A couple of weeks ago I was thinking about how to improve my health. I'm on T3 only and have been taking it in three doses through the day.
I don't have much "get up and go"/motivation/desire to do things. I also struggle with concentration. Both with trying to do any of my study work (a part time course) or even watching a long TV programme.
I need to be able to concentrate if I'm going to get back to work. When I left my job due to ill health (back then was diagnosed depressed, but now I know I was hypo) having poor concentration, no matter how much I tried, made me unable to do enough work in the day. It's the same feeling as now.
I have found that I've been taking one of those batches that may be suspect. I've got one pot left and I'm not going to use it (so I have one I could send to be tested if that Yellow Card scheme need one). I've got more T3, but it's all in a bottle from Boots, so I don't know what batch it is. I wish I knew one way or the other.
Anyways, I'm taking 85mcg and I've tried taking it throughout the day like 35mcg, 25mcg, 25mcg and also waking early and taking some then going back to sleep.
I then tried taking the 85mcg all in the morning. It felt good until about 5 hours after I'd taken it and then I crashed and had to pull myself through the day on coffee and chocolate. I'm surprised that I didn't feel at all hyper in the morning.
Why don't people who take their T3 only in one go feel hyper after they take it?
and
I've noticed that people on T3 only seem to take larger doses, 100mcg + . I'm wondering what would happen if I took a larger dose in the morning. Maybe it would last me all day? But I don't want to take too much.
If you take your T3 only in one dose, whatever time of day, did you increase your dose compared to taking it throughout the day?
Totoro x
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That's a really interesting reply of his. Particularly about T3 making a patient more sensitive to other things, like coffee.
Two nights ago I was exhausted after a previous night of little sleep (I have a sleep problem) and I took a nap at 6.30pm. My heart beat was fairly strong, but nothing else. I woke up at 9pm and then back to bed at midnight. But at midnight I had moments of an irregular heart beat. But I'd taken no more T3 (last dose in the afternoon) and all I'd done was have a decaff coffee. I'd also been careful not to eat sweet things and chocolate.
I did a quick bit of googling and found that decaff coffee can make people less sleepy, not just caffeinated. So that was the most likely reason my heart went irregular!
What does Dr Lowe mean by "metabolic rate"? "Many patients taking T3 have TSH and T3 levels like yours but still have severely low metabolic rates."
Maybe someone more qualified than I will answer. I am not medically qualified but hypothyroidism causes everything to slow down and thyroid hormones should raise our metabolism to a point that we feel well as our metabolism is back to normal. That's why so many complain of weight gain/temperature is low and sometimes heart rate too in that their body cannot burn the calories quickly enough. This is an excerpt (can't find link now)
Points to Remember
Hypothyroidism is a disorder that occurs when the thyroid gland does not make enough thyroid hormone to meet the body’s needs. Thyroid hormone regulates metabolism. Without enough thyroid hormone, many of the body’s functions slow down.
Thanks Shaws. This is very interesting. I used to take my T3 all in one go but I was not on a high dose. I got on very well with T3 only. Shame they decided "everyone has thyroxine" and "it's better". How wrong they were!
I think I will try taking my T3 all in one dose. I am only dosing twice a day now rather than 3 times. I will try increasing my morning dose and decreasing my afternoon dose and see what happens. Perhaps this is the missing part of the puzzle.
That's very interesting, especially the Nov 2005 reply. I was told about 35 years ago by my unbelievably, appallingly rude GP that I shouldn't take ephedrine. No explanation given. (One of many GPs who simultaneously assured me there was nothing wrong with me). I took it once by mistake and found out why.
I had a similar reaction at the dentist just a few years ago when I forgot to tell them I needed adrenaline free injections. I had such severe palpitations I nearly passed out on the floor. The dentist was very calm and very kind and he and his nurse waited patiently til it passed, even making me wait for half an hour in the waiting room afterwards before they would let me drive home.
I too am thinking about how I can get back to work. Yesterday I got a letter from my manager asking if I could come in for a meeting with her and HR. I think it is procedure in the health service and I am not too worried about it because I do want to go back, I am not malingering. I have been off since October last year and I am on ½ pay now but like you, I can’t see that I can go back with such appalling concentration, memory and fatigue.
Initially I was taking my dose twice a day, then Paul suggested the multi dosing and immediately I felt the benefits. Perhaps in the beginning it is important to multi dose until you get used to it, who knows. Perhaps a study would be a good thing!
Anyways, I would love to take 1 dose, at night, before I go to bed or once in the morning as I get up. Unfortunately I found I was crashing badly for the afternoon if I 'lost' my 11.30am dose. I don't feel hyper with increased doses as I don't have the same feelings of life washing over my cells when I take the medication so I am hopeful that I can dose once a day and will try it again once I have some time in my schedule. I was taking the batch of T3 that has been mentioned and I do feel better now I have changed it. I now have a few pots of the stuff!!!
I was taking NDT in about two-hourly doses - just to see if it helped - it didn't. I tried adding T3, I tried all sorts of things, but I was getting steadily worse. I was also taking HC because I knew my adrenals were shot, but that didn't help much, either. The future, frankly, looked extremely bleak. Then I read the above passage from Dr Lowe. I was very sceptical, I couldn't believe it would work. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained, and being as low as I was I figured I had nothing to lose.
I must have started taking my whole dose at night around last September? Dont remember exactly. Firstly with the NDT, then gradually phased out the NDT and went T3 only. I now take 200 mcg just after midnight every night.
I won't say it was all plain sailing, but right from the start my sleep improved. It had been getting a bit better with the HC, but I was still having to get up at least once in the night for a pee. Taking the T3 at night, I sleep right through 9 times out of 10.
I have never once felt in the least bit hyper at any time. Quite the opposite. To begin with, I did find I ran out of steam at about 11.0 the following night, and my brain started niggling with little obsessive thoughts, reliving old grudges, worrying about what to do, and I looked forward to dose time! But that didn't last very long. I no-longer get the running-out feeling now.
I feel different in ways I really can't describe. I still have swollen feet, I still can't walk very far or stand for very long, but I feel more human than I've felt for a long, long time. More in possession of my body, if that means anything.
This week is a nightmare. I've got the plumber back (aaarrrrrrgggggggghhhhh!!!!!) Some of you might have read my depressive blog last time he was here. Well, despite the fact that my kitchen looks like a bomb hit it, I'm coping with it! Much better than I did last time. Last night, my granddaughter came to stay. This morning, I couldn't even cook her breakfast. So we went out to Subway!!!!!!! I have never gone out for breakfast in my life before! But I did it. Then home again and out again for lunch. And I'm still standing! It's a miracle!!! lol Seriously, just to say how much my life has improved since I started dosing at night. And on Sunday, I'm doing a boot fair! Yay for me! lol
And the best of it is, I'm losing weight. Now whether that is down to the high dose of T3 (I suspect it is, but the body still has to use it) or the HC (must play it's part) or dosing at night, I don't know. But it's happening and that's all I care.
I'm not saying that everybody should be on the high dose I'm on (although I'm willing to bet that a lot of people should be on a higher dose than they are at present) or that they should resort to HC, or that dosing at night will work for them. We're all different. But I thought I would put it out there that this is working for me. And as so many people are always asking for success stories, perhaps they'll take heart from this. Although I'm far from claiming complete success, but it's a start.
Toroto, I would say to you that you'll never know unless you try. It could very well work for you. In any case, if it doesn't, it won't have cost you anything and you can always go back to what you were doing before.
When I took my T3 at night it slowly gave me terrible heart pounding, I suspect it messed up with my cortisol though I don't have the proof.
I get on HEAPS better with dosing once a day when I wake up now
but yes, unless one tries one does not know
I have only recently added some NDT and I take 160mcg T3 and 1 grain of Erfa, will up the Erfa I know already but will not go any higher than 3 grains as in the past I could not tolerate any more than that, then if I still need anymore I'll up the T3 This process will take a while.
As I said above, I did take T3 and NDT at one point. But, for various reasons, I gradually lowered the NDT and eventually went onto T3 only. Which seems to suite me better.
sorry I obviously lost track of time, it felt like very recently on another thread you mentioned taking T3 and NDT, but obviously that was probably ages ago and to me it feels like recent forgive me
lol Ah, this hypo thing, it not only affects our bodies and minds but also our sense of time. Have you noticed that when your levels are good and you're having a good day, the day seems much longer and you can pack more into it. But when your levels are bad and you feel bad, you can sit there and stare at the wall and the day just disappears. You don't even see it go.
And I do wonder if time is not a matter of hormones. When you are young and the hormones are flowing freely, a year seems like an eternity. As you get older, and hormone production reduces, a year gets shorter and shorter...
But I don't want to bore you with another one of my theories. lol
Grey - most interesting post! Are you saying that mentally you've experienced an improvement when taking the whole dose at night? Physically you're saying that you're not quite there yet?
Yes, I suppose I am. I hadn't really thought about it because the feelings of improvement are so difficult to put into words. I think the feeling is best described as slowly emerging from a pit of mud that one has been in for a long time. A feeling of regained freedom both physical and mental
But as for the physical, I've lost so much of my muscle mass that I doubt things will ever improve much there. I suffer from low HGH and there's not much I can do about that.
I would very much doubt if they were equal. There are so many other parameters to take into consideration. That would be too easy, wouldn't it! lol And real life isn't that easy. If you look at it from the opposite angle, I wouldn't say that I declined both mentally and physically at the same rate. The physical was much faster for me. But there are people who decline rapidly mentally and hardly at all physically. I don't know...
I was looking at the Mexican Meds website which sells T3. It does say that T3 may affect muscle mass so some athletes take anabolic steroids along with T3. I was rather concerned when I read that. Weight loss is not good when the weight you are losing is muscle.
I've never heard that T3 effects muscle mass before. Perhaps that's just in people that are taking it without needing it, such as weight lifters. After all, you need T3 to live. And as my HGH is practically zero, I would be inclined to think that it is that that is causing my loss of muscle rather than the T3. When HGH is low, muscle is reabsorbed and replaced by fat. I don't quite know what happens when you lose the fat. Perhaps you disappear all together! lol
Thank you so much for sharing. Reading other people's stories of what happened to them and what helped and what didn't gives me ideas of what to try to try and get myself better and also the strength to give different plans a go.
This site and the people here give so much more information than I could ever get from a doctor or endo.
I'm now taking 60mcg in the morning and 25mcg later in the day. I'll see how this goes and then think about taking more in the morning.
Greygoose, so you take 10 (!) tablets all in one go ???
I take my T3 daily dose all at once, about an hour before I get up. From tomorrow, this will be 45mcg. I am going to slowly increase (again!) until I feel better.
I have tried taking it before bed, but it kept me awake, even at lower amounts. I tried taking some extra amount later in the morning, but normally felt no different, and once I felt dizzy / heart pounding so stopped it. As nobodysdriving said, why have the nuisance of it.
As it is in the morning when I struggle (as opposed to during the day) then I feel single early morning dosing is the way to go for me. I've probably got an adrenal issue, but the nhs don't recognise adrenal fatigue, only Addison's (low) or Cushing’s syndrome (high), nothing inbetween
Not 10 tablets, no, because my tablets are 25 mcg and I have 75 mcg capsules. So that works out at 2 tablets and 2 capsules. lol But it doesn't keep me away at all.
It really is amazing, isn't it, how medical bodies can not recognise things that are staring them in the face but make up other things to explain them, such as fibro and CFS. We really haven't left the dark ages yet.
>medical bodies can not recognise things that are staring them in the face but make up other things to explain them, such as fibro and CFS..
To be honest, some doctors are not particularly 'keen' on the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, and other medically unexplained syndromes. There are various theories to explain these syndromes but none are proven. It seems to me that patient advocacy groups have promoted this diagnosis. One thing is for certain, and that's that there is a massive amount of suffering amongst those diagnosed with fibromyalgia, whatever the underlying cause. It is highly probable that this condition is multifactorial in origin. Different patients may have different underlying causes. This is essentially the case with all diagnoses that are based on group of symptoms (syndromes) rather than specific tests.
One the other hand, a lot of fibro and CFS patients that manage to get decent levels of thyroid hormone, find their syndromes disappear.
I don't know that anyone ever suggested that there wasn't a lot of suffering amongst those diagnosed with fibro. It's obvious that there is. The problem is that doctors don't always search for the root cause but fall back on these pseudo diagnosis. It makes life so much easier for them! And I say 'pseudo' because 'diagnosing' someone with a syndrome isn't actually a 'diagnosis' at all.
>I don't know that anyone ever suggested that there wasn't a lot of suffering amongst those diagnosed with fibro. It's obvious that there is.
You didn't - I felt it was necessary to stress this because discussion of whether syndromes such as fibromyalgia should be accepted as diagnoses is a highly emotionally charged area. Sufferers can get very upset and feel that their condition is not being taken seriously.
>The problem is that doctors don't always search for the root cause but fall back on these pseudo diagnosis.
That's true, but in many cases the root cause is not known or understood. Alternative medical practitioners frequently do the exact opposite of conventional physicians in this situation (which is equally bad), and regularly 'diagnose' the underlying cause of patient's symptoms based on little or no evidence. Attributing a hugely diverse range of symptoms to candida infections in an example - any microbiologist would class this as pseudoscience.
>And I say 'pseudo' because 'diagnosing' someone with a syndrome isn't actually a 'diagnosis' at all.
Sadly, in many cases, it's the best we can do. Examples include autism, all psychiatric disorders and various types of dementia.
'That's true, but in many cases the root cause is not known or understood.'
That's true too, but don't you think that if someone is known to have an underactive thyroid then it is more than likely that it is the hypo causing the symptoms. And that's what I meant in my original comment 'medical bodies can not recognise things that are staring them in the face'. .
It is so frustrating that mainstream medicine doesn't seem to be able to acknowledge adrenal insufficiency until someone has a full blown Addisonian Crisis! My nephew's wife, who has had Hashimoto's for ten years, spent most of last year moribund & unable to function in between being taken to see GP at regular intervals. All he did was play around with her levo dosage. In February this year, in despair, her husband and mother took her to A&E where she was diagnosed as being in a full blown Addisonian Crisis! They had taken her in the nick of time. Why did she have to suffer all that time and not be treated until her adrenals failed altogether? it beggars belief!
>My nephew's wife, who has had Hashimoto's for ten years, spent most of last year moribund & unable to function in between being taken to see GP at regular intervals. All he did was play around with her levo dosage.
That's very poor. She should have been referred to a specialist if her symptoms weren't improving. The diagnosis could then have been made much earlier.
>the nhs don't recognise adrenal fatigue, only Addison's (low) or Cushing’s syndrome (high)...
It's not specific to the NHS, conventional medicine in general does not recognise 'adrenal fatigue' - which is a popular concept in alternative medicine. Conventional medicine does recognise adrenal insufficiency however. Addison's disease represents the most severe form of adrenal insufficiency, but milder forms also occur. It is untrue that conventional medicine only recognises adrenal insufficiency if it is very severe, although mild forms are sometimes missed.
Adrenal insufficiency is diagnosed using the Synacthen (ACTH) test, which is carried out quite frequently in NHS hospitals. The short Synacthen test is most popular. The Synacthen test assesses the ability of the adrenal glands to produce cortisol when stimulated.
If a Synacthen test proves that a patient's adrenal glands are unable to produce normal quantities of cortisol on stimulation, the diagnosis of adrenal insufficiency applies, not adrenal fatigue. Some alternative practitioners diagnose adrenal fatigue based on symptoms alone or using tests which have not been demonstrated to be valid - this is what conventional endocrinologists disagree with.
The most common causes of adrenal insufficiency in the UK include autoimmune adrenal disease and prolonged steroid treatment (which leads to adrenal suppression and eventually adrenal atrophy).
Adrenal insufficiency is usually treated with standard hydrocortisone (cortisol) tablets, usually about 20-30mg per day in 2 or 3 divided doses. The dose is temporarily increased during times of severe physical or mental stress
A new controlled release formulation of hydrocortisone has recently been launched in the UK for the treatment of adrenal insufficiency. The brand name is Plenadren and it is supposed to mimic the natural variation in blood levels of cortisol during the day. Plenadren is expensive (approx. £400 per month) and hasn't been proven to lead to superior patient outcomes vs conventional hydrocortisone tablets. I expect it won't be used very much. Certainly, I have not yet seen a prescription for it.
I am taking T3 (20mcg) twice a day as I found that I was crashing badly about 6 hours after taking (20mcg) in the morning only. This seemed logical to me as I am sure that I have read somewhere that T3 only stays in the body for 6 hrs. GP agreed that this was the case but said don't need it at night- which again seemed to make sense as I feel so much more energetic when I have taken tablet- till about 6 hrs later. The crashes were too severe for me to have imagined it. Am too scared to try taking it all in one go in case I go the other way. Is this being paranoid?
Your doctor is wrong about that. The body needs T3 at night to carry out repairs and heal itself.
As for T3 only staying in the body for 6 hrs, Dr Lowe has a theory about this. I can't summerise if for you because I'm not sure that I understood all the finer details, but Shaws gives the link above if you're interested in reading it. After I read it, I thought no, I don't believe it! But I have a great respect for Dr Lowe and thought well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating! So I tried it. The rest, as they say, is history! lol
I worried that I might go hyper if I took my 85mcg all in one go.
I'd been slowly increasing how much of my daily T3 I took in the morning. I was taking 40mcg then 25mcg 4 hours later and then 20mcg in the late afternoon. So I figured I was already taking 65mcg all within 4 hours.
I tried taking 85mcg all in the morning in one go and I didn't go hyper, not in the least. It surprised me a bit. I did crash in the afternoon. Now I'm taking 60mcg in the morning and 25mcg later on.
You could try taking it all in one go but I'd do it on a day when you're not planning on doing much later on just in case you crash in the afternoon. Or you could try taking 30mcg and then 10mcg later on. See how you go.
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