Some people can gain weight on less than 600 calories per day because their metabolisms are so slow. Weight gain occurs when people take in more calories than they burn. So it’s not just a matter of what people eat, it’s also a matter of how much they’re burning and that can vary tremendously between different people in different circumstances.

Doctors have known for years the connection between thyroid and weight gain, and they have known the connection between thyroid and low body temperature. Unfortunately, few doctors make the obvious and critical connection between temperature and weight gain. The body temperature is probably the most important reading doctors rarely check!

The first thing you can do is to start checking your body temperatures by clicking here: How to measure body temperatures. You can have low body temperatures even if you feel hot all of the time. The best way to check is with a thermometer.

You probably know that the human body has a survival instinct to fight against starvation. During fasting the body’s metabolism slows down as a coping mechanism to starvation. But did you know that the metabolism can remain slow even after the fasting has passed?

Diet after diet, people can find their metabolisms getting slower and slower, often leading them to gain all their weight back and then some! How frustrating!

This appears to happen more easily in patients whose ancestors survived famine, like Irish, American Indian, Scot, Welsh, Russian, and Polish. It’s especially common in people who are part Irish and part American Indian. It makes sense that some people’s metabolisms can slow down in response to starvation more than others. It also makes sense that the people who can slow down the most are the most likely to survive famine. So it’s easy to see why the descendants of famine survivors might be more prone to developing slow metabolisms than others. The more a person’s metabolism can slow down in response to famine, the more easily it can stay slow.

The metabolism is supposed to slow down under conditions of stress (childbirth, divorce, death of a loved one, fasting) but it is supposed to return to normal once the stress has passed but sometimes it doesn’t.

The thyroid system is critical in maintaining a normal metabolic rate. When people have low thyroid gland function their body temperatures drop and their bodies slow down. However, some people’s temperatures can drop even when their thyroid blood tests are completely normal. This is known as Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. People with Wilsons Temperature Syndrome often recover completely when their temperatures are returned to normal with a special thyroid hormone protocol and their symptoms often remain improved even after the treatment has been discontinued.

Sometimes, people are able to encourage their metabolisms to return to normal with stress reduction, exercise, proper diet, and rest.

There is a vast difference between trying to get to a normal weight with a normal temperature and trying it with a low temperature. With a normal temperature it’s much easier and people are more likely to keep the weight off when they’re finished. With a low temperature people are fighting themselves the whole way and they may actually suppress their temperatures even further which can leave them with a tendency to gain back more than they lost. If it’s a struggle for them to lose weight now, just imagine if it got any worse.

Success Story:

It really is hard to put into words the metamorphosis

[that my husband] Ray has undergone since beginning the [WT3] protocol. He had initially (after months of nagging from me) visited our family doctor with huge weight gain, extreme tiredness, long term fibromyalgia, low body temperature and loss of eye brows, continuous night sweats that soaked the bed, plus grey looking skin and pains all over his body. After doing one set of blood work, she declared he was fine and needed Prozac for “winter blues”. She told him a low body temperature was sometimes normal and nothing to get excited about. He was both dismayed and furious, vowing never to see another mainstream doctor as long as he lived.

But I had been researching on the web about low body temperature and found the Wilson site. It has quite literally saved our lives. My husband is self employed. No work means no pay, no pay means no mortgage payment, and that means homelessness – that simple. We don’t qualify for disability payment or welfare, we are on our own. We were really starting to wonder if we’d have to sell everything.

….[the doctor] prescribed the T3 … and we got started right away. Within 3 days I could see a huge improvement. By the end of the first week, I was falling asleep in the chair at 10 pm and he was still wide awake watching tv – that may sound odd, but I was so used to him falling asleep by 5.30 pm every night, and dozing all evening before going to bed! The other huge change – before starting the protocol he’d been taking OTC painkillers – Motrin, Tylenol etc. all day, every day, for years, just to keep going at work, and drinking pots of coffee just to try and stay awake. One week into the protocol and he’d given up coffee completely and had not needed even one Motrin.

We felt we needed to adhere to the programme with rigid dedication – so we bought a “pill alarm” which proved invaluable, and as the weeks went by the improvements just got better and better. We (or rather I) kept a graph on the computer, plotting his daily temperature reading and what medication levels he was taking that day etc., and we were a bit like excited kids as his temperature climbed nicely to an average of 98.9F. We were nervous to start weaning off, so held the dose for about a week before very slowly coming down, reducing by one pill am/pm every third day.

I see from Ray’s chart we started the meds on 21st February. Its now 10th May. Ray’s weight has dropped from 240+ lbs to just under 210 lbs. He looks wonderful (well I always thought he did but then he is my soul mate) and his eyebrows have started to re-grow. His skin is smooth and soft and glowing. He looks the picture of health, is not grimacing in pain with every movement, he sparkles and has more energy than me! He finished weaning off on 24th April – we did take it very slowly because he was almost terrified he’d slip, and he was worried we might not be able to afford to cycle up all over again. His temperature has hovered around the 98.6 mark, sometimes dipping a little in the morning which causes a bit of a concern, so we’ve just ordered another 200 T3 so he has them as a safety net, just in case.

NO PROZAC REQUIRED, THANK YOU!

I suppose what makes me so angry, and Ray more so, is that he has had to suffer for ten years – ten years of struggling to earn an income, in chronic pain and fatigue, with no idea how to turn things around. We meet many people who say “I’ve got fibromyalgia, I’m on long term disability” and when we direct them to the Wilson’s site, they say nothing can help them. Well I suppose you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. I just wish our medical doctors would open up their minds and look beyond their pre-set ideas. There are thousands of people who could be leading normal, healthful, productive lives and aren’t because they just don’t know who to turn to or who to believe.

Thanks – a million times over.

Jane H.

The story above shows how achieving a normal body temperature can help people actually feel better while they’re losing weight.

Did you know that a thermometer is actually a molecular speedometer? Temperature is literally a measure of how fast molecules (for example in a liquid or gas) are moving. By definition, the metabolic rate is how fast the molecules in your body are moving and reacting. Quite literally, thermometers measure how fast the molecules in your body are moving. Of course body temperature is important! It’s absolutely critical.

Some people respond well to a prescription T3 medicine protocol (WT3 protocol) to get their temperatures up. You can check our list to see if there is a doctor near you.

You can also the tabs at the top of this page to learn more.

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