i say it can but hubby disagrees he thinks i am exaggerating.Would like to know if its a yes or no.
Can hypo kill you?: i say it can but hubby... - Thyroid UK
Can hypo kill you?
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fairyeyes
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Fairyeyes, left untreated hypothyroidism can lead to myxoedema coma which has 50% fatality rate.
patient.info/doctor/Myxoede...
About how long? I've had it for a few months or so. No more doctors for me. I choose death.
Blondie2485,
It will depend on how much natural thyroid function you have. Prior to thyroid replacement being available it was thought that death would take place around 12 years after diagnosis. Most people saw a gradual breakdown in health and many ended up in mental institutions. It was not a good way to die. It is rare that anyone dies of it now days but refusal to take medication can lead to irreversible damage of major organs especially the heart and kidneys.
If you write a post of your own saying why you feel the way you do members will try and help you. It will be helpful if you include your recent thyroid results and ranges and say how much Levothyroxine you are taking.
Of course it can, if it's left untreated for long enough. You would eventually fall into a coma and then you would die.
helvellaAdministratorThyroid UK
Yes. It can.
Thank you all,so i was not being dramatic?which i knew but i like to certain.
Your husband will love you when you say 'See' I was right and you are wrong 
He believes similarly to many doctors I think, that because we take one pill a day all our symptoms magically dissolve and the TSH is King and informs them that there is 'nothing at all wrong with you' that an anti-depressant wont solve and ignore our pleadings 'but doctor I still feel so bad, pain, fatigue, exhaustion, etc' (I cannot put all 300 symptoms
My husband has found it hard to come to terms with the implications of low thyroid. When I got so bad I barely had the energy to move and was slabbing weight on it woke him up! Since then hes got involved in my self medicating and reading the artickes on here and he now realises how potentially serious it is.
Most of the population are unaware of how potentially serious the consequences are if undiagnosed or undertreated . That includes the majority of doctors/experts it would seem.
The ignorance of clinical symptoms is beyond belief and how unwell someone can get and still they remain undiagnosed as clinical symptoms are not even considered. The emphasis on the TSH alone is a complete disaster and the failure not to take a Full Thyroid Function Test is negligent.
That's how I feel and the doctor is taking my meds away. I'm 61 years old and do not abuse or use drugs, yet. lol I'm ready to go to the next place. This one hasn't treated me very well.
Blondie2485. There's no info on your Profile so I don't know any history. The fact that your doctor is withdrawing meds is important. Many don't know how to diagnose or treat patients.
You have to put up a new post. Giving details of when you were first diagnosed and if you have any copies or can get a copy of your last blood test and give the information.
If you've not had a recent blood test, or can afford a new privat one ask for TSH, T4, T3, Free T4, Free t3 and antibodies.
The test has to be the very earliest possible, fasting (you can drink water) and allow a gap of approx 24 hours between your last dose and the test and take afterwards.
Put your results on a new post for comments. Your GP should also test B12, Vit D, iron, ferritin and folate.
If you have hashi's, then your immune system is bad, leaving you susceptible to other autoimmune diseases and infections, poor healing from illness and prone to getting illness, bacterial problems, ..ms, lupus, even cancers. inflammation, like you get with autoimmune, causes cancer, diabetes and issues with the heart, nearly every organ uses thyroid hormone...excuse the lack of caps..tired, maybe even dying!
That is really cheering!
It can also damage your brain if left long enough. I had myxoedema and was very ill for quite some time before I discovered the right thyroid treatment for me. As a result my brain was so badly damaged that I developed all sorts of brain problems which led to a diagnosis of dementia. After I started the correct treatment for me (T3 only) some of these slow processing and memory problems have actually improved and they have now changed the dementia to thyroidal dementia which is caused by incorrect treatment of my thyroid condition when I was so ill.
Heather
It's all pretty scary, isn't it? What I keep trying to get doctors (one after another) to understand, is that all our cells need adequate T3, so if we are deficient, then any or all of the cells in our body will struggle to function, or stop functioning. Our health gets gradually worse, and more and more bits of our bodies will fail to work properly.
To me, this means that any deficiency in my T3 level is leading to an earlier death than I should have. It may be a slow process, but they are still killing me. It is the reason for finally taking the plunge and buying T3 on the internet. This way, they give me too little T4, but I take responsibility for taking the amount of T3 I need to feel well.
I haven't quite got there yet, but I'm optimistic that I will, and I'm making sure that they know what I'm doing, and why. I just make sure that I don't let them drop my T4 dose.
Perhaps you could give your husband some material to read - there's a lot on the internet. There's a particularly interesting site which I'll try to find.
Found it! This is a very useful page to give to your husband to read - to help him to understand why people still feel unwell after the doctor says that there is no problem - or no longer a problem - with their thyroid.
hormonerestoration.com/Thyr...
The fact is that these days, it seems to be very difficult to get adequately treated. Even people like myself, who felt reasonably well treated in the past, now have doctors harrassing us to drop our dose of T4, thus making us ill. They seem totally unconcerned when they turn a healthy person into an ill one.
People recently diagnosed (or those who recently had they thyroid gland removed) are less fortunate, as they are more likely to never reach an adequate level with reference ranges having been altered. It all seems unbelievable, but your husband needs to learn to believe that it is true!!!!
The only good thing that has come out of this for me, is that after about 20 years of T4 total replacement, I have spent two years studying thyroid function and treatment, and I now realise that I was never properly medicated.
I have collected a series of health problems that I put down to the menopause and then aging, and I now realise that they may ALL have been caused by my very low (and even below reference range) levels of T3.
Learn as much as you can, and then use what you've learned to fight for better treatment!!
Good luck! X
Yes, but you won't find it as a reason on a death certificate!
Glynisrose, actually, I have seen it on a death certificate. Granted it was a secondary cause of death but even so, coming not long after my diagnosis it was a scary moment. The lady in question was 87 and I took from this that my hypothyroid condition may kill me - but very slowly - and anyway, we're all dying once we're past 27...it just takes a while x
In dogs hypo can cause heart problems which often lead to cardiomopathy and death.
I think many animals are diagnosed by the vets that they are hypo and given hormones yet we struggle.
Yes. I had a long discussion with my vet recently about it. My elderly boxer bitch had all the symptoms of hypothyroid and was getting worse. I took her to my vet, whom I have a far better relationship with than my GPs because we talk about options and outcomes. She agreed with me that that the old dear was becoming quite severely hypo. Immediately she put her onto 400mcg of levothyroxine, while the blood results were coming back (full thyroid hormone tests). There was improvement in three weeks.
I said in passing that I was surprised she'd treated her before the bloods were back. She answered that she sees a lot of hypothyroid bitches, specially spayed ones, the bitch was obviously ill with hypothyroid and that the blood tests are only a guide. She said I treat by symptoms. I wish the doctors were As enlightened.
Your vet indeed sounds more enlightened than most doctors.
Which sounds ridiculous, but is entirely logical.
Because your dog can't verbalise its symptoms, the vet has to carefully assess the dog, instead of dismissing what it says, as a doctor can with a patient.
The vet can't just tell the dog it has chronic fatigue syndrome (etc) - it won't understand, so she has to actually treat the dog.
Similarly, the dog can't read its TSH result, so the vet can't fob it off by saying "See, its not your thyroid".
And the vet isn't incentivised to deny the actual disease, and prescribe anti-depressants instead.
Ah, its a dog's life. ..... or if only it were!
So, the moral, Mrs. Raven, is that we should probably go to see a vet for detection and medication rather than the GPs
I think shaws you could very likely be correct lol! I had the same vets for 35 years, and my present one was trained by them. You would be surprised how many things that go wrong with a dog can also go wrong with a human. My vets were happy to share their knowledge and I was even allowed help with procedures with my own animals, even assisting at a caesarean. We discussed things thoroughly and I was never spoken to the way I have been by various GPs.
Yes it can. Look up "myxedema".
I don't think many people die from it nowadays (apart from what Clutter said), but it if you go back to before the 1890s when they discovered that you could use animal thyroid as a cure, it was basically a death sentence (probably after a few years in the loony bin). However, I wonder how many undertreated people still die early.
Or take their own lives out of depression and desperation.
That's why we get Thyroxine on free prescription I assume?
Precisely! If we take no thyroxine when hypothyroid, we die slowly. If we take some, but not enough, we die more slowly, but sooner than we should. The amount we take determines the speed at which we die.
This may sound scary, but even though I know we're all gradually dying from the day we are born, and we all have to go sometime, I want the best quality of life I can have, for as long as possible. For this I need optimal medication and proper treatment, even if I have to organise it myself.
Putting up with medical negligence is not an option I'm prepared to put up with, and it's about time that doctors realised that they are expected to follow some dangerous guidelines.
If I had the money I'd sue NHS England.
Yes, it's a very tempting idea, but sadly we'd be up against a totally blind force that doesn't see or accept anything that doesn't fit with their own beliefs.
You'd have to be a billionaire to tackle that lot!!!
I'm beginning to sit back and chuckle at the thought that one day, the force of the good research will making them feel like total and utter pratts!!
Yipee, can't wait (and am no longer waiting since T3 is available online without the help of a doctor)!! We need to assert ourselves and do what we can for ourselves.
Yes. I have it and want to know how long I have left. I quit the doctors. They suck.
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