Week Forty One – Forty Two | Ch, ch, ch, changes!
*** This blog is not to be prescriptive nor give you advice, merely to show you my way of navigating true health in a jungle of advice and pharmaceutical pressure. Please do your own research, ask your own specialists or contact those I have used if you wish to find out more about your personal condition and symptoms. To your very best health. ***
As I wrote in my last piece it’s been a few months of humdrum sameness and I have certainly become used to this sameness. So much so that I had almost forgotten what I was doing and why. Luckily some interesting things have happened that have reminded me to stay focused on the end result.
We decided this year to buy ourselves something for Christmas that would benefit us both but wasn’t particularly exciting to put under the tree. We have invested in, and had installed a reverse osmosis water filter.
This sits under your sink and filters your water so that all the contaminants are removed and you get completely pure water. This is quite an important part of the healing process for the thyroid as our water supply contains, amongst other things, fluoride. Fluoride is sometimes added to water to prevent tooth decay by some water authorities. (You can check here if your area is one of them).
Fluoride is a thyroid inhibitor and affects the production of normal thyroid hormones. It’s a huge topic, too big for here, but suffice to say you don’t want added fluoride in your water and even more so if you have a thyroid issue.
Given that my antibodies weren’t going anywhere in the right direction I decided this was something we could do that I could control. Yes, I know that I still shower in ‘normal’ water, but this is still better than not bothering at all and I feel I need to do all that I can to assist my body to function better.
It’s also worth noting here (I had a head slapping/aha moment) that when I was about 5-7 years old I had to have ‘fluoride’ on my teeth at the dentist.
It was a new fangled thing that was going to improve the health of teeth, so I used to go and have this disgusting pink gel piped onto a gumshield for both upper and lower teeth and had to sit with my teeth in this pink-gunk (fluoride gel) for what felt like ages but was probably 5-10 minutes every 6 months.
If I was predisposed to a malfunctioning thyroid by my genes this wasn’t going to be a great start. Probably the second trigger, after genetics, that didn’t help me.
So we now have shiny, pure water. Lovely.
When you’re working on improving how your body functions you become very aware of how it works. You tend to notice things that maybe you wouldn’t normally and become heightened to changes in things. As such I noticed since end of November or so that my body doesn’t really know how to metabolise and store properly.
I am eating the same as I have since June, added in a few nuts and seeds, the odd egg or two and the occasional hot cacao made with coconut milk. Nothing excessive, untoward or remotely ‘off-plan’. But I do notice a fluctuation in where and how I store fat. Without any change to my intake or exercise routine I can lay down an extra layer on my belly.
This isn’t an ‘I’m fat’ observation, I am not unhappy with how I am, but I am curious as to what my body thinks it’s doing with the green veg and protein that it gets pretty religiously three times a day. That’s one for Annette the kinesiologist.
So you know I said earlier that there had been a few months of sameness? Well the first Sunday back to Fit Camp in the New Year has been etched in my mind because of the profound difference I noticed that day.
Until then I have been delivering Fit Camp sessions in my big woolly hat, gloves, several tee-shirt / base layers, a fleece, an anorak and a kagoule style coat on top. I’ve been comfortable, not over-toasty and sometimes damn cold still.
It was no warmer on that first Sunday, but I started teaching the warm up and became aware of feeling pretty warm. And warm enough to feel uncomfortable. Within a few minutes I was stripping the coat and anorak off, hat and gloves too and finished the session in my fleece.
This may seem pretty insignificant and unexciting, but I can assure you this is EPIC! The thyroid is the metabolism. When you are hypothyroid your metabolism runs more slowly, you gain weight, you feel the cold. I’ve been cold for 12 months. Even in the heat of the summer of 2018 there were days when my feet, hands and nose were still cold.
THIS change to feeling warmer reminded me that things can change.
It reminded me that I was doing ALL this to change (and I’d forgotten that).
I was so excited that at last something, that was so linked to the thyroid function, was different.
Other areas I’ve noticed changes in a my oomph. I’ve definitely got a more can-do attitude than I did last year and it’s palpable. I feel it.
I’ve become decisive and action focused. Two things that just didn’t happen last year at all.
There’s a risk with this that I end up running myself ragged again and I am aware that I need to be careful of that. My sleep is still broken and I am getting about two spates of 3 hours a night. So I am ensuring that I take a day off each week so I get my version of a weekend. It’s early days, but I know I need to enforce this.
Finally, for this is already long, I saw kinesiology- Annette early in January. I told her my changes to temperature, attitude and how I felt I wasn’t really burning my calories well.
She did her tests on me and confirmed that the work she had done in November (and ongoing supplements) had worked and my blood sugar was manageable and my liver functioning better. Given that the liver is responsible for producing and synthesising thyroid hormones I wondered if this meant my thyroid was picking up now that my temperature seemed higher.
After a spot more testing she confirmed that it had improved from where it was at the last visit, that my body was struggling with one of the digestive pathways and so storing more fat and that my immune system was ready to get a little boost.
The reason for me going was to also have a standard clearing treatment to clear any issues I had with calcium. The treatment itself is fairly quick and you have to lie still for about 10-15 minutes afterwards. Whilst lying there I was musing on the fact that I Annette had pre-warned me to avoid everything with calcium in it for the following 25 hours.
This means no tap water (hooray for the water filter!), green vegetables, dairy produce, fish and more. But in that musing I thought that I eat a lot of green veg and wondered what I’d have to eat that day. Then I wondered whether having eaten ALL the green veg that I have over the last 7 months has been a waste of time! If I am having trouble utilising and tolerating calcium no bloody wonder I don’t feel fabulous despite having the diet of a goddess!
Good grief! It’s staggering to think of the number of strands I’ve linked over the last 40 odd weeks or so.
So these treatments with Annette will allow me to use and tolerate these foods optimally giving me the health benefits that quite honestly I feel I’ve been cheated of!
That was a good day. In fact it’s been a good week.
The dawning realisation that I am making improvements.
The understanding as to why I’ve not felt as good as I’d hoped for the effort put in.
And the woo-hoo, yee-hah reminder that there’s a reason to all this and it’s only bloomin’ working!
Worth waiting for 🙂
