Interesting article about depression and treatment with T3

[TSH110]

Some of you may find this an interesting and very readable article about treating depression with T3, with some reference to hypothyroidism

evolutionarypsychiatry.blog...

[lola1956]

Very interesting ..thankyou

[gabkad]

I read this AFTER my endo put me on Cytomel. Thankfully she is aware of this. Still need a tweak on dosing schedule but no longer do I not want to continue living. GP blissfully unaware. I hope she learns something so other patients don't suffer for years and years like I did with "you know, you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome". Borderline suicide syndrome was more like it. Menopause is really deadly for some of us.

[TSH110 in reply to gabkad]

So glad you are feeling better on T3. I am so glad my menopause is over it was really horrid - mind you how much was menopause and how much was hypothyroidism I will probably never know but my money is on most of it actually being hypo symptoms

[gabkad in reply to TSH110]

I was undertreated before menopause. Then it became dire. Now, since I have no insurance, I am calculating costs and dosages because I think I should be taking the Cytomel three times per day, not twice. At 5 mcg twice per day it costs me $1,000 per year. And it's not the only medication I have to take. I was google image searching if the 12 mcg tablets are scored or not.

People think 'oh it's tax deductible'. Um no. Only health care costs above 4% of gross annual income fall into that category. It's really not much of a plus being self employed around here. Just hoping, if I live long enough, that over 65s have Cytomel coverage.

[Angel_of_the_North in reply to gabkad]

You might find Tiromel from Turkey/Greece/Cyprus cheaper. Or try Mexico.

[gabkad in reply to Angel_of_the_North]

Definitely am looking into my options once the dose and dosing schedule is figured out for a reasonable longer term.

[TSH110]

Oh god that is so awful - at least we have the NHS here usually it is pretty good but treatment of hypothyroidism seems to be the exception that probes the rule . It is slowly being privatised by the back door and it is going downhill. The Tory party fought it tooth and nail from the get go and now they are dismantling it altogether. With hypo you get free prescriptions for all medicines your doc prescribes but NDT and T3 are nigh on impossible to get on prescription

[sazzyb in reply to TSH110]

The privatisation path was trod by both Labour & Tories. Looking back to its launch (you're probably too young to remember Nye Bevan who spearheaded the establishment of the NHS,) by allowing the consultants to work inside the health service and at the same time still treat their lucrative private patients, Bevan bought the backing of the consultants by, as he put it, "stuffing their mouths with gold." I don't know what the answer is though, sadly our NHS isn't delivering as much as it should and has to change. It's great in an emergency, but the rest of it....!

[TSH110 in reply to sazzyb]

Hi sazzyb a very sad but valid point

I was born 12 years later but I knew of his comment about stuffing their mouths with gold and that this has always been a fundamental and hugely draining flaw with the NHS - the public effectively funding private medicine, which is outrageous - and that the Tories voted against every bit of punctuation in the bill to try and stop it going through but the will of the people was overwhelming.

I agreed that Labour (not that I'd call Tony Blair a socialist in any shape or form) made it possible to carve it all up but I still maintain that the Tory party have been openly hostile to the NHS - maybe bar a brief period in the 60's and 70's - and have vested interests in getting it privatised. I fear it is too late now we are on a slippery slope and the NHS is nothing more than a name and a lost dream. I cannot comprehend why we should want to have a heath system that resembles what they have in the US - great if you are filthy stinking rich and plain scary if you are not. I have had excellent treatment on the NHS in everything bar the thyroid problems but to be fair they did save my life and it has only been the dosage and Levo mono therapy (due to over reliance on TSH numbers) and a refusal to offer any options (if symptoms persist and blame it all on depression) that have cause me problems . I also had a doctor I was very disappointed with (the first one in ages - I have been very lucky with GP's over the years) but since switching to another one I am much happier. However, I don't feel able to divulge that I have started to self medicate on NDT in sheer desperation and feel hugely better as a result. I have a lot of other ailments that need addressing and he has set all these in motion so I don't want to upset the apple cart.

Free at the point of delivery - tragic that this basic premiss has been ditched. It is such a simple idea and as fair a system as could be devised - why are all the best ideas trashed?

[Neeta-K]

My psychiatrist prescribes T3 for me. I went sent to see him because of the anxiety i had over not being able to control my weight, feeling a constant lump in my throat, hair loss, eyelash and eyebrow loss, IBS. Really the GP should have treated me for hypothyroidism but until my TSH reached 10, everything i was going through wasn't thyroid related. It's the GPs that are crazy and need some help!!

[TSH110 in reply to Neeta-K]

That is awful Neekta-K - fancy having to suffer all that and allowing your TSH to rise up to 10 before treating you. For supposedly intelligent people one despairs of their ridiculous over reliance on treatment by numbers by some of these GPs. Yes I agree that they are the ones who need their heads examining!

[gabkad in reply to Neeta-K]

Yup, the psychiatrist referred me to the endocrinologist. I had no eyebrows left to pluck. Just thought it was 'normal' for menopause.........um, NO.

[TSH110 in reply to gabkad]

Tell me about normal for menopause gabkad! All my hypo symptoms were explained away by the menopause despite me telling several GPs there was a history of hypothyroidism in the family after traipsing in with a series of weird problems - severe foot and leg cramps, tendonitis, frozen shoulder, plantar fasciitis, heart pains, guts problems, depression, exhaustion etc etc not one bothered to test to see if my thyroid was working ok. My eyebrows went all wiry and very untidy and then really spartan as they fell out especially in the outer part...as for my toe nails yack! Once the menopause had gone there was no hiding place anymore I got worse and worse and became so ill I nearly didn't make it through - normal for menopause? I don't think so.

[gabkad in reply to TSH110]

I thought I was going senile. Couldn't remember words and names. My voice had no strength. People couldn't make out what I was saying unless I put in a superhuman effort to, what felt to me, raise my voice abnormally loud. I was walking slower and slower, aching and limping. Carrying groceries was a back breaking activity. I'd get everything done by 11 a.m. on a week-end day so I could nap for 5 hours in the afternoon. I was dying of fatigue at work.

Now I found out that Synthroid is not stable at all. My GP was prescribing 400 tablets at a time and I have no doubt that eventually the 112 mcg tablets had only half that strength to them after a while. Not to mention that even fresh 125 mcg tablets don't raise my fT3 above basement level. No wonder I didn't want to live anymore.

A doctor friend who no longer has her thyroid consulted with the pharm D at her hospital. She advised to keep the tablets in their original bottle and check the expiry date.

[TSH110 in reply to gabkad]

Gosh me too - my mind was like a sieve I could not even remember where I was or the names of people I was talking to (unless they were very old friends). Sometimes I could not even remember what I was saying or why I was saying it! My voice too was sort of weak, thin seeming and wobbly; later on I started to sound like a Darlek it went really deep and almost electronic as it vibrated out! A half mile dog walk might take me 2 hrs I felt like I was wading through treacle I was so slow! Getting ready for work would take at least 2 hrs I was so indecisive every decision I had to make was a nightmare. All I could do was try and do everything in the same order to reduce any vacillation but that is not easy when you cannot remember what you did 10 seconds ago my sequencing was very badly affected - cooking was utter chaos as I did everything all the wrong way round and nothing came together at the end unless it involved some seriously burnt offerings!! I struggled to carry shopping home and when I started seeing a skull looking back at me from the mirror I thought I was going completely mad especially with all the emotional and physical disturbances, my moods went hay wire and I would fly off the handle just like that and be quite aggressive, then I'd be weeping uncontrollably it was hellish. As for the depression it settled over me like a big black suffocating cloud I began to research natural poisons and other methods of suicide as I so wanted to die. I would wake up and see a vision of me hanged somewhere in the house or on the allotment, it was very disturbing. I would fall asleep at the drop of a hat even standing up on a tube or sitting on a seat and I could snooze for days on end scarcely getting out of bed. I was plagued by hideous nightmares, hot sweats between feeling like I was in the Arctic and excruciating cramps in my feet and legs. I found it hard to sleep at night at all but in the day I was comatosed. Noise was deafening to me and I smelt all sorts of hideous smells everywhere and itched so much I thought the dogs had given me fleas! How I kept on working I just do not know. Once diagnosed I just told people I had meetings with and said it affected my memory. I could see them looking incredulous as I asked really stupid questions cos my mind was not processing what they had just told me properly, I'd think 'why did I say that daft thing?' As my faulty mind caught up again. How embarrassing - but better to tell them first why it was.

I am glad I am much improved from that frightening phase of the illness. Treatment was slow cos of the dreadful heart pains I suffered and after 9 mths they just about got me human again, but reduced the dose I felt best on. I have had hypo symptoms ever since and eventually lost heart and switched to NDT. I immediately started to feel better and now like my old self again I take 4/5 NDT and 1/5 Levo and will up to all NDT when I settle on this dose. I am glad I swallowed hard and took the plunge to think I could have suffered like that for the rest of my life if I had listened to conventional medicine makes me shudder. Thank goodness for this site and all the support and informed advice so freely given. It has allowed me to find myself again

[sazzyb in reply to Neeta-K]

Your GP wants a good shaking Neeta. They forget that it wasn't so long ago when it was symptoms that were treated not a number on a computer screen.

[TSH110 in reply to sazzyb]

Quite agree sazzyb