Day 42 of no T4 and wanted to know what its like once clearing has occurred and how long it took people
Has anyone cleared RT3 ? If so what does it fee... - Thyroid UK
Has anyone cleared RT3 ? If so what does it feel like when it happens? How long did it take?
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stuartwwhouse
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Stuart, it took 10/12 weeks off T4 plus 2 weeks off T3 before my symptoms began improving. It was amazing how tremors, shortness of breath, palpitations, muscle pain, brain fog etc cleared within days. I don't know whether it took that long to clear T4 from my overloaded system or whether it was rT3. I didn't know about rT3 then.
Thanks for your reply Clutter, I have googled everywhere and can't find many personal testimonies about clearing RT3 , I'm working with Paul Robinson and going T3 only after realising I have adrenal issues causing high RT3 from the T4 /t3 ratio, I'm so curious how people feel but doesn't look like many have done it
Did you feel when it happened and suddenly need a lot less T3 ? I'm currently on 60 t3 only , I was on 150 t4 /60 t3
Stuart, I stopped T3 too and improved within days. Stayed off meds for 4 weeks by which time I was very hypo. May have spared myself that if I'd given it another couple of weeks to clear the T4. The detox worked for me. I resumed T4 but side effects piled in within days and calmed down when I added T3.
I'm sure Paul Robinson mentions rT3 taking up to 14 weeks to clear.
I don't think I could cope off of both , God you are brave!
Yeah he mentions it in the book but calculated 150mcg T4 to take 64 days to clear but 12 -14 weeks to be absolutely certain
I hope it works for me too !
Stuart, I wasn't brave, I was desperate and pretty much giving up. When the side effects started easing up I was thrilled and then ecstatic when I realised I could actually feel well. I felt wonderful for 2 weeks but slid into zombiedom in the 3rd and 4th weeks. I thought I might just be able to cope if I had to stop meds every month or so for a week or two to feel pain free and without hammring palpitations. Happily, I was able to tolerate T4 with T3 after so I didn't have to put it to the test. Most hypo symptoms were gone 3 months after I resumed replacement but hair loss and skin shedding went on for another 3/4 months.
Stupidly, I overdid T3 in the spring and FT3 went considerably over range but the only signs were a little heat intolerance and slight tremors. Hair & nails are rubbish again too 
How are you working with Paul? I would love to but can't find info online. Do you have a link or email to share please?
If you Google recovering with t3 you will find his website and if you put it in Facebook you will find his group 😁
Hi Clutter,
I know this post is very old but I need some kind of guidance! I have switched to T3 only starting last Friday. I felt better the first day but now feel absolutely horrible! I can barely get through a day of work and my brain fog has gotten so mad I cant stand to be in my own body! I have also put on some serious weight fast! Is this to be expected? will this getting better? or is this a sign this is not the treatment course for me? I switched bc I was not doing well on NDT but this is far worse so far! I am so frustrated and confused and have no guidance! I do not know how to do this T3 treatment and am not sure if I am supposed to wait out this period of time.
I cleared my rT3 by using T3 only. I was previously on T4 only and felt appalling. When I paid for private tests and discovered my rT3 was way over the range I decided to try the T3 only route. I discovered very quickly that I couldn't function on low doses of T3 - I couldn't walk properly and I suffered severe memory problems. I escalated my dose very quickly as a result. It turned out that I could tolerate very high doses of T3 during this time. I briefly got up to 200mcg per day but settled at 150mcg per day in the end. It took me about 8 weeks to clear my rT3 and then I went hyper - I got a very fast heart rate and high BP - it was quite scary. I dropped my dose down to 50mcg per day for a few days, went hyper again, and then came off T3 altogether for a few days. When I re-started I was very cautious and started with 1/4 tablet doses. I have never been able to tolerate more than about 3/4 of a 25mcg T3 tablet per day since which is a huge relief because I couldn't have afforded the high doses I was taking on a long-term basis. The other noticeable thing is that I don't have the walking problems or the severe memory problems any more, even on very low doses of T3. In the end I came off T3 altogether, and eventually did new private TFTs - my rT3 had dropped to being very slightly over mid-range. Still not great - I would have preferred it to be lower. But the difference in how I felt was incredible. I was so much better after reducing my rT3 compared to how I felt when it was high.
I wouldn't recommend doing what I did to anyone else - I did it too fast, didn't know what I was doing, and it probably wasn't safe. It would have been much, much safer to have taken a lower dose and taken longer over the whole process.
I'm thinking that maybe the symptoms I have - constantly feeling like I have had too much coffee, especially when I wake in the morning, headache, muscles feel weak, strained and jittery, hair shedding ( although the iron seems to be helping with that), constant tickly airway, cough and mucus might be due to RT3 build up?
What symptoms did you have and where do I get a test to confirm it? My GP can't help. I feel dreadful and don't know where to turn to get help. So far I have made big mistakes when choosing private doctors from the TUK list, who are supposed to be experts on thyroid - one was a homeopath and the other uses herbs - both made me worse than when I started and did not check the basic test results first - concentrating only on the adrenals and TSH and costing me hundreds of pounds to get nowhere.
WhaT dosage are you on?
Please read recovering with T3 by Paul Robinson it very good even if you aren't considering T3 only at the moment ,
I'm on Erfa T4/T3 combo - 60mg a day. My adrenals need attention but all the supplements I am prescribed are a combination that affects the whole adrenal gland, not just the Cortex - so I get general symptoms of over-stimulation which make me feel awful - constant headache, sore scratchy eyes, dry throat, etc etc. Always worse in the morning so interested to read the post about needing more T3 in the early hours. I always wake about 4.30 every day so I take half a tab ( 30mg ) then. Maybe I need more but if I take it all at once I run out of steam by the afternoon. What to do next as it's the constant internal trembly feeling, stiff neck ( 6 months now) and daily headache thats driving me mad. My last results showed the T4 at 8.9 and the T3 at 3.9 and TSH at 0.10. Maybe it's low blood sugar? Maybe it's too much adrenaline? Too much Rev T3? I don't know and neither does anyone else it seems. I have had this for 20 years but its much worse since the menopause and 20 years of persistant stress.
Thanks for taking the time to post.
Did you sort out your jittery type feeling in the end?
If so what was causing them and how did you get it sorted out?
I'm feeling this most days. I say I feel unsettled inside and never fully worry free
TIA
Hi Middleagemadness,
I would be hard pushed to say for certain what symptoms of mine were caused by high rT3 and what were caused by other health issues I have/had. I was a bit less brain fogged, a little bit stronger, and my heart was behaving much better generally, after I spent time taking T3 only. But it is possible all these things would have improved anyway because another serious health issue I had (unconnected to thyroid) had been surgically fixed a few weeks before I went on the T3.
The jitteriness and headaches you refer to sound as if they could be adrenal to me. Have you ever done the adrenal stress profile saliva test from Genova Diagnostics?
Thanks for the reply. Yes - I agree about the adrenals. have done about 3 adrenals tests over the past few years. Last one was early this year. Apparently I am either just about coping or on the edge of not. Well, I have just been on Valium for the jitters, which helped calm it all down, but yesterday I read that when you reach the " crash and burn" stage you end up on Valium and Prozac! The list that was described fitted me exactly to I guess that is what is happening to me right now. I can't afford any more private doctor fees at the moment so will just have to hope I can manage it myself by using forums like this.
Apparently if the adrenals are struggling, then they can't cope with the extra demands of thyroxine because the body down-regulates in order to cope. Same with a lot of these so-called adrenal support ( they stimulate them rather than heal ).
Seeing doc tomorrow to ask for more Valium. Don't know what else to do as I feel so rubbish - like I have flu all the time. All the best to you.
Did you sort out your jittery type feeling in the end?
If so what was causing them and how did you get it sorted out?
I'm feeling this most days. I say I feel unsettled inside and never fully worry free
TIA
Did you sort out your jittery type feeling in the end?
If so what was causing them and how did you get it sorted out?
I'm feeling this most days. I say I feel unsettled inside and never fully worry free
TIA
Rose
Hi there. No, I never did - still have it although it is not so frequent. I have given up asking on here. It got so bad that I had to take Valium to function recently. I think it is partly due to cortisol, adrenals and stress ( big part of it I think) and magnesium levels but I cannot afford to keep going private so have stopped. I am seeing an applied Kinesiologist who has helped enormously. She put me on B6 which has made a big difference - more energy and no afternoon slumps, but I would recommend getting tested before deciding on a dose - to find the correct amount your body needs. It is always worse when I go to bed - probably because I am more aware of it.
Did you sort out your jittery type feeling in the end?
If so what was causing them and how did you get it sorted out?
I'm feeling this most days. I say I feel unsettled inside and never fully worry free
TIA
Did you do your thyroid tests including rt3 with Genova?
When you say it was over rashness was that according to the numbers you got from your tests or by what's said in the sttm forums
TIA
ROSE
I did my thyroid tests, including reverse T3, with Genova Diagnostics UK. This was about three years ago and at the time it was the only way of getting an affordable reverse T3 test without a doctor being involved. There are more options available now in the UK.
My first ever reverse T3 test result was
0.72 pmol/mL (0.14 - 0.54)
so it was over the range by anyone's standards.
People should only compare their results to the reference ranges supplied with their results. You can't pick and choose which reference range to compare your result to.
Be careful when comparing results to numbers on the web. If I told you my ferritin level was 85 it tells you nothing sensible.
If I told you it was 85 µg/L that is slightly more helpful, but not by much.
What you really need to know when comparing results is the result itself, units of measurement, and reference range.
There is a big difference between :
Ferritin 85 µg/L (13 - 150)
and
Ferritin 85 µg/L (13 - 400)
The first result is approximately mid-range and is a good result. The second result is less than a fifth of the way through the reference range and is not a good result at all.
Another thing to be aware of is that units of measurement in the US and Europe are often different.
For example, vitamin D :
A good level in the US is 40 ng/mL.
A good level in the UK is 100 nmol/L.
When you say your rt3 was over range is that by the numbers on your results or by what they say in the sttm forums?
TIA
ROSE
I am reading this post with interest, I have been on a T4/T3 combination after slowly adding 25mg T3 around 4 weeks ago. I felt great for a few weeks, and still feel much better, however I have noticed that I haven't lost any weight and now the tiredness has started creeping in again..
I have also since been told I have stage 3 kidney disease.
I was wondering how you would know how and when to try T3 only. I have also been taking B12, Vit C, Zinc and a multivitamin.
The T3 would now likely be suppressing the Tsh which will lower your T4 to T3 conversion (if Tsh wasn't suppressed already) so symptoms will return despite the addition of your T3 , once you understand how your body works it's easier to decide what to do next , if you are on a significant dose of T4 the body will just chuck the T 3 into RT3 in vast quantities as a sort of safety mechanism
Being hypo it is also likely there are issues in b12, cortisol, d3 , iron etc that will also need to be addressed despite being "in range" on bloods
Thank you all for your replies, I have done no tests for RT3 just an awful lot of reading and logic
How is it possible to still be significantly hypo on 150T4 and 60T3?!
I applied a bit of logic that adding multiple times to the T3 and not moving the T4 around will cause vast amounts of T4 to be made . This is just how our bodies work.
Most Endos will treat you according to the TSH and Free T's , once you have added more than about 15mcg T3 (or TSH suppressed ) to your dosing plan these blood tests become useless for many reasons apart from safety
I wanted to take control of my own health as it could take years with our out of date NHS protocol
I have never felt well on T 4 so I thought why not reset it all and start again but with T3 only this time , and introduce the t4 later instead
Jaquikent- if you have tried T4 and then t4/t3 and still hypo the next step could be T3 for you ? If you are in the UK you probably won't be offered NdT etc
Many many hypo patients have minor adrenal problems likely to be caused by our bodies not giving the adrenals the t3 they need in the early hours of the morning , this effect causes low cortisol levels which in turn causes problems with the transportation and conversation of hormones in the body
I am intrigued how this clearing process works and how it can work literally overnight !!
This thread is 3 years old and has now been closed to replies.
If you have questions about clearing high rT3 please write a post including recent thyroid results and ranges, the dose of Levothyroxine or NDT you are taking and how long you have been taking it.
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