Blood pressure - was high on T4 alone, almost normal with the addition of T3 :)

OH phoned me earlier sounding quite excited (that's another new development since getting a T3 prescription - the return of the ability to get excited!).

Her blood pressure was relentlessly high at the point when she went on sick leave back in March. Luckily even her endo could see that prescribing beta blockers to someone who was hypothyroid would be a really bad idea. But guess what? 2 months after starting T3 in addition to T4, her blood pressure is looking great. She's always had a diastolic pressure of at least 90 (having one kidney does that to you) but it was in excess of 100 for quite a while. When she had a synacthen test on Monday, they measured her BP as 138/90. She's taken a reading at home again today and it's 135/90.

Just goes to show, getting the right thyroid hormone treatment can make an enormous difference, even when your TSH is in that "normal" range doctors love to bang on about. Yes, her TSH was 2.4 at the point of starting T3 - but there's nothing normal about having a BP of 160/110 is there? And magically, on T3, her BP's down again. Coincidence? I think not.

[Clarebear]

Great news I have heard of another forum member with high blood pressure that was controlled by NDT - her doctor took her off it and her BP shot up. The GP reluctantly prescribed it again and sure enough back down it came

My blood pressure has always tended towards the low side, but I think it is more normal on NDT. I only have one kidney too but was unawere that this could affect blood pressure, xxx

[Numberone1 in reply to Clarebear]

That interesting to read you both have only one kidney. My youngest daughter was born with one kidney and now has Type 1 Diabetes (diagnosed at 14). These are all autoimmune diseases.

Does having only one kidney make you more liable to the autoimmine disease I wonder?

One of my cousins has 3 so we're using her as reserve.

p.s. if either of you were born with only 1 kidney, how have you fared with it. My daughter seems to have no problems.

[Clarebear in reply to Numberone1]

I had a kidney removed 15 years ago as I suffered a ruptured AML (angiomyopoma - or something like that). As far as I know I have not had any problems with it, although one of the GPs at my practice thought I was going into kidney failure due to a low GFR reading - fortunately this turned out to be normal for someone with one kidney. but she had me worried for a week I believe if you are born with only one kidney then that one grows extra large to compensate

As far as I know I don't have hashis as both antibodies were negative, but I did have a horrible autoimmune illness called Stevens-Jonson syndrome in my mid twenties - I have often wondered if this may have caused my thryoid failure...

Clare xx