31–40 of 54 posts
You sacrifice some time to exercise, but gain energy and you will feel better and be better able to attack the rest of the things you need to do. You might even wind up with more free time than you began with.[1]
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[1] We all know we'll just use it to pack more work into the day. But theoretically you could gain time.
Also, please don't take random advice about diet fads from an internet forum. Many of the health problems you describe, including the weight gain can in fact be caused by the hypothyroidism and you won't fix it by trying random diets or even by various gym regimes (although regular exercise and eating healthily probably doesn't hurt of course).
As someone whose (almost) all family members have thyroid disfunctions, I know it is a problematic disease, but entirely treatable/managable in 2014 in most cases.
I don't know where you happen to be in, but both in my original country (Romania) and my current country (western EU) it has cheap or entirely covered treatments.
In summary, one way to go is via medication: try to find the right mix of medicine, and monitor the thyroid indicators regularly - this is a hit-and-miss approach because the thyroid function has a "lag" - you change the dosage when you feel it necessary, but then it is usually too late as it swings from hypo to hyper or vice versa. In practice it is almost impossible to find the right dosage on long term and you keep swinging from hypo (brainfog, weight-gain, etc) to hyper (weight-loss, random heartbeat, sweating, etc) and back. Especially the hyper condition is harmful on long term, and some of the medication is also harmful.
Which brings me to the other approach preferred in some countries and in many cases: removal (partial or full) of the gland and/or radioactive iodine applied to it. After this, you need to take pills, but generally the situation is much more managable and the outlook better.
I just wrote this up based on what I know from family members, but please do your own research, get proper treatment and a predictable income (as others suggested, ideally in form of a salary in a country with good healthcare). Take care!
May not be the advice you want to hear, but... you sound like you're in a country with a pretty terrible healthcare system (US? India? Ah, Brazil according to your bio on your site). The first thing I'd do in your position is move to a country with a proper public health care system - probably the UK. Do it via finding a job or any other method, but somehow do it. The startup itself doesn't matter. You write "I have…
Hormone treatment for hypothyroidism is provided free by the NHS in the UK [1]. I'm not sure about the conditions that migrants to the UK have to satisfy to qualify for non-emergency treatment though. (I am not a doctor, the following does no constitute medical advice, etc) Hypothyroidism is a life-long condition, so you need to get your medication sorted out asap. Someone close to me has this condition, so I know fr…
Health is devolved - England, Scotland, Wales, and NI have slightly different systems.
If you need Thyroxine for thyroid problems you will get that free each month. But you will also get all your other meds free. It's a bit of an oddity with the system.
There are a couple of doctors who privately prescribe unlicensed meds. I'm not sure how they avoid regulatory trouble. But there's a community of people who claim that T4 is important and these people sometimes pay a lot of money to dubious doctors to get it.
Sorry to hear about your situation - what everyone said: focus on your health first, everything else should come second. Also, please don't take random advice about diet fads from an internet forum. Many of the health problems you describe, including the weight gain can in fact be caused by the hypothyroidism and you won't fix it by trying random diets or even by various gym regimes (although regular exercise and eat…
You probably don't even realize how bad your diet really is. Become passionate about nutrition - make it something that you're better at than anyone else. What you eat is more important than alcohol, smoking and many other things.
If you've fallen into the trap of taking fist-fulls of vitamins, stop doing that. Get what you need through good nutrition.
Eat on regular schedules - especially breakfast which will help regulate your sleep schedule.
Since you're overweight, buy a cheap bicycle and use that as exercise. You'll find it's low impact therefore low injury risk but high reward in terms of calories burnt and cardio. Also most adults forget how much fun the simple act of riding a bicycle is.
STOP eating all sugar now. No soda, no cakes, no sweets and become aware of the things you eat that contain sugar that you don’t even realize, like bread with added sugar. Don’t bullshit yourself. Stop sugar.
There are people in much worse shape than you are that are powering through. A friend is in his early 20’s and dove into a shallow river where he fractured his C4 vertebrae and is now wheelchair bound hoping that through working his ass off at therapy he can regain at least the use of his hands to become productive. From what I’ve gathered you have working arms, legs, hands, feet, brain. You have all the opportunity and power in the world. It’s going to require hard work, restraint and discipline. Take charge and kick some ass. Good luck.
"Also I am have insane trouble controlling my weight, I am yet to find a safe place to exercise for free (I don't have money to pay a gym), and even with a carefully controlled diet my weight swings around madly (I managed to get 2kg lighter in 4 days, and then 4kg heavier in 2 days for example...) " I've good news about that. The +/- 4kg oscillations are just water, but you can fix the weight problem even without ex…
"Also I am have insane trouble controlling my weight ... and even with a carefully controlled diet my weight swings around madly (I managed to get 2kg lighter in 4 days, and then 4kg heavier in 2 days for example...) " It's not pretty, but the Hacker's Diet site has a weight tracker with an algorithm that smooths out daily weight fluctuations for precisely this reason. http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/
Suggestion: focus on your health :)
The thing to keep in mind, that you can burn through your health, until you can't, and your body forces you into a full-stop.
"Also I am have insane trouble controlling my weight, I am yet to find a safe place to exercise for free (I don't have money to pay a gym), and even with a carefully controlled diet my weight swings around madly (I managed to get 2kg lighter in 4 days, and then 4kg heavier in 2 days for example...) " I've good news about that. The +/- 4kg oscillations are just water, but you can fix the weight problem even without ex…
4kg weight swings tie into the endocrine dysfunction. Aldosterone levels are probably messed up causing screwy water retention. Try keeping sodium intake over 5 grams a day. Get more calcium and potassium, too. As for procuring meds like t3/t4, you can order what you need online from Thai and Mexican pharmacies. It's expensive and you run a something like one in twenty chance your national customs agents will seize t…
I am a college athlete who consistently exercises at a high level, and I ballooned uncontrollably last summer. I started using a strict diet, but that wasn't nearly enough. I'm on the right medication now, and the "mental fog" and dreariness, which I couldn't even tell I was going through at the time, is gone.
Right now this is your most important problem, and you should take every necessary step to fix it. I can personally tell you that everything you're going through is closely related to your hypothyroidism. Good luck!
After you have the money situation managed for the immediate future, I'd concentrate on getting the health situation stabilized. Resist the temptation to overwork -- that makes you sick and sickness doesn't improve your productivity. All the people telling you "eat right and exercise" are actually not blowing smoke about this.
I'd also attempt to cultivate a mindset which is less "I have a bunch of interlocking problems which are a tremendous burden and none can be fixed without fixing the others" and more "Today is Thursday. I will use Thursday to get three things done which I did not have on Wednesday but which will make Friday a bit better." Then you repeat that for as many days as it takes.