Armour Thyroid need help!!!!

I am taking armour thyroid at 15mg and I am hoping it will work long-term. I just notice it nullifies the effects of my other medicines like antidepressants. I really feel like I am stuck in a box because I need to be functional. I have been on the medicine under 2 weeks now. Does anyone have any suggestions on my situation?

[Jazzw]

A quarter of a grain (15mg) is never going to make you feel better. It’s a tiny dose. Why are you taking so little? It’s just enough to knock out any attempt your own thyroid might be capable of making, so the overall effect is that your body has far less thyroid hormone to work on.

What were you taking before you started Armour? Are you diagnosed hypothyroid? What are your blood test results?

[Hidden in reply to Jazzw]

My doctor is going to do the bloodwork on Friday! I will post it then I was taking synthroid 50mcg. Yes she just wants to test and my doctor wants to see where I am at and she said based on my bloodwork then she will increase the dosage. My thyroid condition is low grade usually my tsh would go up to 4.0 something so I only require a low dose to bring it down to 1.0.

I usually take anywhere from 25mcg to 50mcg of thyroid hormone.

[Jazzw in reply to Hidden]

It doesn’t really work like that. Ask what your FT3 levels are. When taking NDT you really need to know because you can be very undermedicated with a TSH of 1.0.

[Hidden in reply to Jazzw]

How can you be undermedicated with a tsh of 1.0?

[Jazzw in reply to Hidden]

Because TSH isn’t a good “tool” for measuring the effectiveness of a thyroid hormone replacement dose. Some people have pituitary dysfunction which means that even when their thyroid levels are low, the pituitary doesn’t pump out much TSH.

To know whether you’re on enough thyroid hormone replacement, you need to know what your FT3 levels are.

More about all this here: thyroiduk.org.uk/tuk/thyroi...

[Hidden in reply to Jazzw]

Yeah I know being off thyroid medication that I don’t feel normal. I guess this is a gauge to where it works for me or not. Tsh can help with primary and secondary hypothyroidism but I agree if I had a conversion problem or low t3 then I would

need to get free t3 checked.

[Jazzw in reply to Hidden]

To be frank, the only way to know if you’ve got a conversion problem is to have FT3 checked.

But in any case, TSH can’t tell you anything once you start thyroid hormone replacement—not in isolation. Taking thyroid hormones of any kind disrupts the feedback loop, so the TSH result can be utterly misleading. You can have a suppressed TSH with an under range FT4 result - and that wouldn’t necessarily mean you have a conversion problem. It might just mean you’re not on enough levothyroxine. But some doctors automatically assume that a suppressed TSH means overmedication. It doesn’t—it very often doesn’t mean that, in fact.