Iodine and Amino Acids

I’m putting the iodine on hold.  I’m not sure what’s going on exactly, but it’s not making me feel good.  As I mentioned, I was taking a drop a day.  Felt great for about 3 days.  Had a few detox zits emerge – no biggie, they were done in a day after putting a drop of iodine on each one.  This stuff is really quite interesting for that purpose, if for no other.  After my high-energy, good mood 3-day period of time I went into a serious depression that lasted about 4 days.  It’s the most depressed I’ve been in many years.  I could barely get off the couch, crying off and on all day, much lamenting of my unsettled lot in life…dark thoughts.  I was also having trouble with a dry cough that came and went. A day or two into this I realized it might be associated with the iodine supplementation, so I stopped it (but continued to take the co-factors to aid in what I figured was bromide detox).  My mood cleared up and my cough retreated.

So I decided to try again, only slower. This time rather than a drop a day I put one drop in an 8 oz bottle of water, and drank only one ounce of it per day.  I did that for a day or two, and the cough came back.  Ok, still too fast?  Fine.  So I reduced my daily dose even further – to 1 Tablespoon a day of the 8oz water/1 drop 2% Lugols solution.  1 Tbs a day.  If 2% Lugols has 2.5mg per drop, and there are 4 Tbs in a quarter cup, that means my dose had dropped from 2.5 mg a day, to 312 micrograms (mcg) a day, and now to 156mcg/day.  About equivalent to the iodine found in a 4-5oz piece of cod.  Did this for 3 days.  Day 2 was magical – tons of energy, great outlook, great mood….and then the depression came back again.  Not as severe as the first time, but still not good.  Crying, inability to handle even small stressors, lethargic.  That’s where I was for 2 days through yesterday.  Still have the cough too.

I’m done with the iodine for now.  I don’t have time for this rollercoaster.  I don’t know exactly what’s going on.  Perhaps it’s bromide detox.  Perhaps is the Wolff-Chaikoff effect.  In any case, I hate it.  I’m just going to try to increase seafood (which doesn’t seem to give me problems) and stop supplementing with it.  Maybe I’ll try again someday.

In the meantime I’ve also started supplementing with amino acids.  I’m glad I’m putting the iodine on hold so I can see how these affect me without any confounding variables. After taking the quizzes (here and here) in The Mood Cure and The Diet Cure, the ones I want to start with are as follows:

• L-Tyrosine – affects production of dopamine and norepinephrine.  I’m taking 500mg first thing in the morning.  It’s supposed to provide a little zip – like caffeine, only without the crash.
• 5HTP – for depressive symptoms.  You’re supposed to take this mid- and late-day, as it can make you drowsy.  Some people take it at night to help with sleep.  My sleep is pretty good, so I’m not taking it at night.  I take 500mg mid-day.
• GABA – a calming amino acid that I’ll take as needed before anxiety-provoking situations, 500mg.
• DLPA – D-Phenylalanine + L-Phenylalanine.  This is supposed to enhance endorphin production and make life feel better.
• L-Glutamine – this is supposed to prevent/stop carb cravings.  I guess glutamine is a form of energy the brain can use when it senses it’s low in sugar.  I’ll probably take this as needed, 500mg.

Note that not all amino acids are good for everyone.  Check out these contraindications before taking them. Julia Ross says that amino acid (AA) supplementation is temporary.  After you’ve re-established your reserve of the AAs (which were initially depleted by dieting, stress, genetics, or other factors) you stop taking them.  Until you need em again, anyway.

So why am I doing this?  I don’t want to take prescription meds.  I don’t want another diagnosis that the medical establishment can use to discriminate against me when I need insurance.  I want to feel better.

Whew

I’m feeling a lot better.  Upped my Vitamin C and water and that seemed to put an end to the detox depression.  That was pretty severe.  I’ve heard (on the iodine thread on Kruse’s site) that having serious bromide detox on a pretty low dose of iodine can indicate there’s a significant deficiency going on.  I don’t have the money to test right now, so instead I’m just going to continue at a very slow rate…one drop of iodine a week for the moment, and increase very very gradually.

I made a wish list of the tests I would have done if I could.  The off-the-top-of-my-head list totaled $1520.  Uh…Nope.

It looks like we’re going to have to get jobs.  We were hoping to start our own business but the credential we have – while golden in California – is relatively unheard of here in the Midwest.  We are not among the professional disciplines that can easily do early intervention or provide services for autistic kids with medicaid.  We could attempt to navigate the world of health insurance billing, but I suspect we’ll run out of money before we figure that out.  So off to get a job it is.

 

 

The Health Saga Limps Along

I’ve written several posts and then didn’t post them.  I’ve been depressed this week.

So…how about a brief update.  Because it runs counter to my nature to do nothing when there’s a problem, I’ve changed game plans again.  I’ve become suspicious that I have an iodine deficiency, based on my symptoms of hypothyroidism (as well as my last tests).  I don’t have a doc willing to prescribe me Cytomel (T3), and my insurance is pretty sucky, so I thought I’d try to supplement iodine.  I thought it might help given folks around the web having success with it.  I’m too tired to dig up and share relevant links at the moment…sorry.

About a week and a half ago I started supplementing iodine (2% Lugol’s solution), at the rate of a drop a day in a large glass of water.  I’ve been following Dr. David Brownstein’s recommendations, and have also been supplementing B vitamins, selenium, sea salt, Vitamin C, magnesium, which are recommended to help the body flush stores of fluoride and bromine.  A drop of 2% Lugol’s solution is equivalent to about 2.5-3mg of iodine.

The first day I took iodine I had a metallic taste in my mouth, and I could feel my thyroid swell a little, pressing against my windpipe.  The next several days I felt good – some sinus drainage, but increased energy and good mood.  Looked forward to taking my iodine in the AM.  Then about a week ago I started developing a sore throat.  This continued for several days, and developed into a non-productive cough.  It feels like the area around my thyroid is irritated, and I’ve been feeling weak and depressed.  I guess this could be the fluoride/bromine detox I’ve heard about.  I’m going stop supplementing till it goes away.  I’m having my doubts now as to whether or not I want to continue this.  It’s keeping me up at night and is interfering with my motivation to do anything like go for walks or work.  Folks on various forums indicate this is a common reaction to starting iodine.  Some people say to power through it – up the dose and it’ll pass. Others say back off and decrease dosing till you feel better.  Others say increase Vitamin C and do a salt flush.  I’m going to do the last 2.

I’ve stopped counting calories, and now I’m back to very low carb.  My weight is up to 201.

I’ve started reading Julia Ross’s book The Diet Cure, and starting yesterday I’ve been supplementing with 5HTP.  I do notice an immediate improvement in mood after taking it.  I’ll add others to the mix soon…but I really needed a shot of serotonin to get started while I read the rest of the book.  I’ve been hurting.

ABA Program – Day 4

So I’m on Day 4 of earning positive reinforcement for appropriate health-conscious behaviors with the intention of losing weight.  So far there are pros and cons to this system:

Pros:

• I get to feel good about the things I do right without that being overshadowed by the things I don’t do well.  For example, normally I would psychologically beat myself up for not staying under 1500 calories, but when I get reinforced for things I did right (exercising, logging all my food, taking all supplements) my focus turns to that.  That feels great.  I’m quite prone to beating up on myself.
• There have been a couple days I almost gave up recording all my food because it felt like a pain in the ass, but I did it just to earn the token.  So, it works in that respect.

Cons:

• I don’t have enough money to finance my reinforcement structure.  Therefore, I’ll have to revise it.  See below.
• The things I struggled to do before I still struggle to do.  Yoga (which feels so damn hard for me in my current state of physical non-fitness), despite having a high token value and relatively short duration, hasn’t happened yet.  Also, I’ve only managed to stay under 1500 net calories one day since I started.  So I’ll have to either increase the reward or decrease the response effort necessary to earn the reinforcer.
• I’m not losing weight…probably because I’m struggling to keep my calories low. Part of this is a matter of changing from an eat-any-quantity low-carb diet to one in which calories are now restricted.  It’s going to take time for me to start thinking in these terms again.

So revised reinforcement system is below.  Revisions are as follows:  I’ve tripled the token requirement for all long-term rewards, because I can’t afford my previous rate of reinforcement.  Secondly, I’ve adjusted the reinforcement value and response effort of tasks that I’m still avoiding.  Third, I’ve removed music downloads from the list of reinforcers…cuz really.  Music can be free.  Hello Pandora.

So here are the revised reinforcers and criteria to earn them:

Reinforcers:

• Time at a coffee shop alone (30 tokens)
• A movie alone (45 tokens)
• Clothes (60 tokens for $10 worth of clothing)
• Pedicure (120 tokens)
• A new book (60 tokens for $10 book)
• Sushi (150 tokens for sushi takeout)
• A night out with David (300 tokens)
• A lab test (e.g., lipids, Vit D) (450 tokens for $75 test)

Criteria for earning reinforcement:

• 30 minutes of exercise (walking or other constant movement) – 1 tokens
• 5 minutes of yoga - 5 tokens
• Logging all food for the day – 1 tokens
• Drinking no alcohol – 2 tokens
• Staying under 1500 net calories for the day (meaning, if I burn off calories exercising I can eat that much more) – 5 tokens
• Taking all of my supplements – 1 token

Low Cal No Fun

Well, after about 5 or 6 days of 1500 calories and walking every day I kind of fell off the wagon.  Who wants to be on a wagon anyway.  There’s nothing to look forward to on the wagon.  The entering of calories became cumbersome when we were cooking.  My husband made some really awesome Paleo Crabcakes (I would link but I don’t know where he got the recipe).  I just didn’t feel like entering each one of the 20 ingredients into an app to figure the calories…so I put it off…and put it off…and before you know it 3 days have passed and my Lose It! app is neglected.

Ok, so that didn’t work for me.  If I’m not willing to do it, it doesn’t work for me.

It occurs to me that I should start looking at this the way a behavior analyst would.  This is what I do, after all.  When I write a behavior plan with the intention of increasing the frequency of a desirable behavior I arrange for the consequences of that behavior to be reinforcing (a.k.a. rewarding).  Behavior is lawful.  People tend to repeat behavior that result in rewards and don’t repeat behaviors that provide unwanted results.  If I analyzed my own behavior with regard to counting calories over the past week, I’d say the reinforcement schedule was too thin (i.e., there wasn’t a powerful enough or frequent enough reward to make it worth doing).  Sure, it was nice to see the scale move…but apparently that delayed gratification – that moment in the morning when the scale gave me good news – was only enough to keep me on plan for 5 or 6 days…it was not powerful or immediate enough to motivate me to enter 20 crabcake ingredients, and then the slippery slope began.

So what I need to do is manipulate the consequences of the behaviors that make up my plan so the rewards are more powerful and/or more frequent…so I don’t fall off the wagon again.

So what am I willing to work for?

Let’s do a reinforcer assessment first.  This is basically a list of crap I’m willing to work for.  Ideally, they’re things that can be provided quickly and in high frequency, so not too expensive or too difficult to come by/organize. You can use bigger or more expensive rewards too, and use tokens for the little steps toward the big reward.  Here we go, off the top of my head – a list of things I don’t typically allow myself very often because I’m pretty stingy with money these days.  I think I’ll have to do a token system since almost everything I like costs $.

• Music downloads (2 tokens per song)
• Time at a coffee shop alone (10 tokens)
• A movie alone (15 tokens)
• Clothes (20 tokens for $10 worth of clothing)
• Pedicure (40 tokens)
• A new book (20 tokens for $10 book)
• Sushi (50 tokens for sushi takeout)
• A night out with David (100 tokens)
• A lab test (e.g., lipids, Vit D) (150 tokens for $75 test)

So here are the tasks I’m going to reward myself for.  The number of tokens I can earn is directly proportionate to the difficulty and/or importance of the task for me right now:

• 30 minutes of exercise (walking or other constant movement) – 1 tokens
• 15 minutes of yoga - 5 tokens
• Logging all food for the day – 1 tokens
• Drinking no alcohol – 2 tokens
• Staying under 1500 net calories for the day (meaning, if I burn off calories exercising I can eat that much more) – 3 tokens
• Taking all of my supplements – 1 token

So starting tomorrow: ABA Program – Day 1.

Low Cal / Low Carb – Day 6

Down another pound this morning to 195.4.   I actually did get hungry yesterday and ran out of calories, so I ate more.  I’m just not going to be hungry.  My totals for yesterday were as follows:

• Calories: 1901
• Protein 180g (39%)
• Carbs 62g (13%)
• Fats 99g (48%)

I also walked for 30 minutes.

Lose it!  is totally the best app for tracking calories, macronutrients, and exercise.  It has the cool barcode scanner, is very user friendly, and the nutritional information for the foods isn’t entered by people who are guessing.  The food database isn’t as large as MyFitnessPal, but I’d rather have accuracy than size.  So I highly recommend it.

Baby’s gut has calmed down again.  Poor thing.

So back when we had money a few months ago we signed up to participate in this American Gut Project – it’s a massive project to investigate the intestines of humans around the world.  They send you a kit including instructions and sterile swabs.  You send back bio-samples of various kinds, and in like 6 months or so they send you an analysis of the bacteria in your gut.  We’re about to send in our stuff.  And then wait for 6 months.  I guess I should just forget about it for a while.

Low Cal / Low Carb Day 5

Down another pound this morning to 196.4.  Nice to see the scale move.  I assume it’ll be slowing down soon…and then I’ll just need to be patient.

I almost got hungry yesterday…I could have eaten more last night but I ran out of calories.  But still no big deal.  Last time I lost a significant amount of weight was in 2006 right before I got married (such a cliche, I know).  I lost about 35 pounds and was hungry most nights going to bed in order to do that.  I can’t get over the fact that I’m not hungry and cranky and scale is moving.

I’ve started taking Maca, which supposedly helps with sex drive.  So far I’d have to say that YES it seems to already be making a difference.  It’s only been a few days though, so this could be placebo effect.  I’ll let you know in a month or so for sure.

My daughter still has really loose stools, which are causing her some serious distress.  She had just finished potty training and now she can’t make it there in time.  My bad, honey…sorry about that.  Note to helicopter moms everywhere – go easy on the probiotics with little ones.  Geez.  I weighed her a couple nights ago and she’s lost like 3 pounds.  Her colon must be completely empty by now.  It has not been pretty.  Back to micromanaging my own health problems I guess.  Things with her will be adjusted SLOWLY.

My Fitness Pal is great in some ways for tracking macronutrients and calories – I really like the barcode scanner and the large database of food options.  I’m learning, however, that a lot of the foods in the database were entered by users and the macronutrient totals don’t always add up to the calorie total.  This is making it difficult to determine my % of calories from fat, carb, and protein with any accuracy.  Yesterday 10% of the  calories I ate were unaccounted for.  I’m looking for another app.

One thing I’m learning right now is that you can trust no one who says they have all the answers.  I know that sounds obvious, but it’s very easy to get sucked in by someone confident who claims to know a lot about what you’re struggling with.  I think it’s fine to try things out…but give it a month or two.  If you’re not getting results, then it’s time to look critically at what you’re doing, take the good, and ditch the bad.  I wish I would have done that a year ago.

Edited to add…I’ve started using a new app called Lose It! I think the nutritional info for the foods in the database was entered by the manufacturer, so hopefully it will have some accuracy to it.