Getting pregnant with Hashimotos

[Georgie03]

Hi there! Any advice on getting pregnant with Hashimotos? I have been trying for about 3 years with no success. I am taking 50mg of Levothyroxine for about 6 months now and my tsh is around 3.5. Thanks!

[humanbean]

You might be able to reduce the activity of your Hashi's antibodies by eliminating gluten from your diet. It has to be a total removal - cheating doesn't work. And going gluten-free doesn't help everybody - people just have to try it and see what happens.

A TSH of 3.5 is too high indicating that you are under-medicated. A high TSH will reduce your chances of getting pregnant and increase your chances of miscarrying.

See this link for info on TSH levels in people with no known thyroid disease :

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

Another important issue is that being unmedicated or under-medicated for thyroid disease is very likely to have a bad effect on your stomach acid levels. This then has a knock-on effect on how well you digest your food, and this then reduces your absorption of vitamins and minerals.

Low nutrient levels can make you feel unwell in all sorts of ways. And it can have a severe impact on the health of any offspring too. It's always a good idea to optimise your nutrient levels before attempting to get pregnant.

The nutrients most people concentrate on are vitamin B12, folate, ferritin, vitamin D, and iron, because all of these have an effect on conversion of T4 (an inactive storage hormone produced by the thyroid) to T3 (the active thyroid hormone). Levothyroxine is an artificial form of T4.

The first thing you need to do is to get access to your blood test results and medical records for the last year or two and see what has actually been tested. If you can't get online access then ask for print outs of any test results from the last couple of years. Always ask the receptionists not the doctors for access to results or for print outs of results. The levels we are interested in are those for any nutrients at all, and also the following :

TSH

Free T4

Free T3

Thyroid antibodies - TPOAb and TgAb

If you have results from an iron panel that would be great. And some results from a full blood count can be helpful too, such as haemoglobin and MCV (Mean Cell Volume).

[Georgie03 in reply to humanbean]

Thank you so much for your elaborate answer! I will try to go gluten-free and also increase my levothyroxine dosage to 75 mg.

[Angel_of_the_North]

I'm pretty sure that NHS guidelines say that TSH must be under 2 for a successful pregnancy so I suspect that you are still undermedicated

[Georgie03 in reply to Angel_of_the_North]

Thank you so much for your reply! I will increase my levothyroxine dosage.