Hi, I have written a couple of times about my symptom of waking every hour and sweating. My latest TSH is 0.42 (,2-4) and my endo says I am normal now. however the waking persists and is accompanied by dread and stomach issues.
I asked about some T-3 she said it would make me over medicated.
My dose is 100 mcg levothyroxine. i am exhauseted, havent slept since April with this I dont have T3 and 4 yet from latest test but they have always been in normal range last three tests.
What dose of T-3 should I request and Levo? What combination I mean? can anyone help me? And when will I feel better? i have only been on 100 for 4 weeks- should I expect to sleep better anytime? Should i feel some energy sometime>? my central nervous system was so overwrought all this time I ended up with panic attacks.
Please help. Thnaks so much again!
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katholinegasoline
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Anxiety & panic attacks were so much worse for me when I was under medicated & when key vitamins (ferritin, folate, vit D & B12) were low. It definitely took me a few months on Levo to feel more like myself, so do give your body time to adjust. You may not need T3 if you do well on a higher dose of Levo and have key vitamins high in range. I’d suggest working on this before trying to obtain any T3. Best wishes to you.
Going gluten free also helped me, as did having key vitamins high in the range. I definitely had more energy when I achieved this, but (for me) this did take several months.
Honestly… I’m not sure that T3 is necessarily going to be the answer here (unless of course you do turn out to be someone who just can’t tolerate levothyroxine—and we do see that from time to time). But before jumping to that conclusion, I think I’d be looking at other things, as Buddy195 says—Vit B12, folate, Vit D, ferritin first of all. Because your FT3 levels aren’t terrible—you’re converting.
Poor sleep is very often connected to low Vit D/Vit B12. Every now and again, SlowDragon links to the writings of a Dr Gominak, who has some very interesting things to say about that—I’ll go and see if I can find the link.
I am so sorry to hear how unwell you feel.I empathise with everything you write...
But please would you kindly elaborate upon the digestive aspect of your post?
I am experiencing very strange symptoms ;
Crippling pain in stomach and abdomen, triggered upon waking... Even the 'stress' of hearing the alarm will provoke this attack. There's no other word, it's an "attack".
My stomach tightens as if I'm being squeezed by an iron belt to the point I can't breathe. If I drink a glass of water, to take my meds, it makes it a hundred times worse.
The pain becomes so intense I can almost lose consciousness. I can hardly breathe, there's virtually no room for my diaphragm...
I have to go to bed and rest and try to relax. It takes up to four hours to recover...
And I can't eat for the rest of the day
It just takes two or three times for this to occur and it's sets an unbreakable pattern.
what meds are you on? I got pretty sick on Dessicated thyroid after years on it, the T-3 made me ill for 4 hours after taking it.
My attacks are only when I sleep (weird) its a fast heart, spinny head and upset gut. Then I sweat. If I haven't eaten enough the day before its very painful, whole body pain. yes I think its cortisol as it takes a break in the late afternoon and evening. Sleeping then will not be interrupted hourly. My endo said cortisol is highest in the AM (my attacks are the most violent then) and drops in the PM ( I get a break from hourly attacks)
* Sleep deprivation, as in not sleeping enough, repeatedly for days in a row...
* possibly coupled with not eating enough the previous day... All pushes up cortisol.
But it's not the complete puzzle.
I followed up a terrific link from a post here, with reference to not sleeping connected with low D hormone....and the B vitamins.
The research also discussed/mentioned the negative knock-on issues with digestion...
Suspecting low stomach acid, I have experimented with taking apple cider vinegar. I worked it out logically because at my worst I have struggled all night to digest my meal from the previous evening, feeling as though I had a 'breeze block' in my stomach!
It can get so bad that having the impression of being unable to digest after over 12 hours, I can get up feeling like all I want to do is vomit, but unable to do so...
Taking the cider vinegar BEFORE eating, helps me to digest... And I no longer experience the breeze block factor over night, so that's a huge bonus.
But I know that my D hormone is low, as possibly my B12 and my iron.... So I've got to address these first. However, currently I have a huge amount of personal stress, sadly unavoidable for the present....
So in conclusion, I'm convinced these raised 'cortisol attacks' are exactly that, combined with the double whammy of nutritional deficiencies.
I became seriously allergic to Levothyroxine.
And became thyroid toxic.
Then I tried Porcine Armour...and eventually couldn't tolerate that either..
And now take Metavive, which is a milder bovine replacement. I'm Hashimotos.
I'm never really able to find a good sweet spot, but since having the Covid vaccine it's seriously thrown my body's response, going from a higher TSH dropping to 0.05
I need new tests but like everyone else there are no test tubes, so I wait, but I'm not feeling good.
Have you thought that maybe this is gluten related? I was in so much pain when I started having gluten issues an eventually found out I had celiac. The pain was upper body right below heart so the stomach and would last for days if I had eaten more gluten than I could tolerate and I started noticing this after every lunch when I would have a sandwich, I would be tired and in a lot of pain and on days when I went to a thai restaurant and had green curry, I didn't have pain the rest of the day. It becoame even more obvious when I had a vegetarian chicken at a chinese restaurant, they used pure gluten and I was sick for three days with the worst pain. Try to remove all wheat products from you diet for a few days and see if you improve. (No pizza, no bread, no oatmeal, no pasta, no cakes and cookies) You can do this easily to see if this is the problem. It all started for me around the time I noticed the thyroid nodule on my neck, and a lot of thyroid patients have gluten insensitivity or celiac. Good luck, I sympathize fully with your stomach issues.
It is possible that your insomnia is caused by having the wrong levels of cortisol (produced by the adrenal glands). Thyroid and adrenals are closely connected. If one goes wrong the other will often follow.
Symptoms of high cortisol are described in the image at the bottom of this post.
Symptoms of low cortisol are described in the following link :
It can be almost impossible, based just on symptoms, to decide whether problems are caused by low or high cortisol, so testing cortisol is sometimes necessary. But don't rush off and do this right now.
With luck, if you can get your thyroid hormone levels optimised, and your nutrient levels optimal these will improve your cortisol levels with no other treatment.
I would also suggest that, if you haven't already done so, that you give up gluten completely - absolutely no cheating. About 85% of people with thyroid disease are alleged to be gluten intolerant. Only 5% have coeliac disease. It's worth the experiment for three months. If you get no benefits then you can start eating gluten again. If it doesn't make you worse again once you restart then keep eating it and forget about it.
I got lots of benefits from going gluten free, mainly mood related in my case, but I had previously been tested for coeliac disease, including blood tests and stomach/gut biopsies during an endoscopy. All the tests came back negative. But going gluten-free still helped.
One thing you can try that might help - but also it could make things worse - but the experiment is harmless anyway - is to try one or more of the following :
1) If you take your Levo in the morning try taking it at bedtime instead.
2) If you take it at bedtime, try taking it as soon as you wake up.
3) If you get up to pee during the night try taking your Levo then.
4) You could try cutting your Levo in half and taking it twice a day.
Getting cortisol measured accurately will often end up with results showing as < 2 or < 0.5 or something like that. That is a feature of certain testing protocols and certain testing machines. But they aren't all as bad as each other.
Regenerus has sensible reference ranges and gives actual results (i.e. with an actual number rather than a result saying < 2 or something equally unhelpful for all samples that I've seen so far.
.....
I've just noticed that you are from Canada, so the above info is probably useless. There are companies that do private testing in Canada according to STTM. See this link and search for the word "Canada" :
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