Any ideas why I am getting joint pain/stiffness again since increasing NDT?

[PinkNinja]

When taking levothyroxine I had horrible joint pain and stiffness which even made walking and sleeping difficult. Switching to NDT saw that pain and stiffness disappear within days. I have been taking it for many months now and I feel so much better.

A couple of weeks ago I started experiencing hypo symptoms again so I increased my NDT to 4.5 grains. I am starting to feel a little better already but the joint pain and stiffness seems to have returned. The pain feels like inflammation in the joints, but I'm not sure if that's the cause.

Any ideas what might be going on or what I might need to look into next? I thought I had found the answer, and I suppose I have found most of it but some tweaking might be in order. I'm just not sure how to proceed.

Many thanks

Carolyn x

[nobodysdriving]

my guess and I am fairly sure it might be this:

is that your body has reached a limit of how much T4 it wants to convert to T3 and is notw producing rT3 instead.

drop back to 4 grains and if you can at all add a little T3 it will probably do you good :), just a smidge like 5mcg to start with

[PinkNinja in reply to nobodysdriving]

That makes sense. I wonder why I have so much trouble converting T4. I must be better at converting than I used to be because 4.5 grains contains more T4 than 125mcg levo. Clearly I'm still not that hot at it

Thanks

C xxx

[nobodysdriving]

well, the T3 in the NDT must have helped you probably

but I've heard far too many people that when they reached so much T4 in the NDT they started getting joint pain due to them not tolerating more than so much T4

[sandi]

Hi Carolyn

The one thing that taking thyroid hormones seemed to work on was my stiffness and joint problems but in the past few weeks they are back with a vengeance. Getting up from sitting or lying requires notice if it is to be followed by walking. It's the zombie walk in the morning especially.

I can't for the life of me work out why and concluded it must be the weather as I have changed nothing else.

Which NDT do you take? I take Erfa.

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK]

Carolyn,

Just happened to see this paper:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/100...

Might not be relevant but as soon as I saw it, I thought of your question.

Rod

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to helvella]

And:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/197...

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[PinkNinja in reply to helvella]

Thanks. This is rather interesting and I feel I should look into it. I would be very interested to see if gout treatment has any effect. I wonder if the same occurs with T3 only. I shall have to look into it.

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK in reply to PinkNinja]

Trouble is, normal gout treatment (e.g. colchicine) goes after the uric acid - which is not the problem in pseudogout.

I agree about your T3 question.

We get a lot of people reporting joint issues on levothyroxine and end up not really knowing what to say. These do look interesting.

Rod