my doctor has allowed me to try 5mcg t3 infact she is quite open I think , anyway I now take 50 mcg of levo and 5 mcg of lio

[Thyroidie]

how much thyroxine am I taking? doctor said a 20 mcg lio was equivalent to 100 mcg levo ...any advice ? Not finding the chopping up easy .....I want to get better and get on the right dose ....sweats sore throats lack of energy dizziness aches I my joints. I mite even try the T3 in te morn with the levo and and suggest another 5mcg of lio in the afternoon or switch t4 to the eve and t3 to the morn what du think...I know not to take take t4 near food. I take iron multi ginseng omega d3 nothing for adrenals yet ...if I am on the right dose would I still need adrenal support? Please help....what do people think of Dr Myhill website ?

[Hidden]

I'm afraid I only have a mundane solution to the 'chopping up'. Someone on here advised me to use a craft knife. Works a treat. Hope others can help with the technical stuff!

[jeanniex in reply to Hidden]

Hi I bought a pill cutter from Boots £2.25 it works a treat even on the very small pills - very simple action just gently close the 'machine' blade inside does the work.

[vajra]

Hi T, good luck with the T3. It gave me back my life, but not everybody responds in the same way.

I tend to (carefully - very easy to trim a finger tip) use a stiff backed razor blade , and have never had much luck with proprietary pill cutters. A lot depends on the brand of T3, the Ti-Tre i've had for example is more inclined to crumble than the other brands. Anything more than halving gets messy and potentially impracticable.

It's a big help if you can either get exactly the right size pill (less likely here - they have great choice of sizes in the US) - or get the pharmacy to cut them for you. My current guys do this, but not their predecessors.

One to watch out for is that if they dispense the exact quantity you need and a few crumble you may lose several days supply. The big advantage of the pharmacy doing the cutting is that they replace any that are lost. I've never tried to get extra to cover my own cutting losses - it'd be worthwhile if the prescribing rules allow it.

The equivalence factor for T3 to T4 is typically X4 or X5 depending on where you look - it's been closer to X4 for me, but many doctors will probably want to start at the more conservative X5 and work up. i.e. if replacing part fo a T4 dose with T3 then 1mcg of T3 replaces 4 or 5mcg of T4.

I started on 10mcg of T3 with my T4 adjusted down to suit, and it was magic. Despite that it took me quite a few years to realise that my replacement still wasn't optimum, and to work through the options on dose and T3/T4 mix. (i'v eneded up taking a far greater proportion of T3)

So either adjusting so that both free T3 and free T4 are in the upper ends of their refrence ranges and/or lots of (cautious) trials in response to how you feel can be worthwhile. This can take quite a while when the time needed to persuade endos/docs to change rpescriptions is factored in......

ian

[Heloise]

If you were to be prescribed an NDT your would be taking the equivalent of about a 1/2 grain of Armour and you would be taking both T4 and T3 at the same time. Some take it in the morning and some have found more benefit of taking it at bedtime. I think whatever seems to work for you would be appropriate but at that low dose, it may not reveal any difference. You can find the exact calculations somewhere on this site but I thought you might find this page interesting. stopthethyroidmadness.com/d...

[Zephyrbear]

I agree with Sandy12... your dosage seems very low. I was on 100mcg T4 until my endo agreed to trial me on a T3/T4 combo. He replaced 75mcg of T4 with 30mcg of T3, so I ended up taking 3x 10mcg of T3 spread over the day and 25mcg of T4 which I take last thing at night. My experience is that this latest batch of T3 (produced after the great 'run-out') is not quite as strong as I need it to be and so have increased my 1st and 2nd doses of the day by 5 mcg and that seems to be maintaining the status quo. But the bottom line is that I have always taken more T3 than T4, so your doctor seems to be a little over-cautious, which may be doing more harm than good.