Administering Levothyroxine

[Charltonjl]

Someone posted on another forum that their doc advised them to chew or suck their Levothyroxine tablets as it may be more effective than swallowing. Is this true and/or advisable? TIA

[waveylines]

Ive not heard of Levothyroxine being more effective if chewed first or sucked. Some ndts yes though thats not the official advice. I wonder where your GP got that from?! Was it the GPs avoidance strategy in preference to an increase in medication? Many poeple are undermedicated.

[Charltonjl in reply to waveylines]

Not my doctor. Someone on a Facebook forum mentioned it and I wondered if it had any truth!

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK]

There have been reports of people crunching up their levothyroxine tablets.

There have also been reports of some tablets failing to disintegrate.

Tablet disintegration has been looked at in both the UK and the USA. Both now expect tablets to fully disintegrate quite readily. (At least one USA make has a tendency to disintegrate before even being swallowed - in the mouth or throat - and must be taken with a full glass of water to ensure it does not get stuck!)

I am not convinced, at all.

However, if it did make a difference, you would have to make sure you always did that. Not swallow one day and suck the next two days, or whatever.

[Charltonjl in reply to helvella]

I'm not convinced either which is why I posed the question

[janeroar]

It sort of makes sense to chew given so many people with Hashimotos have not so good digestion.

Or to put it another way would there be any drawbacks to chewing them? If not then maybe we should? Currently I don’t but have thought about it.

[humanbean]

Why don't you experiment? It won't do any harm that I can think of.

The only potential issues I can come up with are :

1) If you don't always take the same make of Levo then they could crunch/break up more or less easily than the previous make you took.

2) If bits got stuck in your teeth and then you cleaned your teeth you could lose some.

[silverfox7]

Well I’ve come across someone who doesn’t swallow the tablet with water but was wondering why they weren’t feeling well. If you aren’t taking your meds with plenty of water I would try that first as it usually says in the instructions that is to may sure the tablet doesn’t get stuck in the wrong place on its way down.