Thyroiditis???

[Esther75]

Hi I have seen a endo consultant who was very vague and quick in my first and only appointment. He said i have thyroiditis rather than typical hypothyroidism and i should a for a TSH of around 4.0. I am negative for antibodies. Any thoughts or ideas please. TIA

[SlowDragon Administrator]

Do you have your latest blood test results, ideally TSH and including FT4 & FT3, TT4 and both types of antibodies so that members can take a look & advise.

Have you got recent tests for levels of vitamin d, b12, folate and ferritin. These all need to at good (not just average) levels for thyroid hormones (our own or replacement ones) to work in our cells

Did you have the thyroid test early in morning & fasting? If not would be worth doing again

Usual advice on ALL thyroid tests, is to do early in morning, ideally before 9am. No food or drink beforehand (other than water) This way your tests are always consistent, and it will show highest TSH, and as this is mainly all the medics decide dose on, best idea is to keep result as high as possible

[humanbean]

You should give this endo a miss from now on - he will keep you ill. A TSH of 4 is far too high.

Most healthy people have a TSH around 1 - 1.5.

People with hypothyroidism usually feel at their best with a TSH under 1.

(There are exceptions to everything though.)

Your endo told you you don't have antibodies. I wonder how many kinds of antibodies he tested. You can see the different kinds in the table on this page :

labtestsonline.org.uk/under...

For people with hypothyroidism the NHS will usually only test TPOAb, they won't test TgAb. But there are quite a lot of people on this forum who are only positive for TgAb. As a result many of them were told they didn't have autoimmune thyroid disease (aka Hashimoto's), when actually they did.

Another point is that antibodies fluctuate. So a negative test one day could be followed by a positive test the following week. In other words, a positive test is reliable, a negative result isn't. Some people have all the evidence of Hashi's but never get a confirming blood test. In some cases it can be confirmed with a thyroid ultrasound.

Since you have thyroiditis I think your best chance of getting well is to take enough thyroid hormones to reduce your TSH to almost zero. By removing the need for your thyroid to do anything (it won't need to do anything because hormone is being supplied artificially) the thyroiditis may improve. Do you have a goitre? Be aware that this last paragraph would be strenuously disagreed with by most doctors. (And I'm not a doctor.)

[Angel_of_the_North]

Very few people feel well with a TSH as high as 4. I suspect he means hashis aka autoimmune thyroiditis, but you need to make sure. Did he do antibody tests? Post your blood results with ranges.