Skinny hands and feet-I know sound weird

I have lost weight - even muscle.

the back of my hands show tendons and big blue veins - I'm thinking it must be from lack of fat and muscle.

Same with my feet - very veiny and also wrinkly in some places.

My feet and hands make me look 90 years old.

I don't know when/if it comes back after treatment.

Yup, same. I am a twig. Grossly skinny. I hate it. Thing is, it's been so hard for me to find foods that both my body can tolerate and those I can afford to eat on a regular basis. I know, there's a whole list of foods that are "safe" for us. The quotations are not to imply that they aren't in fact safe, just in my case. But, yeah, I have trouble with a big chunk of 'um.

I don't know if it's candida, mold, sensitivities brought on by the infections, or a combination, but.. really sucks, having your diet be wittled down to nothing, struggling not to starve to death.

I would just eat more, but, with how little options I have, I don't want to keep throwing the same stuff in there in mass. I'm thinking that could be how I developed issues with other foods to begin with, eating them all the time, meal after meal.

Anyway, now that I take a second look, seems you guys have sort of just slimmed down from being sick and stuff, rather than just diet alone?

I'm sure I'd be fine, if I could just eat better.

Oh well..

Hope something changes for you..

I experienced the same extreme weight loss, but I was in my 40's at least 25 years after I started having symptoms.

When I was in my late 20's, I went to see a doctor about ringing in my ears. He did an exam but we never determined the cause. This was well before my diagnosis of Fibromyalgia. The doctor however did find a lump in my thyroid. I was sent for a radioactive iodine test (I think). It showed that one side of my thyroid was mostly inactive and the other side was compensating. No one was worried but they suggested if I started having symptoms of over active thyroid or things like extreme thirst, then I should have it rechecked.

Fifteen or twenty years later was when I had a very sudden and extreme weight loss. I've never been on a diet and there was no change in my eating habits. I researched and got concerned that something might have changed in my thyroid. Extreme weight loss would be a symptom of over active thyroid. Extreme weight gain would be under active thyroid. I made an appointment with my Rheumatologist (he and my primary split things up depending on who is most likely to have already talked to me about a related subject) and we discussed it. He said you want me to run a thyroid test because if you go to a specialist they will think you are a hypochondriac. Yep. Hit the nail on the head.

My numbers came back and they were abnormal. However, they leaned more towards under active than over. Under active causes weight gain. So they sent me to a specialist. He told me that he sees some patients that just when the numbers begin changing (TSH goes up, T3/T4 go down), show symptoms of over active thyroid. Thus the reason my husband was able to count the vertebrae in my spine and I was able to count my ribs. It also effected my EKG. I was so thin that the EKG leads picked up my heartbeats multiple times. This was the Cardiologist's explanation.

So the thyroid doctor put me on synthroid and my thyroid numbers normalized. There was no evidence of the lump that had been seen previously, so my primary started monitoring my thyroid levels to cut down on extra doctors. One thing we did was mess around with the amount of synthroid I took. I didn't really feel better with my numbers in the middle of the normal range, although I stopped dropping the weight. My primary said that some people feel better with the values in the higher range of normal. So we played with the dose until I saw a difference.

My weight has now flopped to me being too heavy. Again no change in diet. It never varies more than a pound or two. It doesn't matter if I stuff my self all day long or eat nothing at all. I suspect that at this point I'm retaining fluid at least in my stomach area and that is a major factor in my weight. I'm really sensitive to some foods, but haven't yet figured out what they all are. I have major digestive problems. I didn't weigh this much at my maximum pregnancy weight, but I look right now as if I'm 5 months pregnant.

It definitely won't hurt to check your thyroid hormone levels, but make sure the doctor runs the free T3 and T4 in addition to TSH. TSH by itself is sometimes misleading. TSH tells the body when to produce T3 and T4 which are the actual hormones your body needs. When you have an under active thyroid, TSH may go really high because your body is saying there's not enough T3/T4. TSH tells the thyroid to produce T3/T4. If there's not enough T3/T4, TSH is produced to say make more. TSH will continue to be raised as long as there's not enough T3/T4, so it can go way up if the right message is getting through. TSH can be really low if there is too much T3/T4. You really need all three levels to get the full picture.

Good Luck,
Kim

Thank y'all,
I think my feet and ankles and hands were where I truly noticed my weight loss first, an ankle bone on the right that is never noticed sticking out and my hands look so old.
Then my clothes started to get bigger and I finally weighed myself.
I come from German stock and heaviness runs on both sides of my family, I have always struggled to loose weight so all of a sudden I'm dropping weight without trying. Months ago I did have this time frame that I had loss of appetite and I then realized that I had been that way for a little while and I started forcing myself to eat. Still lost weight and even tried adding Ensure to get enough calories, again this is all abnormal for me. My appetite gets really good for awhile and I put a few lbs back on and then I drop them.
One of the many drs I saw said that around 150 is normal for a women my height and I am stick at 160 to 165 so he wasn't concerned, well when you feel like the life is being sucked out of you and there is a sudden change to unintended weight loss and you hands and feet are sickly looking then it's concerning. I wonder if some muscle milk type product will help when we are healed.
I have had my thyroid levels checked several times because I was thinking this was thyroid not lyme, and I had them all checked including for antibodies, all within range.

Thank you,

Iheartx

Bumping this old thread because this is happening to me now in a bad way.

In a matter of hours my left hand went to crap. Boney, sunken. Fat and collagen just evaporated so quickly. It first started when I got lyme but to a reasonable degree. Now it's wasting on another level.

Please tell me after 2 years, some one has some good news on it recovering with treatment.

Is this seriously lyme? I'm freaking out.

dacarte3 said...
Bumping this old thread because this is happening to me now in a bad way.

In a matter of hours my left hand went to crap. Boney, sunken. Fat and collagen just evaporated so quickly. It first started when I got lyme but to a reasonable degree. Now it's wasting on another level.

Please tell me after 2 years, some one has some good news on it recovering with treatment.

Is this seriously lyme? I'm freaking out.

Mine hasn't gotten better. Still tendons and blue veins - But it hasn't gotten any worse either.

Girlie said...

dacarte3 said...
Bumping this old thread because this is happening to me now in a bad way.

In a matter of hours my left hand went to crap. Boney, sunken. Fat and collagen just evaporated so quickly. It first started when I got lyme but to a reasonable degree. Now it's wasting on another level.

Please tell me after 2 years, some one has some good news on it recovering with treatment.

Is this seriously lyme? I'm freaking out.

Mine hasn't gotten better. Still tendons and blue veins - But it hasn't gotten any worse either.

*sigh*.

So that's it uh? I'm just going to look like this for the rest of my life.

WalkingbyFaith said...

My parents and I were in a moldy home, which we left 11 months ago. All 3 of us lost over 20 lbs. My parents are still losing weight, partly because they are eating less and less, and they're not treating.

If I'm not lying to myself then I have to admit I have mold. I'm not an mold expert so I don't know the different species and which was a very bad and which ones are more innocuous.

Good news is, I'm moving in a month from my current residence.

dacarte3 said...
When very troubling symptoms like this happen my mind just start thinking this can't just be lyme. I know lyme can do horrible things but when it happens to you it's hard to wrap around the fact a microscropic microbe can do all this.

I agree. It isn't JUST LYME. It's a host of things working in concert in a dynamically changing environment both inside and outside of our bodies that cripple the immune system and cause dysfunction.

dacarte3 said...

If I'm not lying to myself then I have to admit I have mold. I'm not an mold expert so I don't know the different species and which was a very bad and which ones are more innocuous.

Good news is, I'm moving in a month from my current residence.

PLEASE learn about mold exposure. If you want any hope of full recovery, you will need to learn the facts, know how to test your environment properly, and know what lab tests your doctor can do to properly evaluate and treat you.

Mold is a lot like Lyme. The government and medical community don't believe it can cause the range of illness that it in fact does, and have seriously flawed guidelines for testing and remediation.

Please educate yourself and have an ERMI test done on any place you live, work, or regularly spend time in.

www.survivingmold.com

www.biotoxinjourney.com

[url]www.paradigmchange.me

dacarte,

I'm laughing so hard, I'm choking on my lunch right now😂

I think it's collagen. If it was fat, I think it would have come back since it came back on the rest of my body..why not the hands and feet?

I have a friend who is older (she's 64) and her hands don't look all scrawny like mine with blue bulging veins.


I have the collagen...started taking it...but then stopped.

I'm doubting that ingesting collagen will promote it coming back on my hands and feet.