The Dino-Aspie Ex-Café (for Those 40+... or feeling creaky)

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True dat. And similarly, "suffers from dyscalculia" sounds altogether better than "will likely be late for her own funeral", don't you think? What would we do without all those lovely Latin and Greek polysyllables?


... who showed that other entire realms of human experience can be as little as a quantum, just a molecule or two, away.

I so agree with this.


I am now wondering whether auto-immune attack on my thyroid, causing throid disease, is the result of longterm consumption of foods to which my body is intolerant, thus permanently triggering an immune reaction. And whether it was thyroid damage which caused my mood-disorder... the link between wheat and dairy consumption, and my bi-polar episodes/tendencies?.

Thank you for the long replies/monologues. Not boring at all; body-mind connection is one of my oldest obsessive interests, so it is interesting to find out about another one that until a couple of weeks ago i knew almost nothing about. ( it was pure accident while looking up stuff about what provokes calcium loss from bones for a thread about dental care in the Health Forum which pointed me at it, and i thought, OMG, maybe i have thyroid disfunction).

I found references to a study by Gilberg, Gilberg, and Kopp, 1992, called "Hypothyroidism and Autism Spectrum Disorders", but don't have the sub to read whole paper. It apparently found that there might be a connection between them, of some sort. ( embryo brain development in-utero in hypothyroid mothers etc)

I suddenly realise that a lot of the "symptoms" which appear in discussion on the General Discussion Forum, many of which i identify with, look like thyroid symptoms:

Inertia, stress leaving house, long recovery needed after socialising, slow speech/conversational reaction time or speedy, over-exciteable/inappropriate social reactions, ( usually after a coffee drunk specifically to get me through some socialising) , trouble handling executive tasks ( esp responsibilities, and fast/multi-tasking activities), extreme reactions to sudden noises, extreme intolerance of/sensitivity to cold/heat, poor concentration, poor relationships, poor motivation, irritability/crabbiness, intolerance of others, etc etc etc.

I'm not quite vegetarian, but i find if i eat much meat/concentrated protein or fatty food i get painful back ache, so i avoid it most of the time.

Coffee: I am just realising how much it must have been disguising all this, until we moved here 20 months ago and i stopped going out once a day for my strong french espresso. When i do drink coffee i feel much better that day, but the couple of days after that I experience the most debilitating lethargy. It calls on my adrenal glands to zap me up, leaving the adrenals even more wasted each time.

Doctors: I avoid them like the plague, so reading about all this has been rather alarming because it seems to mean i will have to see one and do tests and take pills. Which is why I was thrilled to find the site i linked on last page because it suggested doctors not necessarily best resource. The story of one sufferer who seems to have managed without much medical intervention is at :

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/st ... ias-story/

But I am afraid that it may be too late for me, for natural nutrition methods. 15 years ago it might have still worked...


According to the site I've linked above the best treatment is dried pig thyroid. Everything else ( all the synthetic stuff ) only produces partial recovery, if any, to the point that doctors say it can't be thyroid and start treating you for a myriad of other things, with much more expensive medicines which make more money for everybody involved.

Apparently in the USA it is possible to get a weak version of pig thyroid over the counter I'm going to see if i can here, and see what happens.

PS. to my post on last page 922

Apparently the low breathing function during sleep is a thyroid symptom, which i was pleased to see included because it explained something that had puzzled/worried me this winter; i had tried changing the bed position in case there was a subtle slope etc, ( old floorboards), but it carried on for a while. Is better recently, but it turns out that hypothyroid can/does gradually suppress breathing function. ( it gets shallower).

Thank you for best wishes. Am going to try various nutritional approaches, for instance avoiding soya ( Oh s**t! does soya sauce count? I use the gluten-free version, tamari, in masses of things. I was thinking that soya exclusion would be easy cos stopped eating tofu about same time stopped dairy, because couldn't stir fry it in butter anymore ), and cabbage/broccoli ( one of my favourite vegetables! ), families cos they are goitrogenic/thyroid "depressing", and eating fish in small but far more regular "doses", avoiding coffee and sugar as much as i can bear ( perhaps this new info will help me do so) ,etc. And hope i never have to go to a doctor about it.

P.P.S. Just remembered that when i used to still write letters i was a terror for post-scripts.

Just to say that apparently exercise is crucial in healthy endocrine function, and that of course i suddenly almost completely stopped exercising on moving here 20 months ago, and it had already got less during the 18 months at our previous address.

Maybe this data, about the thyroid, will help me get round to doing some on a regular basis again. What do you know, anyone, about exercise and the thyroid? Apart from that the condition itself makes exercise offputting!

A page about exercise and endocrine function, ( especially myopathy linked with hypothyroidism) , for anyone interested, is at:

http://www.emedicine.com/pmr/TOPIC57.HTM

All this thyroid stuff has to count as "feeling creaky"! !

Thanks for both the links Ouinon....interesting.

Even though I have the same difficulty going to the DRs and it is really difficult to find someone you can trust....you might reconsider. They have a list of recommended DRs and clinics...are any in your area? I noticed some one that is within 20 miles from here and I am thinking about making an appointment....it is hard.


The synthroid isn't optimal....it has still helped me. Even after you start it, it takes several months to get to the right level, symptoms persist but the "crazy" goes away...mostly My thinking becomes less foggy and my mood swings aren't as dramatic.


I still wonder about the breathing thing. I was always a very shallow breather, had low body temp, low blood pressure...but I never had muscle weakness until this past few years. Because my job was so sedintary, I mostly only noticed it when I tried to hold the hair dryer over my head...ouch. That freaked me out a bit. I was always a physicaly strong person, so this has been noticable to me. My current job is much more physical but it only seems to cause problems with my arms and hands when held over my head for more then a few seconds, other then that I still feel strong. Since my last increase, 6 months ago...my finger nails are no longer growing like mica(in layers that peel apart) but they are still very brittle...so I believe I am still not at the correct dose.

I eat broccili at least 3-4 times a week. I am not giving it up. As long as I'm taking synthroid, I would rather increase the dose then give up my favorite vegitable. The blood test is fast and not that expenssive if you have insurence...the Synthroid is less then $6. a month....I would still like to know more about the Armour pig gland before I start it. I don't want to be hyperthyroid either...not fun.

I am going to see my DR today...I already called and cancelled my appointments twice and she extended my scripts until I could come in for testing...can't put it off any longer. I think I will print out the "testing reccomindations" from the "stop the Madness" web site but I am already 90% certain she will just say..."All that is uneccesary...I know what I'm doing,etc,etc"




I loved acid. The only bad trips I had was when I drank alcohol at the same time and was hanging out with punk rockers..that doesn't mix

It's odd about the arms . I have always had "weak" arms, even when i could walk happily for miles, or swim 50 lengths in half an hour. I definitely had trouble holding my son as a baby. I couldn't grasp how other mothers could walk around holding their baby over the hip, under their arm, slung anywhere, with just a slight effort of the arm/hand; to me it was a major effort. So sadly it meant he got put down a lot, unless I was sitting. Why would hypothyroid affect the arms? Anyway,me too I get shattered arms cutting my hair etc. Maybe has something to do with the pressure thing, like getting dizzy standing up.


S'funny, priorities. Mine would be "no pills", whatever it cost in dietary restrictions.

Good luck with your doctor!

Good luck with your finding a doctor.

It's interesting that one of the founders of AA Bill Wilson was part of the same LSD experiments as Timothy Leary was. Tim wanted to crash Bill's AA party but Bill shined him on, didn't trust him, thought he was to 'ego' based.

interesting. They were trying to figure out if LSD was a good therapy tool for alcoholism, too.

Merle

Was it good for anything other than causing trips?

Double Postie

(miss him )

Last edited by sinsboldly on 30 Apr 2008, 11:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

why do you discount 'causing trips?' morning_after?
what do you know about LSD other than what you have been told?

I am just curious, as I have experienced those 'caused trips' and they were the best experiences I have ever had in my life.

Merle

I don't mean to discount it, but that CNN article talked about the guy trying to find some sort of medical benefits to using LSD.

Do you know if anyone managed to do that?

I didn't know he was still around....I remember psychiatrist John C. Lilly using this in conjunction with an Isolation tank
combining trips with sensory deprivation and of course there is Stanislav Grof
who is using hallucinogenics to "map" consciousness and perinatal and perithanatic experiences. As for myself I dabbled with
psilocybin mushrooms and peyote buttons but not LSD-25.

Holy Mackerel! You just pinpointed what triggered this last debilitating attack of fatigue and pain! Usually, when this happens, I try to figure out what I could have done to aggravate my condition. I totally overlooked the fact that , in response to the severe pain, I took some pain meds that contain caffeine, as well as consuming two cups of coffee. The back lash from that, lasted exactly 12 whole days. Especially since the medicine will keep me awake, when I most need to sleep.







I will look into that. Thanks!

http://www.teeccino.com/defaultnew.aspx

I tried this coffee substitute years ago. While they tasted interesting, I didn't really think it could take the place of real coffee. But you might want to try it and see for yourself.