a plan, but mercury isn't really something I'm thinking too much about. It's true that there were periods after each of my amalgams that my health got worse, but it's more likely that the worsening of health was due to oxidative stress and my Lyme infection being reactivated. If I want to get tested I'd not only have to pay for the test, but also pay for another doctor (mine is covered by insurance) so I probably won't do anything for awhile. It took a lot of convincing just to get my doctor to test for free T3 and vitamin D 1, 25 dihydroxy. I'm not convinced that Cutler's method is the best method either. Everyone seems to have a different opinion. Although it's true that alpha lipoic acid crossing the blood brain barrier could take mercury out of the brain it could also deposit mercury into the brain. But as I said earlier, it's not something I'm really thinking about much these days.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
Hi Sam,

The HMO model was destroyed in the early 80s with the buy-ups for profit of successful non-profit HMOs established under the original federal HMO act. It was dead and buried by the MaxiCare debacle. They couldn't have destroyed the HMO name more if they had set out to do that. The successful HMOs, except for Kaiser, were rarely facility based. Instead they contracted with area hospitals and paid them according to contractual considerations, much like the insurance companies get a 60-65% discount from the price for a self pay patient that is quoted at hospitals today. In a managed care dental plan crowns and bridges account for 25-30% of total cost. In fee for service, that number is 50-60% of total cost. In doing a crown the tooth is destroyed leaving posts as the fallback. One of the things we cracked down on were the dentists who "I don't do fillings any more, only crowns. At the time it tripled or quadrupled the revenue (10x the NET profit) per chair-hour over amalgam or composite restorations. With these restorations the fallback is a crown as the tooth is left as intact as possible. Again, repeat interval on crowns was held to a minimum of 5 years so some dentists didn't churn them. In the medical HMOs we were getting prenatal vitamins accepted. Health club memberships became a benefit. preventive care was covered. Docs were paid on a capitated or hybrid basis, not fee for service. We even did capitated specialties. Everybody could enroll at community rates with no pre-existing clauses. Does any of this sound familiar? Frequent flyers at the ER were visited by home health nurses cutting expenses 95%. Walk-in family clinics were established in areas of sufficienct local population again getting rid of ER for sore throats. All these were tough fights against the insurance companies. They destroyed HMOs by buying them out. It wasn't politically correct at the time to say "take vitamins so your kids don't have neural tube defects and cleft palates". It was a huge battle to get those accepted.

If you don't know about HMOs 1960-1980, you know nothing about HMOs. I did the practice profiling for blue and white collar dental practices, and actuarial work (checked by a professional) for the first dental HMO when I was 13 years old. I've been involved ever since until I got too sick. After 1980 the real HMOs went underground. They were not open to the public. They were instead virtual HMOs (no bricks and mortar, no facilities) sold as group benfit plans, that were in the design of the contract with the insurer and the management philosophy. The HMO law allowed cutting out the insurance company. When we contracted with the insurers they were limited to a maximum of 10% margin, not the 30% or so many are taking now over our sick and dead bodies these days. Again, "loss-ratio" is regulated by the new federal laws. We are about to embark on HMO CHAPTER 2 with the rules the insurers have to act under with the new healthcare organizations.
 

Sam7777

Senior Member
Messages
115
Its good to know there was a more legitimate system prior to my time. I know self diagnoses and treatment is not feasible, practical, or sane on a mass scale. Actuary work is a huge aspect of having a free market with individual health aspects, given what I understand of actuaries. I have a friend working to become one.

But given the nature of health in America, the amount of change necessary is staggering. I have to take into consideration what you have said for any future influence I may have in this, not to mention my own choices assuming I ever become able to get professional treatment.

It really is a case of waiting and watching to see how the obamacare plays out.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
Its good to know there was a more legitimate system prior to my time. I know self diagnoses and treatment is not feasible, practical, or sane on a mass scale. Actuary work is a huge aspect of having a free market with individual health aspects, given what I understand of actuaries. I have a friend working to become one.

But given the nature of health in America, the amount of change necessary is staggering. I have to take into consideration what you have said for any future influence I may have in this, not to mention my own choices assuming I ever become able to get professional treatment.

It really is a case of waiting and watching to see how the obamacare plays out.

Hi Sam,

This one was scary. It invented all sorts of plan design features for which there was no actual experience. What allowed us to get away with it was that it was for a union benefits group and we could adjust premiums each quarter. We turned out to have it close enough. It was a tough sale to dentists, to get a decent panel put together, a capitated payment based on the numbers of singles or families signed up to come to them. Again they were frightened of getting eaten alive on negative selection. Suddenly with free checkup and prophy twice a year having a hygienist made a lot of sense taking a big load off the dentist for higher profit work. Free checkups got people to go in twice a year who would never had dreamed of coming in until they had an abscess. Fillings were much cheaper. This model of preventive dentistry became the standard in the entire practice. Some of the features meant to control utilization were later disallowed by law. They were then controlled in other ways. The incentives were all there to get people to maintenance condition conserving natural teeth for improved geriatric survival. We had found out by comparing the two demographic groups in the practices what was least costly, ultimately from the members pockets one way or another. It was WAY cheaper to maintain good dental health than to deal with emergency after emergency.

The composites are decent today, the new ultra strong ceramics sculpted by computers for on the spot crowns are excellent, as near perfection as I've ever seen. You might consider keeping your tooth unless it is a 3rd molar. You will likely be glad you did as you get older. Let me clue you, actuary work is necessary no matter how it is funded if you want it to be funded accurately. In the dental HMO/insurance software I designed (early to mid 80s and onwards) and wrote was such that we could examine and model the plan design influences of dentists who had customers from any number of different groups and plan designs. We could adjust rate zones by zipcode and all sorts of handy dandy features in bidding groups. We even monitored regional practice differences and procedure time for each practitioner to find the ones who were rushing it as well as slacking off. We worked out a hybrid basic pay plus incentive to a limit to get the docs in the sweet spot of enough time for top quality but not slacking too much.

How Obama-care plays out is whether the companies kill it or not. They can make it impossible or great.
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
My post wasn't directed towards you even though I was sort of responding to it. I know you don't have mercury issues. We went over this a few months ago. And it sounds like we're in agreement that a reaction to NAC and ALA isn't an accurate measure. You used yourself as an example as a false positive and I mentioned two examples of a false negative. That's it.

I thought you said you didn't have amalgams so I didn't think mercury was very likely in that case, but I don't know enough about the issue. It sounds like you've had some bad luck with doctors if 2 of them pushed the mercury angle. I went to a doctor a few years ago for candida and his response was that it was from heavy metals and I needed chelation. He didn't mention mercury specifically or ask if I had amalgams (I didn't at the time). I have no doubt based partially on what you told me and my own experiences that it's overdiagnosed in some instances, but I also believe there are many times where it's underdiagnosed.


I stopped ALA and NAC and I might also stop chlorella. I'm being cautious until I figure out a plan, but mercury isn't really something I'm thinking too much about. It's true that there were periods after each of my amalgams that my health got worse, but it's more likely that the worsening of health was due to oxidative stress and my Lyme infection being reactivated. If I want to get tested I'd not only have to pay for the test, but also pay for another doctor (mine is covered by insurance) so I probably won't do anything for awhile. It took a lot of convincing just to get my doctor to test for free T3 and vitamin D 1, 25 dihydroxy. I'm not convinced that Cutler's method is the best method either. Everyone seems to have a different opinion. Although it's true that alpha lipoic acid crossing the blood brain barrier could take mercury out of the brain it could also deposit mercury into the brain. But as I said earlier, it's not something I'm really thinking about much these days.
Can I ask what your free T3 and 1, 25 calcitriol levels were? Have you ever had rev t3 before?
 

OkRadLakPok

Senior Member
Messages
124
I just had the heavy metal test urine 24 hour test and will post when that comes back. I also lived on fisha nd rice- mercury and arsenic- for two decades. Every time I had a shot I became virtually disabled and even when I was in my mom's womb, the dr gave her a shot and I reacted.

I have been gene tested and discovered that I do not process drugs and toxins well because of mutations on the CYP and NAT genes. So it is a no brainer what happened to me.

The question is what to do.

More potassium is helping. But I am still eating it. I did stop the methyfolate for a while.

AND INDEED! The fake folic acid in everything is killing people. I have to make my own bread for the family. Ic annot eat it, but it helps them.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
Can I ask what your free T3 and 1, 25 calcitriol levels were? Have you ever had rev t3 before?
I just had the blood drawn yesterday. The reason I wanted my vitamin D 1,25 tested was because my 25 hydroxy was 30.2 even though I've been taking 6000 iu of vitamin D and some people have said that the 25 hydroxy could be low and the 1, 25 could be high. Especially with people with immune system dysfunction as I seem to have.

My doctor is probably only going to test free T3. I haven't had my reverse T3 tested, but I've heard that some people can have low free T3 and high reverse T3. I was going to wait until I got my results back for the free T3 before I ask about it. I've also heard of people getting thyroid antibodies tested.

She was very reluctant to do those two tests (vit D and T3) and I don't think she understood why they were necessary. Even though she's a doctor of integrative medicine and has recommended accupuncture and massage and various supplements she tends to do things by the book. Most doctors only test vit d hydroxy. She has also tested my T4 and TSH 3 times in the past 3 years, but never thought to test T3 because my T4 and TSH were always normal. I'm not happy about that, but I'm told that that's standard operating procedure for doctors. She's still the best doctor I've ever had and she's covered by my insurance and so are all the tests she's run.
 

SJB944

Senior Member
Messages
178
I've never been able to find anything particularly conclusive about the significance of rt3? I have high rt3 but when I looked into what to make it lower, it was pretty much all the things covered by Fred's protocol and the like. (all t3, t4, TSH and antibodies came back fine.) Although I have mild enlargement of the thyroid.

Do have views on rt3 Dbkita?
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
I've never been able to find anything particularly conclusive about the significance of rt3? I have high rt3 but when I looked into what to make it lower, it was pretty much all the things covered by Fred's protocol and the like. (all t3, t4, TSH and antibodies came back fine.) Although I have mild enlargement of the thyroid.

Do have views on rt3 Dbkita?
I'm curious what dbkita has to say on this too, but here's what Ema told me the other day:
=========================​
It's really important to know your free T3 level because that is the active thyroid hormone. I don't get total T3 because it measures what is bound and unbound and not what is available for use.

RT3 is good to know but I don't get it every time. It can tell you if you are converting T4 to T3(active) or RT3 (inactive) preferentially. A lot of people with Lyme and chronic illness convert more to RT3 as a way of turning down the metabolism to protect the body from infection. So it is helpful but not necessary every time.

Remember "normal" is not the same as optimal. The thyroid normal ranges are WAY too wide in my opinion and include a lot of people with suboptimal thyroid function.

Ema
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
I just had the blood drawn yesterday. The reason I wanted my vitamin D 1,25 tested was because my 25 hydroxy was 30.2 even though I've been taking 6000 iu of vitamin D and some people have said that the 25 hydroxy could be low and the 1, 25 could be high. Especially with people with immune system dysfunction as I seem to have.

My doctor is probably only going to test free T3. I haven't had my reverse T3 tested, but I've heard that some people can have low free T3 and high reverse T3. I was going to wait until I got my results back for the free T3 before I ask about it. I've also heard of people getting thyroid antibodies tested.

She was very reluctant to do those two tests (vit D and T3) and I don't think she understood why they were necessary. Even though she's a doctor of integrative medicine and has recommended accupuncture and massage and various supplements she tends to do things by the book. Most doctors only test vit d hydroxy. She has also tested my T4 and TSH 3 times in the past 3 years, but never thought to test T3 because my T4 and TSH were always normal. I'm not happy about that, but I'm told that that's standard operating procedure for doctors. She's still the best doctor I've ever had and she's covered by my insurance and so are all the tests she's run.

Actually it is more common for a person with high reverse T3 syndrome to have a normal free T3 than a low one.

Thyroid antibodies TPO and TG are good for just about anyone with chronic disease problems to rule out Hashimoto's or similar diseases as they are that frequent. Rev T3 is an excellent marker of chronic Lyme's infection or autoimmune diseases. C3a and C4a are useful markers in their own right. Getting a full adrenal panel can be very illustrative. Some doctors can easily dismiss low cortisol and sex hormones, but if progesterone, pregnenolone, and DHEA are all also low then they have no leg to stand on in denying adrenal insufficiency. 1,25 calcitriol is a secondary inflammatory marker that looks at Th1 level macrophage inflammation (provided you do no have sarcoidosis).

If your doctor is reluctant to test T3 that means she has no clue about thyroid function, sorry. She is using dogmatic procedures that are 20 years out of date. Especially if she is in integrative medicine. I am sure she is good in many respects but like I said until you can see T3, rev T3, thyroid antibodies, you won't really know where your thyroid levels really stand. Then again maybe everything is fine with your thyroid and this is a wild goose chase. But a lot of differential diagnosis is wild goose chases, by definition.
 

dbkita

Senior Member
Messages
655
I've never been able to find anything particularly conclusive about the significance of rt3? I have high rt3 but when I looked into what to make it lower, it was pretty much all the things covered by Fred's protocol and the like. (all t3, t4, TSH and antibodies came back fine.) Although I have mild enlargement of the thyroid.

Do have views on rt3 Dbkita?

Hehe for many years rt3 and I were old friends. I have some earlier posts where I preach on rt3 and what it means so I will summarize here.

High rt3 means your immune system is intentionally shifting conversion of T4 to rt3 by deiodinase III (primarily) in order to block activation of the thryoid alpha and beta receptors in the nucleus by regular T3.

If levels are high enough they mimic hypothyroidsim.

High rt3 is incredibly accurate marker of inflammation gone wild either due to a chronic (severe) infection or an autoimmune disease.

I did not realize my rt3 was high until I was already in big trouble a few years back with my autoimmune disease. At that time it was only 100 points above the upper limit (in the 300-400 range where 290 was upper limit). Of course at that time my body was so jacked my free t3 levels while technically in normal range were pretty poor (~2.0).

As doctors proceeded to pump me with T4 and then Armour thyroid, all I did was feed T4 for conversion to higher and higher T3. I reached levels of almost 800. One of my doctors stated that it was the second highest reading she had ever seen. Dr Mariano agreed and stated it meant my underlying problem (not yet diagnosed as to which autoimmune disease) was not getting better and many other things I was doing were mostly palliative. The decision then was to shift to Cytomel. Within several weeks this put out the rt3 fire since there was no fuel. It of course did nothing to address my core problem of my autoimmune disease. But it did start letting my body get thyroid hormone again. Even then it was not easy going. Generic cytomel made me reflux even when used in compounding formulation. Time release worsened some on my insomnia. I had gut absorption issues that meant it was not delivering ultimately the dose we expected. But ... with some effort I finally found a protocol that got my free t3 levels above 3.0, made me feel MUCH better, and no rt3. Still it was struggle to go after my autoimmune disease and after three years my autoantibodies have dropped in half and are back in the almost normal range. That being said I still have some inflammation as evidenced by my elevated 1,25 dihydroxy levels (which btw do fluctuate quite a bit).

Edit: if your rt3 is high enough that is imo a likely sign your immune system is upset. In fact increased methylation can exacerbate pre-existing inflammation. While adb12 + bh4 are excellent at cleaning up peroxynitrites they will do zip against the many Th1 inflammatory pathways indicated by a high rt3 value. What is your value btw for rt3 and what are the ranges?
 

Victronix

Senior Member
Messages
418
Location
California
Hehe for many years rt3 and I were old friends. I have some earlier posts where I preach on rt3 and what it means so I will summarize here.

High rt3 means your immune system is intentionally shifting conversion of T4 to rt3 by deiodinase III (primarily) in order to block activation of the thryoid alpha and beta receptors in the nucleus by regular T3.

If levels are high enough they mimic hypothyroidsim.

High rt3 is incredibly accurate marker of inflammation gone wild either due to a chronic (severe) infection or an autoimmune disease.

I did not realize my rt3 was high until I was already in big trouble a few years back with my autoimmune disease. At that time it was only 100 points above the upper limit (in the 300-400 range where 290 was upper limit). Of course at that time my body was so jacked my free t3 levels while technically in normal range were pretty poor (~2.0).

As doctors proceeded to pump me with T4 and then Armour thyroid, all I did was feed T4 for conversion to higher and higher T3. I reached levels of almost 800. One of my doctors stated that it was the second highest reading she had ever seen. Dr Mariano agreed and stated it meant my underlying problem (not yet diagnosed as to which autoimmune disease) was not getting better and many other things I was doing were mostly palliative. The decision then was to shift to Cytomel. Within several weeks this put out the rt3 fire since there was no fuel. It of course did nothing to address my core problem of my autoimmune disease. But it did start letting my body get thyroid hormone again. Even then it was not easy going. Generic cytomel made me reflux even when used in compounding formulation. Time release worsened some on my insomnia. I had gut absorption issues that meant it was not delivering ultimately the dose we expected. But ... with some effort I finally found a protocol that got my free t3 levels above 3.0, made me feel MUCH better, and no rt3. Still it was struggle to go after my autoimmune disease and after three years my autoantibodies have dropped in half and are back in the almost normal range. That being said I still have some inflammation as evidenced by my elevated 1,25 dihydroxy levels (which btw do fluctuate quite a bit).

Edit: if your rt3 is high enough that is imo a likely sign your immune system is upset. In fact increased methylation can exacerbate pre-existing inflammation. While adb12 + bh4 are excellent at cleaning up peroxynitrites they will do zip against the many Th1 inflammatory pathways indicated by a high rt3 value. What is your value btw for rt3 and what are the ranges?

This is about the most info I've ever seen on reverse T3 from someone who is not a nutcase. I had high RT3 but did not have any autoimmune disorder except for Hashimoto's, which I've had since 16. Although at that time I had started on B-12, so, perhaps there was a methylation effect.

What's happening to my thyroid now, since starting on mfolate, is very interesting.

At first I was attributing changes in my labs to going off gluten. But later I realized that it could be more likely that the mfolate has some role. I can't know for sure of course.

Jarrow added mfolate to B-Right at some point in 2012 and I was unaware of that, but my body started having odd episodes and feelings, especially my stomach in late 2012. In late 2012 I also started on the gluten free diet -- to address the odd stomach issues -- and by early 2013 I felt AWFUL until finally it dawned on me that several of my symptoms could be due to low thyroid and indeed, when tested I found that my TSH was over 8! The highest ever. I did not want to increase my dosage, so did a number of behavioral changes to effectively increase the dosage, and got it down to a little over 3, but sure enough, a month later it was back up 5. I chalked it up to some kind of gluten-free impact.

But now I am thinking mfolate. What's interesting is that my total T4 is rising but free T4 is falling, and my T3 went up. This pattern is described in one of my thyroid books talking about the typical thyroid response during pregnancy to increased estrogen, involving the liver and thyroglobulin binding of T4, decreased free T4, leading to an automatic increase in T3. My T3 has always been rock bottom, and now (albeit still at only 2.5) it's higher than ever before in my life. (I haven't looked at reverse T3 in awhile, since it never coincided with anything that I could make sense of in the past, and it's costly).

What was the protocol that got your T3 over 3?

I've read that methylfolate will increase estrogen and I noticed soon after starting it that my breasts were sore almost all the time for awhile. That eventually went away. But could that be what's happening? I don't know. Doctors have often wanted me to try T3 but I've avoided it for a number of reasons (one being a thyroid meltdown in 2008 that wiped out 2 yrs of my life), so I'm excited to see it go up even just a little, on its own.

However the last thing I wanted to do, while coping with mfolate in my life, was increase my Synthroid dosage, but now, no choice. Should be interesting . . . unfortunately, this may likely stop or decrease my T3 again, presumably.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
HI Victronix,

Deficient b12 and folate can cause hormones testosterone and estrogen to decrease and they are sometimes partially restored in taking these vitamins. That is about I have about that hormone function change.
 

brenda

Senior Member
Messages
2,266
Location
UK
Is there some advice somewhere about taking p5p sublingually and which brands are best? I cant find an enteric coated one and have just received Source Naturals co-enzymated I ordered last week. Thanks.
 

Victronix

Senior Member
Messages
418
Location
California
HI Victronix,

Deficient b12 and folate can cause hormones testosterone and estrogen to decrease and they are sometimes partially restored in taking these vitamins. That is about I have about that hormone function change.
I guess it would be worth it all to have estrogen partially restored . . . there are so many benefits to it.
 

Freddd

Senior Member
Messages
5,184
Location
Salt Lake City
I guess it would be worth it all to have estrogen partially restored . . . there are so many benefits to it.

Hi Victronix,

From the women I've talked with most of them were more impressed with having the testosterone also done. While a woman's testosterone levels can get excessively low they often are not checked for. There had been some studies, Dartmouth, for one. The were testing a testosterone patch for FMS. However, as they were not correcting the b12/folate etc deficiencies, response wasn't good enough in enough people. If you are one of the people for which it is very effective then you win. Not everybody doing hormone replacement therapy for women is into also testing testosterone. Most men find estrogen terrifying.
 

triffid113

Day of the Square Peg
Messages
831
Location
Michigan
Testosterone has effect on the CBS mutation (which I have +/+) and may be why DHEA helps me as my body makes estrogen and testosterone out of it. I also take pregnenolone to make progesterone. I also get estrogen pellets (used to be testosterone too but I told my doctor that DHEA covered me for that). I may discontinue the estrogen pellets if I don't pass my hormone lab this year. Last year the pellets caused hormone changes Life Extension wasn't happy with - first time ever - and if the changes we made don't fix it, I'm off that this year. Not like I wasn't making things in the right ratios, but they said too much is too much. I get this lab and highly recommend it if you get hormone replacement because they tell you every single estrogen, testosterone, and progesterone metabolite you are making so you know immediately if you are headed toward cancer: http://www.lef.org/Vitamins-Supplements/ItemLCM4098/Urinary-Hormone-Profile-24-hour-Urine-Test.html and here's the website of the lab: http://meridianvalleylab.com/urine-hormone-testing

Caution - for the first few days when you raise your testosterone levels (however you do it) it will cause you to break out and to become - er - insatiable. That all settles down in just a few days.
 

Lotus97

Senior Member
Messages
2,041
Location
United States
Cheilitis could be from B2 deficiency. Freddd says it could be from folate deficiency. Based on what dbkita said about B2 increasing MTHFR, with either B2 or folate deficiency as a cause of cheilitis, B2 causing cheilitis seems paradoxical. Unless there's another cause.