Finally managed it.

[Dadof5]

Well thanks to all the advice on here and the extra lancets from SeasideSusie I finally managed to take a blood sample this morning. It was a struggle though and took the missus and me to manage it. lol

I think I will be getting some of the orange lancets from ebay as I think the skin on my finger tips is quite thick( my missus always says I have asbestos fingers because I can touch hot things quite easily).

Something I don't really understand though!

Why do we take bloods when our medication (levothyroxine) is out of our system for 24hrs? I have never done this when having bloods taken at the doctors and thought that the results were meant to show that the dosage was correct?

Dave

[SeasideSusie Remembering]

Dadof5

Well done!

I don't know what those orange ones are like. Are they for diabetics? Just be aware that if it's like a pin (which I think maybe the diabetic ones usually are) then it may not be much good. The lancets I sent you are the ones usually sent by the testing companies and they have a blade (albeit small) rather than a pin.

Why do we take bloods when our medication (levothyroxine) is out of our system for 24hrs?

It's not that the Levo is out of our system, it certainly isn't. It would probably take about 8-10 weeks for all Levo to completely leave our bodies.

If we have no thyroid disease then our bodies ask the thyroid to make hormone as and when we need it and it has a natural circadian rhythm.

What happens when we take Levo is that we get our thyroid hormone in one big hit once a day, so rather having it in small doses as and when we're getting a whole day's worth at once. This causes a spike in our FT4 level 2-4 hours after ingestion, once it hit's it's peak then it gradually starts to fall. The half life of Levo is about 7 days (what you take today there will be half of that amount left in 7 days, but of course we are topping up every day) so it's not leaving our system, it moves on from the blood to the cells at some point.

So if we take our Levo before the blood test we will be measuring FT4 at it's peak level rather than the normal amount of circulating hormone, a measure of which is better reflected if there's a gap of 24 hours since last dose.

If your GP blood tests have always been done after taking your Levo then your results will have shown a false high FT4 (rather than the normal circulating amount) and this could be a factor in your GP maybe reducing your dose or not giving you an increase.

[Dadof5 in reply to SeasideSusie]

ah that make a lot more sense now.

Funny the GP has never advised not taking my daily dose before having bloods. I wonder if that is just nativity on my part or the GP.

The orange lancet’s are the ones recommended in my other thread apparently they cut deeper.