General Help:

[Danoute]

I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism about 3/4 years ago and am still feeling rubbish. I have trialled Levo, NDT, T3 and so on but only ever have fleeting success. For example I recently I trialled NP Thyroid and after some initial success (after being medicated for around 4 weeks) I seemed to plateau and then deteriorate back into a hazy, foggy, achey, tired mess.

Is there any reason why I would have these apparent improvements and then consequent slumps?!

I am thinking of trialling T3 again only but am unsure how to go about it - I know my daily requirements of T4 is around 200 mcg but how would this translate into a T3 regime?!

[Heloise]

This doctor of functional medicine has 22 short videos about Hashimoto as an autoimmune condition and seems to explain why taking thyroid hormones alone are not enough to feel well. If you find this first video interesting, the rest of them are on YouTube. youtube.com/watch?v=nZ_CP7l...(Not working as expected?)

[shaws Administrator]

When you begin thyroid gland hormones you have to start gradually until you take enough to make you feel better, when clinical symptoms start again, you should then make another small increase and continue. If you took a bit too much, you will realise this and either miss the next day's dose and reduce the following day's dose slightly.

[humanbean]

Do you know whether you have enough of the necessary vitamins and minerals? You need to have optimal levels of iron/ferritin, magnesium, zinc, vitamin D, vitamin B12 and folate. Being less than optimal in any of these will reduce your ability to convert T4 to T3.

You also need to be sure that your cortisol is at the right level throughout the day.

Have you ever had any of these tested?

According to the conversion chart on this page :

thyroid.about.com/library/d...

you would need about 50mcg of T3 to have the same effect. But these conversions are very rough - your body may react quite differently to T3 compared to how it reacts to NDT or levo.

[silverfox7]

I think the plateau is fairly standard. Remember before you went in medication you were probably not able to be very active etc. The initial dose makes a difference and because you feel a little better you may be start to do more. Your initial dose appears to be enough for how you were then but not to sustain the improved you so you need another small increase. This seems logical to me to explain this.