Help with Blood Results when taking armour 2 grain (120mg)

[Gillsy]

Hi I had blood tests taken (26/05/16) after 4 months taking Armour 2 grain per day. Can anyone advise if I need to keep taking vitamins or if I need to add more? I take Vitamin D3 2000ui, vitamin K, Omega fish oil, vitamin B5 500mg, folic acid 400mcg, zinc 15mg?

Tryglyceride 0.7 (0.2-2.3)

TSH <0.01 (0.35-5.00) Graves Disease had RAI 19 years ago

Free T4 13.3 (9-21)

Serum Vit B12 354 (200-900)

serum folate 15.2 (3.1-20)

serum Ferritin 47 (15-200)

Vitamin D 98

Please note Sep-Dec 2015 GP prescribed ferrous fumirate for 3 months as it was 24 (15-200) now it is 47, do I need to take more iron if so what is the best? Also Vitamin B12 at lower end too.......

Thanks Gill

[Gambit62]

Can only comment on B12 and folate - both of which are on the low side.

Problem with supplementing B12 is that it makes getting diagnosis of an underlying absorption problem more complicated but ... and the overlap of symptoms of B12 deficiency and thyroid is likely to mean it gets totally overlooked as a potential problem anyway.

Having thyroid makes B12 absorption more likely and having a D deficiency is also quite common.

On the other hand you can't overdose on B12 - but would recommend that you take a high dose - sublinguals seems to work - something between 1000-10000mcg a day. People tend to take a good methyl sublingual like jarrows ... though there are actually 2 forms that are used by cells - methyl and adenosyl and some people can't convert methyl to adenosyl - so see how methyl goes and if it doesn't seem to be doing anything then add some adenosyl.

A good vit B complex should allow you to get enough folate - up to you if you try methyl or just go for folic acid.

The one B vitamin to be careful of is B6 - doses over 100mg a day over several months can cause nerve damage - although it generally reverses there have been some instances where it didn't.

[mistydog]

Iron should be around 70-90 so could do with more. Ferrous fumerate is the cheap one prescribed by the NHS. Try solgar gentle iron for a bit.

Shame they haven't tested your Free T3.

[LAHs]

I have heard, but I have not done any in depth research to date, that when your thyroid meds dose is right on, your blood pressure will return to normal. If you are close to your "perfect" dose it is hard to say whether you should reduce your dose slightly or increase it slightly. Doctors will probably say decrease it - which is why I cannot bring up this subject with my Endo. The problem is that they will put the heart first over the thyroid - but without studying the whole problem, which will leave you with two problems instead of one.

I am in the same boat as you and this is the next problem I hope to solve - and I will post results here.

[jericates]

I would ask about your thyroid symptoms. Your TSH is low but if your symptoms are well controlled that's ok as long as you are not having hyper symptoms like palpitations tremors or excessive sweating.

You might consider backing off on the d. Over 100 can be toxic. According to Dr Amen (of the Amen Solution) vit d should be over 50 to decrease incidence of dementia and aldheimers. I try to get pts to keep their vit d between 50 and 100.