Radioactive iodene life after

[Ganggywaller]

Hi all im new to this forum, had RAI 15 years ago after being diagnosed with graves disease. Been on levothyroxine eversince. Now post menopausal and having difficulty with anxiety , insomnia , any tips. Recent blood test tsh 0.9 T4 22 so reduced levothyroxine to 75 mg sat and sun. 100 mg mon -fri

[PurpleNails]

Welcome to forum

Might be best is you post on main thyroid uk forum.

TSH looks low & FT4 high. But we need the range to interpret accurately & likely not had FT3 tested?

FT3 is the active thyroid hormone if low you can have hypo symptoms even if TSH low & FT4 high.

[Hollins]

Hi I'm fairly new here too.

What I've learned that might be learned is:

Levothyroxine stays in your body for about 6 weeks. It takes that long for a change in dose to produce a change in how you feel. You've made a 7% change in your weekly dose.

T4 is the store of hormone but T3 actually does the business. So T4 if is how much gin's in the bottle then T3 is how much is in the glass with lemon, tonic and ice (merry Christmas). The T3 level is very important.

Hospitals and labs can have very different normal values for thyroid hormone levels.

Hope this is of some help.

[pennyannie]

Hello Ganggywalker :

In order to help you understand better what is going on we do need to see a TSH, a Free T3 and a Free T4 blood test result and range and ideally your inflammation and thyroid antibody markers plus your core strength vitamins and minerals that support your thyroid hormone replacement - viz - ferritin, folate, B12 and vitamin D results and ranges.

Graves is a poorly understood and badly treated auto immune disease and simply flipping the patient from hyper to hypo by either a thyroidectomy or RAI thyroid ablation and monitoring on just a TSH reading with an occasional T4 reading as common in primary care not conducive to fully restoring health and well being.

It is essential that you are dosed and monitored on your Free T3 and Free T4 results and ranges and not a TSH reading as with Graves disease the TSH is a very unreliable marker of anything post RAI thyroid ablation.

If your doctor is unable to run a full thyroid panel to include the vitamins and minerals there are private companies listed on the Thyroid UK website - thyroiduk.org - who can and once you have the results and ranges just post everything back on here in a new question and we can talk you through what it all means and advise on your next best steps back to better health.

Arrange an early morning blood test, fast over night and do not take your T4 medication for that day until after the blood draw - so leaving around a 24 hours window from your last dose of Levothyroxine.

If taking any supplements leave these all off for around a week before the blood test so we measure what your body is holding onto rather than that recently ingested.

We do now have some research on Graves and RAI thyroid ablation which you may find of interest :-

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/338...

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/306...

I found Elaine Moore's books and website the most well rounded of all I read when I started my research some years post RAI when I became very unwell and with no answers forth coming from my doctor. elaine-moore.com

Further details, if interested, on my profile page - just press the icon alongside my name :

[Ganggywaller in reply to pennyannie]

Thankyou so much for all the info. I will check out the websites. I have a a blood test booked in a weeks time and will post results, nhs probably just tsh and t4. I will look into getting private ones for vitamins and full thyroid test .