Is It Possible To Get Off Thyroid Medication?

[PR4NOW]

Chris Kresser has a very good post on this question. PR

chriskresser.com/is-it-poss...

[Hypopotamus]

I'm not sure if many of us would agree with his opinion that a suppressed TSH level means that our dose of thyroid meds is too high. It may make sense in theory, but if I reduced my dose to increase my TSH level, I feel 10 times worse, ie under-medicated.

[PR4NOW in reply to Hypopotamus]

I am the same, my TSH started to be buried at 1 grain, at 3 and now 4 grains it has been buried for 25 years and if I back off 1/2 grain I start going hypo. With two hypo parents a genetic glitch is very probable. The other possibility is the longer it takes to get on the right treatment the more damage that might be done to receptors, deiodinase, who knows. Having said that I do agree that for many people 0.5 to 1.5 seems to be optimal once gut and other problems are attended to. PR

[shaws Administrator]

Thanks PR

I have downloaded and will read later. It would be wonderful if we could get off medication.

[Angel_of_the_North]

I think his point is that

1) IF we have an auto immune disease and we can stop the auto immune reaction before it gets bad enough to destroy a lot of thyroid tissue (and keep it that way), we may not have to take meds.

2) There a lot a of different reasons for hypo. If it is caused by low ferritin etc or gut issues (so poor conversion), if we can fix those issues, we may not have to take meds.

3) There are other reasons for thyroid problems which probably mean that we will have to take meds.

[PR4NOW in reply to Angel_of_the_North]

I would agree. PR