Back on levothyroxine, dose upped

[Tiredowl11]

Hi, I've had hypo for a while now and felt a bit better before when I was taking 125mcg synthroid. However my GP got scared back then that the TSH was too low and reduced my dose to 75. Of course this made me feel terrible again.

So I tried some NDT but didn't fare too well on the Thai brand, that caused frequent urination(which I still have incidentally).Afterwards I went back to levothyroxine for a while feeling very fed up.

Recently I was working with an alternative medicine practitioner to try and balance my hair minerals and taking another glandular supplement alongside something else- which contains some iodine and selenium. This didn't work out either and I don't think glandulars and NDT are for me if honest. But I still take the supplement with iodine and selenium because it has other stuff that I need.

So for a few weeks I was on nothing because I wanted to see if my body can still produce thyroid hormone on its own or not. I know this was stupid now but meds caused my hypothyroidism and I just wanted to see what would happen. Last week the GP rang me up all concerned, asked how I could even stand up and raised my levo dose to 150mcg.

I thought that it would be interesting to see how I react to this new dose but I'm also a bit worried that it could be too much. I've always been very fearful of going hyperthyroid and this is why I've been hesitant to up my levo or play around with T3 by myself. And is it safe to be taking things with selenium and iodine in them too? Even in small amounts.

The GP thinks I was taking my levo all along and my requirements have changed, which is why he upped it. I couldn't say I stopped everything to try natural solutions instead or just haven't been taking it.

Is it going to be safe to take this dose for long? Been on it for a few days and feel quite shaky. I don't know if this is related to the new dose or not though

[tattybogle]

If GP thought the blood results were from taking your prescribed dose, but you 've been on nothing for a while and given them some 'unmedicated' blood instead , then i don't think it's a good idea to take the full 150mcg ,it will almost certainly be too much .

TSH after a period of no meds for more than a week (ish) will probably have gone fairly high , hence her asking "how come you can stand up" and consequently she's increased dose.

What dose did she think you were taking when you had those bloods done ?

[Tiredowl11 in reply to tattybogle]

75mcg. So it's too much? What if I take 125 again like I used to?

[tattybogle in reply to Tiredowl11]

In that case . yes ,150mcg is probably far too much.As a long term aim i think 125mcg might be the way to go ,if that's where you have previously felt OK.. BUT .... to go to straight to 125 from a period of 75 followed by nothing (for a few weeks ?) might also be too much initially .

In your position i wouldn't take more than 100 for the time being , and i'd expect to have a few day's of feeling odd even on that, due your body getting used to the sudden change from 0 to 100.

This GP of your's seems to be in the habit of making the mistake of adjusting doses by far to big increments .

eg. if your blood test on 125mcg showed a low TSH , and /or slightly over range fT4 , then she should have made a small reduction of no more than 25mcg. to give a dose of 112.5mcg or 100mcg (and even that might not have been necessary if you felt well on 125mcg , but we'd need to see actual blood results to know more )

But , whatever the bloods were...Dropping it to 75mcg sounds far too heavy handed ...

And now she's possibly made the same mistake again ... if she thinks your result are from 75mcg and the TSH has (i assume) gone really high. then it would have been sensible to increase dose to 100 or maybe 125 depending on how high your TSH had gone... but going up from (as she sees it) 75 to 150mcg is again, too heavy handed.

When did she tell you she'd like a repeat blood test following this new prescription ? .... the thing is once you take a decent dose of Levo again , (especially if you take 150mcg ! ) , your TSH will probably fall really low again , and she'll see that in the results and panic thinking you are on way too much Levo and reduce your dose , ( probably by far too much again, if previous experience shows us anything about her method's of adjusting Levo. )

Hormone's like stability....You want to be adjusting using the smallest adjustments once you are near the right dose , and if 125 was near the right dose, you only want to be changing that by tiny amounts like 12.5mcg at a time.

[Tiredowl11 in reply to tattybogle]

I agree!

Thanks for the advice, think I'll try 100 then. But yes I also thought that it was far too extreme reducing the dose by 50mcg as she did. And this is another big leap.

I'm due for a new test at the end of June but I wonder if I should get a private test now or not?

[tattybogle in reply to Tiredowl11]

You need to be taking the same dose for 6 weeks for any blood test to be worth doing, .. otherwise the results won't tell you anything useful .. How long did you stay off Levo for ?

and had you started taking any again just before the blood were done ?

[Tiredowl11 in reply to tattybogle]

Makes sense.

I stopped taking it in January so I was off it for about a month and then I took the glandular supplement for just over a month to the end of March. Blood test was mid-April and I didn't take any levo again until the end of April.

I won't lie, I had a further ulterior motive in "stocking up" on levo and going back to 125mcg by myself as an experiment. But also for the reasons I outlined in my original post.

Thanks for your help

[tattybogle in reply to Tiredowl11]

well, you might have (accidentally) achieved the objective of getting enough Levo to try 125mcg again.. the problem will be keeping the prescription at that level past you next blood test at end of June, but trying to second guess the GP's next move is difficult without knowing the results of latest test.

Too many unknowns to guess sensibly i'm afraid, depending on if there was any T4 /T3 in the 'glandular', or none at all , you've either given them a blood test from 2 weeks with no hormone, or 10 weeks with no hormone..

I once went without for about 12 day's and TSH went from 0.5 to 7 .9, but some peoples TSH might not move much at all in 12 day's off levo.

However TSH of 7 would not prompt a GP to comment with shock that you could stand up , so i suspect your TSH was much higher than 7.

TSH would definitely have moved a lot if not taken any hormone for 10 weeks though.

Taking iodine could also have very interesting effects, but there's no way of knowing in which direction.

[tattybogle]

just noticed the 'can i still take the supplement with the iodine in' question .... probably a pretty bad idea, hopefully someone who knows more facts about it than i do will be along to comment on why ,shortly. Levo is effectively made of iodine, by the way , so you're unlikely to need any more than is in a daily dose of that , and iodine has some pretty odd effect on thyroid, so you need much more information than i can give before using it.