Thyroid medication

[Glover17]

When should your thyroxine medication increase? Iv been on 50 since I was first diagnosed with under active thyroid in June 2017 or is ok to stay on that dose?

[bantam12]

Depends on what your blood results show plus how you feel.

[Glover17]

Ok thank you

[Nanaedake]

Post your latest blood test results along with lab ranges if you want good advice.

After diagnosis for hypothyrodism you should have blood tests every 6 weeks and then adjust dose until you are symptom free or TSH is around 1. Make sure you take levothyroxine with a full glass of water on an empty stomach and leave an hour before eating or drinking anything except for water.

[Glover17]

Great thank you I noticed on some of the other posts that you should not take your thyroxine medicine on day of blood test ? I was never told this so the last test I had done was in October TSH levels were back down to 1.7 and serum free T4 were 10.7 but I had take my medicine

[Nanaedake in reply to Glover17]

It's not a disaster to have taken your meds before the test but it's a patient to patient tip (we don't mention it to the doctors) to leave off the thyroid meds on the day of your test or 12 hours before and take meds after bloods are taken. This is because most patients want their TSH to be at it's highest because many doctors are inclined to reduce thyroid meds if the TSH is low as they panic unnecessarily about it. Since they don't measure the actual thyroid hormones FT3 and FT4 they really have no idea whether we are under or over medicated. If they adjust our dose based on TSH alone, then it's likely we'll start feeling unwell.

The main thing is that you want to stay feeling well and you don't want the doctor messing about with your dose of levothyroxine base on TSH alone. Whizzing the dose up and down unnecessarily makes us feel ill.

Have you got the lab ranges for the results you give above? T4 sounds lowish but it depends on the lab ranges as they vary from lab to lab. How are you feeling?? Do you feel well?

[Glover17]

The range for TSH levels are 0.38-5.33 and the T4 range is 7-16 it took a while for me to start feeling better and when I did it was great but the last week I have started to feel really cold and tired again so I think I will go back and see if they will re test me but thank you for the heads up on the medication after blood test 😀

[Nanaedake in reply to Glover17]

Have you got thyroid antibodies? Did they test TPO and TgAb? If you do have thyroid antibodies, you may find that thyroid blood tests fluctuate. If your TSH level was lower than you expected you might have had an antibodies flare that released a lot of thyroid hormone . When the antibodies activity settles down you become hypothyroid again which could make you feel tired. If you have not had thyroid antibodies tested then ask for it to be done so that you can understand what is happening. There are helpful things you can do to help manage autoimmune thyroid antibodies which doctors have no idea about so it's really worth finding out.

[Glover17]

Yes I have the thyroid antibodies I also have a B12 deficiency. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge it’s a great help

[Nanaedake in reply to Glover17]

Read Thyroid UK website, there's a lot of information about Hashimotos thyroiditis which is what you've got if you've got thyroid antibodies and are hypothyroid. B12 deficiency is common with thyroid conditions. Have you had other vitamins such as vitamin D checked?

[SlowDragon Administrator in reply to Glover17]

So you get B12 injections? Are they frequent enough

Be good idea to check B12 is at good level

What about folate supplements?

Also essential to test vitamin D and ferritin

A you have Hashimoto's, very many find strictly gluten free diet helps

thyroidpharmacist.com/artic...

thyroidpharmacist.com/artic...

amymyersmd.com/2017/02/3-im...

chriskresser.com/the-gluten...

scdlifestyle.com/2014/08/th...

drknews.com/changing-your-d...

[Glover17]

Thank you I will have a look .No they only checked the B12

[Glover17]

Thank you , I have the B12 injections every 3 months

[Glover17]

Thank you