zinc Archives • Avoiding Rx

19Jul 2012 by Marjorie 3 Comments

If iron interferes with your thyroid function or thyroid meds, you might need zinc

interactions

After I started taking the Armour Thyroid to treat hypothyroid symptoms -- including that lovely one where your hair feels like there's an electric current going through it -- I quickly realized that the 50 mg of iron I was taking every day for my abysmally low ferritin levels was making things worse. (Armour is a prescription medication of desiccated pig thyroid, a type of preparation that has been used since the 1890s.) Even if I separated the doses by the requisite four hours or stopped taking the Armour altogether, I got more hypo-T symptoms -- low mood, cold, fatigue, and insomnia. Taking the Armour only fixed the symptoms to a certain point because of the low ferritin (which was at 6 for several years before any so-called health practitioner…

29Mar 2012 by Marjorie 51 Comments

Hunting the mysterious origins of geographic tongue

symptoms and conditions

by guest blogger Kara My experiences with geographic tongue (GT) started about ten years ago. GT is an unpleasant condition where patches of papillae are missing from the surface of the tongue and appear as smooth, red areas with slightly raised borders. The patterns of the lesions can change daily or hourly. It’s considered benign, but it can be painful, especially when eating acidic or abrasive foods, and is very unattractive. Because my GT makes me feel like my mouth is dirty all the time and that I have bad breath, I generally open my mouth less, am always covering my mouth or restricting myself when I laugh, and feel embarrassed to kiss my husband. There seems to be no definitive understanding of what causes GT. When I ask doctors…

07Sep 2011 by Marjorie No Comments

Diagram of how various deficiencies can egg each other on

interactions, symptoms and conditions

Soon after I discovered that typical guidelines about iodine are outdated and wrong (1), I came across information about vitamin K that made me realize the amounts I had been experimenting with were pathetically small. Also, it is possible that vitamin D supplements affect vitamin K, which for me would explain a lot (2). This is yet another example of how difficult it is to find reliable info about all the nutrients and how they work in the body and interact with each other. Here's a diagram of how I suspect my iodine, vitamin K, vitamin D, zinc, and iron deficiencies have been interacting. 1: You can find a list of iodine references at the bottom of this Breast Cancer Choices' iodine investigation page. 2: From the World's Healthiest Foods…

20Jul 2011 by Marjorie No Comments

Kinda-sorta helpful approaches to sciatica

symptoms and conditions, treatments

I don't know how non-telecommuting workers cope with a bout of acute sciatica if they can't take time off. There is no way I could've functioned at my desk. I tried one morning and had to return home to recline with my laptop for five more weeks, fantasizing about slitting my backside open with an Exacto blade, pulling out the nerve, and drowning it in a bin of icewater. Perhaps they're doped to the gills? All my doctor offered me was Aleve, which was a joke. Finally I went to Needleman the acupuncturist. I spent an hour on my side with needles from the nape of my neck to my ankle, like a brontosaurus. By the time I left the pain was gone, but it crept back during my 30-minute…

05Jul 2011 by Marjorie 10 Comments

Rx, OTC, diet-, and needle-based ways to treat hypothyroidism

symptoms and conditions, treatments

Last updated July 2022. Also see this post on how iron interferes with thyroid meds. It took me two years from the time I first suspected I had thyroid problems to get treated for it. I was very tired, had a weird, periodic hum in my body as if the ship's engine on "Star Trek" was running in the background, was unbelievably cold outside in the winter, and my hair felt like it had an electric current running through it. But my test results from my traditional doctors, who were only looking at TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone), always came back normal. When I read that ideally other markers should be looked at as well (e.g. T3, T4, etc.) I asked for those tests, but they, too, came back normal. (Here's…

29May 2011 by Marjorie 22 Comments

How I induced cystic acne in myself

symptoms and conditions

Except for several regrettable weeks in 1995 when I was drinking seven cans of Pepsi a day, I have rarely been bothered by anything but the occasional pimple despite heavy chocolate abuse, which I'm guessing is offset by my heavy water drinking. But then two years ago, in a desperate attempt to get some energy, I started taking about 100 mg of iron a day. I've taken iron off and on, sometimes for years at a time, sometimes at 150 mgs at a time, but I've never been able to get my ferritin levels past 26. Conventional doctors feel this number is fine, but... don't get me started on how stupid lab ranges are. Even though iron had done nothing for me in the past before except energize me for…