splitting a tablet

[susanclark]

hi can anyone help can I quarter a 100 of Levi to make up my 125 dose I know it sounds a daft question but would a grain here and there make a massive difference x

[Bmthbelle]

I cut pills in half successfully with a pill cutter. I have not had much success with equal quarters. I find the best dose for me is 88ish.(50 +25+half a 25). It does balance out if the cut pill is not exact and I don't notice. Another way to do it is to take a different dose alternate days. But I get brain fog and forget what day I am on.

[susanclark in reply to Bmthbelle]

thank you x

[Geejay38]

Although it is physically possible to cut these tablets you will not be able to be sure of the dosage in each part.

[Ashka9]

Instead take two tablets one of 100mcg and other of 25 mcg. ..no hassle of cutting and remembering if you take it alternate days...

[Sc0rP10n in reply to Ashka9]

Getting 2 different tablet sizes not possible well not with my prescribing GP. You are lucky if you can. Anyhow I get 25mcg tablet of Levothyroxine & you can adjust accordingly. Hope this helps.

[Caddycat]

Would you be doing this long term or are you trying to utilize the remaining of a previous prescription?

[TSH110]

The variation in dose is so minuscule I don't think it will matter if the quarters are not absolutely equal. I did read a detailed study that concluded this. However, the tipping point can be quite exact so you should just see if it is ok for you. I simply bite mine to get halves or quarters it seems a bit more accurate than my Boots pill cutter! I started doing it when I could only get the less evil of two types of Levo in 100 not 25mcg. I use NDT now and still bite them to get smaller doses. They taste a whole lot better than Levo perhaps a pill cutter is best for those!

[TSH110]

Here's a link to that study I mentioned about splinting Levo tablets and its effect on dosage:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

[deb25426]

I have 25mcg tablets!

[Ruthi]

With Levo the half life is so long you can safely take one tablet every four days. After all , they say you could take the entire dose once a week. By the same token, slight variations in the size of the bits will not matter.

[Hidden]

I take 62.5 mcg. 1 x 50 mcg and a quarter of a tablet to get the 12.5mcg. No problems at all. Great little pill cutter from Tesco does a neat job. I wouldn't worry if they are not completely accurate in size, because you will be taking the rest of them each day and it will add up to the correct amount. I would stick to the same brand though as mixing them as caused myself and others issues. If you can get your GP to prescribe 100mcg and some 50 mcg you'd only have to half it then..just a thought. My Activis lowest dose is 50mcg.

[posthinking01]

The thyroid gland/pituitary request each day each hour isn't exact so it wont matter if you aren't exact with the cutting - but to miss 25 mcg is quite a lot that will matter.

[Jackie-2124]

I would have thought the simplest solution would be to be prescribed 100s and 25s to get a reliable dose.

[crimple in reply to Jackie-2124]

That's if you can get 25mcg in you preferred brand. I can only tolerate Actavis and need 112.5mcg daily so I have 100 mcg then split a 50mcg with a pill cutter and take half of that on alternate days. I therefore make a 50 mcg tablet last for 4 days. Actavis don't do 25 mcg tabs.

[jillygee100]

You can get 25 mg tablets prescribed. They are tiny though!

[JOLLYDOLLY]

You can quarter it with difficulty but you may not have the correct amount. Why 6don't you ask your dr to prescribe you with a 25 mcg dose as well as your 100 mcg?

[SewingBee]

Bmthbelle

I agree. When I'm forced to take a different dose each day because they don't provide the accurate dose in the pill then I get totally disorientated and added to that I have to remember the awkward changes in my dose.

I'm off to get a pill cutter. I didn't know there was such a thing. Magic!!!

[Littlemissmuffet]

I sometimes halve a tablet but they're very crumbly and when I've gone back for the other half its just a crumbly powdery mess that you can't even pick up. 🙄😀🤔

[Hidden in reply to Littlemissmuffet]

Don't worry about crumbly bits....not very ladylike I know ,but turn the pill cutter over on to your hand and lick the crumbs off...easy ! I think we've all probably been hung up on accuracy at one stage or another,but after a while you relax knowing that the slightly uneven intake of odd crumbs isn't going to harm you x

[lola1956]

Hi it would make a difference so just get a pill cutter thats what i use to be as acurate as possible

[puncturedbicycle in reply to lola1956]

That seems sensible but in fact the hormone may not be spread evenly through the filler so technically the only way to make sure is to dilute in four parts water and take one part each time you require 25mcg. Considering it takes time for levo to do its thing I'd say for most people (unless you're exquisitely sensitive) it doesn't matter much.

[puncturedbicycle]

Am I the only person who detests getting two different pills for two different doses (eg 100s and 25s)? I also take t3, so that means I'd have three tiny white pills to set out and no way to tell the difference among them. If I drop one (esp if it's early in the morning and I don't have my wits about me) I have to throw them all away and start again.

The real crisis point seems to happen when I set them out at night and I have two blister packs and something on my mind. When I regain focus I may not know which blister pack I've taken the first tablet from, so which one do I take the second tablet from?

Yes, if you have a jewellers' loupe you may be able to distinguish one from t'other but, esp if you have to alter them in any way (I halve my t3) it gets harder to see what they are. I guess I could go through all my t3 and split them in advance and then I know which tiny tablet is t3, but unless the levo tabs look significantly different, I still have the same problem.

Again, you may be able to distinguish w a great deal of effort, but I find the process so much more stressful than just taking out two tablets, splitting one roughly into quarters and putting the other quarters away.

[JOLLYDOLLY in reply to puncturedbicycle]

Any consolation puncturedbicyle, I use a dosette box now as I take 2 x 100 mcg, plus 1 x 25mcg of T4 and 1 x 20 mcg of T3, plus other medication. Otherwise I can't remember what is what - all I know is that the T3 meds are a lot smaller lol.

[puncturedbicycle in reply to JOLLYDOLLY]

Blimey I felt overwhelmed just reading that lol. Not a bad idea. I'd probably fill it once, use it up and then forget it every single day until the moment before going to bed. I should give it a go though, it might be just the thing. My t3s aren't any smaller than my levo! One of them is about .5mm taller than the other, and one has a slightly shinier coating. You couldn't get a cigarette paper between them.

[JOLLYDOLLY in reply to puncturedbicycle]

I feel my whole box up on a weekly basis. My dosette box is rainbow colours (got it from Amazon) a colour for each day. Even got times of day on it too. So I know not to take my iron tablet until later and so on. It makes a big difference to me as I can tell whether I have taken my tabs or not. I would definitely recommend. Hope it works out for you I know what you mean about the T3 size - you can just tell by a fraction.

[SlowDragon Administrator in reply to puncturedbicycle]

Fill up a weekly pill dispenser ......that way you only have to concentrate once a week!

I have one by bed for Levo, that I take at night. I fill it up each Sunday morning.

Then also have one in kitchen with divisions for multiple daily dosing for all the vitamins to take breakfast / lunch / dinner

When I was taking 112mcg I just alternated 100mcg one day and 125mcg the next.

Smaller increases or decreases can be done eg taking 100mcg two days in row, then 125mcg........or vice versa

Or any number of different variations/patterns

[whispers60 in reply to puncturedbicycle]

I cut the blister bit from the main sheet and store them in my daily pill keeper thingy, you could put a bit of a sticker on each one to show which is which, I only open the blister bit when I am ready to actually take the tablet, that way I know which is which

[humanbean]

If you feel confident halving a tablet, but not quartering it, then take 1 tablet one day and 1½ tablets the next day, and then just keep alternating.

If you are well organised you could take the correct dose without cutting tablets at all :

In 4 days you should take a total of 500mcg (5 tablets) of levo. So you could take 1 tablet for three days and 2 tablets for the fourth day, and then keep repeating the cycle.

Levo has a long half life, and in cases where doctors believe patients aren't being compliant with their meds they have been known to insist that a patient takes a week's worth of medicine, once a week in the surgery.

thyroid.org/patient-thyroid...

[Susansp]

You can get a little gadget from Boots the chemist which will do this nicely!

[greenhills]

Easiest to get your meds in 50 mcg and 25 mcg. I have cut pills when wanted to take 112 mcg but it is a devil to do as they so small. I didnt worry about a few grains more or less.

[Eddie83]

Depends on the shape of the pill and who the manufacturer is. In the past, I have successfully quartered both Unithroid and Synthroid T4 pills, which split cleanly. However, I now use Levoxyl; the pills are an odd shape and splinter easily, so the most that can be done is to split Levoxyl into halves.

WIth this scenario, you could also split a 100 into 50s, then take a 50 on either odd or even days. That would work because T4 half-life is long (about a week).

[LAHs]

If you want to get to about 125mcg (122 to be precise) without cutting pills, continue to take your 100 every day but every Sunday take two pills and every OTHER Wednesday (or any other mid-week day for that matter) take two that day also. That will bring you to 122mcg (as near as damn it to 125). Now if you feel that is not quite enough, 2 on Sundays and Wednesdays will take you to 130mcg. The reason why this is OK is because Levo has a half life of about 7 days so the whole thing averages, or smooths out. Oh, and if you just do the increase on Sundays you will increase your intake to 114mcg per day. You might want to try this first since, if it works for you, it is simpler than the 112 solution (because of remembering the every other week).

I was thinking about this pill cutting recently. I have about a 40% success rate of cutting pills, I get a good one half and a pile of dust. These pills recently became expensive in the US, they tripled in cost at the beginning of the new year. I got to thinking that I don't want to throw almost half of them away!

[ThyroidThora]

Hi,

Are you trying to self medicate with an extra 25mcg of Levothyroxine? You could try and get your GP to prescribe you the extra 25mcg. I get 25mcg of the Mercury Pharma Levothyroxine plus the 50mcg tablets of the same brand making my daily dose 75mcg. PM me if you would like some help with this.

TT