Hi following on from first post. I am 31 years old and was diagnosed with hypothyroidism 5 years ago. It has been very hard for me to deal with and family and friends don't really seem to understand. My health has really gone downhill because of the effect it has had on my life. I currently take 150mcg Levo but endo and doctor say results are perfect but I don't feel perfect in fact far from it. My stools are hard, periods are shorter but still clotty, I am tired, I get headaches, skin is pale and ice cold, skin is dry and getting blotchy, I am anxious, getting a tremor and my heart feels like it flip flops in my chest. My family history is unlucky in terms of health, cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular problems, autoimmune. I take ferrous fumarate 3 times a day and vitamin D 800iu once a day. Any advice about my bloods would be very much appreciated.
Thyroid peroxidase antibodies - 78.5 (<34)
Thyroglobulin antibodies - 256.3 (<115)
Ferritin - 15 (15 - 150)
Folate - 2.36 (2.5 - 19.5)
Vitamin B12 - 199 (180 - 900)
Total vitamin D - 21.5
(<25 severe vitamin D deficiency. Patient may need pharmacological preparations
25 - 50 vitamin D deficiency. Supplementation is indicated
50 - 75 vitamin D may be suboptimal, and long-term may lead to clinical effects. Advise on safe sun exposure and diet. Supplementation may be indicated
>75 adequate vitamin D)
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Elizabet
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Your thyroid antibody level indicate you have hashimotos. The advice is to go completely gluten free - avoiding processed gluten foods and cooking from scratch. The aim is to increase good gut bacteria and improve your absorption of vitamins and minerals.
You need to make an appointment with your GP asap and show him/her your vitamin D results. S/he should either prescribe you a loading dose of vitamin D3 which is something like 40,000IU or 8,000-10,000IU of vitamin D3 per day.
Some NHS areas have useless guidelines so you may be told different information by your GP.
if s/he doesn't prescribe a decent amount then sort this out yourself and buy your own tablets of Amazon. General advice from vitamin D council and grassroots health is to take 10,000IU per day of D3 or 12 weeks. After that go down to 5,000IU every other day. You should get a test at 3 months making sure you have left 24 hours between taking your D3 dose to avoid a false high reading.
You will need to take a maintenance dose for life of around 2,000IU per day. But you need to get your level up to around 100nmol/L first.
Yes I agree - however Grassroots have always been advocates of dosing way above the suggested levels in the US - as you will notice from looking around their website.
Go over to the pernicious anaemia society on health unlocked for advice about vitamin B12 and folate. Your results are under range but they will tell you how to best deal with GPs and what you should do.
MCHC is above range - normally indicates that you are deficient in vitamins B12 and folate. Make sure you talk to the posters on the pernicious anaemia society and point that on a full blood count that:
Mean corpuscular Hb. conc. (MCHC) - 371 (310 - 350)
In regards to the ferritin level - you don't have iron deficiency anaemia you have non-anaemic iron deficiency.
Make sure you take your ferrous fumerate with vitamin C and water twice a day. Take it 4 hours away from levo and 2 hours away from other food, drink and supplements. This is to avoid interactions.
Iron frequently causes bowel and stomach problems so if you have issues buy Solgar Gentle iron of Amazon and take that instead.
However unless you sort out your gut by changing your diet and you may find your iron levels never increase.
The reason why you need to increase your ferritin levels is because these are your iron stores, and if you menstruate you can easily end up with iron deficiency anaemia.
Your doctor has to get an intrinsic blood test to check if your low B12 is due to Pernicious Anaema another very serious autoimmune disease if not treated correctly.
Do not supplement with B12 until you get a correct diagnosis and if you have PA it is another lifelong condition. Many of us have more than one autoimmune condition.
Deficiencies in both B12 and Vit D are important to be corrected as the are pro-hormones rather than vitamins.
Deficiences in any vitamins/minerals can give us clinical symptoms.
Blood tests for thyroid hormones have to be the very earliest possible, fasting (you can drink water) and if you take thyroid hormones you allow 24 hours gap approx between last dose and test and take afterwards. This keeps the TSH at its highest as that's what doctors seem to use to indicate whether or not we are on sufficient hormones, when they should also take account of our symptoms.
I forgot you need to take vitamin K2-Mk7 and magnesium with your vitamin D3. This will help you keep your calcium levels under control and will help with the absorption of vitamin D3.
You don't NOT need extra calcium. If you want to help your bones long term you need to ensure you are menstruating and are doing weight bearing exercise daily. This means in your case you start with walking BUT only when you feel well. You then when and ONLY once your T3 is high enough can do resistance exercise and weight training.
Many members have been helped enormously by going strictly gluten free. Read all labels on any packaged food and members can help with suggestions for meals, etc, if you put up a new post. Preparing and cooking from scratch seems to be key.
Come back and tell us what your GP says and what he's going to do about these low levels. If he prescribes inadequate doses we can point you on the right direction of decent supplements and suggest doses.
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