AndyJ's Body Enhancement Thread

memento’s suggestion to use magnesium sulfate as a magnesium supplement has worked out fine. I started taking it a couple of weeks ago after running out of magnesium oxide tablets. I apparently tolerate magnesium supplements well; as with the oxide, I have had no noticeable reaction to the sulfate.

The oxide was 500mg tablets. I cut them in half and spread the daily dose. I’m not sure how much sulfate I’m taking; it’s in coarse crystals like beach sand, and I just loaded up a bag full of leftover “0#” size capsules I had left over from disassembling some supplements to get at the contents. I just scooped them full from a bowl of magnesium sulfate and pushed the caps on, so I don’t know the weight of the dose. I have a precision laboratory scale out in the shop, but round tuits have been short lately.

Normal capsules have a compressed fill. I have a loading device for #3 capsules, which are much smaller than #0s. I’ll weigh a compressed load in a #3 as well, since that’s the size I’ll be using after I run out of the #0s. Each capsule size has to have its own loader tool.

Just in case you’re wondering, the smaller capsules generally cost more than the large ones. I suspect it’s because the large ones seem to be the most popular, and there are economies of scale at work.

So, 5 days into keto cycle #2, I’ve gone from 300# to 295#.

I think it’s mostly clearing the bowels and some water weight, though I’m always happy to see the numbers on the scale go down.

295# is still four pounds heavier than the 291# when I got off keto.

Still waiting for the blood labs to come back. Kinda makes me wonder what happens to patients when there’s something serious going on, and the doc needs the freakin’ labs *now*.

I’ve been taking a copper supplement to go along with the zinc. I ordered another bottle as the first one got close to empty.

The tablets from the first bottle gave me some nausea, just like zinc. I cut both the zinc and copper tablets in half, which greatly reduced the problem, and spaced them half a day apart.

The old bottle was 1mg tablets. The new one is 2mg capsules. I need to start watching that when I buy stuff. I started looking at the bottles, and the old bottle was “1mg copper amino acid chelate” cut with dicalcium phosphate, vegetable cellulose, calcium silicate, silica, and “vegetable magnesium stearate.” I remember the first bottle was magnesium oxide and [mumble, mumble].

The new bottle was 2mg capsules. I had disassembled about 3/4 of them, dumping the contents into a bowl, to cut and refill for 1/2mg loads, which I could take twice a day like the zinc. I looked at the bottle and it said “2mg copper glycinate chelate” cut with rice flour, gelatin, calcium palmitate, and maltodextrin. Freakin’ carbs… well, not enough to matter, but it just emphasizes how prevalent they are.

So, not the same product at all. It might not even be the copper that was causing the stomach upset. So I took one of the ones I hadn’t disassembled. Then I put the empty gelcaps aside, got an empty pill bottle, and tapped the bowl against the desk to scoot the powder over to an edge so I could pour it into the pill bottle, to reload the caps later if needed.

Instead, the powder just went “poof!” into the air, all over my desk and me, while I sat there like Wile E. Coyote after his latest ACME product failure.

Sigh. Sometimes you’re the bug. Sometimes you’re the windshield. This may be another bug day.

And for extra points, the unmolested cap I took didn’t upset my stomach, so I didn’t have to take them apart after all. Well, at least about half the powder remained in the bowl…

memento had suggested using magnesium sulfate as a magnesium supplement. It’s working fine and it’s way cheaper than the packaged supplements. I have about five pounds of industrial grade copper sulfate on hand, so I looked up using it as a copper supplement. Nope, not recommended. On the other hand, it used to be used as a fungicide, to treat athlete’s foot and crotch rot. And it’s good for some kinds of plant blight, and will kill snails in your garden. Good stuff, but “not suitable for internal use.”

You can buy copper bisglycinate in pure form* or buy a capsule without nasty fillers* .

The better solution is probably food high in copper like liver which will come with the correct amount of zinc to balance it out.

I’ll look for a bulk source of copper bisglycinate. Thanks!

Anything but liver.

I find raw liver really excites my mouth, it’s like my body is saying “yes, I need that”. Of course our bodies are often trained by junk food to get that feeling from nutritionally worthless stuff so in the modern age if your body is saying yes give me more you have to worry about it a bit :)

with fava beans and a nice Chianti?

I doubt even chocolate truffles and a good Krug could make liver palatable.

Even the memory of the last time I tried it makes my stomach roll.

Hell, fava beans are pretty nasty too. Mr. Lecter’s meal planning was definitely on the yuppie side…

rofl

I don’t eat beans or drink :) Also haven’t tried human yet but apparently it’s quite good for you* which makes sense because we’re made of meat.

The 6-month lab is back; my doc called a bit ago and read off some stuff for me. I’ll swing by his office and pick up a paper copy later.

I have the standard 200mg every two weeks prescription; I’ve been injecting half a dose once a week since the Pfizer web site says the half-life of testosterone cypionate is 8 days. I shot up on 06/01; they drew blood for the lab 06/09. That was also a full 14 days off keto.

The lab back in November 2021 said 185.7 total, 23.6 free testosterone. After 8 days, it was still 749. There aren’t any cut-and-dried numbers for testosterone level, but most of the sources say that 320 to 350 would be normal for my age group.

The creatinine and C-reactive protein numbers were down, but just inside the “acceptable” range. Kidney failure is now not indicated by the numbers… but for them both to be on the high end like that still indicates some kind of problem, given they were both low-normal this time last year. He’s looking up some more information on that.

LDL cholesterol and triglcerides were good. Something called DFR (?) was low. HDL cholesterol was very low. That’s usually a sign of arteriosclerosis. I had a full cardiology workup done six years ago, and HDL levels were fine last year, but the doc said he wants to send me out for another.

The difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure (docs call it “pulse pressure”) should be between 40 and 60. Arteriosclerosis would normally raise pulse pressure. Mine runs 45 to 53-ish. Looking at my BP numbers from five years ago, it ran 50-60, so it has come down. Also, I have a leaky heart valve (not enough to worry about, according to several docs including two cardiologists) which would raise pulse pressure slightly. I really don’t think I have a heart problem, but it looks like I’ll have to have some tests run before we can cross it off and look for some other reason for the odd numbers.

Oh, I forgot: the urine sample showed another proteus infection. I had one a couple of years ago; it was your standard “toothbrush up the urethra”-yearrgh-it-hurts UTI. I have no symptoms from this one at all.

The doc said that sometimes bacteria can “colonize” the urinary tract without the usual overt UTI symptoms. He wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic.

Low carbohydrate, high fat diet increases C-reactive protein during weight loss

It’s worth remembering that

1/ We don’t know whether increased CRP in the context of keto is a bad thing
2/ Doctors view CRP ranges in the context of society which has a crappy diet
3/ If you’re losing weight and/or improving your blood pressure, you’re lowering major risk factors in most things.

I don’t see a problem with creatinine being high. That’s just an indication you’re eating more meat than other people. Though a doctor will flap their hands around and talk about kidney problems, body builders safely supplement with creatine (one of the few things they take that’s safe) and people eating a lot of meat will, by default, have more creatinine in their blood than people on SAD. It doesn’t mean the kidney is failing to regulate, it just means the inputs are bigger.

It might also be a sign of your diet change. Dave Feldman has a lot of info on his site on this. Here’s one of his experiments but he often says he can move his figures around at will just by changing his diet. From his experiments, I’d expect your HDL to rise with more fat.

I gained 9 pounds in the two weeks I was off keto before the lab. I hope to hell the blood thingamabobs were back to “normal” by then…

Hopefully water weight and easily lost.

Waist measurement is a brilliant way of tracking. Much better than weight.