Intermittent Fasting FAIL? You're Not Alone!

Several years ago, I tried intermittent fasting when it first became all the rage. Result? I was hungry all day and ended up binge eating that night. I'd been on a low-carb diet for quite a while.

I now know that the problem was likely low cortisol. I've had symptoms of low cortisol all my life: allergies, wonky blood sugar, sinus infections, and recently, my three-month bout with bronchitis--in the summer. And I'm hypothyroid, a condition that tends to go hand-in-hand with low cortisol.

Cortisol helps regulate blood sugar. Without enough cortisol you can get hypoglycemia; your liver won't make enough blood sugar. In other words, I need to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. When I had a more stressful job, I also needed some snacks in between.

Since about half of people with thyroid problems also have adrenal problems(1), and Syncrap (levothyroxine, a thyroid medication) is the second-most prescribed medication in the US(2), low cortisol must be a pretty common condition. Yet I rarely read about any caveats with regard to intermittent fasting. When Chris Kresser published an article saying he didn't recommend fasting for his patients with wonky blood sugar (that is, most of his patients), some Jason Fung fanboys chimed in with suggestions to drink enough water, eat enough fat, and of course exercise. Water and fat are necessary nutrients, but they don't fix endocrine problems. Further, drinking water without any salt can make you feel worse if you have low cortisol. (In fairness to Fung, he wrote that people with too much cortisol shouldn't fast, but doesn't say anything about low cortisol.) Kresser writes that fasting raises cortisol levels (and therefore blood sugar), but for someone who doesn't make enough cortisol, it seems to me that fasting would cause hypoglycemia.

Obviously, intermittent fasting isn't on my to-do list for 2020. I'll eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with plenty of fat and salt and few carbohydrates. I'll take my adrenal and thyroid medicine and my supplements. Nassim Taleb defines rationality as what leads to survival, which often means ignoring some of the experts.

Stop the Thyroid Madness Updated Revised Edition by Janie Bowthorpe, page 47. Laughing Grape Publishing, 2019.
Prescriber Checkup By Ryann Grochowski Jones, Lena V. Groeger, Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, Updated February 2019. Accessed January 1, 2020. https://projects.propublica.org/checkup/

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

Decongestant Ineffective; Vibration Plate Works

A common ingredient in many cold medicines has been shown so ineffective that the FDA recently proposed taking it off the market. The ingredient, phenylephrine, "failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion," say researchers from the University of Florida. "The same researchers also challenged the drug's effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research," according to CNBC . Mostly placebos. Photo from Pixabay . I can attest that phenylephrine doesn't work. Before I stopped eating wheat, I constantly had nasal and sinus congestion. I helped keep Sudafed in business when the active ingredient was pseudoephedrine, but I noticed the PE (phenylephrine) variety didn't work at all. The only other decongestants I've found helpful are guaifenesin (Mucinex) and spicy food. Mucinex is expensive because it works! (The cheaper store brands work just as well, though.) Su

Paleo Diet: Eating Differently from Everyone Else is Fine!

I've been seeing more and more articles by women (it's always women) whose heads have exploded trying to figure out life without yogurt and cupcakes. Oh, the shenanigans they get up to: bathroom problems from stuffing themselves with vegetables, paleo baked goods that don't taste the same as ones from the bakery, and especially the irresistible urge to eat "normally." The technical problems aren't hard to sort out: substitutes like baked goods will taste different because they are different, but an adjustment period of a few months will make those foods taste normal. And whatever you eat, don't stuff yourself. First, though, read a book by Loren Cordain or Mark Sisson to learn about the paleo diet before diving in. The articles I keep reading, though, have more to do with attitude: the urge to be exactly like everybody else or the urge to be helpless. If you're in the second category, I can't, by definition, help you. If you'd rather be Lu

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder .

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

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