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Hypothyroidism
What does everyone think of psyllium husk for fiber/binder?
For the record, my great grandmother (who raised several centenarians) dried and stewed prunes, that was their trad fiber.
@jiri and everyone else just finished a mini test with pysllium husk.
Started on Saturday to Tuesday; 1tsp after each of my 3 meals. Digestion seemed fine, little bit more gas than normal.
Slept good on Sat, than had the absolute best sleep I have ever had in the last 10yrs hands down on Sunday night, it was glorious, then the worst sleep I have had in a long time on Mon and last night. Changes like this always boggle my mind.
Seems that to much binder means not enough calories and cortisol spikes for energy, last two nights sleep, felt like being on high dose cortisol insomnia. This would definitely push me into hypothyroidism
Stopping the husk for now, and might use it occasionally before bed as a nightly binder. Used charcoal for an long time at night, and wanted to take a break from it for a while.
Anyway hoping for a more normal sleep tonight 🙂
So I think I have SIBO that might be causing my hypothyroid symptoms. I think I have the sibo and leaky gut. I have sensitive digestion, food intolerances, hormonal imbalance (menstrual cycle unpredictable), difficulty concentrating, and seasonal allergies. I developed seasonal allergies only after starting the low va diet. I may have always been intolerant to gluten and eggs, but maybe am now just discovering it on the low va diet, I'm not sure. My menstrual cycle has become more unpredictable and there are longer delays between each period since starting the low va diet. I do tolerate eating beans though. I am going to try the herbs mentioned by tim on another thread.
Psyllium husk is the soluble fibre ‘supplement’ recommended on the Karen Hurd programmes. She recommends beans or psyllium husk & says they are equivalent in terms of soluble fibre absorbing toxic bile, but beans contain other nutrients too (so she prefers these). Karen Hurd has many years experience with bean protocols so I listen to her opinion.
However, personal experience tells me that psyllium husk is a very strong provoker of vA out of the liver so needs to be used carefully. Since increasing the amount of psyllium husk I was using I’ve developed detox symptoms that I had when I was vA toxic, but haven’t had so far on the detox (2+ years) so it’s strong stuff imo (at least for me). Be careful. (This is presuming my symptoms are due to the increase in psyllium, correlation doesn’t mean causation but it seems to fit symptom appearance).
Psyllium husk is recommended for constipation so shouldn’t be a problem for that, it should help as long as taken with plenty of water. I think the problem with trying things while we are on the vA detox is that we are very sensitive to anything that increases the rate of detox more than our bodies can deal with. If someone wasn’t detoxing vA then they probably wouldn’t be so sensitive to psyllium husk. I was only using the amount recommended by Karen Hurd, so nothing stupid.
@leap7 I’ve come to learn that any increase/new symptoms on the detox tend to be because I’m doing something (inadvertently) to increase the rate of detox of vA from storage. This is hard to control as life happens (well not in the U.K. at the moment but usually!). Dr Smith calls these ‘agitators’ which I think is a good word for them. To me it sounds like your body is dumping too much vA out of storage into your system, more than your system can cope with.
Psyllium husk is a fiber? so it should be feeding gut bugs producing SCFA, and short-chain fatty acids in turn have body-wide effects:
To get back to the original post (thyroid on this diet), I've mentioned it before that I brought my basal temp up with a daily kelp pill (it took about a year). Taking the basal temp is one way of monitoring your own thyroid, btw. I did find that some basal thermometers are not reliable. I bought two and one worked great and the other not very well at all. I'm sure it wasn't a huge amount of iodine, perhaps a small dose of iodine daily would do something similar. I'm not for big doses though. There might have been other nutrients in kelp. A daily small amount of fish might do something similar.
I used to follow Matt Stone when he would talk about over-feeding to bring up basal temp as well. Don't know if that over-feeding idea went anywhere, I wonder does anyone here follow him? He was doing low VA wasn't he? Has low VA changed his ideas about over-feeding? I would wonder if over-feeding might mean "more VA" if you aren't careful. Because more is more and VA is ubiquitous.
I think mostly everyone who is VA toxic has a delicate gut, @leap7.....yuppers... Though there may be a tough gut here or there. I think I know one guy... My mouth is very delicate and it makes me wonder if I'm just seeing the front end of a long delicate pipe. I even have to be careful about the temperature of my food and drinks or my mouth gets sore. My grandmother told me that her mother used to put aside their food and was adamant that no one should ever eat food that was too hot.
Perhaps that is where the story of Goldilocks and the 3 Bears comes from.