Reducing Levothyroxine and feeling awful!

[Jenbot78]

Hello, just looking for a bit of advice as feeling awful! About me:

-I have Hashimotos with previously very high antithyroid antibodies (not been tested for a long time)

-6 months postpartum and still breastfeeding but have been gradually reducing in order to stop in a couple of weeks.

-On 125mg of Thyroxine since diagnosis four years ago. Slight increase during pregnancy but dropped again. TSH has generally sat at .55 and I felt reasonably ok at this.

-Reduction in dose one week ago to 100 mg due to feeling dizzy and sick. Went to docs and was tested at <0.05.

So my questions are:

-Is it normal to feel so rubbish when doses change? Main symptom is exhaustion and aching muscles.

-I went gluten free one year ago but three or four days ago I was mistakenly given casserole thickened with flour. Could this make me feel bad? Or reducing Breastfeeding?

The main reason I am stopping Breastfeeding is so that I can try and get my thyroid straight, and start taking the supplement regime I took when I wasn't pregnant.

I would be really grateful for any help, sorry for the long post! Just wanted to give some context...

[Charliebrowne]

Ooh I feel for you. I was advised to stop breastfeeding as I was told it was doing me more harm than the baby good. I think that was rubbish advice. A month after stopping breastfeeding I was in antidepressants as there was no lift in energy, only more rubbish feelings and more weight gain.

I think people are more cautious about what supplements you can take whilst breastfeeding. Gwenda Neal from the Facebook group vitamin d truth group is very knowledgeable and I trusted her guidance on supplanting whilst breastfeeding.

Being glutoned can effect you up to a week. First 3 days are generally the worst. Bloating should improve after that.

Levothyroxine can make you feel rubbish and changing doses too,

Have you told us your latest blood results?

What supplements do you want to take that you aren’t whilst breastfeeding ?

Have you thought about other thyroid medications? NDT perhaps?

Be really sure about your decision to stop breastfeeding. There is help out there to support you in your choices.

Wishing you and your baby well x

[greygoose]

Why are you reducing your levo? If you needed 125 mcg before pregnancy, why do you think you need less after? Don't you think you ought to get tested before starting to reduce levo? I'm afraid I don't understand your motivation, here.

Does your doctor only test TSH? It's really, really a bad mistake to dose by the TSH alone because it's a very bad indicator of thyroid status. And you probably feel sick and dizzy because you are now hypo.

I'm not gluten-intolerant myself, but I believe that, yes, just a little gravy thickening can make you pretty six, and set you back quite a few weeks.

What exactly was the supplement regime you were on? Did you get anything tested before you started it? If one is not careful, supplements can be counter-productive.

[Jenbot78]

Thanks a lot for replies. To clarify I went to docs due to feeling unwell and TSH test was less than 0.05 so very hyper.

I was supplementing with:

200mg selenium

High dose vitamin C 1000mg

Probiotics

High dose cod liver oil

Co enzyme Q 10

Thiamin 500mg

Folate

I should add, some of my supplementation was to help get pregnant. The selenium, thiamin and probiotics were to try and reduce antibodies. I Whether they did or not is a different story as I never got a retest.

[Marz in reply to Jenbot78]

You are only Hyper if the FT3 is over range. The TSH is not a good indicator of thyroid status once you are on Levo 😊