Taking Armour-throid and levothyroxine together??

[hhalkovic]

Has anyone taken nature-throid and levothyroxine together? What has been your experience??

[humanbean]

I haven't done this but people who have the freedom to decide their type and doses of thyroid meds can end up on any combination of thyroid hormones you can think of.

Some people who don't tolerate the amount of T3 in NDT might reduce to keep their dose of T3 quite low then increase their dose back up with Levo.

Some people who need more T3 than is supplied by NDT might add extra T3 to their NDT dose.

Some people use Levo and T3 together.

If you find something that works for you then that's great. I wouldn't worry about it.

[Hashihouseman]

It’s good. Better than nature thyroid alone by far. I used levothyroxine to adjust the desiccated thyroid dose to human proportions instead of pig proportions. In other words I only took enough desiccated thyroid to give me about 6-9 micrograms in to total of t3, in split doses on sleep then waking. From that I calculated how much t4 I was getting from the desiccated thyroid and then added enough levothyroxine to give a total of 100-125 t4 combined. It saved having to argue the toss about t3 prescriptions with unhelpful doctors. After a few years though they said they’d rather prescribe me proper t3 (!) for free than have me struggling to get what they saw as dubious quality unlicensed product! A few years on desiccated thyroid gave me the evidence to show I needed replacement t3 (like everyone does of course).

[TSH110 in reply to Hashihouseman]

I don’t think it’s as simple as pig and human proportions. There is a huge variation in what individuals T4:T3 ratios are, with a functioning thyroid. The trick is to find what approximated your output and it is dynamic the proportions were altered immediately to meet daily challenges, which means our tablets are a fairly blunt tool by comparison. I take a pig proportion with no problems at all. It may be necessary to add T4 or to add T3 to NDT or leave it as it is to get the best optimisation possible for each individual who is using combination therapy.

This article is very informative and the author Dr Tania Smith has recommend fine tuning using combinations of T4 and T3 if not here, it is in another of her blogs :

thyroidpatients.ca/2019/05/...

& this one is very pertinent too:

thyroidpatients.ca/2020/08/...

[Hashihouseman in reply to TSH110]

Not according to all the actual data from large scale human studies of euthyroid individuals. The ratio is most commonly 1:12 not 1:4.5. Some individuals having to replace with exogenous hormone may be uniquely different or able to tolerate significantly different ratios but it’s not normal and I was merely suggesting normal was a good place to start when figuring out individual replacement regimes.

[TSH110 in reply to Hashihouseman]

Read the links I have posted I think they demonstrate that your statements are incorrect

[Hashihouseman in reply to TSH110]

They are not my statements. They are statements of authoritative academics and scientists looking at research data. All the studies of human thyroid compartment kinetics I have seen put thyroidal secretion ratio of t3 & t4 around 1:12-14. Are there different figures from specific studies available? Perhaps people who are comfortable with 1:4 ft3 ft4 proportions in replacement hormone are highly unusual in converting little or no t4 and need a much higher proportion of t3 in replacement similar to the healthy ft3:ft4 ratio of 1:3-4 seen in blood tests (which is not the same as thyroidal output ratio). Even with a diagnosed DI02 polymorphism associated with t4 - t3 conversion dysfunction I still convert t4 to t3 to about 70% of normal levels, something I have figured out by testing against various levels of t4 only and combined t4 & t3 dose regimes. Yes everyone may be different but but without a scientific evaluation it’s all a bit guesswork and again I suggest that in the absence of detailed individual diagnostics the starting point for replacement should be what the the most common healthy thyroid output would be and then work up from response to that.

[TSH110 in reply to Hashihouseman]

Did you read the articles by Dr Tania Smith? She gives the studies. Please can I have your sources?

[Hashihouseman in reply to TSH110]

Yes. And she has muddied the waters by conflating far too many bits of research and expert opinion to come up with, well, almost nothing! It’s classic taking stuff out of context and mixing it up to come up with further hypothesis that have not in themselves been specifically experimentally challenged. Is she actually even a scientist? The point is that while many of the authoritative specialists and experts and other influencers have used these pieces of research to come up with health policy on thyroid hormone replacement these are themselves doctrinaire conclusions from a health policy maker bias often with as much highly debatable reliance on cumulative inference from multiple indirect studies as dr Tania has in arguing the other way. It’s by no means clear what it is dr Tania is concluding or inferring from all this or on what exact evidential basis she makes her comments? The raw data tells a story but how different story tellers interpret that story is a matter for caution whatever side of the fence it appears to sit. Over the last 5 years I have read all those research articles dr Tania mentions and a whole lot more and I find myself sitting on the fence looking down at both sides thinking there’s some truth in each and the the best approach is to avoid being doctrinaire one way or another. The raw data gives a starting point but I haven’t seen any conclusive peer reviewed studies involving randomised clinical trials looking specifically at all the physiological and QoL outcomes from a broad range of replacement hormone regimes where all potential significant individual variables such as DI02 status and absorption and symptom responses have also been isolated and factored into statistical analysis to discover optimal dosing for replacement and whether there is indeed a magic bullet ratio either in blood ft3:ft4 or replacement t3:t4 ...... In pursuit of objective determination the best that can be done without significant randomised clinical trials is to comprehensively monitor each individual’s response to a range of treatments and regimes and discover how all the biological indicators respond. Sadly this is way beyond the realms of public healthcare for treatment which relies on bucket shop chemistry and doctrinaire clinical guidelines that set patients against clinicians and even patients against patients. It’s completely understandable that lack of wellbeing or adverse effects of treatment or unresolved symptoms of the condition lead people to latch onto all manner of untested theories linking together data and paradigms in ways that are more like the ideas from gossip and Chinese whispers than actual science.

[Hashihouseman in reply to TSH110]

And a lot of that research that dr Tania charts in an opinion forming timeline has been used to decry the need for replacement of t3 at even the physiological levels identified as normal in healthy individuals. Isn’t the issue that there should be an acceptance that at least a physiologically normal amount of t3 should be the starting point for replacement of thyroid hormone when a thyroid gland has failed. If the t3 side of the fence pushes unphysiological levels of t3 as thyroid replacement there is a danger the establishment regards the whole issue as a bit wacko and it undermines the case for arguably the most useful health policy improvement - for combination replacement therapy as the norm. The thyroid gland does not produce t3 for fun, it has a distinct purpose and the best starting point is to replace that even if it’s tricky to emulate how and when the body asks for that when the thyroid gland can deliver it. And yet there are clues in the data we could use to emulate healthy thyroidal output response that few people seem to be following up.....

[adin]

I mix them because on ndt alone my ft4 drops too much and I feel poor and anxious. I need a good ft 4 level and T3. I don't support synthetic t3 the natural one is much better. So I replace exactly the amount of t4 in the synthetic with the natural one and in this way I get about 9 mcg t3 and 125mcgT4.

[CatsofCatford]

Hello! I take Erfa NDT (60 mg) and Levothyroxine (25 mcg) and it’s been great for me. Moving from Levo to NDT had been a big improvement but I wasn’t quite there if you know what I mean, still getting very tired if I had even a mildly busy day. My (private) dr suggested adding in the 25 mcg of Levo and it seems to have been the missing piece of the jigsaw for me. Perhaps I should add that my T4 result had always been at the very bottom or just below range while on NDT. I take both tablets in one dose at night. We’re all different of course and finding the right combo is a process of trial and error. Good luck with finding the right combo for you 😊

[Batty1]

I haven’t come across and Endo that would prescribe both to me but I actually did bump into someone who uses both and liked the combo.