i've been on NDT since July. Gradually building up towards 2 grains. Currently on 1.5 as a split dose -- 1 grain in the morning, 1/2 as I go to bed. The night time dose was only added since end Aug.
I've had dreadful back pain at night. Usually about 4 hours after taking NDT and about 3 hours sleep. My entire back goes into spasm. It hurts. A lot. I have to get up and move about, usually for about 2 hours to get it to go. I then sleep sitting upright for a couple of hours, which prevents a reoccurrence. As you can probably guess, I'm absolutely shattered from lack of sleep for over a month and waking up in pain - the type that makes you gasp and swear. It was so acute one night, I had to have help getting out of bed as I physically couldn't move.
Totally flummoxed my physio as she expected to find trigger points. Nothing. After a lot of discussion, we worked out it coincided exactly with taking NDT at night.
I didn't take it last night. Slept like a log. No late night pain session.
I'll shift my 2nd dose to post lunch now.
Anyone else experienced anything like this??
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Kit_Monster
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Ive been on a ndt for 15yrs and no never experienced that. How weird. I always take mine first thing. I dont split it. I used to years ago and back then I took my second dose two hours after lunch. I used to split to avoid the late afternonn slump but once I started on b12 jabs found I didnt need to split it any more.
Hope moving the dose resolves it for you. Sounds very painful.
HI, I have cronic back pain due to trauma, I don't find that NDT causes back pain, quite the opposite, my pain is reduced. Do you think that your back pain could be muscle spasm / cramp? Hypos often have absorbtion issues, you could be low on magnesium.
I would not only suggest low magnesium as a possible cause, but also low levels of any of the following :
Vitamin D
Everyone with thyroid disease should get their vitamin D level optimised - it is essential in helping to convert T4 to T3.
Calcium
You could get this tested, but a simple and cheap way of finding out if calcium helps reduce your pain is to try drinking a glass of milk an hour before bed every night for a week or two. Check out the calcium levels of these milk products :
If adding calcium doesn't help you could try adding potassium-rich foods to your diet. There are many, many lists of foods containing potassium available on the web.
A lot of people have cut down their salt intake over the years, but it is essential for good health and lack of it can cause all sorts of problems. If you want to try adding salt (which gives you both sodium and chloride and both are essential electrolytes) get a quarter teaspoon (of the kind used in cooking) and add a scant quarter teaspoon to some orange juice or plain water and drink it an hour before bed. Note that salt is essential for good adrenal health.
Magnesium
As already mentioned, low magnesium can cause muscle spasm, cramp, tics, twitches, and benign fasciculations (search for these on Youtube if you don't know what they are - some weird people film theirs and put it on the web).
As long as your kidneys are functional you could take an oral magnesium supplement, because any excess is excreted via the kidneys. Personally I take magnesium citrate powder (bought on Ebay or Amazon) in orange juice (it tastes vile so I have to disguise the taste), but there are many other oral possibilities that might work better than relying on absorption through the skin, but there are no guarantees.
Just a thought - taking your pills in the daytime your body is moving about so the pills move on. Taking it at bedtime your body is not moving, so the pills might not be moving on and get stuck, causing your back pain. That also fits with your having to move about and sit upright to prevent a recurrence.
Anyway, well done for finding a solution. I hope it works.
By the way, which NDT are you taking? From my own experience using Armour and later Erfa, they have different side effects, neither of which suited me unfortunately.
There can be differences in formulation, so it’s possibly something in the tablet (other than the active desiccated thyroid ingredients) affecting you.
Just checked.... other ingredients in Armour Thyroid are calcium stearate, dextrose, microcrystalline cellulose, sodium starch glycolate and opadry white.
Nothing on there I'm intolerant to. Not that I know of.
No. I’m on Armour too (not that I like it nearly as much as Nature Throid. I miss Nature Throid ).
Hmm. So maybe not that.
I guess it’s going to be about seeing whether changing the dose timing helps you. When I was on 1.5 grains I used to take it once a day in the morning (no splitting).
It’s possible I suppose that the back pain is secondary to something else—for example, perhaps the evening dose has been stimulating your bowel and it’s referred pain of some kind?
I’m only guessing and probably way off. I dunno, the things we have to do to stay well, eh? 🙂
Hi Adin, perhaps the dose is just too much for me in the evenings when I'm not moving about much. I've moved it to lunch time as of today. Crossing my fingers.
I just get the most amazing and clear dreams - full technicolour, although what Hugh Grant is driving me in a car in France, discussing planting trees is anyones guess!
Hi relentlessearch, it's definitely gotten better now I've stopped the NDT. It's taken 3 weeks to calm down sufficiently that it's just now achey with the odd flare up.
I've not thought to have a look to see if adrenals could be the issue ....
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