Hi all,
I wanted to know if you are on cytomel is it life long. I have been on a combo of cytomel and tirosint. I wanted to know if you get off it, because I couldn’t. Due to severe side effects on the cytomel, my body seems to lose the ability to convert.
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Hi Morgan,
Have you substituted a comparable dose of Tirosint for the Cytomel you are wanting to remove?
It seems the cytomel is hard to get off however, I feel my whole metabolism is shut down.
In general, what sometimes may happen is that when your body gets used to not doing something, it stops doing it - so for example, and sorry for this one, if you take a laxative regularly to go to the bathroom, and then you try to stop, you would have difficulties doing so because your body has become used to having the drug do the work for it.
Do you have your thyroid panel results from your previous and latest blood work with ranges (T4, T3 and TSH)? It is hard to answer your question without seeing at least what the T3 numbers look like to assess whether or not you are not converting. If you can post these, others with more expertise than me will look at them to try to help you. I am not the "blood work" expert - but I am aware that the body gets "lazy" when a drug does the work for it. All the best.
I will post them now. I wonder if it has something to do with my iron levels. I see people get off a cytomel with no problems. I am going post the lab work with me off the cytomel.
Free t3 3.2 2.3-4.0
TSH 1.05 0.40-3.00 ng/dl
Free t4 1.4 1.0-2.4 ng/dl
white blood cell count 3.5 3.8-10.8 thousand/ul
red blood cell count 4.19 4.20-5.80
hemoglobin 12.8 13.2-17.1
I think you need advice from the bloodwork experts on this one, Morgan, and I will defer to them as I don’t have the experience to make the connections here. I wish you all the best.
Hey Greekchick it must have been my iron deficiency and anemia, and it probably causing a lot of my symptoms. I am taking iron supplements, I am feeling a little bit better, I feel kind of loopy though.
Glad you are better! Hope things continue onward and upward for you.
Me too, it has been a slow upward progress! At least I am moving forward, not backwards. Thank you Greekchick again!
Thyroid Hormone Replacement is not drugs. Levo, T3, NDT, they're all hormones. And, it depends on which gland we're talking about whether you can come off the therapy or not.
With the thyroid, you can. It is a myth that once you start thyroid hormone replacement you are stuck with it for life. The thyroid does not totally shut down. Sometimes, it can stop production, when taking enough hormone, but it's not definitive. If, for whatever reason, you stopped taking your hormone, it would eventually go back to doing exactly what it was doing before you started it. So, if you were hypo beforehand, you'd go back to being hypo. If you were euthyroid, you'd go back to being euthyroid.
If you try to stop taking T3, and you feel bad, it's because you really needed it and your body is suffering without it. These aren't withdrawal symptoms, they're hypo symptoms. Why would you want to stop your T3?
Well you can subsist on t4 only, but my rationale is to stick with one thyroid medicine. Understandably I understand thyroid medicine is a hormone, yet it is a men made synthetic drug compounded with other chemicals and additives.
"you can subsist on t4 only".....
We might change that statement to "one can exist on T4 only".
Looking at your labs above -
FT3 is 52.9% through the range
FT4 is 28.6 through the range
The question is, "can you, the patient, exist on T4 only"?
How well do you convert?
The figures above suggest that you are converting
Conversion may be improved by optimal levels of folate ferritin, vitD and vit B12.
Lab results with high FT4 and low FT3 will indicate poor conversion... not evident in your labs
The cause, however, may be low nutrients or it may be a genetic polymorphism
A genetic Dio2 test also offers confirmation of poor conversion
If your conversion is poor you will have low T3....however, your FT3 is likely to improve by increasing LT4 as it converts to T3.
Although your FT3 does need to be higher...around 75%
But these results suggest that you need more levothyroxine!
Your rationale may be to " stick to one thyroid medicine (hormone) but that will only work if that is what the body requires to keep it in a euthyroid state.
The next question is how much LT4 (plus T3) are you taking.
If your dose of LT4 is low then simply increasing that dose may resolve the issue.
However....you must bear in mind that you cannot compare the use of thyroid replacement with, for example, antidepressants. ....that is like comparing apples with oranges!
The old adage, "Listen to your body" remains important....and it may just be that you are right to be concerned about your dose. But, for the wrong reasons!
I'm not a medic, just another member who spent many years on a very bumpy thyroid journey before finding the answers that medics failed to find!
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