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Oh, I do remember also, that Dr Wright also states that the 24 hour urine will test high for these hormones as they are not being absorbed.
@misseschris 2449 wrote:
Don’t have the article in front of me right now, but Dr. Wright recommends cobalt to fix the problem. Will check out the article a bit more later and be back!
Hmm, cobalt. Isn’t that basically B12?
My most recent test showed B12 around 490 and folate at 16. Seems to be at least decent levels.
I’m not sure where one could even buy cobalt, but it’s interesting.
All my symptoms seem to point to very low cortisol but nothing seems to remedy it.
When I was hospitalized, I was actually thinking I was having low cortisol so I took a bunch of HC on my way to the hospital. My initial blood tests there show high cortisol levels so the pills were at least enough to cause an initial spike but that was not long after I took the pills.
I’m not sure if that urinary cortisol means anything but it’s really the only lead I have at the moment.
Yes, B12 does contain cobalt. I did google cobalt dietary supplements and you can get them. If you are supplementing B12 and your labs result was 490, that is way too low. It should be up over 1000 if supplementing, if you are not supplementing you probably should. Methylcobalamin is a very bioavailable form.
When I was taking hc without much success, I spoke via email to Dr Peatfield in England. He has written books on thyroid/ adrenal issues. I was taking 35mg hc at the time and he said I could easily double it as absorption is a big problem for some hypothyroid patients and hc. I didn’t do that at the time as hc was causing low aldo (didn’t realize that was what was happening) and also stomach pain- probably stomach irritation from the hc was increasing poor absorption.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts on your situation. I have found for myself that all hormones reacted weirdly in my body til I got optimized on nutrients, mainly, iron, B12, D, magnesium, etc. Also, I reacted adversely to some hormones when I was deficient in others- eg: could not tolerate progesterone til I got some estrogen into my system- so somewhere, with you there is a deficiency (or overabundance) in something that is causing everything else to go haywire. As Dr. M says, you have to keep searching.
To improve absorbtion of HC use Betaine HCL with your HC capsules this will improve absorbtion of the HC through increasing stomach acidity.
@misseschris 2459 wrote:
Some people do hc sublingually- tastes terrible but they get better absorption.
Thanks, I’ve tried this actually…it tastes awful like you say.
I’m not sure my problems are cortisol but I think the urine results are a little strange. I’ve seen posts from people who are on 30-40mg and they came in well below range. It would seem to mean that I’m either super-responsive to HC (unlikely it would seem given my symptoms) or that I simply urinate it out for some reason. When trying the higher doses of HC I did notice a slight increase in BP which to me indicates that it is doing something.
Are there any other reasons why increasing testosterone would cause rapid heart rate, tremor, fatigue?
Check this out…my SHBG has always been low but I just got results today and it was a 7 (8-48)!
That’s one of the lowest I’ve seen anywhere.
3 months later and I’m no further into figuring out what the hell has gone wrong with me. I no longer believe the testosterone injection was necessarily the cause of my problems, rather just a catalyst. It must be something with either the cortisol replacement or brief thyroid meds that I took.
Prior to the testosterone injection I was on the T cream and my E2 was rather high and I was retaining a lot of fluid. I believe that for whatever reason when I switched to the injections my E2 dropped to a lower level and that’s when all hell broke lose. One of the things that seems to somewhat reduce my symptoms is reverting to the T cream that raises my E2 levels again to too high levels. I have some possible theories why higher estrogen levels seem to help me and also shielded me from these symptoms right away.
1. I appear to be hypovolemic and suffer from orthostatic intolerance. The higher E2 levels may have caused me to retain fluid/sodium that overcame this effect. Florinef and DDAVP have been tried without result to improve this though.
2. I may be rapidly metabolizing hormones, perhaps my higher E2 slowed down my liver metabolism thus allowing me to hang to hormones longer.
3. The higher E2 would have raised binding globulins perhaps when I switched to T injections I had a thyroid/cortisol “dump” which caused my symptoms…this would not explain why they have not resolved with time though.
4. Estrogen increases norepinephrine. Low norepinephrine is associated with orthostatic intolerance and fatigue/depression. Perhaps my body could not handle the transition from high norepinephrine signaling to low NE signaling. Or perhaps the HC has had some suppressive effect on this. This theory seems to explain a lot of things.
Those are just some of the theories I have. I have no idea how I managed to get hammered with all these crippling symptoms that I did not have before hormone replacement. Maybe my body was in an adaptive hypometabolic state and by increasing it I triggered this.
I really have absolutely no idea, and seeing multiple doctors who all basically say, “yes, you’re obviously very sick but I have no idea why.”
The only thing that helped a little was I recently got a few B12 injections. I felt better for a few days after the first couple of injections which I thought was promising, but later injections didn’t repeat this effect.
I’m pretty much lost here…
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