I wish my “story” were more interesting, but this is basically it:
I’ve felt physically lousy since early adolescence. Throughout my teen years, this was accompanied by severe depression so the physical symptoms were written off by everyone, including myself. Fast forward to my early 20s: after a period of personal growth I started to deal with my negative emotions in healthier ways and little by little got to the point where I no longer viewed myself as depressed. In fact, I started to think of myself as (by and large) mentally and emotionally healthy. Despite all of this, I still had a ton of physical symptoms including extreme fatigue, physical weakness, confusion, mental fog, training and diet results disproportionate to the work that I put in, etc. After a few years of having every doctor I saw write these things off as either (a) not real issues or (b) symptoms of depressions or an anxiety disorder, I started doing my own research. Things were getting worse and I knew I had to do something about it.
First I went through a sleep study and was told, essentially, that “you wake up a lot and don’t sleep well, but that’s not a disease so there’s nothing we can do for you.” Fine. Then I ordered a sex-hormone blood panel from a private lab and found some strange values on hormones that doctors had either refused or neglected to test me on previously. So I took these results and about 20 pages printed off of the mayo clinic website about various tests I wanted ordered and made an appointment with a NEW doctor, assuming that I’d basically have to force him to order everything I wanted. To my surprise, this new doctor was remarkably competent and came back with a list of blood tests that he wanted ordered, which matched almost exactly the list which I came in assuming I’d have to fight for. From that test, we identified three primary issues: hypothyroidism, high SHBG, and low free testosterone. (As a side note, my total testosterone came back high-normal due to the high SHBG. In the past, the only hormone test I could convince doctors to order was total testosterone, which always came back normal. This, of course, was a false normal reading, and what they should have been looking at was free testosterone. Idiots.)
Based on this set of tests, my doc put me on thyroid hormone. I felt immediately better. Over the course of about 6 months we dialed in the dose and it made an even bigger difference in how I felt. However, some of my symptoms persisted. My doctor was weary about jumping in to treatment for my low testosterone due to my age and the fact that I had just started taking a moderate dose of another hormone. We agreed to leave that value alone and revisit it later. In the mean time, I started exploring other ways to make myself feel better and came across some very interesting information about the role of the nervous system in the stress response and how chronic, low level stress can cause a sympathetic shift in the nervous system which can effect pretty much every single system and function of your body. I started addressing this issue with many of the techniques I outlined in my initial post to you. My sleep improved, my resting heart rate dropped about 15 BPM, and I felt noticeably better overall.
Now, I hesitate to even mention this part because I realize that it sounds like new age, voodoo nonsense, but it is all based on recognized science that makes sense when someone can explain it well. Unfortunately, I’m not that person. But anyway, a huge part in the above improvement in sleep quality, resting heart rate, and Heart Rate Variability (HRV), came about after I started working with a physical therapist on what I thought were some regular, unrelated orthopedic issues. What I found out, however, was that my body had become locked into a twisted position as a result of, among other things, improper breathing mechanics. And by “twisted,” I mean that my feet literally did not point in the same direction, my pelvis was abducted and oriented to the right, my right rib cage was a different shape than my left, etc. This twisted position made it even harder for me to breath properly, which held me in a chronic state of sympathetic dominance. Working on this problem not only made it so I could squat and deadlift again, got rid of a huge amount of knee and back pain that I had, and fixed the fact that I had been “pigeon toed” since I was a toddler, but caused a marked improvement in my quality of life. I have since started studying this pattern and the science behind it and now see it EVERYWHERE that I look. The number of people walking around with this problem who don’t even realize it is staggering.
There’s more I could say here but I’ll try to wrap it up. As of right now I still don’t feel as good as I think I should, but I feel a whole hell of a lot better than I did a year ago, and for the 12 or so years prior to that. I had a visit with my doc yesterday where we talked about revisiting the free testosterone issue, and I got my blood work for that done this morning. Based on those results, I may have the last piece of this puzzle figured out. So yeah, that’s my story. I hope it helps you in some way.