TSH is raised and antibodies are low. I suspect I've been a bit thyroid odd for a long time but just got on with it and not found it too bad. My mum is also borderline underactive but again, copes with it.
I started in March with sudden hair loss, general shedding not patches, and have since developed very low mood, low energy, aching joints, dizziness and my legs just feel so week all the time.
TSH in January out of interest was 2.69 but GP says that it changes in cycles?.
Can anyone else see anything that would be making me feel pretty rubbish? B12 is high but so is serum folate, have I read somewhere this may mean I'm not using it?
I am currently taking ferrous sulphate for mild anemia, cod liver oil, vit d3 and I was taking b12 but this looks high on results.
Any questions just ask
And thank you all in advance
Oh and I am 2 weeks into going gluten free
Written by
wally10
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They use very high levels of b12 to clear cyanide from the body. What type of b12 are you taking? If you have the MTHFR mutation you will not be able to utilise other forms apart from methyl cobalamin. This caused very high b12 for my niece, but she couldn't use it.
The high b12 reading was before I was taking a b12 supplement. That is my own level but I just wondered if it wasn't getting through for some reason.
"mild anemia", and even iron depletion short of anemia, could well be causing the hair loss, weakness, dizziness and might even contribute to a higher TSH, because the thyroid needs iron - I say that having recently looked at a study on a young woman with anorexia who was dying of malnutrition.
Any kind of anemia is going to have major effects on how you feel.
Do you have any idea why you have developed mild anemia? And what kind of anemia was it? Are you vegetarian? Are you having gut symptoms which might suggest some kind of malabsorption? Are you a long distance runner or another kind of fitness freak?
I think a lot of us would say that ferrous sulphate isn't necessarily the best iron supplement - the NHS prescribes it, it is cheap - but there are alternatives out there like ferrous fumerate and ferrous bisglycinate and Ferrochel which you might find help more quickly.
The FBC has come back as OK I think, is there a serum ferritin result there? Even if you full blood count is looking alright, you should have a serum ferritin count of at least over 60, and 80 to 100 might be optimal.
If you want to see if B12 is part of the problem, switch to taking methylcobalamin sub lingual B12, which will bypass any absorption problem or MTHFR problem and see if you feel better. The only risk here, I believe, is to your wallet.
But I think you probably need to let your body fully recover from the anemia before you can see what symptoms remain.
Thank you aspmama for such a helpful reply. Yes ferritin was low at 41 but crept upto 47 once I started on the ferrous sulphate. I will look at the other iron supplements you recommend.
They can see no reason for the anemia, I am not vegetarian and eat a good diet including liver! They have checked my body for silent bleeds etc but found nothing. Exercise is dog walking and zumba although the zumba has taken a backseat lately, I just can't face it.
If you've been checked for silent bleeds did they do it with a faecal occult blood test? If they did, please be aware that it is a poor test that can return false positives and false negatives very easily. You can get a false negative just from taking Vitamin C supplements. You can also get a false negative if testing of the sample is delayed too long and the sample dries out too much. You can get a false positive from eating beetroot.
I was producing visible blood in my faeces in large quantities and my faecal occult blood test returned a negative result. I was given a single test and it was not repeated. This is what Wiki has to say about that :
"The sensitivity of a single stool guaiac test to pick up bleeding has been quoted at 10 to 30%, but if a standard three tests are done as recommended the sensitivity rises to 92%"
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