does armour thyroid make anyone else more fatigued?

[brucergoldberg]

Assuming that my "adrenals" are in check and not really interested in discussing dietary recommendations.

My TSH was 27 and my frees were really low so I increased my armour from 2 grains to 2.5 grains. My afternoon nap got worse. Waited 6 weeks and retested again. TSH 10.5 and the frees were a drop better but still in the dumps. I increased to 3 grains armour ( splitting it up taking 1/2 grain at bedtime, 1.5 wake and 1 grain afternoon) and the nap attack is even worse. How in the world are my nap attacks in the afternoon WORSE after properly increasing and bringing it closer home as far as being in range goes?

Anyone else get these weird druggy type naps when taking NDT>?

[galathea]

Your mistake is assuming the adrenals are ok. Increasing the meds has made the naps worse. A pretty good pointer that the meds are causing even more adrenal stress.

I took thyroid meds for almost 20 years before an adrenal saliva test showed that my cortisone levels were low.... fixing the adrenals made more of a difference than any amount of thyroid meds ever did.

That was 10 years ago. I am still taking thyroid meds as i have autoimmune thyroiditus, but looking back i cant believe how ill i felt.

[SlowDragon Administrator]

You need to retest thyroid and vitamins 6-8 weeks after recent dose increase

For full Thyroid evaluation you need TSH, FT4 and FT3 plus both TPO and TG thyroid antibodies tested. Also EXTREMELY important to test vitamin D, folate, ferritin and B12

Low vitamin levels are extremely common, especially if you have autoimmune thyroid disease (Hashimoto's) diagnosed by raised Thyroid antibodies

Do you have Hashimoto’s

If in UK

You may need to get full Thyroid testing privately as NHS refuses to test TG antibodies if TPO antibodies are negative

Recommended on here that all thyroid blood tests should ideally be done as early as possible in morning and before eating or drinking anything other than water .

If/when also on ARMOUR make sure to take last third or half of daily dose 8-12 hours prior to test, even if this means adjusting time or splitting of dose day before test

Is this how you do your tests?

Low vitamin D may affect adrenals

Supplementing vitamin C can help support adrenals

[brucergoldberg]

my adrenals are okay because I have had them tested and am currently treating everything with HC and DHEA. My levels have come back up to the right place where they need to be. This is why I really wanted to discuss the question at hand which is why does the armour ( NDT) give me a "drugged" feeling when I take it. I was honestly hoping for someone with a similar experience to comment and not the usual " you need to be gluten free" or "its the adrenals" or " stand on your head and wiggle your nose" LOL

no one else has these weird naps and fatigue when taking NTH? just the usual "adrenal, gluten" team answers?

[adin in reply to brucergoldberg]

I was in the same mess when I was on on synthetic but it diminished when I swap on ndt.

[brucergoldberg in reply to adin]

could you please elaborate? do you think it was because you were hypo? Then switched to NDT and became more stable?

[adin in reply to brucergoldberg]

I don't know exactly why, but after each increase ( levo&T3 ), I became drowsiness . It seems to be about blood sugar as well as adrenals. After a while the fatigue disappeared. I think the body has become accustomed to each dose increase. I was on ndt and then on levothyroxine&T3 and back on ndt . For me, ndt&T3 is a better option then levo. I need to add some T3 to ndt to be optimal.

[Hidden in reply to adin]

Hey Adin, I agree, I have blood sugar fluctuations up and down, don't want to eat, then want to eat, then not again! It gets worse when I eat something sweet so I'm staying away until it stabilises!

[adin in reply to Hidden]

Yep, I have to take 500mg Metformin/day for this. Also, I found that ndt action is smoother then synthetic T3 (when adding to levo).

[Hidden in reply to adin]

I see, glad it worked out for you! I find t3 in both the same, but that was just my experience, in fact ndt made me feel bad because of the t4/t3 ratio it has

[Hidden]

Hey Bruce, yeah, definitely it can happen. After an increase of t3 especially I feel more tired, I sleep in, I feel spaced out, drugged up or drowsy. That should go away in time. I think this could be related to the feedback loop, t3 suppressing something as its building up before a balance is achieved with t4.

Recently, I had this urge to nap every single day at 6 pm out of a sudden. It took about 10 days to go away.

I also think that in my case when I take t4/t3 it first suppresses my tsh, so that causes drop in conversion straightaway, this is why I become hypo in the first weeks. Then the additional hormone builds up in blood over time, and starts working after a while and then tsh goes back up. This happened to me so many times, I have tested my bloods once every single week to see what happens in my body and so far that makes the most sense, but everyone is unique!

Re sugar - this has an effect for me, my blood sugar fluctuates a lot while changing , adrenaline gets released too or it's too low, but they don't cause this, it's my thyroid meds cause a havoc at first on them

[galathea]

Have you tried any other brands of ndt? Maybe the formulation of Armour is wrong for you.