It makes sense to me that you would need more thyroid hormone for increased energy consumption, right?
Within a couple of days after I started taking adrenal cortex, I finally felt better (I was already on 1.5 grains NDT) so I started taking longer walks with my dog - 1.5 hours daily instead of 40 minutes. Within about 2 weeks my hypo symptoms started coming back. A week ago I added another 1/4 grain NDT but I have not felt better. I have also not been sleeping well at all these last few months. I can fall asleep relatively easily but I wake up within 1 - 1/5 hours and can't sleep again for hours. I'm considering taking 5-HTP, although, hypothetically one should be able to sleep better once their thyroid and adrenals are balanced.
Any thoughts?
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Yes, it’s my experience that increased exercise/activity increases my need for thyroid hormone. Or, to put it another way, when I increase my activity I subsequently feel more tired and other symptoms reappear.
I've read that it's related to how much T3 you have in your system. If you don't have enough to power your body for the amount of activity you do then you experience hypo symptoms. I also find it hard to recover from exercise. How are your T3 levels?
This was while I was on 1 3/4 NDT and before starting adrenal cortex. After these results I decreased my NDT to 1 1/2 grains and after my saliva cortisol test results at mid-September I started taking Adrenavive.
It's only these last couple of weeks that I've felt the need to increase my NDT dose again.
Hmmm, it's difficult to speculate without seeing your results with your reduced dose, but for my experience I have felt very tired when my T4 was towards the top of the range, a different kind of tired to hypo fatigue. Maybe it's just about finding your sweet spot in the range. I hope you manage to figure it out!
Thank you Zazbag! I felt my sweet spot when I was on 1 1/2 grains while I was doing just 40 minutes walking. So I guess I know what to look for while I'm doing longer walks.
I have to agree with you, if you’re increasing exercise there appears to be a need for more hormone otherwise you do quickly start to feel tired. Not sure if this is just the body taking longer to recover as it gets fitter or truly a need for more hormone.
Certainly no doctor has commented on this before to me and I’ve seen many Endos.
Why did you start taking adrenal cortex? Was this something a doctor suggested or have you experimented yourself?
I'm self medicating. I've given up on doctors. They couldn't help me. I get help here on this forum and do my own research. I did a 24-hour adrenal saliva test which showed low cortisol, that's why I started taking adrenal cortex.
I started exercising in July when gyms reopened and I have had to increased my thyroid hormone accordingly. An endocrinologist told me that this is a phenomenon ie when your body is over exerting then the cortisol that is produced as a result of the pounding exercise (eg running or pumping iron) blocks thyroid receptors so you become hypo more easily.
If the thyroid receptors are blocked would extra thyroxine really help? It’s like having a blocked drain and if you keep pouring more water down there you just get more blockage!
I’d love to read some proper research in this area if anyone has links.
That isn't quite right – cortisol will cause you to convert T4 to reverse T3 instead of T3. Reverse T3 blocks T3 receptors – that's what makes you feel hypo.
I just remembered that I was given hydrocortisone cream by a dermatologist to treat a skin allergy, which I used for 9 days up until two weeks ago. I read it can be absorbed through the skin. Could it be that it was this cream that caused my symptoms to return?
"Why don’t RT3 hormone molecules get into the nucleus?
Answer: Neither Reverse T2 nor RT3 have enough affinity to the thyroid hormone receptors in the nucleus to bind with it.
You’ll notice that Bianco’s image, and my image above, does not put any hormone other than T3 into the nucleus of either the D3-expressing cell or the D2-expressing cell.
Long ago, research proved that RT3 lacks an iodine atom at a key position on the molecule. It is handicapped and can’t bind to the nuclear receptors.
RT3 does not have the correct iodine “key” to put into the receptor’s “lock.”
See the red arrows in this image to notice where “inactive” RT3 is missing the key iodine atom from its inner (blue) ring: "
" This is why “inner ring” de-iodin-ation (iodine removal) is always discussed in science as a way of ensuring “inactivation” of the thyroid hormone molecule.
However, it doesn’t inactivate RT3 from binding to an entirely different receptor for thyroid hormones. We now know that T4 and RT3 bind to receptors on the cell wall, called “integrin” receptors, where they don’t compete with T3 and sometimes don’t do friendly things. But that’s the subject of an entirely different post, the one on Cancer, T4, and RT3.
The main lesson here is that RT3 and 3,3-T2, the product of conversion by D3, cannot bind to nuclear receptors.
I think what happens with the conversion of T4 which is normally to T3 and Reverse T3 in a specific ratio, ( rT3 is used to rid the body, of T4, when there is too much T4 around). Raised (and perhaps decreased) cortisol causes the change of T4 to T3/rT3 to be imbalanced. I was given Thyroxine initially and I became more unwell, almost overnight my breathing became really poor. So more T4 made more rT3 and because there was so much rT3 being made and less T3, my system was flooded with rT3 and the small amount of T3 was insufficient for my body to function correctly. (I had the 4 salivary test for Cortisol, and this showed 1st sample High normal, 2nd High above normal 3rd High normal 4th High above normal.) When I started with T3 within days my breathing improved.
Thanks, if you have come across any research on how cortisol affects deiodinases in this way , i'd be interested to try and understand the mechanism , but not tonight lol , (have got brain fade now,. presumably something to do with too much thinking about t3 and not enough converting it )
i'd have to go away and look that up too LOL , but my impression is "nothing much"... more iodine atoms are taken off it to get to T2 and then T1 and then the iodine is recycled .
Lol! My understanding was that in times of illness or starvation your body converts T4 to RT3 in order to reduce your energy needs to prevent starvation...
Sort of , but it's not the extra rt3 that reduces your energy needs, its the lower amount of t3
In illness, it converts higher proportion of t4 to rt3 so that there is less t3,because it wants you to have less t3 at that point to slow everything down while you are poorly/starving. This is NTIS non thyroidal illness syndrome, there's a good graph to show the changes in TSH/FT3/FT4/rt3 under this heading ;
Deiodinases in illness and recovery
The process of T3 loss and T3 recovery is the main subject of research on nonthyroidal illness syndrome (NTIS), also called “Low T3 Syndrome.”
From being quite sedentary I was glad to read you felt able to double your time in walking the dog but this has probably taken a lot out of you and maybe was too much too soon ?
I think the more you utilise your body the more NDT you need, but remember you were concerned about your T3 level at the last blood test.
It reads that you feel the adrenal cortex is helping you - is this a slow build like NDT ?
I don't know enough but having looked up 5 HPT / Oxitriptan it does read for your other symptoms of insomnia and fibromyalgia but I don't know enough to offer an opinion.
Hello pennyannie! Thank you for always being there with a helpful reply! Yes, I guess I got excited and overdid it. I guess I should probably decrease my walking time a bit and stay on 1 3/4 for another week and see how I feel.
I took one Adrenavive II for a couple of days, and then increased to two, both in the morning, as advised on this forum.
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Thank you for always being there with a helpful reply! Yes, I guess I got excited and overdid it. I guess I should probably decrease my walking time a bit and stay on 1 3/4 for another week and see how I feel.
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