pleasant fatigue and ... the other kind

This morning i was having a bit of trouble with fatigue.  Caffeine wasn't making any impression on it, nor carnitine nor tyrosine.  I decided to try some nicotine, and all of a sudden i had an urge to get out of my chair and work on the powder room some more.  The rest of the afternoon flew!  I finished removing the wallpaper from all of the west wall i could reach without a ladder, and called it a day.

When we're feeling more-or-less GOOD, with "normal" energy levels, work and exercise feel good too.  People who don't have chronic fatigue issues probably only experience this kind of weariness, which carries with it the satisfaction of accomplishment and the promise of good rest and returned vitality tomorrow.  This is the way it should be.  Unfortunately, some don't share this experience -- theirs is completely otherwise.

And this is one of the reasons that normal people can't empathize with "chronic fatigue" sufferers.  Hell, even the name of this problem is felt by its victims to be a minimization of the disease;  while some have widely-varying day-to-day energy levels, others are completely prostrated by the lack of available energy for the essential activities of living.  Their lives are devastated by inability and they're not even taken seriously by much of the medical establishment -- they're constantly told that they're malingerers and it's all in their heads.

So many medical problems have fatigue as a significant symptom, i can imagine that pinning down the diagnosis IS tricky.  As a hypothyroid, i've always had energy issues, and my fatigue has waxed and waned in a manner not at all predictable.  Fatigue crops up in association with neurological problems, too, and with mitochondrial issues and in concert with difficulties in energy-retrieval and ... innumerable others that i'm not qualified to list.

In the last few decades, CFS/ME [(Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) and its aliases  post-viral fatigue syndrome (PVFS), chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS), or by several other terms] HAS gained some ground, though the whole situation is far from well-defined OR understood.  The sufferers and their doctors have amassed quite a few techniques for improving energy and quality-of-life, and i'm hoping to be able to pick their brains for some good pointers.  It's turning out to be a very interesting study!

You see, i WANT to be able to enjoy more afternoons like i did today -- expending some energy i actually have TO SPARE, and accomplishing things.

feeling better CAN be just a supplement away

Of course, that's not ALWAYS true....  ;-)  ...but it seems to be helping me this week.

Before i went out of town the last time, i ran out of cod-liver oil.  I placed an order for some caplets of the fermented stuff, and when it arrived i stuck it in the fridge and forgot about it.  I was resolved to eat my weekly liver and salmon, and get more sunshine, so why did i need to use the caps?  Mistake.  I can be so stupid sometimes!

When my husband is at home, my eating (not to mention drinking) is less disciplined.  Then, the climate has been dragging its feet, delaying the sort of weather i expect to see in spring.  Distracting stressful details of everyday living left their irritating effects, and i felt dragged-down, exhausted, and uninspired.  I was making sure to get my carnitine, pregnenolone and iodine, and trying harder to include two caps of epimedium every day, but my energy was NOT improving.

Digging around the back of the refrigerator the other day, i found the CLO bottle, and ... three days (doses) later i'm starting to feel a little more human again!  Ye gods, does it make a difference.  Synchronicitously, George sent me more vitamin-A info (THANK YOU!!!)  That bloody stuff is SO VALUABLE to me, either in the form of CLO or beef/chicken liver....  I obviously don't absorb it worth a damn from anything else!

I become so annoyed with myself -- when i learn things quickly and easily, i tend to retain the information rather poorly.  "Forgetting" the importance of vA:  only i could be so dumb!

Maybe i should stitch up a sampler, frame it and hang it in the bathroom, reminding myself of what supplements are actually crucial to my well-being.  MAYBE that would impress it indelibly on my faulty brain!

recovery has been a little different this time

Most of my out-of-town adventures end by my coming home and gratefully taking up my proper diet once more, the only difficulties lying in how long it takes me to start getting enough energy from burning FAs and ketones again.  This trip and its aftermath have been slightly different.

Because i didn't get out of ketosis during the course of the weekend, i only lost speed because of weariness, stress and ... the fact that i left most of my supplements at home!

I didn't think it would make a lot of difference, because i was making sure i WOULD:  1) eat the right things;  2) NOT eat the wrong things;  3) be back home before i had time to suffer a shortage.  I was wrong.  Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday my thyroid function was on the low side; i tended to have a hard time dealing with the cold snap we've been having here, and my digestion has been weak.  And the most suspect thing i DIDN'T carry with me was the iodine.  I've gone that many days without everything else in my supplement collection before, and recently too ... but not that.

When i think of all the cautionary advice about iodine that one hears, it just MAKES ME SO MAD!  And it's predicated on ignorance and misunderstanding of the science!  Yes, if you blindly and excessively supplement without having a clue about appropriate dosing and balancing of nutrients, things can go wrong.  HRT, anyone?  Or maybe synthetic vitamin A....

I got a bit of spring back in my step today.  Tomorrow should be better.  And i'm never going anywhere without my Iodoral again (knock on wood)!

was i "sick" and didn't know it?

Yesterday gave me a return of the old low-energy blues, and after the hypomanic evening i'd had Wednesday, i wondered if i had just overdone my exertions.  I woke up this morning with a stuffy nose, perceptible inflammation, and low-grade headache -- i think i caught somebody's bug, and it was so mild i didn't perceive significant malaise!

Being the reclusive cat-lady* i am, i don't come in contact with a lot of "germs" from day to day.  In the past this has meant that whenever i visit my grandchildren i run the risk of catching all those buggies that are so communicable in the "real world."  I think there's a darned good chance i'm improving my immune system a huge amount at the same time i'm fine-tuning my nutrition.

Not surprising.  If i wasn't getting enough pre-formed vitamin A before to keep my mitrochondria churning out the ATP decently, i probably wasn't getting enough to keep my immune system firing on all eight, either.  We all know that A is important for immunity, and i THOUGHT i was getting enough with my cod-liver oil, but the food version of liver is so much more effective, i won't be buying the Carlson brand of CLO anymore -- i have to doubt its potency.

But today i'm back wanting to trot up the stairs instead of trudge.  I had a couple of ibuprofen and a couple of benedryl, so the aches are almost gone, even though i can still feel a little inflammation in the tissues of my upper respiratory system.  I'm going to get myself a zinc lozenge next time i'm in the bathroom, and use the neti-pot later, and i expect tomorrow will be even better than today.

YIPPEE!  I may have been "sick" but i'm not SIIIIIICK!

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*  i'm less of a cat-person than a dog-person but ... the leap from dog-lady to BITCH is just too easy!

... and liver led to vitamin-A reading

My energy has been SO phenomenally better recently, well ... i just HAD to look at this gift-horse's teeth! :-D  I googled "vitamin a and energy" and hit the jackpot.

I read (in an blog that doesn't deserve quoting because it won't let me copy a single PHRASE to paste here) that in the FASEB Journal there was an article about retinol's role in ATP production.  AHA!  Then a short paddle around the PubMed pool revealed another wealth of information -- the author has done a LOT of work on mitochondria, our favorite organelle!  ...Okay, okay -- they're ALL important....

It's going to take awhile to read and digest this information, but the starting-point is here:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19812372 and the takeaway is this -- low retinol results in bare-minimal energy.

I also googled the factoid that 45% of people don't convert carotenes to retino's adequately; all in one place i got the (uncited) number i was looking for, PLUS material for thought.

Some people may not absorb adequate carotenes from the diet due to digestive problems and some people, even those with adequate thyroid activity, seem to have some difficulty converting the carotenes to the active form of vitamin A.  In one study, up to 47% of British women were unable to adequately convert beta-carotene to vitamin A.  The problem may be even worse in some populations.*

Am i the only one who goes on point (the hunter-bitch that i am) at the notion that SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST NOT DESIGNED TO LIVE ON AN ANIMAL-FREE DIET?  Some people do not convert this ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL nutrient from the form in which it's offered in the modern diet!  Every time i see the title "foods that provide vitamin A" followed by a list of friggin' VEGETABLES (which have NO retinol content) i want to erupt.

But no time to read today!  I'm teaching a class in tatting to a couple of dozen ladies at the Chatillon-de Menil House tonight, and i still need to print my hand-outs and collect my examples.  :-)  Later!!!

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 *  see, i LOVE to give credit where it's due!  it's the writers who are so friggin' scared that somebody's gonna STEEEEEAL their work that they make it really difficult to quote them AT ALL....  oh well -- this quote is from www.drlwilson.com/ARTICLES/VITAMIN%20A.htm

ENERGY

The most intractable of my hypothyroidism symptoms is lack of energy.  I actually was unaware of this until very recently!

Weird, but explainable.  I thought i had a willpower or motivational problem, or a tendency to laziness, and so did most people around me -- i could tell, though they were too kind or tactful to actually accuse me.  Truth is, i always COULD pry myself from the couch if i HAD to, or wanted to badly enough, and when i'm in action ... i trust i'm not being immodest in saying that i'm GOOD.  I'm just not good OFTEN ENOUGH to be a big success in the world.

But the close observation that i've given my health over the past year has opened my eyes to a few things.  Wooo's discussion of her childhood was a big help, too.  People with "normal" metabolisms have a well-spring of energy that isn't available to all of us, and the seed seems to have been sown in our prenatal environment, or at least in early childhood.

My best friend, M, is only about four months younger than i am, so the age factor is immaterial -- we met in our seventh-grade music class and have been dear to each other ever since; she's the person i've known longest, outside my family.  Our natures harmonize together though we're outwardly different in many ways, especially in appearance.  I'm short and stocky, and she's leggy and lean.  I tease her about being an overachiever, but she's actually just an EXCELLENT achiever of whom i'm jealous because of her abounding energy (and other qualities which are not relevant here).  K is another dear friend of us both, and she's very like M -- the amount of work she can accomplish in a short time is phenomenal.  My husband J is another one of these workers.

When i'm out and about in the world with any one of them, trying to keep up, i go home at the end of the outing absolutely EXHAUSTED.  If J gets me up early to go out for breakfast and run errands all morning, that's it -- i'm done for the day!  We return home, i take a beverage to my chair, sit down with a book or my computer, and spend the ensuing hours marshaling my vitality so that the next call on my exertions will actually find me able to answer.  In other words -- a moderate amount of energy expenditure is immoderately draining to me ... and probably to a lot of other people, also.

Fitness enthusiasts, professional or otherwise, try to urge us to ignore our instincts and just get up and go for a walk or a run.  In some respects, this is good for us as we know that getting some kinds of exercise helps us to create new mitochondria.  What they don't understand is that exhausting ourselves in what to "normal" people is nominal exertion, we are draining our scanty resources to the point that OTHER activities (like making a living or taking care of our families) has to pay the price for our exercised-diminished vitality.  More mitochondria are GOOD -- but buying them may be too expensive for some of us.

THAT is why i'm on such an obsessive quest to improve vitality through diet, supplementation and lifestyle.  Once i improve my baseline energy available for all my everyday uses, i'll have more to spare for the optional ones, which have a potential for enriching my life ... like more exercise.

you know your energy is better when...

That was almost like the old "you might be a redneck if" jokes.  ;-)

With me it's the temptation to run up my staircases instead of walk, the impulse to spring out of my reading-chair and do/fetch things in other parts of the house, or to spontaneously play chasing games around the dining table with Spenser.  (Of course, for the sake of my iffy knee i find it's a good idea to resist springing up those stairs....)

The supplements i've added, which i'm inclined to credit with this recent improvement, are carnitine, pregnenolone and epimedium -- which, though a little surprising, aren't really too "out there."  The last two are boosting my age-related decrease in endogenous hormones, and the first ... long story.

Wooo was taught in her medical training that carnitine binds to thyroid receptors, and is therefore not recommended for improving health in hypothyroids.  OTOH, i also read that "Hypothyroidism has been found to deplete the body of L-carnitine stores. A six-month placebo-controlled study cited in the August 2001 edition of 'The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism' examined the effectiveness of L-carnitine supplementation for the management of hypothyroidism. The subjects were given 2 to 4 g of L-carnitine daily, and the study concluded that L-carnitine effectively helped to reverse and prevent symptoms of hypothyroidism. The research is preliminary, however...." *

Whichever is the "true story" i'm not qualified to judge, but all i read gave me sufficient encouragement to TRY carnitine and see what might happen.  I started with a small bottle of 500-mg caps, but am now using a BIG bottle of the one gram size.  Again, i don't KNOW how it works but i can speculate -- does carnitine perhaps spare thyroid hormone because the receptors it binds to are where FAs are passed into cells for use?  That is, after all, what carnitine is famous for doing, and one of the many things thyroid does as well.

Short version:  carnitine HELPS.  At least, it helps ME.

Pregnenolone, as you may know, is a precursor to a whole avalanche-ful of hormones and neurotransmitters.  I was getting SOME benefits from the progesterone creme i was using, but for various reasons i chose to swap over to an "upstream" supplement -- and am i happy i did.  The negative effects of my previous progesterone boost aren't an issue anymore, and there are many less-specific plusses!  Doubtless, my body is partitioning the pregnenolone to the balance it considers appropriate -- and its judgement seems to be sound.  Is it making more estrogen, more testosterone, more progesterone, what?  I really don't care which -- i just like it.

But why don't the makers of epimedium supplements label them EPIMEDIUM?  It would make things less embarrassing when you have to ask for help in the health-food store!  ;-)  Actually, i'm joking -- the virtue of being "older'n dirt" is that you care much less for what people think!  The common name you find on the supplement bottle is HORNY GOAT WEED, widely publicized for improving sexual performance -- it's splashed in good-sized type across the label.  I think all of us users agree, though, that its beneficial effects go far beyond improving blood flow to the penis....

LOL -- it's hard to care too much about the WHY, when the WHAT is so satisfactory!  I certainly don't agree with Dr. Lustig across the board, but when he said that quality of life pretty much equates with how much energy we are able to burn, i have to raise my glass to him!

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*  from www.livestrong.com/article/432486-carnitine-uses/#ixzz23D0J4Kz7 -- and i'm not a fan of the site.  :-)  if they hadn't quoted a "respectable" source, i wouldn't have credited it as much as i did.