Preexisting hormonal imbalance & self-medicating?

[fire.horse]

Re: Preexisting hormonal imbalance and self-medicating?

I should also add for any women reading this, if you have a persistent inexplicable hormone imbalance and also have a "non-hormonal" copper IUD, please see your naturopath to check your copper levels (note: blood tests are not an accurate way to assess copper).

A Mexican study showed women with copper IUDs for many years to have double the normal acceptable levels of copper. Not toxic, but enough for chronic symptoms. Excess copper has many symptoms, but namely of interest here, it eventually leads to adrenal crash and hormonal imbalances.

Also, a foreign object in the uterus causes chronic inflammation, which is a physiological stressor, to which the body responds with elevated cortisol and eventually adrenal fatigue as described above.

 

[fire.horse]

Re: Preexisting hormonal imbalance & self-medicating?

Our body does need some cortisol:
scdlifestyle.com/2013/10/why-cortisol-is-good-for-you/
And you did say that your cortisol was low as well.

I said my evening cortisol is low. Morning cortisol is fine. My cortisol is crashing after years of being too elevated which eventually caused all other hormones to crash. My body can no longer support elevated cortisol.

Also, a 22 year old will be more responsive to any efforts regarding metabolism & hormones than a woman in 30s or 40s.

 

[Pepe Le-r3]

More responsive, yes. But the hormone levels that she started with weren't as low as someone 10-20 years older. Like someone who has lower levels of gh increasing their levels have more potential to see results than someone with normal gh levels increasing it. If it is still within the normal range the impact isn't as great to someone who started out with more to begin with.

 

[fire.horse]

Re: Preexisting hormonal imbalance and self-medicating?

Hmm, ok I see what you're saying. But as you suggested, it depends on the starting point. If both women (22 years old & 40 years old, let's say) are 20 units of testosterone below normal functioning for their age, regardless of whatever the differing norms are for their testosterone levels for their ages, the younger woman's endocrine system is either (a) still more likely to respond & bounce back, being younger & healthier in general, or (b) just as impaired/damaged & will take just as long as the older woman. Further, since the norm to be strived for in a younger woman is higher, she will see the more dramatic fitness response that comes with naturally higher testosterone levels as she gets closer to achieving her norm, compared to the 40 year old. In any case, no way the older woman sees more dramatic or faster results. Which pretty much applies to any health-related efforts when comparing an older vs younger woman.

I guess it would help if I knew my GH levels.

So anyway, I shy away from the idea of knowingly increasing my cortisol. Evening cortisol is low but within normal range. If I simply spike that up to the higher end of the normal range, maybe that's ok. But I wouldn't want it elevated above normal for too long since that is what compromised my system and totally killed my testosterone production to begin with. If testosterone is up and can take a hit, its less of a concern as a side effect of tinkering with GH levels.

But its hard to know how attempting to increase one hormone is going to impact other hormones. The whole thing is a bit of a crap shoot. Even endocrinologists have to tinker and mess around and try different things for years with no guarantee of good lasting results (though they will better understand the results of each attempt than I would on my own). So yeah, maybe its silly to be worried about increasing my cortisol slightly while experimenting to increase my testosterone & maybe GH levels. *shrug*

 

[Pepe Le-r3]

It's all a matter of what you're comfortable with, I would worry more about high cortisol than low, so I don't blame your hesitance. I just bought some Ibutamoren from amazon today, and I'm going to use probably around 100mg three times a day of phosphatidyl serine just to be safe. Jason blaha recently talked about his hrt on youtube and that the doctor raised his testosterone to lower his cortisol, I thought that was interesting. Hormone balance is a crap shoot, kind of a scary thing to try to control.