I doubt that I am going to cover something new, but the realization that I had may be new for some. I had not read this, or been told anything about how my metabolism works when I have no thyroid anymore. My realization is about eating habits, and meal timing. I think I am on to something, and might help others.
As I understand from various books, literature and websites is that our thyroid hormone production goes through waves, ebbs and flows throughout the day. There are times that is high, and low, or say exercise should trigger a burst of production. There are other aspects that can influence your production as well. But what happens when you don't have a thyroid gland anymore? How do you get ebbs and flows, bursts when you need them to recover?
The answer is I don't think there is bursts, or a cycle, or there is a significantly lower cycle. There may be some T4 hormone stored in various parts of the body in small amounts for future use. Triggering a large release for metabolism and the like may not happen to an expected level, it may much less.
The reason I mention this, is to realize that the expectation to eat on a schedule the same as when one had a thyroid gland may not be possible. As you exercise, or just perform your duties for the day we burn calories, and have to regenerate our energy and try to rid our bodies of the byproducts of the day. Normally, we would eat dinner, and metabolize that food to help us recover. We still do. But it is harder at 6pm to have a hormone surge to help with that metabolism and recovery mode.
Statistically, during sleep we burn a good amount of calories in our regenerative process. Many people are amazed the calories that are burned during our sleep cycle. Part of this is triggered via a surge in thyroid hormone being available.
What I have realized is that via my body temp, I am not seeing that surge at night. My body temp drops pretty far, well over a degree. That is not unheard of, but to me, when I am struggling to maintain 97.5 with the drugs I am on, then having a drop that far also indicates that my body is not metabolizing as much at night. It is struggling to go through the calories, to fuel up further and the like.
I realized that when I was struggling to lose weight, that the later I ate, the harder it was to lose. When exercising, it was nothing to see 2 pounds lost on the scale over night because of those various processes going on. Post Thyroid Cancer sees it difficult to see a 1 pound difference. In a non scientific way, the low body temp, lack of weight drop at night and overall difficulty in losing weight indicates that the overnight cycle is not working perfectly.
What I changed was my eating habits and schedule. I try not to eat dinner, but during the day spread out meals and food intake better. If I eat dinner, I see problems with weight loss. So I try to eat before 5 if possible, or have a sensible snack in the evening. With this different schedule I am able to lose weight. I feel more hopeful that things are going in a reasonable way.
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