AIP - has anyone had success?

[Levo50]

Hi

I’m only a few weeks into getting my head around the fact I have Hashimoto’s, after decades on Levo!

Anyhow, I have to remain positive and do all I can and although the AIP sounds incredibly restrictive I guess it’s worth it to get to a better place... I’m on my third day gluten free so quite the novice but doing ok!

Has anyone any positive experience to share?

Does it need to be 90 days? At the thought I’m already missing caffeine and gosh what about lockdown weekend movies without alcohol 😢

I’ve ordered the Hashimoto’s AIP Cookbook for inspiration 😊

[Lotika]

I can only ever manage it “properly” for a week at a time. And even then, my version of “properly” isn’t proper because I don’t cut out nuts, seeds or caffeine. I am a lightweight!

Here’s what tends to happen:

- Because I end up being quite low sugar on it, I stop craving things

- all my tummy pains go away completely

- I lose weight... this one is tricky because I don’t need to lose weight. I just find it hard to get enough calories on meat, vegetables and fruit, so I find I feel like a farmyard animal with my nose permanently in the trough and it all gets time consuming and tiresome...

... and then I give up! And instead of even giving up by reintroducing one thing, I go and scoff a GF egg sandwich or something and get tummy pains and don’t know if it is something in the GF bread or the eggs! My money is on the latter...

So, I would say there is definitely something in it for getting rid of tummy pains, but it does get tiresome very quickly! And I’m with you on the booze, particularly in lockdown. Somehow it’s not a great time for me to try anything like that (in dose change purgatory as well, which doesn’t help). But I am incredibly impatient in general, so I would be exactly the person who struggles with this. And additionally, I love to cook. Painting with such a limited palette gets my goat!

Just editing to say that I think - without scientific evidence, just based on how I feel and my experience of my own body - that I struggle to convert T4 to T3 when I am relatively low carb, like I am on AIP. But I do have a friend who swears by it. She’s a poor converter who refuses to try T3 and she feels that her uptake of levo goes through the roof, which helps her.

Good luck!

Lotika.

[Levo50 in reply to Lotika]

Thank you for your reply, it certainly helps to hear that I am not the only one who finds the idea of this so extreme... I would rather cut one thing out at a time for a month and then re-introduce it to see whether I get any reaction, rather than cold turkey miserable and I would certainly get sugar drops. It is not something I am going to dive straight into (if at all), I would really have to prepare mentally to do this, and I fear I would be totally miserable!

The other thing to mention is I am new to adjusting my dose slowly and adding vits / having tests to find my optimal, and logic tells me if I go into AIP then I'm not going to be getting true results?

Christ - Hashis is so complex isn't it! I don't think I'm over the shock of where I am even at if I'm honest, just want the brain fog, insomnia and other ails to improve!

Thanks again 🦋

[Lotika in reply to Levo50]

Yes, I see what you mean... put it this way, I feel sorry for my past self as I really thought some times that my continuing symptoms were because I wasn’t on AIP all the time! (That looks like such a strange thing to admit, but the doctors were gaslighting mr about my remaining symptoms so I was really blaming myself and looking for alternative explanations and a way of “fixing myself”.) So, AIP is all well and good, but it isn’t a substitute for being properly medicated... and not a stick for us to beat ourselves with! I think cutting out gluten is a great start. I am also a believer in trying to crowd out the bad things by eating lots of things you like which happen to be healthy. Strawberries and cherries and steak and spinach and kale in lemon and anchovy butter... ! Massive salads with roast salmon for lunch and toasted seeds on the top, all of those things! Then there is a little less space for my GF biscuit problem!

[Levo50 in reply to Lotika]

Love your reply thanks Lotika really helps having someone’s input who understands - just making a lovely Thai green vegetable curry 😀x

[Lotika in reply to Levo50]

You’re welcome! I love Thai food and green curries feel very healthy to me!