Here are my past results on 100 mcg levo (left, 11/20) followed by my new results (02/21) on the right. Results are from Thriva and I followed "our" protocol, except I forgot to split my nighttime dose of T3, which I took just over 8 hours before the test. I alo did an NHS test this morning for the endocrinologist, so fingers crossed that it broadly reflects these results! Drumroll... :
TSH0.34 :---------> 1.16 (0.27 - 4.2)
fT419.6 :---------> 16.3 (12 - 22)
; 70% -----> 43% through range
fT3 3.6 :----------> 4.6 (3.2 - 6.8) ; 11% -----> 41% through range
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I have spent the best part of 6 weeks feeling like I have been hit by a bus, although I generally have less joint and body pain and feel a lot less depressed but more lethargic than I was on 100 mcg levo only. My get-up-and-go has got up and gone, my give-a-dam is busted! Oh well! Having been quite certain that the drop in levo was too steep, I took an extra 25 mcg this morning, to move it to 75 mcg and plan to continue. I'd be grateful if you could confirm that you think I'm on the right track with that, or suggest an alternative way of looking at things
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Vitamins: I was overloading the vitamin d a little too effectively, I think. Hmm. Should I just aim to maintain that level? And I was taking an iron supplement until a week before the test. I only realised that I shouldn't do that without a full iron panel long after I'd begun, so the iron results below are my attempt to rectify matters! Does that transferrin saturation number mean I need to back off with the supplement? Or continue to supplement but maybe only a couple of times a week? Ferritin in November was 72 (15-300) which would make it at 20% on that range. It is at 26% on the February range, for comparison.
Vitamin D: 127 (50-175)
Ferritin: 49 (13-150)
Iron 33.9 (5.8 - 34.5)
Transferrin saturation 62% (20% - 50%).
Thank you for any help with the vitamins! The vitamins always have me feeling terribly confused...
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I am so lucky to have a TSH result within the normal range, as I thought the addition of T3 would send it to hell in a handcart. What a piece of luck!
Lotika xx
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Apologies - in my enthusiasm I forgot to say what I am actually taking! Yes, they cut levo to 50 mcg to incorporate 2 x 5 mcg lio. I told the registrar that I thought it was too big a cut when they told me what they were doing with my prescriptions, but I didn’t get anywhere and now feel totally vindicated! Ha! On the other hand, I thought they might be adding too much T3, so I suppose we should consider it a score draw
Yes, I’m on Accord and have a spare strip of 100s and my 50 mcg tablets are Accord too.
When vitamins were tested in Nov, folate looked very healthy and B12 was at 497 where we would consider optimal to be around 500. I’ve attempted to push that up a little too, but I noted that I could save money with Thriva by just testing the vitamins I was worried about going over range on, so it was a value for money decision! They also tested thyroid antibodies and one of them is a little ugly
I am being very good at being GF, having fought the idea for years and followed your recommendation on the Waitrose own brand seeded brown GF bread! Funnily enough, I haven’t eaten this unhealthily for years, as I have also discovered Prewitts GF biscuits and the Waitrose own brand GF triple chocolate chip... Oops!
Thanks again for your help. If I start feeling odd with the increase I shall try a steadier increase, as you suggest.
The bread was a game changer in the GF stakes and the other was Skinny Lager, which is GF and as the branding suggests, low in calories. It tastes of very little, which is how I like my lager! Quite how I’m going to manage GF when the world opens up again, I’m not so sure, but I find there’s very little problem with it during lockdown!
I agree with SlowDragon about increasing Levo, there really was no need for your doctor to reduce it that much in the first place, but what do they know 🙄
Vitamin D: 127 (50-175)
Nothing at all wrong with that level, the Vit D Society and Grassroots Health recommend a level of 100-150nmol/L and in the current Covid situation I think keeping at the top of that range is a good idea, that's where I maintain my level all the time.
Ferritin: 49 (13-150)
Iron 33.9 (5.8 - 34.5)
Transferrin saturation 62% (20% - 50%).
If those were my results I'd stop the iron tablets, your serum iron and transferrin are on the high side. Optimal levels according to rt3-adrenals.org/Iron_test_... are:
Serum iron: 55 to 70% of the range, higher end for men - yours is 97.91% through range
Saturation: optimal is 35 to 45%, higher end for men - yours is 62%
Obviously your ferritin needs improving so I would start eating liver regularly, no more than 200g per week due to it's high Vit A content, or liver pate, black pudding and other iron rich foods
I have successfully raised my ferritin level without too much effect on the rest of my iron panel this way. I can't guarantee that will be the same for everyone though.
Thank you for taking the time to comment on my meds and vitamins
I tried to tell them that I thought the cut in levo was too drastic at the time... but apparently about 20 years in sales hasn’t given me the required communication skills to get my point across! I do wonder!
My ferritin levels have been on the low side of normal since the start of this journey and this is the first time I’ve seen any kind of movement.
I eat entirely too much red meat, so the low ferritin is a conundrum. I don’t like liver (or didn’t when I last tried it many moons ago) but had been eating pate until a week before the test. The shop-bought stuff has a lot of rubbish in it, so once I have the energy again from the increase in levo, I may try to make my own... And I may post asking if people have decent liver recipes to share as it might be worth trying to see if I like it more now than I did when I was young. Tastes change, but I’ve not given liver a throw of the dice in years.
Looking at the vitamin d result, which, like the ferritin, had been stubbornly low for years, I just wonder if I’m getting more vitamin uptake from foods and supplements since I went GF (about 4 weeks ago) and since I started T3? If this is the case, then I think it is possible that I might finally start to get somewhere with ferritin through diet this time!
You mentioned above about a pate recipe - I was given this one which i've made twice. You can get organic chicken liver from Waitrose that are sub £3. I make it dairy free using coconut oil instead of butter. My ferritin levels aren't doing ANYTHING but am working on my gut health which will hopefully help.
Can I just ask when you started T3 did you introduce both doses at once? My doctor has prescribed 3 x 5mcg doses 8 hours apart but seen a few posts on here about phasing in - but has also said about retesting in 4 weeks and i'm just trying to figure out what to do. thanks
Ingredients
1lb chicken liver - organic, grass fed
1 small onion (or 1/2 of a large onion), chopped
1/2 cup red wine (or you can try balsamic vinegar if you don’t want to use or don’t have red wine)
2-4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
1-2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup butter (ideally grass-fed, organic)
Sea salt
2 tablespoons cracked black pepper (optional)
Preparation
- Sauté the liver and onions in a couple of tablespoons of the butter until the livers are browned and the
onions are tender.
- Add wine, garlic, mustard, herbs and lemon juice and cook uncovered until most of the liquid has gone.
- Transfer the mixture into a food processor and blend to a smooth paste along with the rest of the butter
1Tbsp at a time until it reaches a smooth, creamy consistency – you don’t want it to be crumbly.
- Add salt and cracked black pepper (optional) to taste.
- Put pate in a shallow dish to refrigerate before serving.
- It can be frozen in portion sizes in small jars
Enjoy spread on celery, carrots, cucumbers, or home made seed crackers, oatcakes or rice cakes
Variations
- Use any other kind of liver you like
- If you don’t want to use wine, try using some balsamic, apple cider or red wine vinegar. I haven’t tried that
out myself though, so I can’t tell you how well it would work.
- Can use coconut or avocado oil instead of butter
- Dried herbs also work well
- Black garlic instead of regular garlic also gives a lovely taste to it
Thank you jsy_girl, that does sound promising and I will give it a try! We are going to have liver for dinner tomorrow for the first time... eeek!
Re T3, in my case, as the endo cut the levo from 100 to 50 mcg, I was so terrified about feeling under medicated (correctly, it turns out) that I went with a straight dosage swap and did exactly what the endo said, dropped 50 mcg of levo and immediately introduced 2 x 5 mcg T3 over night. I still blame the fact that I spent the first week feeling like I’d been run over by a truck on the drop in levo and nothing which happened indicated to me that I’d introduced T3 too quickly. Although now that I reflect on it, I’m not sure what I’d have been on the look out for, truth be told!
Generally, the advice here is different, but... I recall you had a drop in levo before T3 was prescribed and then I think a second drop when you got your prescription? With that in mind, and if I was feeling under medicated, I guess I’d start with 1 dose of T3 in the morning and if I felt OK, I’d go for one in the evening and see what happened on day one and if I felt I wasn’t getting any weird reactions, the next day I would go with all 3 as prescribed. But I am seriously impatient, totally inexpert and prone to a little recklessness! And, I didn’t have anything much to do at the time, so zonking out on the sofa was an option!
Good luck with it - I look forward to finding out how you get on! I think I am finally capable of the occasional creative thought, given that about 9 days have passed since the levo increase - phew!
Haha this made me laugh. Thank you! I am impatient and also confused haha. Yes you are correct I had 25mcg drop and this will be a further 25mcg drop plus the lio. I am worried about dropping the T4 and then introducing the T3 too slowly and really feeling it. Was wondering if I introduce 1 T3 one week, then 2 the next week along with dropping the T4 then. And then the week after try for the 3. If I do a blood text in 6 weeks (rather than the 4 he asked for) I’ll have at least been on his advised dosing for 4 weeks by then. Feels a bit renegade to just be making it up!
That sounds lovely - creative thought. I’d just like this brain fog to clear!
And enjoy the liver. I guess if you don’t like then tomorrow you could just blend them with some butter and ad lib the pate!
I definitely hear what you say about that worry of feeling worse on the one hand and the impatience on the other! I was so worried that I got horrifically drunk the night before starting the trial and bored my husband witless (and my closest friends via WhatsApp!) about stupid endos and how I was going to feel rubbish for 8 weeks... but being under medicated but with better T3 was, in my experience, a lot less unpleasant than being plain under medicated on levo only. I felt less depressed immediately and didn’t think I was particularly depressed to start with. I felt a bit stoned, if I can think of anything to compare it with, but without the munchies or giggles and generally couldn’t find the energy for anything, but not unhappily so. The worst part was the frustration because I was pretty sure the dose was wrong before I started, so I got angry on occasion that they didn’t listen... It would have been different if I had work deadlines and the like, I suspect, though. And I have been sleeping soooo much better since the T3. The difference is astounding.
Your way sounds measured and reasonable, I think. If it is any consolation, I felt absolutely belting on days 8 and 9 of the trial and had totally forgotten that before hashis I was somewhat ADD with the brain spinning in 3 directions at once, as I was that again for those two days. It was awesome and yet it was shocking to have forgotten something so fundamental about the downside of being the real me. I don’t have that back yet. I think it was possibly right at that moment when my residual fT4 hadn’t dropped quite so much but the fT3 had risen... and then thwack! I suspect I may eventually need an increase to around 88.5 mcg on levo but we shall see...
Great idea about the liver by the way - thank you! It saves wasting it or feeding it to the cats, if it turns out that I still don’t like it!
By the way, did I mention before that I journaled the trial in a word doc? It turned out to be useful for the random knowledge about days 8-9, for example, and I could pick out the themes in terms of the improvements...
It’s not an NHS trial no, my doctor said an NHS referral would take ages right now so am private. But potentially if it works I will ask her for the NHS referral so I can get it endorsed. But not sure how successful that will ever be. Cross that bridge later!
I have definitely bored many of my friends I can sympathise with that. At least they all know a tiny bit more than they would have ordinarily. Haha.
That does sound more tolerable. I guess it’s only 6 weeks ish that I have to tolerate it and then I can badger the endo if I have a sense of what I need adjusting by then. I unfortunately do have to work but somehow I get through. Working from home as we have been is a bit of a life saver in that respect. If I need a lie down and I’ve got no meetings I can just go and do that and I can make the time up later.
Great idea about journaling it. I will do the same. My endo does read notes I send him on symptoms ahead of the meeting and it’s easier than in the meeting as during I find it hard to get a word in edgeways haha. So I could send him a summary. He’ll probably be annoyed though about me phasing it in gradually but it’ll be too late then... haha
Thank you! I’ll be keen to see how you get on. I think I followed you if that’s okay.
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