Surgeons routinely removed it during heart surgery. Patients paid for it with their lives. It sits at the center of your immune system and shrinks with age.
I eat 2 oysters most mornings after doing a mitochondrial analysis thru Chris Maserjohn. Increased liver consumption, too, but not every day. Not sure how it's affecting my thymus, but I feel overall stronger, stronger than I did even 20 years ago. I'm 54 now. Thank you for the in depth content, it is much appreciated.
Thank you for sharing, Nita! You're hitting the two most important nutrients for the thymus. Oysters = zinc, which thymulin can't function without. Liver = vitamin A, which maintains thymic tissue directly. And no need for liver every day by the way. 2-3 times a week is plenty since vitamin A is fat-soluble and stores well. No wonder you feel stronger!
this is such great information and deeply helpful. thank you for putting the pieces together. it's a shame we exist in such a disjointed specialized over culture where nothing coherent seems capable of existing. putting everything back together again is what you've done here for me.
Fragmented specialization is what I dislike most about modern medicine. The body doesn’t operate in silos, so this model falls short by design. It’s also unfortunate that most doctors aren’t incentivized to look beyond what they were taught in medical school. Glad this piece helped connect some dots.
Je suis entièrement d'accord, le corps est un tout. Il est aberrant de ne pas tenir compte du reste du corps. D'accord aussi sur le niveau des spécialistes (et de la plupart des généralistes) Ce qui me frappe le plus c'est le manque de curiosité et donc de connaissances qui demandent de se documenter, et de réfléchir. Le côté apathique. de certains spécialistes qui recrachent leurs cours sans chercher à comprendre. J'en ai fait les frais dernièrement avec un dermatologue qui me prescrit des corticoïdes alors que je lui explique que la dermatite péri orale que j'ai est dû aux dermocorticoïde ! Puis rebelote avec un endocrinologue qui accepte de me prescrire de la T3 mais qui veut m'en donner autant que la T4 cad 80 microgramme ce qui est extrêmement dangereux pour le coeur. Il faut à tout pris s'instruire et ne pas faire aveuglement confiance aux médecins. Un très grand merci pour votre excellent travail, et la transmission que vous faites.
Questions so women who have a complete hysterectomy remove the ability to produce both hormone, estrogen and progesterone. I am sure most doctors don’t talk about this and how important it is, they have put fear to even do replacement hormone therapy, saying it leads to cancers. next Question what happens now with the transgender receiving these hormones that are not normally in their body how does that affect this organ? Can it cause more disease because of it, or has anyone even questioned this. Just curious, because I don’t believe most doctors or PA even think of this organ, or they would suggest ways to keep it healthy right?
Great questions. After a complete hysterectomy, progesterone production from the ovaries is gone. The body still makes estrogen from fat tissue and adrenals through aromatase, so you end up with unopposed estrogen and zero progesterone. Such environment suppresses the thymus directly. Without progesterone, thyroid function also drops, cortisol rises, and the liver clears estrogen more slowly. Leaving women in this state is the actual danger, and that's exactly what most doctors do. The fear around HRT was based on synthetic progestins, not bioidentical progesterone. Completely different things.
Re transgender hormonal therapy. Standard male-to-female protocols use estrogen and anti-androgens. Progesterone is not included. Female-to-male protocols use testosterone alone. Progesterone is again absent. So in both directions, progesterone is missing from the protocol entirely. High-dose estrogen without progesterone suppresses thyroid, elevates cortisol, increases fat deposition which drives even more estrogen through aromatase. Testosterone in females suppresses ovarian progesterone production and itself converts to estrogen through aromatase. Either direction creates an unopposed estrogen environment with zero metabolic counterbalance. These protocols were designed to change appearance. The metabolic consequences, including what happens to organs like the thymus that depend on hormonal balance, are not part of the conversation. transgender hormonal therapy increases the risk of autoimmune disease, cancer chronic infections over time etc. Again, unopposed estrogen, suppressed thyroid, elevated cortisol, and absent progesterone is the exact hormonal profile associated with accelerated immune decline. And that's just the metabolic and immune side. The mental health consequences of disrupting the entire endocrine system deserve their own conversation entirely.
Tbh if doctors understood progesterone's role beyond reproduction and truly cared for their patients, post-hysterectomy care would look very different. And transgender hormonal therapy in its current form probably wouldn't exist at all.
Not just applying to women who have had hysterectomies (of which I am one), the medical establishment has been selling the “Estrogen Causes Breast Cancer” Kool-Aid successfully for so long that they’ve built themselves a permanent section of patients who suffer from maladies that, if they had those hormones, could probably have been avoided. The sales job has worked so well that when I have the opportunity to share my own experience—mother with breast cancer, grandmother with breast cancer—but I am not in the least afraid of estrogen their eyes almost pop out of their heads. What women also don’t know about our need for estrogen is that EVERYTHING DRIES UP without it. Bones, muscle tissue, skin, organ tissue (thymus), etc.
Well, since it was brought up, can you speak to precursors such as dhea and pregnenolone? I know, this is a tangent, too be sure. I take these in low doses with red clover. Perimenopausal at 54, I still get my period. I'm the one who posted re eating liver and oysters.
They deserve a thorough breakdown which is hard to do in a comment. I actually have a separate article on steroidogenesis where I go into this in detail (called Steroid depletion). Also, still getting your period at 54 tells me your body is doing something right. Keep eating those oysters and liver!
Not at all, HRT can be life-changing when done right. The issue is what most doctors prescribe. Synthetic progestins and oral conjugated estrogens behave very differently in the body than bioidentical progesterone and transdermal estradiol. Most women just aren't getting the right ones.
So how do they get the right ones, women have a right to know these things, they have a right to the best health. What is wrong with these doctors why don’t they tell women these things? I feel really bad for women.
Synthetic hormones are easier to patent and standardize, so they became the default. the entire system is built around what can be sold, not what works best. Women absolutely have a right to know, but the people who are supposed to inform them have no financial incentive to do so. That's the uncomfortable truth behind most of modern medicine plus often most doctors don't know the difference themselves. They prescribe what they learned in med school and what the pharmaceutical companies pushed. Bioidentical progesterone and transdermal estradiol are available by prescription, you just have to find a practitioner who understands the distinction. Functional medicine doctors and integrative endocrinologists tend to be better at this than conventional gynecologists. It takes some digging, but the options exist.
WOW I am going to tell the women I know, maybe find these doctors who care about women’s health, thank you God Bless you your an amazing human being, thank you for your kindness and for speaking Freely for all the women who read this.
Thank you, Bonnie! Everything in the article applies at any age. Zinc, thyroid support, vitamin A, reducing seed oils, managing stress, keeping body composition healthy, red light therapy. The thymus retains some regenerative capacity even late in life so it's never too late to support it. For post-menopausal women specifically, bioidentical progesterone is worth looking into!
In 2018 when I was about 260, the low carb diet was very beneficial… dropped 45 pounds of mostly fat in 5 months and kept it off. (Males have it easier!). But now at 188 lb and 18% body fat likely not ideal.
Still Whole Foods avoiding chips candy donuts of course. Will ask do to check thyroid. I have a great one…
Yes, I am familiar with thid TRIIM study from 2019. The HGH-thymus connection is the genuinely interesting part, backed by animal studies going back to 1986 and replicated in HIV patients. Growth hormone receptors exist on thymic epithelial cells, so the mechanism is real. But read it carefully before getting excited. Nine men, no control group. That alone makes the epigenetic age reversal claim essentially uninterpretable as a causal finding. You cannot draw meaningful conclusions from that. And Fahy is the co-founder of Intervene Immune, the company built specifically to commercialize this protocol (they charge $18,000 for this). He designed the study, ran it, and profits from its conclusions. That conflict of interest doesn't invalidate the findings but… it absolutely warrants extra scrutiny.
Also worth noting: the protocol included vitamin D3 and zinc specifically to support thymulin activity and hedge against cancer risk. Those additions validate the foundational nutritional support for thymic function, yet they rarely get mentioned when people discuss TRIIM.
Metformin is the ingredient I'd push back on hardest. It works by inhibiting mitochondrial complex I, suppressing oxidative phosphorylation. It was included purely to counter the insulin-raising side effect of HGH, not for any thymic benefit. You would essentially be stressing your mitochondria to manage a side effect of a drug you are taking for a different purpose.
The longer term HGH picture is also not clean. The longest-lived animals consistently show lower GH and IGF-1 signaling, not higher. That trade-off is real and the TRIIM trial was far too small and too short to address it.
The bigger issue I want to flag for you personally: the low carb diet is likely working directly against your thymus. Cortisol is one of the primary drivers of thymic atrophy, and inadequate carbohydrate intake creates a chronic hypoglycemia-cortisol cycle. Heavy exercise compounds that cortisol load further. You may be working hard to protect your thymus while the dietary approach is accelerating the same process.
Thank you, Volva, and great question! I haven't tried them myself so I can't give you a personal take. There is some research on oral thymus extracts, mostly small studies from the 80s and 90s in Europe. A few showed reduced respiratory infections in children and improved white blood cell counts during chemo. A Cochrane review looked at 26 trials and called the results 'promising but not conclusive.' Plz note that many were funded by the companies making the extracts.
Important caveat: those studies used thymomodulin, a standardized pharmaceutical-grade extract with controlled peptide content. The grass-fed beef thymus capsules you find in supp stores are freeze-dried whole gland, which is a different product entirely. The peptide concentration and potency won't be the same, so the research results don't directly transfer. The mechanism makes sense and no side effects have been reported, but I'd be honest and say we don't really know what the commercial glandulars are doing at a measurable level.
Two questions. Is there a test of the thymus function? And I can't eat eggs. I take Ancestral liver. I read in your comments, was it 2-3 times a week to supplement. Is there a danger to everyday supplementation?
No simple routine test for thymus function. On liver: daily use isn’t inherently dangerous, but it’s rich in vitamin A so long-term high intake can add up. That’s why I suggested 2–3x/week as a safer baseline.
I don't think it was intentional in this case. Surgeons removed it because it was in the way during cardiac surgery and nobody thought it did anything important in adults. It was probably ignorance, not a conspiracy. But the fact that nobody bothered to study the consequences for decades is its own kind of negligence.
One thing I disagree with is the use of thymus glandulars. Glandulars have long been known to suppress the function of the glands they are substituting for when used long term.
I am also not a fan of progesterone as a supplement to the body’s own production. Stimulating the body’s production with things like vitex (chaste tree berry) is one thing, but pharmaceutical progesterone, including the so-called “bioidentical” progesterone comes with too many risks including cancer, gallstones, hyperaggression, weight gain, loss of libido, etc. These hormones accumulate in the body, and many women end up with way too much progesterone in the body that is not picked up by blood or saliva tests.
1. I already called it both an organ and a gland in the piece.
2. On progesterone: the risks you listed are associated with synthetic progestins, not bioidentical progesterone. Those are not interchangeable compounds. They have different receptor binding profiles and metabolite pathways, so conflating them is a common but important error. Progesterone doesn’t accumulate in the body in the way you’re describing - it’s rapidly metabolized and cleared.
3. On vitex: it is not a substitute for progesterone. It is an indirect herbal modulator, mainly discussed for dopaminergic effects on prolactin, which is not the same thing as correcting progesterone deficiency directly.
4. On glandulars: I didn’t present them as a blanket long-term recommendation. I discussed them in the context of thymic peptides, noted that thymosin alpha-1 has the strongest evidence, and explicitly stated that none of this replaces a functioning thymus. The suppression model you’re invoking comes from endocrine systems regulated by classic negative feedback loops. That broader claim is not established in thymus research.
5. And the vitamin C paper you linked was a mouse study in vitamin C–deficient knockout mice. It showed a supportive effect in that deficiency model, not that vitamin C is the central mechanism of thymus physiology in humans.
1. I already called it both an organ and a gland in the piece.
True, but you primarily refer to it as an organ and even write “Most people, including many doctors, think of the thymus only as an immune organ. It’s also an endocrine gland.”.. No, most people, including doctors think f I primarily as a gland, which is why it is called the thymus gland, not the thymus organ.
2. On progesterone: the risks you listed are associated with synthetic progestins, not bioidentical progesterone. Those are not interchangeable compounds. They have different receptor binding profiles and metabolite pathways, so conflating them is a common but important error. Progesterone doesn’t accumulate in the body in the way you’re describing - it’s rapidly metabolized and cleared.
I have known the difference between progesterone and progestins for decades, and was not confusing the two. The side effects I mentioned about progesterone are for the hormone progesterone. Look up the effects of progesterone during PMS in women for example. That is not synthetic progestins doing this as these effects have been occurring in women long before progestins were invented.
The hormone progesterone, not progestins, play several roles in increasing cancer risk. Primarily through the activation of cancer viruses, such as human papilloma viruses associated with numerous cancers in the body.
There are other mechanisms involved in the roles of progesterone in cancer development. For some examples, see:
Tian JM, Ran B, Zhang CL, Yan DM, Li XH. Estrogen and progesterone promote breast cancer cell proliferation by inducing cyclin G1 expression. Braz J Med Biol Res. 2018 Jan 23;51(3):1-7.
Lange CA, Yee D. Progesterone and breast cancer. Womens Health (Lond). 2008 Mar;4(2):151-62.
Diep CH, Daniel AR, Mauro LJ, Knutson TP, Lange CA. Progesterone action in breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers. J Mol Endocrinol. 2015 Apr;54(2):R31-53.
Other side effects of the hormone progesterone, not progestins, are in part the result of progesterone crossing the blood-brain barrier. This progesterone is metabolized into allopregnanolone and pregnanolone, which are gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) agonists. GABA is widely known as a neurotransmitter inhibitor. Effects of GABA include sedation and muscle relaxant effects. It is the later that plays a role in gallstone formation I mentioned previously.
Both estrogen and progesterone play roles in gallstone formation, which is why women are more prone to gallstone formation. Estrogen increases cholesterol secretion into bile increasing saturation. Progesterone, not progestins, which is also a precursor to estrogens suppresses muscle contraction, which includes the muscles of the digestive system. By suppressing proper gallbladder contraction, this prevents the gallbladder from properly expulsing the saturated cholesterol in the bile, which leads to supersaturation, and thus precipitation of the excess cholesterol as gallstones.
The mental depressant and anxiety properties of progesterone, not progestins, are due to increased monoamine oxidase activity due to progesterone, which leads to declining serotonin levels. Low brain serotonin is one of the various causes of depression and anxiety.
Serotonin has other effects on the body outside of controlling mood. Serotonin also suppresses appetite, plays a role in memory and perception, blood pressure regulation, helps control anger and aggression, helps regulate the digestive system, plays a role in bone density, maintains impulse control, blood clotting and wound healing, etc. Note that some of these side effects of low serotonin are also side effects of the hormone progesterone, not progestins, that lower serotonin, which I mentioned earlier.
As for progesterone accumulation, what you are overlooking is the source and delivery method. Progesterone produced by the body, or taken orally take different paths through the body, and rarely accumulate. The so-called “bioidentical” progesterone though is most often applied topically and absorbed transdermally over fatty areas of the body. Due to the lipophilic nature of progesterone, transdermal progesterone can accumulate in adipose tissue.
Progesterone is not some benign hormone. It does have adverse effects on the body, especially if high. As another example uterine fibroids:
3. On vitex: it is not a substitute for progesterone. It is an indirect herbal modulator, mainly discussed for dopaminergic effects on prolactin, which is not the same thing as correcting progesterone deficiency directly.
Vitex, which is also known as chaste tree berry has more effects on the body than simply affecting dopamine receptors, and controlling prolactin. Vitex also increases progesterone levels.
It is this increase in progesterone levels that also leads to the name “chaste” tree berry, as the increase of progesterone, not progestins, kills the libido. This has been a well-known side effect of the hormone progesterone for decades.
4. On glandulars: I didn’t present them as a blanket long-term recommendation. I discussed them in the context of thymic peptides, noted that thymosin alpha-1 has the strongest evidence, and explicitly stated that none of this replaces a functioning thymus. The suppression model you’re invoking comes from endocrine systems regulated by classic negative feedback loops. That broader claim is not established in thymus research.
You did not say anything about the time people should be on glandulars if they go on them. This is important, just like the adverse effects of progesterone you failed to mention are important. That is why I mentioned them.
Do you have any clue how many thymic peptides and hormones there are? And with glandulars, the issue is with the substitution of hormones. How exactly so you think thymic hormones are controlled to prevent over-activity of the gland?
5. And the vitamin C paper you linked was a mouse study in vitamin C–deficient knockout mice. It showed a supportive effect in that deficiency model, not that vitamin C is the central mechanism of thymus physiology in humans.
Yes, a mouse study as are so many of your citations. I did not read every single one of them, but I did many of them. Your 4th citation Is cited by a variety if mouse, not human studies. Your 5th citation is a mouse study. Your 6th citation is a mouse study. Your 7th citation involves Petri dish studies, which are not the same as the human body, and the use of various animal antibodies, other than from humans. Your 8th citation uses various mouse study citations. Your 9th citation uses mouse, and human in vitro, not in vivo studies. Your 10th citation uses mouse and rat study citations.
A note on nutrition and PUFAs: seed oil crops have been increasingly bred for low PUFA / high MUFA. I don't know whether this was led by consumer deman or producers wanting more shelf-stable products, but it's now widespread. Next time you're in the grocery store take a look at the oils section. Safflower and sunflower oils now have a similar PUFA/MUFA ratio as olive oils.
You're technically right that high-oleic varieties exist with lower PUFA on paper. But this misses the bigger picture and mislead people. High-oleic or not, these oils are extracted using hexane (a petroleum solvent), then degummed, bleached, and deodorized at temperatures that create oxidation byproducts and trans fats that never appear on the label. The final product contains lipid peroxides, aldehydes, and degraded compounds that are biologically harmful regardless of what the fatty acid ratio says.
Olive oil is mechanically pressed from a whole fruit at low temperature. Coconut oil is pressed from coconut meat. Butter comes from cream. These are foods. High-oleic sunflower oil is an industrial product engineered to look better on a nutrition panel.
Saying these oils are now comparable to olive oil because one number improved is exactly how the seed oil industry keeps people consuming products that damage their cells. The processing is the problem, and no amount of breeding fixes that.
That's still a pretty broad brush. How about organic expeller pressed sunflower oil versus refined coconut oil? And how about pesticide residues and PFAS in butter (to say nothing of the environmental impacts of factory farming). There's a lot more nuance in the modern food supply chain than "butter good, sunflower oil bad".
You're finding edge cases to argue against the general principle. Yes, expeller-pressed organic sunflower oil exists (somewhere). Most people aren't buying it. What's in processed food, restaurants, and 99% of grocery shelves is hexane-extracted and industrially refined. That's what matters for public health.
Refined coconut oil is still a saturated fat that remains stable under heat and doesn't generate the lipid peroxides and aldehydes that polyunsaturated oils do. Saturated fats don't have the vulnerable double bonds that make PUFAs oxidize. That's basic chemistry. Pesticides and PFAS are contamination issues that apply to every food category including the crops your seed oils come from. That's not an argument for seed oils. That's an argument for better sourcing across the board.
I get that nuance matters but nuance shouldn't be used to make people feel comfortable about consuming industrial fats that damage their cells
Ha, I'm not laughing! The bypass idea actually exists already in a sense. Thymic peptide therapies like thymosin alpha-1 have been used clinically in Europe for decades to provide what a declining thymus can't produce on its own.
Thymus cleansing isn't really how it works (based on what we know so far). You can't flush it out like a kidney. But you can change the metabolic environment so the thymus stops converting itself into fat as fast and holds onto more functional tissue. That's what the zinc, thyroid support, and body composition pieces are about.
And you're spot on about fat. The old 'inert storage depot' model was one of the biggest oversimplifications in medicine. Fat is metabolically active tissue. It produces estrogen, inflammatory cytokines, and in the case of the thymus specifically, the fat that replaces thymic tissue actively suppresses the remaining immune function.
A good friend of mine who knows a lot about these things once told me that you have to stimulate the thymus every day by giving your sternum a few light taps. Being a Catholic like me, he told me it was like when you go to Mass, say the "I confess" prayer, and tap your chest three times while saying, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."
Eating oysters once a week is pretty much out of the question for me. I'm looking for a good zinc supplement to take, say, every other day. Hugs, Variana—your articles are pure gold!
Love this, Loella! Whether the tapping does anything physically, I honestly don't know but I like the poetry of it! For zinc, look for zinc bisglycinate/glycinate. It's the best absorbed form and gentlest on the stomach. 15-30mg every other day is a reasonable dose. Take it with food and away from coffee or high-phytate meals for better absorption. And if you can't do oysters, red meat, eggs, and dairy all provide bioavailable zinc too. Hugs back, glad you're here!
I eat 2 oysters most mornings after doing a mitochondrial analysis thru Chris Maserjohn. Increased liver consumption, too, but not every day. Not sure how it's affecting my thymus, but I feel overall stronger, stronger than I did even 20 years ago. I'm 54 now. Thank you for the in depth content, it is much appreciated.
Thank you for sharing, Nita! You're hitting the two most important nutrients for the thymus. Oysters = zinc, which thymulin can't function without. Liver = vitamin A, which maintains thymic tissue directly. And no need for liver every day by the way. 2-3 times a week is plenty since vitamin A is fat-soluble and stores well. No wonder you feel stronger!
this is such great information and deeply helpful. thank you for putting the pieces together. it's a shame we exist in such a disjointed specialized over culture where nothing coherent seems capable of existing. putting everything back together again is what you've done here for me.
Fragmented specialization is what I dislike most about modern medicine. The body doesn’t operate in silos, so this model falls short by design. It’s also unfortunate that most doctors aren’t incentivized to look beyond what they were taught in medical school. Glad this piece helped connect some dots.
Je suis entièrement d'accord, le corps est un tout. Il est aberrant de ne pas tenir compte du reste du corps. D'accord aussi sur le niveau des spécialistes (et de la plupart des généralistes) Ce qui me frappe le plus c'est le manque de curiosité et donc de connaissances qui demandent de se documenter, et de réfléchir. Le côté apathique. de certains spécialistes qui recrachent leurs cours sans chercher à comprendre. J'en ai fait les frais dernièrement avec un dermatologue qui me prescrit des corticoïdes alors que je lui explique que la dermatite péri orale que j'ai est dû aux dermocorticoïde ! Puis rebelote avec un endocrinologue qui accepte de me prescrire de la T3 mais qui veut m'en donner autant que la T4 cad 80 microgramme ce qui est extrêmement dangereux pour le coeur. Il faut à tout pris s'instruire et ne pas faire aveuglement confiance aux médecins. Un très grand merci pour votre excellent travail, et la transmission que vous faites.
🙏🏻
New info. And much to ponder. Thank you.
Questions so women who have a complete hysterectomy remove the ability to produce both hormone, estrogen and progesterone. I am sure most doctors don’t talk about this and how important it is, they have put fear to even do replacement hormone therapy, saying it leads to cancers. next Question what happens now with the transgender receiving these hormones that are not normally in their body how does that affect this organ? Can it cause more disease because of it, or has anyone even questioned this. Just curious, because I don’t believe most doctors or PA even think of this organ, or they would suggest ways to keep it healthy right?
Great questions. After a complete hysterectomy, progesterone production from the ovaries is gone. The body still makes estrogen from fat tissue and adrenals through aromatase, so you end up with unopposed estrogen and zero progesterone. Such environment suppresses the thymus directly. Without progesterone, thyroid function also drops, cortisol rises, and the liver clears estrogen more slowly. Leaving women in this state is the actual danger, and that's exactly what most doctors do. The fear around HRT was based on synthetic progestins, not bioidentical progesterone. Completely different things.
Re transgender hormonal therapy. Standard male-to-female protocols use estrogen and anti-androgens. Progesterone is not included. Female-to-male protocols use testosterone alone. Progesterone is again absent. So in both directions, progesterone is missing from the protocol entirely. High-dose estrogen without progesterone suppresses thyroid, elevates cortisol, increases fat deposition which drives even more estrogen through aromatase. Testosterone in females suppresses ovarian progesterone production and itself converts to estrogen through aromatase. Either direction creates an unopposed estrogen environment with zero metabolic counterbalance. These protocols were designed to change appearance. The metabolic consequences, including what happens to organs like the thymus that depend on hormonal balance, are not part of the conversation. transgender hormonal therapy increases the risk of autoimmune disease, cancer chronic infections over time etc. Again, unopposed estrogen, suppressed thyroid, elevated cortisol, and absent progesterone is the exact hormonal profile associated with accelerated immune decline. And that's just the metabolic and immune side. The mental health consequences of disrupting the entire endocrine system deserve their own conversation entirely.
Tbh if doctors understood progesterone's role beyond reproduction and truly cared for their patients, post-hysterectomy care would look very different. And transgender hormonal therapy in its current form probably wouldn't exist at all.
Not just applying to women who have had hysterectomies (of which I am one), the medical establishment has been selling the “Estrogen Causes Breast Cancer” Kool-Aid successfully for so long that they’ve built themselves a permanent section of patients who suffer from maladies that, if they had those hormones, could probably have been avoided. The sales job has worked so well that when I have the opportunity to share my own experience—mother with breast cancer, grandmother with breast cancer—but I am not in the least afraid of estrogen their eyes almost pop out of their heads. What women also don’t know about our need for estrogen is that EVERYTHING DRIES UP without it. Bones, muscle tissue, skin, organ tissue (thymus), etc.
Well, since it was brought up, can you speak to precursors such as dhea and pregnenolone? I know, this is a tangent, too be sure. I take these in low doses with red clover. Perimenopausal at 54, I still get my period. I'm the one who posted re eating liver and oysters.
They deserve a thorough breakdown which is hard to do in a comment. I actually have a separate article on steroidogenesis where I go into this in detail (called Steroid depletion). Also, still getting your period at 54 tells me your body is doing something right. Keep eating those oysters and liver!
So when women take these pills for HT it does no good for them? That’s really sad
Not at all, HRT can be life-changing when done right. The issue is what most doctors prescribe. Synthetic progestins and oral conjugated estrogens behave very differently in the body than bioidentical progesterone and transdermal estradiol. Most women just aren't getting the right ones.
They need to stop the transgender surgery all together. It’s vile evil nothing good can come from it.
So how do they get the right ones, women have a right to know these things, they have a right to the best health. What is wrong with these doctors why don’t they tell women these things? I feel really bad for women.
Synthetic hormones are easier to patent and standardize, so they became the default. the entire system is built around what can be sold, not what works best. Women absolutely have a right to know, but the people who are supposed to inform them have no financial incentive to do so. That's the uncomfortable truth behind most of modern medicine plus often most doctors don't know the difference themselves. They prescribe what they learned in med school and what the pharmaceutical companies pushed. Bioidentical progesterone and transdermal estradiol are available by prescription, you just have to find a practitioner who understands the distinction. Functional medicine doctors and integrative endocrinologists tend to be better at this than conventional gynecologists. It takes some digging, but the options exist.
oh and progest-e drops are available without prescription. I pray it stays this way
WOW I am going to tell the women I know, maybe find these doctors who care about women’s health, thank you God Bless you your an amazing human being, thank you for your kindness and for speaking Freely for all the women who read this.
Yes I e always wondered about trans genders getting hormone all their lives
Great article Variana. What would you recommend for older women that are way past post menopause?
Thank you, Bonnie! Everything in the article applies at any age. Zinc, thyroid support, vitamin A, reducing seed oils, managing stress, keeping body composition healthy, red light therapy. The thymus retains some regenerative capacity even late in life so it's never too late to support it. For post-menopausal women specifically, bioidentical progesterone is worth looking into!
Thanks I can honestly say I had no idea
Great info! Thank you
Last year I read about a doctor working on thymus regeneration… if I remember using human growth hormone, DHEA and metformin.
https://youtu.be/Xj45rcfzrbM?si=_Id7VTh0H1iWGeXU
Not having access to hgh, I exercise a lot and take DHEA and keep a low carb diet. And cross my fingers.
In 2018 when I was about 260, the low carb diet was very beneficial… dropped 45 pounds of mostly fat in 5 months and kept it off. (Males have it easier!). But now at 188 lb and 18% body fat likely not ideal.
Still Whole Foods avoiding chips candy donuts of course. Will ask do to check thyroid. I have a great one…
Thanks for advice
Yes, I am familiar with thid TRIIM study from 2019. The HGH-thymus connection is the genuinely interesting part, backed by animal studies going back to 1986 and replicated in HIV patients. Growth hormone receptors exist on thymic epithelial cells, so the mechanism is real. But read it carefully before getting excited. Nine men, no control group. That alone makes the epigenetic age reversal claim essentially uninterpretable as a causal finding. You cannot draw meaningful conclusions from that. And Fahy is the co-founder of Intervene Immune, the company built specifically to commercialize this protocol (they charge $18,000 for this). He designed the study, ran it, and profits from its conclusions. That conflict of interest doesn't invalidate the findings but… it absolutely warrants extra scrutiny.
Also worth noting: the protocol included vitamin D3 and zinc specifically to support thymulin activity and hedge against cancer risk. Those additions validate the foundational nutritional support for thymic function, yet they rarely get mentioned when people discuss TRIIM.
Metformin is the ingredient I'd push back on hardest. It works by inhibiting mitochondrial complex I, suppressing oxidative phosphorylation. It was included purely to counter the insulin-raising side effect of HGH, not for any thymic benefit. You would essentially be stressing your mitochondria to manage a side effect of a drug you are taking for a different purpose.
The longer term HGH picture is also not clean. The longest-lived animals consistently show lower GH and IGF-1 signaling, not higher. That trade-off is real and the TRIIM trial was far too small and too short to address it.
The bigger issue I want to flag for you personally: the low carb diet is likely working directly against your thymus. Cortisol is one of the primary drivers of thymic atrophy, and inadequate carbohydrate intake creates a chronic hypoglycemia-cortisol cycle. Heavy exercise compounds that cortisol load further. You may be working hard to protect your thymus while the dietary approach is accelerating the same process.
Fascinating and detailed as always! Any thoughts on grassfed beef thymus supplements?
Thank you, Volva, and great question! I haven't tried them myself so I can't give you a personal take. There is some research on oral thymus extracts, mostly small studies from the 80s and 90s in Europe. A few showed reduced respiratory infections in children and improved white blood cell counts during chemo. A Cochrane review looked at 26 trials and called the results 'promising but not conclusive.' Plz note that many were funded by the companies making the extracts.
Important caveat: those studies used thymomodulin, a standardized pharmaceutical-grade extract with controlled peptide content. The grass-fed beef thymus capsules you find in supp stores are freeze-dried whole gland, which is a different product entirely. The peptide concentration and potency won't be the same, so the research results don't directly transfer. The mechanism makes sense and no side effects have been reported, but I'd be honest and say we don't really know what the commercial glandulars are doing at a measurable level.
Two questions. Is there a test of the thymus function? And I can't eat eggs. I take Ancestral liver. I read in your comments, was it 2-3 times a week to supplement. Is there a danger to everyday supplementation?
No simple routine test for thymus function. On liver: daily use isn’t inherently dangerous, but it’s rich in vitamin A so long-term high intake can add up. That’s why I suggested 2–3x/week as a safer baseline.
Thank you for sharing! This was a super interesting and informative piece. Thanks again!
❤️
Removing the thymus was another trick by Big Pharma!
I don't think it was intentional in this case. Surgeons removed it because it was in the way during cardiac surgery and nobody thought it did anything important in adults. It was probably ignorance, not a conspiracy. But the fact that nobody bothered to study the consequences for decades is its own kind of negligence.
The thymus is not only an organ, but also a gland.
And you forgot the importance of vitamin C:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25608928/
One thing I disagree with is the use of thymus glandulars. Glandulars have long been known to suppress the function of the glands they are substituting for when used long term.
I am also not a fan of progesterone as a supplement to the body’s own production. Stimulating the body’s production with things like vitex (chaste tree berry) is one thing, but pharmaceutical progesterone, including the so-called “bioidentical” progesterone comes with too many risks including cancer, gallstones, hyperaggression, weight gain, loss of libido, etc. These hormones accumulate in the body, and many women end up with way too much progesterone in the body that is not picked up by blood or saliva tests.
1. I already called it both an organ and a gland in the piece.
2. On progesterone: the risks you listed are associated with synthetic progestins, not bioidentical progesterone. Those are not interchangeable compounds. They have different receptor binding profiles and metabolite pathways, so conflating them is a common but important error. Progesterone doesn’t accumulate in the body in the way you’re describing - it’s rapidly metabolized and cleared.
3. On vitex: it is not a substitute for progesterone. It is an indirect herbal modulator, mainly discussed for dopaminergic effects on prolactin, which is not the same thing as correcting progesterone deficiency directly.
4. On glandulars: I didn’t present them as a blanket long-term recommendation. I discussed them in the context of thymic peptides, noted that thymosin alpha-1 has the strongest evidence, and explicitly stated that none of this replaces a functioning thymus. The suppression model you’re invoking comes from endocrine systems regulated by classic negative feedback loops. That broader claim is not established in thymus research.
5. And the vitamin C paper you linked was a mouse study in vitamin C–deficient knockout mice. It showed a supportive effect in that deficiency model, not that vitamin C is the central mechanism of thymus physiology in humans.
1. I already called it both an organ and a gland in the piece.
True, but you primarily refer to it as an organ and even write “Most people, including many doctors, think of the thymus only as an immune organ. It’s also an endocrine gland.”.. No, most people, including doctors think f I primarily as a gland, which is why it is called the thymus gland, not the thymus organ.
2. On progesterone: the risks you listed are associated with synthetic progestins, not bioidentical progesterone. Those are not interchangeable compounds. They have different receptor binding profiles and metabolite pathways, so conflating them is a common but important error. Progesterone doesn’t accumulate in the body in the way you’re describing - it’s rapidly metabolized and cleared.
I have known the difference between progesterone and progestins for decades, and was not confusing the two. The side effects I mentioned about progesterone are for the hormone progesterone. Look up the effects of progesterone during PMS in women for example. That is not synthetic progestins doing this as these effects have been occurring in women long before progestins were invented.
The hormone progesterone, not progestins, play several roles in increasing cancer risk. Primarily through the activation of cancer viruses, such as human papilloma viruses associated with numerous cancers in the body.
There are other mechanisms involved in the roles of progesterone in cancer development. For some examples, see:
Tian JM, Ran B, Zhang CL, Yan DM, Li XH. Estrogen and progesterone promote breast cancer cell proliferation by inducing cyclin G1 expression. Braz J Med Biol Res. 2018 Jan 23;51(3):1-7.
Lange CA, Yee D. Progesterone and breast cancer. Womens Health (Lond). 2008 Mar;4(2):151-62.
Diep CH, Daniel AR, Mauro LJ, Knutson TP, Lange CA. Progesterone action in breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers. J Mol Endocrinol. 2015 Apr;54(2):R31-53.
Other side effects of the hormone progesterone, not progestins, are in part the result of progesterone crossing the blood-brain barrier. This progesterone is metabolized into allopregnanolone and pregnanolone, which are gamma amino butyric acid (GABA) agonists. GABA is widely known as a neurotransmitter inhibitor. Effects of GABA include sedation and muscle relaxant effects. It is the later that plays a role in gallstone formation I mentioned previously.
Both estrogen and progesterone play roles in gallstone formation, which is why women are more prone to gallstone formation. Estrogen increases cholesterol secretion into bile increasing saturation. Progesterone, not progestins, which is also a precursor to estrogens suppresses muscle contraction, which includes the muscles of the digestive system. By suppressing proper gallbladder contraction, this prevents the gallbladder from properly expulsing the saturated cholesterol in the bile, which leads to supersaturation, and thus precipitation of the excess cholesterol as gallstones.
The mental depressant and anxiety properties of progesterone, not progestins, are due to increased monoamine oxidase activity due to progesterone, which leads to declining serotonin levels. Low brain serotonin is one of the various causes of depression and anxiety.
Serotonin has other effects on the body outside of controlling mood. Serotonin also suppresses appetite, plays a role in memory and perception, blood pressure regulation, helps control anger and aggression, helps regulate the digestive system, plays a role in bone density, maintains impulse control, blood clotting and wound healing, etc. Note that some of these side effects of low serotonin are also side effects of the hormone progesterone, not progestins, that lower serotonin, which I mentioned earlier.
As for progesterone accumulation, what you are overlooking is the source and delivery method. Progesterone produced by the body, or taken orally take different paths through the body, and rarely accumulate. The so-called “bioidentical” progesterone though is most often applied topically and absorbed transdermally over fatty areas of the body. Due to the lipophilic nature of progesterone, transdermal progesterone can accumulate in adipose tissue.
Progesterone is not some benign hormone. It does have adverse effects on the body, especially if high. As another example uterine fibroids:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10136461/
3. On vitex: it is not a substitute for progesterone. It is an indirect herbal modulator, mainly discussed for dopaminergic effects on prolactin, which is not the same thing as correcting progesterone deficiency directly.
Vitex, which is also known as chaste tree berry has more effects on the body than simply affecting dopamine receptors, and controlling prolactin. Vitex also increases progesterone levels.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8369008/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK144218/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6887765/
It is this increase in progesterone levels that also leads to the name “chaste” tree berry, as the increase of progesterone, not progestins, kills the libido. This has been a well-known side effect of the hormone progesterone for decades.
4. On glandulars: I didn’t present them as a blanket long-term recommendation. I discussed them in the context of thymic peptides, noted that thymosin alpha-1 has the strongest evidence, and explicitly stated that none of this replaces a functioning thymus. The suppression model you’re invoking comes from endocrine systems regulated by classic negative feedback loops. That broader claim is not established in thymus research.
You did not say anything about the time people should be on glandulars if they go on them. This is important, just like the adverse effects of progesterone you failed to mention are important. That is why I mentioned them.
Do you have any clue how many thymic peptides and hormones there are? And with glandulars, the issue is with the substitution of hormones. How exactly so you think thymic hormones are controlled to prevent over-activity of the gland?
5. And the vitamin C paper you linked was a mouse study in vitamin C–deficient knockout mice. It showed a supportive effect in that deficiency model, not that vitamin C is the central mechanism of thymus physiology in humans.
Yes, a mouse study as are so many of your citations. I did not read every single one of them, but I did many of them. Your 4th citation Is cited by a variety if mouse, not human studies. Your 5th citation is a mouse study. Your 6th citation is a mouse study. Your 7th citation involves Petri dish studies, which are not the same as the human body, and the use of various animal antibodies, other than from humans. Your 8th citation uses various mouse study citations. Your 9th citation uses mouse, and human in vitro, not in vivo studies. Your 10th citation uses mouse and rat study citations.
A note on nutrition and PUFAs: seed oil crops have been increasingly bred for low PUFA / high MUFA. I don't know whether this was led by consumer deman or producers wanting more shelf-stable products, but it's now widespread. Next time you're in the grocery store take a look at the oils section. Safflower and sunflower oils now have a similar PUFA/MUFA ratio as olive oils.
You're technically right that high-oleic varieties exist with lower PUFA on paper. But this misses the bigger picture and mislead people. High-oleic or not, these oils are extracted using hexane (a petroleum solvent), then degummed, bleached, and deodorized at temperatures that create oxidation byproducts and trans fats that never appear on the label. The final product contains lipid peroxides, aldehydes, and degraded compounds that are biologically harmful regardless of what the fatty acid ratio says.
Olive oil is mechanically pressed from a whole fruit at low temperature. Coconut oil is pressed from coconut meat. Butter comes from cream. These are foods. High-oleic sunflower oil is an industrial product engineered to look better on a nutrition panel.
Saying these oils are now comparable to olive oil because one number improved is exactly how the seed oil industry keeps people consuming products that damage their cells. The processing is the problem, and no amount of breeding fixes that.
That's still a pretty broad brush. How about organic expeller pressed sunflower oil versus refined coconut oil? And how about pesticide residues and PFAS in butter (to say nothing of the environmental impacts of factory farming). There's a lot more nuance in the modern food supply chain than "butter good, sunflower oil bad".
You're finding edge cases to argue against the general principle. Yes, expeller-pressed organic sunflower oil exists (somewhere). Most people aren't buying it. What's in processed food, restaurants, and 99% of grocery shelves is hexane-extracted and industrially refined. That's what matters for public health.
Refined coconut oil is still a saturated fat that remains stable under heat and doesn't generate the lipid peroxides and aldehydes that polyunsaturated oils do. Saturated fats don't have the vulnerable double bonds that make PUFAs oxidize. That's basic chemistry. Pesticides and PFAS are contamination issues that apply to every food category including the crops your seed oils come from. That's not an argument for seed oils. That's an argument for better sourcing across the board.
I get that nuance matters but nuance shouldn't be used to make people feel comfortable about consuming industrial fats that damage their cells
Ha, I'm not laughing! The bypass idea actually exists already in a sense. Thymic peptide therapies like thymosin alpha-1 have been used clinically in Europe for decades to provide what a declining thymus can't produce on its own.
Thymus cleansing isn't really how it works (based on what we know so far). You can't flush it out like a kidney. But you can change the metabolic environment so the thymus stops converting itself into fat as fast and holds onto more functional tissue. That's what the zinc, thyroid support, and body composition pieces are about.
And you're spot on about fat. The old 'inert storage depot' model was one of the biggest oversimplifications in medicine. Fat is metabolically active tissue. It produces estrogen, inflammatory cytokines, and in the case of the thymus specifically, the fat that replaces thymic tissue actively suppresses the remaining immune function.
More coming soon, glad you're here.
A good friend of mine who knows a lot about these things once told me that you have to stimulate the thymus every day by giving your sternum a few light taps. Being a Catholic like me, he told me it was like when you go to Mass, say the "I confess" prayer, and tap your chest three times while saying, "Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault."
Eating oysters once a week is pretty much out of the question for me. I'm looking for a good zinc supplement to take, say, every other day. Hugs, Variana—your articles are pure gold!
Love this, Loella! Whether the tapping does anything physically, I honestly don't know but I like the poetry of it! For zinc, look for zinc bisglycinate/glycinate. It's the best absorbed form and gentlest on the stomach. 15-30mg every other day is a reasonable dose. Take it with food and away from coffee or high-phytate meals for better absorption. And if you can't do oysters, red meat, eggs, and dairy all provide bioavailable zinc too. Hugs back, glad you're here!
Excellent point re fat storage myths we were all told