I’m looking for some advice from anyone who’s tried this.
I’m currently taking 55mcg T3 split into 30mcg am and 25mcg pm.
The issue I have is, I have proven to myself that I cannot take less than 20mcg. Any less than that just seems not to work and a recent trial of 60mcg split into 4x 15 proved this! I may as well have taken nothing.
Soooo, does anyone have any advice as to how I move to trying one, larger morning dose without leaving myself short or taking too much? Do I just have to brave it and potentially feel awful for a few weeks until I titrate up to where I need to be (if I can tolerate a higher dose at all that is)
Thanks as always 😊
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Murphysmum
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Hey Murphysmum! I would do it gradually. The idea is that if you take more first thing in the morning, you should feel well enough and that should get you through the day. That was my experience anyway.
How about moving 5 mcg at first to see how you are? So 35 am and 20 pm?
And yes, you may feel a bit bad at first, because your body needs to re-shuffle, but then also it may not happen to you.
So I know already that a split of 35/20 is fine, my concern is that for me I’m fairly sure 40 isn’t enough, bit and additional 15 in the afternoon will have no effect!
See what I mean? 😂
Agreed about the larger dose but I can’t help but be nervous about it. I’ll leave it a few weeks before trying anyway as we’ve got stuff on the next few weeks and I’d rather not fiddle with it but after that I might just bite the bullet and try it 😬
But the idea is that bigger dose in the morning will give you better energy and effects for the full day, so you won't need that much again in the afternoon, that was my experience
Why not just do it, and tomorrow take the whole 55 mcg in one go, in the morning. You have Resistance to Thyroid Hormones, don't you? So, you need to flood the receptors to get at least some into the cells. If you need a higher dose, you can increase once you're taking it all in one go. But, you might not even need any more than 55 mcg if you're taking it all in one go.
Well, nothing dreadful is going to happen to you. Maybe it won't suit you to do it all in one go, in which case, you go back to doing it slowly. But, if you never try you'll never know. I take 75 mcg all in one go, and it's just fine.
I have never split doses of whatever thyroid hormones I've taken.
One of Thyroiduk's Advisers (deceased through an accident) was an expert in the use of T3 and he, himself, took 150mcg of T3 (in the middle of the night). He stated that one daily dose saturated all of our T3 receptor cells and that the one dose could last between one and three days. He stated that after T3 was in the Receptor Cells, it sent out 'waves' for between one to three days. I've followed Dr Lowe's advice and thankfully it worked for me. (I also did an experiment - took 1 dose and none for the next two days - and I was fine.) I only did this once and I take one daily dose and concentrate on symptoms (of which I've none at present).
Excerpt from the following link:-
"The simple reason for my taking on the endocrine community is that my mission in life is to relieve as much human suffering as I can. We have long had ample research evidence that T4 replacement simply doesn’t work for and is harmful for too many patients. Consider a large community study 2 of T4 replacement conducted in 2002 in England. Hundreds of patients from numerous clinics taking T4 replacement were matched with other patients who were not hypothyroid and not taking thyroid hormone products. The noteworthy results of this study were 3-fold: a hair short of 50% of the hypothyroid patients on T4 replacement still suffered from hypothyroid symptoms, they had a significantly higher incidence of 5 potentially fatal diseases associated with underregulation with thyroid hormone, and patients on T4 replacement had to take more drugs than did the matched controls to lower hypothyroid symptoms and better control other diseases that afflicted only the hypothyroid patients.
I didn’t even start slowly when I introduced T3. Just lowered my Levo and took 3 x 5 on the day it arrived. Never felt anything but instant relief of symtoms.
I upped to 20mcg after 6wks and split in in 2. Mainly to stop the faffing about.
I did also at one point take it all at once in the morning to see what happened. Nothing happened, felt exactly the same 🤷♀️
So, I’ll wait a couple of weeks until the tiny amount of levo I’ve got in my system has gone (yes, I tried adding it in again but have definitely proven to myself it doesn’t help!) just so that it doesn’t cloud the issue.
I feel that I’ll be able to tolerate a single dose (I hope) so hopefully as you have all said, the second afternoon dose will be irrelevant.
Just go for it! I felt better immediately, I take 75mcg at approximately 4:30 am (or as soon as I wake) this was originally to support my adrenals, but I don’t feel any different if I take it later. My last blood test had to be taken at 7:30pm in the evening and my T3 was still in the top third of the range.
Isn’t it funny how very different we all are? Yet the docs (the ones who even believe in T3 in the first place) would have us believe it has to be split dosing. My endo, who I like a lot, she seems v good, suggested if I dropped levo I should split more often... even up to 5/6 times a day but that clearly doesn’t work for me as my recent experiment splitting 60 into 4 doses showed! Even though it was a slightly higher dose, anything nicer 20mcg at one go Definitely doesn’t work for me. This is why I’m now interested in trying once a day.
Thanks for your reply. As I say, I’ll leave it a couple of weeks so I know where I am first, then I’ll try it. I’ll post my results!
Hey, my doc told me to take it once a day, but other two doctors told me to split. The problem is that doctors believe t3 is short acting. Well, it is not like levo, but it is also not like drinking coffee lol. Once it builds up, it does work for up to 3 days, even though it may be gone from your blood. This is the fundamental misunderstanding - what's in your blood, what's in your cells. Also, when you read Thybon t3 leaflet it says to take all at once. I understand some people need to split, for a myriad of reasons, but not everyone. Best of luck with it in a few weeks, let us know how you get on.
So today I tried one dose of T3 at appprox 730am. I took my normal dose of 55mcg and felt absolutely fine.
However, now at 5.30/6pm I feel rubbish! Just that feeling of needing more, like I’ve done too much. To be fair, we went on a hill climb today but I wouldn’t normally expect to feel like this on the two doses.
Obviously I’ll give it a wee while for my body to get used to the idea but I wonder if it’s expected I need to up my dose to ‘cover’ the whole day as it were, or maybe it’ll just settle down?
Or maybe I need to split the dose.. but I’ll wait until I decide on that one. Definitely not feeling great at the moment though.
Did you gradually increase your dose i.e. beginning with a low dose and working up always taking note of how you 'feel'?
I have actually reduced my dose of T3 recently and am fine.
Dr Lowe stated that one daily dose could last up to three days. I've tried that and mine did last three days but I've only trialled that once and take one dose when I get up with one full glass of water and wait an hour before eating.
I have also reduced my dose recently and am still o.k.
So I was taking 55mcg split twice which I worked up to (and down to) over the last year and a half... is that what you mean?
This afternoon having taken all 55 this morning I felt as if I could definitely use another dose. Clearly I haven’t taken any more but I wonder, if I still feel like this in a few days would I take that as I need a bigger single dose? Or does it not work like that?
To me, if I’m stable on 55mcg split twice, then that amount works for me and I shouldnt need more. But, maybe I need more to “flood” the cells to make it last over the longer period?
I know this is very unscientific but I don’t know how else to explain it!
Well, we're not scientists and many of them don't understand thyroid hormones either.
If you've found that splitting your dose suits you, just keep on doing what you think is best for your body. You can always make tiny increments if you feel the need. I am not medically qualified as I think you know. We just have to go upon our personal journey.
Well I can’t seem to get it spot on, hence trying something different.
Maybe I’m searching for something that I can’t have, maybe it’s not thyroid hormones at all anymore and I’m looking in the wrong place or blaming the wrong thing. Not sure.
I can’t shift the feeling of muscle weakness in my shoulders or muscles fatiguing quickly, even though I can manage really quite strenuous stuff now.
So I thought the idea of flooding the receptors with T3 and letting my body use it as it pleased might be the thing. It still might be I guess, I’ll keep trying.
Just feel like I’m so very nearly there but not quite and so I keep trying various options. If this isn’t helping I’ll go back to Two split doses and look at other things. Thanks for your help and agreed, I think we know more than a lot of scientists!
Erm, perhaps a hill climb today wasn't a great idea? I don't know, but it seems a bit demanding for a day where you made a significant change.
I'd wait a few days on the new regime before you expend a lot of excess energy. Just potter about and see what happens. This is based on no clue of the T3, but my experience with changing any other hormone. I'm currently increasing my HRT and that's knocked me about for 2 weeks (was warned it might) but it's changing, improving as time goes on.
When change it all in one go, you can feel in many different ways, it may not work straightaway at all. You need more time, like days, some weeks, for you to get used to it. But also going on a hike on a first day of change isn't ideal
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experimenting with split dose T3 timings
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