symptoms of over medication

[Goinginsane1]

hi all. I’m wondering if anyone has experience of over medication and what their symptoms were at that time please?

[Buddy195 Administrator]

Over medication and under medication both cause me increased anxiety and palpitations, so that’s why it’s important to test thyroid levels if you experience any adverse symptoms. As I’m very sensitive to change, I only increase or decrease Levothyroxine by 12.5mcg.

[tattybogle]

When it's only slight overmedication.. the effects will probably be different for everyone .. (when it's more severe, the symptoms will be more obviously similar to hyperthyroidism.( ie fast heart rate / weight loss / diarrhoea )

I was only slightly overmedicated , but it probably had been going on for a year or so.

I'd been too busy dealing with elderly parents 150miles away to get thyroid bloods done for a couple of years. I had also just gone through menopause .. and it seems that following menopause i just didn't need quite as much Levo as i had for 15yrs previously , so overmedication had crept up on me very gradually and it was hard for anyone (including me) to spot it for what it was .

I had been gradually feeling more and more unwell with all sorts of issues .. frankly, i thought i'd got cancer or something . generally felt dreadful ,sleep was rubbish . i was over anxious and catastrophizing about everything. i was very fatigued and needed to lie down a lot especially after any exertion .. my temperature control was rubbish .. too cold/ too hot/ too cold . sweating then freezing.

I was regularly phoning my other half to come and help me get home from the shops because i'd 'crashed' at the checkout and could hardly carry myself home ,let alone the shopping.

Increased frequency of bowel movements., and increasing bladder issues ..going to the bathroom about 7 times before i left the house ,,and occasional urinary incontinence ....felt a bit like cystitis but without the burning pain ~ the bladder just felt tense and uncomfortable all the time and had the urge to go more or less constantly .. also a nasty pain in ?kidney area that GP originally thought was kidney stone. they found microscopic blood and calcium oxalate crystals in urine .. but kidney Ultrasound showed nothing abnormal, and no infection found...... these all resolved within a couple of weeks of slightly lower dose Levo.

I was getting clumsy.. kept hitting teaspoon on side of cup instead of getting it in~ that sort of thing .

my eyesight seemed to be worsening rapidly.

I was extremely jumpy, as though my startle reflex was turned up too high .. it was dangerous to come up behind me when i was washing up in case i had a knife in my hand ... and a car horn in the street would make me literally jump.

i had become pretty skinny too. i was not overweight before , but now my muscles were disappearing.

I had been to GP several times over few months (different GP's, each time) resulting in kidney and ?cancer investigations ... endoscopy, colonoscopy . CT scan.

while all this was going on i went back to GP to check why a 2 week referral for one of the above hadn't come though yet ..this time it was an elderly part time female GP. ( with some actual experience.... while i was there she examined me properly (and listened properly !) and then said "has anybody checked your thyroid levels yet ?... they should have done that first ... hold your hands out" .... she noticed a VERY fine tremor in my fingers .... " i think your just overmedicated" .. she was right .

My fT4 was a little bit over range 19.9 [8-18] 119% ... but it's been higher than that at other times when i wasn't overmedicated .. ie 126% ,134%.

But the TSH level of 0.018 was a bit lower than my usual which had been stable around 0,05 ish or slightly above for the last decade .

i was on 150 mcg the reduction was to 125 mcg .. most things improved over the next few months on lower dose.. some improved quite quickly . some took several months.

[Goinginsane1 in reply to tattybogle]

thank you for your reply. I feel very similar to you and have many of the same symptoms. I feel awful. I have anti depressants but I have been advised not to take them until the heart monitor results come back. I have anxiety but my gut is telling me that something is up with the thyroid medication but I don’t know what.

[TiggerMe in reply to tattybogle]

Interesting I too had a lot of these symptoms but they were rectified almost overnight once I started HRT, especially the twitchy bladder, gaslighting, anxiety etc. Actually had to slightly increase my levo once on HRT to balance things out again... so many cross over symptoms between the two

[Pearlteapot]

I was only over medicated for a month, nothing very dramatic but I felt edgy and slightly hyped. Nothing dramatic happened to my pulse or digestion, perhaps a bit faster, a bit looser but no great change. That's not a particularly useful description but I knew it when I saw it, kind of thing. I knew this feeling was caused by the medication and not any natural edginess. Subsequent blood tests showed that to be true with T4 about 125% and TSH below range but not suppressed.