Ive been on Teva now for over five years and not getting anywhere very fast concerning my health. I’m alternating 150mcg with 125mcg daily. My T3 is optimal. My T4 is too high but I’m staying on my current dose for now to see if my T4 starts to come down over time.
I’m on Teva as I was avoiding lactose but these days I seem to be ok with lactose in moderation. I’m about to try split dosing so will see how that goes but next stop, if this doesn’t work, is to consider changing brand of Levo to see if that helps.
Does anyone know what brands are the most well tolerated? I’m on 150mcg & 125mcg alternating as I said. I do have a pill cutter but a brand that comes in 50’s or 25’s would be handy.
Thanks x
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TiredMummy
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Ref.: “…I said. I do have a pill cutter but a brand that comes in 50’s or 25’s would be handy.…”
I’m on 25 micrograms (Wockhardt UK Ltd) and 50 micrograms (Mercury Pharma Group Ltd, London) Levothyroxine =75 micrograms daily. Info from the tablet box.
They’re both tiny white tablets. No supply problem.
The main problem is the blister pack packaging!😰
Very difficult to press out the tablets from the blister pack. This am I spent nearly 5minutes trying to squeeze a pill out! Ridiculous!
Manufactures should take note. Some of us suffer with stiff, arthritic fingers.
Regards
BTW splitting doses is not advised due the active ingredient not being in the right split although it is assumed to be!?🧐
Suvi8901 , "split dosing" in this context means "taking half the daily dose in the morning and the other half later in the day / bedtime".
Some of us do this to avoid having a large amount of T4 at at once , not necessary for many and 'shouldn't' make a difference due to the long half life of T4, but seems to have interesting benefits for a few of us , so always worth a try when people are not doing well.
as regards "cutting tablets in half" .. true this is not ideal , as we have no guarantee there is half of the active substance in each half of tablet . But often cutting tablets is unavoidable . For most UK brands the smallest size is 25mcg , so if we need 12.5mcg ,cutting is needed (taking alternate doses eg 100 one day/ 125 the next, to get a dose of 112.5mcg is also fine , but some of us prefer to take the same dose each day)
The issue of uneven spread of active ingredient isn't too big a problem if you're only cutting one tablet at a time and taking the remaining half at next dose ... but cutting loads in a dvance could lead to a week of taking 'halves with less in' and another week of taking 'halves with more in' . So when cutting tablets it's probably best to cut them as needed.
12.5mcg tablets would be better , but there is only one UK brand that makes a 12.5mcg tablet, (TEVA) but some of us don't feel ok when we that brand ,(and it is stupidly expensive for the NHS in that size £13 for 28 as opposed to £1 , so it's not often prescribed) Hence why so many of us cut tablets .
You could try a pill organiser. That way you can transfer the pills once a week when your fingers are at their strongest and most likely to co-operrate.
(Link to amazon solely because it is easy to see a range.)
I have no personal experience so do not know which work well, etc.
This is the classic of the sort of thing that should be automatically made available (for no charge) - at least a very basic and cheap version. Like a measuring spoon or oral syringe is with liquid medicines.
If you follow this link, you will find my medicines document and details of ALL UK makes.
helvella's medicines documents (UK and Rest of the World) can be found here:
helvella - Thyroid Hormone Medicines
helvella has created, and tries to maintain, documents containing details of all thyroid hormone medicines in the UK and, in less detail, many others around the world.
This link takes you to a page which has direct links to the documents from Dropbox and Google Drive, and QR codes to make it easy to access from phones.
The UK document contains up-to-date versions of the Summary Matrix for tablets, oral solutions and liothyronine available in the UK.
I'm not sure we have any real basis for suggesting one make over another - other than specific excipients. Personal experience is all that really counts in the end.
TiredMummy, sorry to hear you are struggling. Do you have any recent blood results for your Thyroid i.e. TSH, T4 and T3? (NHS usually only tests TSH) Can you post the results with ranges (in brackets)?
I couldn't tolerate TEVA due to the filler acacia powder. I have taken Almus/Accord ever since and used a pill cutter whenever I needed to split a tablet. I eventually ended up on100mcgm T4 and then 15mcgm T3 as I am a poor convertor of T4 to T3.
It is also important to have optimum vitamin levels, so you need to check Vit D B12, Folate and Ferritin. Medichecks (details on this site) have offers on Thursday. Plenty of advice on here about taking the tests. Hope you get sorted but you have to be patient!
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