General Chat

[Yura]

Also still wonder how big factor in my hypothyroidsm case was undereating. After all my first big crash was not after taking and stopping steroids, but after doing stupid low cal bodybuidling cut and even after that because of my gut issues=food group restrictions I was never eating 3000kcal or more consistently even during my crazy cycling days. Constantly doing calorie deficit, but I think because my metabolism was so fucked I didn't lose weight like normal person with healthy metabolism would lose.. So Because I kept my weight(muscles) I always brushed off not eating enough.. Another interesting observation how I treat food. Basically always licking the plates. Like I never see that in other people. They leave bunch of food on a plate all the time and they don't care. Like I see all you guys here talking about "not eat much" or fasting this fasting that. It is so printed into my fucking head. Eating 2000kcal or whatever and wondering why I am fucking cold all the time. Like because of metal toxicity, some fucked up chemistry or just because I am so brainwashed that I simply don't eat enough.. Basically decades of chronic undereating and the body adapted to that. Here and there eating calorie excess will do nothing. It takes long time refeeding before really the body starts to wasting energy by heat production etc.. This is vicious circle for me. Always realize this, say that I will eat at least 3000kcal a day and see what happens, but I do that for couple of days and next thing I know I am eating around 2000kcal again because I have fear of so much food that I eat nothing but lean meat and rice and so even if you eat decent amount of food it is nothing in terms of calories in comparison with diet of "normal" people where they eat here and there some processed junk in form of snack or whatever and easily hit their calories or actually in most cases over their calories that's why is majority of people fat right..
So this is the chicken or the egg situation. Yeah I am fixing some problem with restrictive diet, but after decades of doing it maybe it does more harm than good..
They mention how in refeeding people get so much symptoms of all kinds from bloating, gas, skin issues, crazy water retention etc.. and it takes weeks or months to get the body start using all that food and function normally again. But I never pushed trough that period. Most people who are fucked up and used to starve never do. They eat one thing they don't eat normally get some symptom and they turn around and stop eating it again. Ther restrict even more probably after that..
Here are some interesting videos about the topic

 

[RebelWithACause]

Need to support your metabolism with supps (the stuff that your body is missing) and then eat right for your body chemistry with enough calories. I wouldn't undereat it slows down everything.

 

[Yura]

Any experience with betaine(TMG)? Like me avoiding gluten and oxalates I basically don't have any sources of betaine + muscle meat high in niacin and methionine seems to deplete methyl donors like TMG even more? I should probably test homocystein. The best way to find out if I need more methyl groups right..
I envy so much to people who can eat "normal" diet.. I mean they get betaine from stuff like wheat flour.. Just one example how even basically refined junk food give you important micronutrient.
I am trying to help my body. To fix it. But all I am doing is probably the exact opposite and I think that even really bad diet, but diet where are all food groups is much better and will have much better results than "healthy diet" where you don't eat all kinds of food groups and you take bunch of pills to replace that.
I often try to think about our body how it was evolving over such long period of the time and how incredibly complex system of systems our body is.
How fucking pathetic I am thinking that I can somehow manage this complex system of systems by taking specific isolated micronutrients..
Like right now I would rather just eat exactly what looks good to me and die within months than doing what I am doing now for years..
Eating fucking diet that I don't even like not getting better it's ridiculous lol.
I am really thinking to throw all my supps into trash and buy some sandwich, chocolate milk and snickers bar for dinner lol..

 

[RebelWithACause]

You need to eat enough bro that makes it easier to not get these cravings. I could eat healthy within the sphere of what I needed with enough fat (if needed) and calories. Once you lower calories too much for too long your body will just want to consume quick easy calories and it will go to what you are used to pretty much (as a kid for example)

Betaine worked well for me but later on I felt worse from increasing methylation. Probably overdid it eventually.

 

[Yura]

@RebelWithACause It is not about cravings. IT is about having balanced diet that has everything. But If I seem to not do ok on dairy, gluten, high oxalates, nightshades, high fat etc. and I end up eating meat and rice all it does I have constipation and lack all kinds of micronutrients.. Just eating more rice and meat will just create even bigger imbalance. Like lack of that betaine etc..

 

[opiath]

@Yura Why are you not doing HG7?
Remove copper, zinc goes in. Remove iron, manganese goes in.
Digestion is zinc + manganese basically. Carbonic anhydrase + CO2 + NADPH = digestive juice

 

[Yura]

@opiath I did 10% of full dose. All it did low copper symptoms got worse and worse. There was no "copper surfacing" after taking EGCG. Maybe because I took molybdenum and zinc long time before this. I would need to take the protocol without zinc and molybdenum for some time. But I can't do experiments like that. I felt worse and worse(low copper symptoms even on no molybdenum and zinc.) Maybe I am really low in amino acids and taking anything makes everything worse even zinc etc..
So for now I am doing low heme iron, no high copper foods and do protein. TO do the least damage.. I will take some TMG at least 500mg so I avoid some crazy deficiency..

 

[opiath]

10% meaning you tried 300mg EGCG?
Thats way too low to have any kind of effect.
I recommend starting it without any zinc at first and only taking it later on.
You can try no molybdenum but eventually you'll get kidney pain without it.

 

[Yura]

@opiath without bile flow taking grams of EGCG sure.. It is simply not for me now. I can't afford messing with my body by managing the doses by symptoms as those guys who don't have fucked up body like I have can..
With no bile flow, constipation etc. pushing detox is the most stupid thing you can do..
Pushing toxins from all tissues to the liver when the liver already has hard time si stupid. At first I need to have open phase 3 detox pathways..

 

[RebelWithACause]

10% meaning you tried 300mg EGCG?
Thats way too low to have any kind of effect.
I recommend starting it without any zinc at first and only taking it later on.
You can try no molybdenum but eventually you'll get kidney pain without it.

I thought your post on histidine was interesting, might also be something for Yura to try.

 

[Yura]

@RebelWithACause tried histidine. Felt weird. I really don't want to megadose one amino acid.

 

[opiath]

Histidine is really good for binding copper throughout the body and excreting through the skin but doesn't fix the liver bile excretion.
When you drop a copper toxicity layer you eventually run into an iron toxicity problem.
It's like an onion with alternating layers of iron/copper. You fix one layer, then you have to switch strategy for the other layer.
That's why HG7 is really good approach.
Bile production is blocked by too much copper and iron in the liver. They both create oxidative stress and limit NAPDH production at the same time (by displacing manganese)
EGCG is a very special weapon because it binds copper and iron exactly in liver allowing a temporary boost to their excretion.
The rest of the protocol is just supporting team.
Molybdenum is important because some of the iron/copper ends up in the kidney where you need uric acid to flush out. Molybdenum also neutralizes copper that enters the blood from tissues because the liver now has more free space.

Supporting methylation is nice but it does nothing for copper and iron.
How is SAMe going to bind them? Methylation doesn't make bile. It doesn't make glutathione.
Also if you are looking to support it, sparing methyl donors is better than taking methyl donors.
2 grams of creatine is going to give you the methyl groups from taking 2.5 grams of betaine.

 

[Yura]

@opiath felt weird on creatine. Dehydrated a lot no matter ho much fluids I was drinking.
I was talking with chatGPT and histidine can increase/redistribute copper unless you are taking it ever 1.5 hours or so to keep stable blood levels..
Is that true that EGCG lowers cytochrome P450?

 

[Yura]

Btw what about citrulline? Again if I don't eat any nuts, seeds, legumes etc. that are high in arginine and I eat chicken breast, whey protein the ratio of lysine to arginine is not ideal right. Especially in my case I feel like my NO is zero all the time. Also after manual labor of doing hard work for hours I feel toxic. Probably organs having hard time eliminating amonia? So maybe some citrulline would be helpful for that? Extra glycine that is a must on diet like that with high methionine right..
So I am thinking adding little TMG and creatine and citrulline due to my lean meat, rice diet..
But reading about citrulline it can lower BP a lot and I already have lower BP. so maybe ornithin is better? I would take it mainly just after work to help organs clear amonia when there is crazy muscle damage..

 

[Yura]

@opiath chatGPT says that just take creatine for now unless you test homocystein and it is high which I will not test now.. So I will try just little creatine no more than 5g. THat should spare arginine as well right...

 

[opiath]

Creatine 2 grams tops. Above that its useless since the body only synthesizes that much even in diseased state.
With 2 grams you save yourself all the methyl groups needed to make it (which would be 2.5grams of betaine or 7 grams methylfolate recycled with NADPH)
Above that you'll get dry mouth and dehydration as you say since you dont have the electrolytes and NO production in your muscles.
EGCG is metabolized by methylation too (COMT enzyme)

Trying to raise NO production when you are toxic in metals is counterproductive I think.
Why dialate blood vessels and muscles when you can't handle the oxidative stress?

 

[Yura]

@opiath yeah I was probably taking too much.. Would you recommend anything else like NAC or something? Btw I still don't believe that EGCG can chelate iron from the body that is already in the body.. Like where is ANY evidence for that. IT can block absorption and lower iron stored that way, but chelate what is already in tissues? Do you have any papers on that? What convinced you?

 

[opiath]

After I chelated a lot of copper in the summer with histidine I got a lot of improvements but bile was still not fixed.
Also I got restless legs and very sensitive teeth from too much zinc.
I was thinking maybe I'm missing iron now because I removed a lot of copper.
So I supplemented iron for one month like 20-50mg per day. It didn't fix anything.
It made specific symptoms worsen, which I clearly recognize now are my "high iron" tells.
Sore throat, slowed hair growth, jaw overbite, eye strain, genital inflammation, no bile flow.

I decided to try EGCG solo at first. I was reading HG7 at raypeatforum for a few months but the protocol seemed so crazy to me.
I did 2000mg for a few days and it unblocked so much bile flow it was insane. All of the above "high iron" symptoms starting reversing in real time.
If you run it solo though you eventually run into the cofactors deficiencies and your kidneys start hurting from lack of molybdenum for uric acid.
Also without molybdenum, copper starts flooding the bloodstream causing anxiety, insomnia, itching legs. This can be controlled by just not taking zinc.
Zinc + B6 basically control how much copper and iron leave the tissues and enter the bloodstream.

Starting third month of HG7 now and all the high iron symptoms are almost completely fixed.
Bile is not constantly flowing but its dramatically better. I can feel it moving every other meal.
So in my experience EGCG does chelate iron out of the body even if there are no studies showing it.

Your body already has mechanism for getting rid of iron though its pretty slow (intestinal/skin).
Guys can normally loose 30mg per month from skin/gut shedding, girls can loose up to 90mg paired with menstruation.
I think EGCG basically supercharges those excretion pathways so they get very fast.
It feels like some of it is going out through the bile but I can't be certain how much.
Probably you loose a lot more iron from EGCG chelating it from the lining of cells in intestine.
If it boosts the loss from 30mg per month to lets say 90mg per month and your pair that up with blocking the absorption as you say you can achieve an iron loss of a 1 gram per year or something.
Which is pretty huge if you compare for example to blood donations which are like 250mg of iron loss each.

 

[Yura]

@opiath ok will try taking EGCG will see what happens. Do you take it on empty stomach? You absorb much more EGCG to the blood than when you eat it with food..
Do you think it is needed to take everything at once?
Btw often I would get crazy cold and goosebumps all over the body out of nowhere. Do you think it is copper or iron dump?

 

[Yura]

Btw interesting you said "Also I got restless legs and very sensitive teeth from too much zinc."
Why you think it was from zinc? I think copper toxicity pulls calcium from bones and teeth. Basically the body is trying to protect the tissues from oxidative damage from all that free copper. Maybe you redistributed crazy amounts of copper with that high dose histidine..?