SPINA THYR a research tool to evaluate thyroid function, deiodinases activity, TH resistance

[drob31]

I think @drob31 spoke to that doctor and thought that she was useless and believes in adrenal fatigue and doesn’t follow anything that Blanchard did. Regardless, everything you need to know is in the book.

I suspect you brain fog might be due to overactive 5HT2C receptor lowering DA and NE. Maybe mirtazapine could help with that. And you could experiment with 5HT1A agonists and see if they reproduce some of the effects you get from T3. Both drob31 and I have realized over time that our reaction to T3 could be reproduced by other substances that act on serotonin receptors.

That doctor knows his protocols very well, but beyond that it seems they won't be helpful. And I think most people aren't going to be fixed by thyroid alone. It's going to be a complex combination of things.

 

[Iritu1021]

That doctor knows his protocols very well, but beyond that it seems they won't be helpful. And I think most people aren't going to be fixed by thyroid alone. It's going to be a complex combination of things.

In retrospect, I now think that Blanchard was treating healing hypothyroidism with T4 and treating 5HT receptors and hypothalamic function with micro-dose T3.

He did say that not everyone needed micro T3 and he would only add it if the person was not feeling well with T4 alone. I think the patients he was treating were not as sick as one would find on this site.

 

[S-VV]

Then if overt hypothyroidism weren't a problem, would microdosing T3 be effective for 5HT receptor regulation?

 

[Iritu1021]

Then if overt hypothyroidism weren't a problem, would microdosing T3 be effective for 5HT receptor regulation?

Yes, it would be.
I used micro T3 without any T4 and it still had a strong effect on me, even in “homeopathic doses”.

 

[frozenborderline]

I think @drob31 spoke to that doctor and thought that she was useless and believes in adrenal fatigue and doesn’t follow anything that Blanchard did. Regardless, everything you need to know is in the book.

I suspect you brain fog might be due to overactive 5HT2C receptor lowering DA and NE. Maybe mirtazapine could help with that. And you could experiment with 5HT1A agonists and see if they reproduce some of the effects you get from T3. Both drob31 and I have realized over time that our reaction to T3 could be reproduced by other substances that act on serotonin receptors.

I did read a good portion of the book, as I had a little more energy than usual after my saline infusion yesterday, but normally I feel like this stuff is too complex for me to parse with brainfog, sort of a catch -22, and it would be nice to have a skilled doctor help me with this. I know there must be good endos out there. Yikes about the adrenal fatigue thing though.
Mirtazapine is something i dont think i could bring myself to touch due to my awful reactions to it. I do occasionally take l-tyrosine, esp. when i am taking something that might lower monoamines in general (like high dose BCAAs).

 

[frozenborderline]

Did you read my blog? 5HT1A receptor is involved in temperature regulation, as well as blood pressure and pulse regulation. It is also a main regulating receptor in the hypothalamus - so it should definitely be a suspect when it comes to dysautonomia and HPA dysfunction.

I think 5HT1A dysfunction can really mimic the thyroid hormone effects, in fact it might be the reason why we feel the thyroid hormone fluctuations so strong and so fast while “normal people” do not notice them at all.

perhaps the temperature regulation is a problem with serotonin receptors/abnormal signalling, but given that CFS seems to generally be characterized by problems with hypometabolism and pain that's not just do to disordered perception of pain, but actually abnormal metabolism in skeletal muscle, i dont know, I think that thyroid, if it plays a role, is possibly more than just something thats centrally acting.

 

[Wishful]

I don't believe that there's any problem with my serotonin functions. 5-HTP does combat insomnia, so I am absorbing it and processing it, but doesn't do anything for my ME symptoms. I don't react significantly to supplemental T4 or T3 unless I take several times the prescribed dose (then I feel a bit jittery), so I definitely don't qualify as hypersensitized.

My hypothesis for my elevated TSH and temperature fluctuations is elevated kynurenine production. Elevated picolinic acid should elevate TSH, and thus raise my temperature along with my other symptoms.

I also don't seem to have abnormal muscle metabolism. My ME symptoms are either neurological or controlled by neurological functions. I think it can all be caused by problems within the microglial cells; possibly from their mitochondria. If it's a genetic issue, it could commonly affect mitochondria elsewhere in the body (but not necessarily, since there's a genetic difference between the two). A recent report in science daily was a discovery that we have two different types of mitochondria in our neurons: long ones at one end, and round ones at the other. It didn't say whether that was a genetic difference or something locally affecting expression (my guess is the latter). Maybe other cells have variations in mitochondria based on local factors, which could be affected by ME.

 

[Iritu1021]

@debored13 Mirtazapine is hard to tolerate at low dose because you only get H1 receptor effect and no 5HT2C effect until you are at least at 30 mg dose. It helped me somewhat when I was at the stage similar to where you are now.

 

[Iritu1021]

I don't believe that there's any problem with my serotonin functions. 5-HTP does combat insomnia, so I am absorbing it and processing it, but doesn't do anything for my ME symptoms. I don't react significantly to supplemental T4 or T3 unless I take several times the prescribed dose (then I feel a bit jittery), so I definitely don't qualify as hypersensitized.

5HTP would not help with any of this since the problem is excess sensitivity of certain brain receptors to serotonin. But if you don't react strongly to thyroid hormone than I agree you're probably not in the same category as the rest of us in this thread. And for us, the problem is that TSH is actually not high enough due to hypothalamic settings being off. My TSH only started going up after I correct the receptor issue.
Interestingly my TSH paradoxically went up on micro doses of T3 alone - which is why I think it was acting on the 5HT receptors in the hypothalamus.

 

[Wishful]

Yup, I'm in a category of my own.

Did you ever experiment with T2? It hasn't helped anyone else, since I'm in a category of my own, but if you're playing (okay, experimenting scientifically) with your thyroid system, it's another possibility to consider.

 

[frozenborderline]

@debored13 Mirtazapine is hard to tolerate at low dose because you only get H1 receptor effect and no 5HT2C effect until you are at least at 30 mg dose. It helped me somewhat when I was at the stage similar to where you are now.

ahh very interesting. i think i threw out all my mirtazapine though because it was such a bad reaction, unfortunately. This was before I got sick, and i was just trying it for anxiety/insomnia, but if it made me feel taht tired when i wasnt sick i would shudder to think what it would do if one has CFS

i am very curious about dose-dependent variation in affinities/effects in general

 

[Iritu1021]

Yup, I'm in a category of my own.

Did you ever experiment with T2? It hasn't helped anyone else, since I'm in a category of my own, but if you're playing (okay, experimenting scientifically) with your thyroid system, it's another possibility to consider.

Yes, I did order T2 a while back when you first told me about it. It made me very tachycardic after the first dose so I didn't pursue it further.

 

[frozenborderline]

blanchards book has a chapter on t2, he seems to think its good but i think he thinks its good in similarly ultra small dose range to t3. i am also still curious about triac

 

[Iritu1021]

blanchards book has a chapter on t2, he seems to think its good but i think he thinks its good in similarly ultra small dose range to t3. i am also still curious about triac

He never used T2 alone but he micro-dosed NDT and thought it was superior to synthetic T3 and thought it might be due to T2.
@debored13 you still never told us what your SPINA was.

 

[frozenborderline]

He never used T2 alone but he micro-dosed NDT and thought it was superior to synthetic T3 and thought it might be due to T2.
@debored13 you still never told us what your SPINA was.

i thought i posted my ttsi earlier in this thread? anyway it would've changed a lot since i got it done last. dont know if i have spina on the computer or the brain energy to figure that out right now. i dont even have the values from the last labs, i always ask my pcp to send the labs and he doesnt rememb,er its really a pain in the ass

 

[Iritu1021]

this thread got too long for me to go through it and find your TTSI.

your pcp doesn't have a patient portal? most places run their labs through LabCorp and Quest so if you create a patient portal with them you should be able to access all of your lab results direclty. If you ever get your labs just post them or send them to me and I'll run them through SPINA.

do you still have lactic acidosis now that you're on thyroid?

 

[frozenborderline]

this thread got too long for me to go through it and find your TTSI.

your pcp doesn't have a patient portal? most places run their labs through LabCorp and Quest so if you create a patient portal with them you should be able to access all of your lab results direclty. If you ever get your labs just post them or send them to me and I'll run them through SPINA.

do you still have lactic acidosis now that you're on thyroid?

they might have a patient portal but my parents are too busy to figure out how to access it atm and im too tired atm... ive also been busy trying to help a friend with CFS in LA thru a crisis and try and help her find some medical help. I really want to figure out all this stuff but i will probably b waiting to organize and look thru all my labs until my sister's back from college and can help

well i self-diagnosed with lactic acidosis lol, but the symtoms that i thought of as lactic acidosis, the muscle pain that felt like exhaustion, the severe brain fog, etc, did essentially abate to a significant extent with thyroid treatment, but they still come back some/it seems dose dependent. But this is the main effect of thyroid to me--it doesnt really make me really energetic, but it makes it so i dont have these terrible lactic-acidosis-seeming effects when sedentary, although I still cannot do very much activity.

The reason I assumed it was lactic acidosis, is familiarity with some science on reductive stress and metabolism and redox state, and pyruvate dehydrogenase, as well as familiarity with exercise from before i was sick..

Saline also helps with my symptoms although only for like three hours after an infusion. Still, between saline, thyroid, and caffeine and some of my supplements, i can stave off a lot of the worst pain, even if it hasnt gotten me where i wanna get healthwise

 

[frozenborderline]

Besides thyroid and vitamin D, I have actually had a few other labs which were fairly abnormal, and never followed up on, and i wonder how they play into all of my issues--low IgG, low IgA, high IgE, high eosinophil count, i think high crp or some other inflammation marker, high EBV and coxsackie tiers...

 

[Iritu1021]

I understand what you meant by lactic acidosis because I had it too and my serum lactate was elevated on Genova test. And thyroid did help me with that too. And I also had high acute EBV IgM Abs when I crashed but once I've been on thyroid for a while they went back to normal.

I actually feel like out of all the people I talked to here you're the most similar to my own case. You definitely need to start looking into your serotonin receptors.

 

[frozenborderline]

I understand what you meant by lactic acidosis because I had it too and my serum lactate was elevated on Genova test. And thyroid did help me with that too. And I also had high acute EBV IgM Abs when I crashed but once I've been on thyroid for a while they went back to normal.

I actually feel like out of all the people I talked to here you're the most similar to my own case. You definitely need to start looking into your serotonin receptors.

hmm genova? I had been told to get lactate/pyruvate blood ratio test, which i was told was a normal lab that would b covered by insurance and not a specialized thing. I had been told the ratio was more important than total lactate.