Just that really. I’ve recently been told I probably have hashimotos 8 months postpartum. I’m getting my antibodies checked in the next test to confirm. Has anyone put the condition into remission and what have you added/eliminated from your diet.
Thank you
Yes, possible to send it into remission. How high are your anti bodies? Dietary changes are a must, exclude trigger foods: gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, processed/junk/inflammatory foods. Take black seed extract and get your vitamins and minerals up to speed. Some people take low dose naltrexone (LDN) for Hashimoto's too. Gut health balancing is important too. Hope this helps!
Thank you I will be getting my antibodies back next week after my next test. I have started going gluten free and stopped taking my supplements that include iodine and I actually feel better although it could be placebo for now lol. LDN sounds interesting do you know if GP’s prescribe for hypo or do you need to see private endos for that? Thanks
I’m not sure about remission. For me it has been getting it under control by administering the correct medication and the correct doses for you as an individual. I need to keep my T4 and T3 levels midrange and not let them go over or under range. This way I feel stable, full of energy and very well. This also keeps my TSH that Drs are very focused on from being suppressed. I find I need ‘adequate ‘ amounts of medication not too much or too little. I take liquid form levothyroxine T4 daily and tablet form liothyronine T3 daily. As long as I keep to my regimen strictly and there are no change of brands or types of medication my life has never been so good. I was in a terrible situation and could barely walk for over 18 months. I went private and got the help I needed as the NHS basically didn’t have a clue. It’s all about balancing your medication to suit you.
Hi, where did you go privately I'm keen to do this. ( message me if you can't post it)
Thanks
Ali
There are cases of people going into remission, but this is uncommon. The vast majority of us require thyroid medication and key vitamins (ferritin, folate, B12 and Vit D) to be optimal to feel well. Before trialling a GF diet, I’d recommend having a coeliac test first (to check if you have a wheat allergy before seeing if you have a wheat intolerance). Personally I got in a muddle eliminating too many food items at once, so from experience I would just remove gluten for a couple of months & see if this benefits you, then try removing dairy, to see if this is a trigger. Do test key vitamins and share results with us before supplementing.
I did try black seed oil. noted by Julia_T, but it made no difference to any of my symptoms.
Hi all my vitamins were optimal levels but vit D wasn’t tested which is an important one so will ask for that and my b12 was higher than normal which is down to my supplements. I have started going gluten free this week since I found out and I cut down my vitamin intake as the iodine level is high on them and I read that can have a bad effect on hypo. I feel alot better I don’t know if it’s placebo though lol. I don’t have any hypo symptoms yet as it’s been caught in the subclinical stage or just past so hopefully I can stay on top of it and will be given treatment if needed.
Jayayd,
With my woeful Hashi history I was mindful when my son started exhibiting classic Hasi symptoms. Comprehensive TFT’s showed elevated TPOAb’s and slight TGAb’s. We didn't test for TRAb’s.
Vit D was classically low in spite of his age (mid twenties) and other deficiencies all addressed and now maintained to optimal. He also supplements selenium and fish oils, eats a g/f diet, (tried dairy free but it didn’t seem to make any difference). The antibodies have dropped and now remain low for a few years and he feels and looks really well. I would term this as remission. Should he feel symptomatic in future and antibodies increase his next course of action would be LDN.
I would strongly recommend you to educate yourself as much as you can regarding autoimmunity. I started with basic immune books and people like Isabella Wentz (The Root Cause) and anything by Datis Kharrizian. If you have the right genetic make up and mindset I l believe it can be controlled, but for how long nobody knows. Sady when I was going through my teen age years attacks it was the era when it was blamed on glandular fever and I never even considered ny thyroid until late forties by which time it was a case of no return!
Regarding your previous post - the latest guidance is to increase iodine with pregnancy as demands increase so much. Hence most pregnancy sups now contain iodine.
Post partum hypo is incredibly common. There are various thoughts why it is initiated;
The body makes tremendous immune adjustments in order to retain the pregnancy and a previously unknown Hashi tendency may reveal itself as the immune system tries to normalise post birth. The flux of hormones trying to normalise with high prolactin levels (milk hormone). Prolactin and TSH are suppose to correlate in certain situations that sometimes go askew.
I hope you have negative results and if not, believe there is remission, and enjoy your lovely new baby 🤗
Thank you so much! And I’m glad your son is doing well. I actually feel really good I have no symptoms of hypothyroidism and actually feel a lot better than my last test so maybe my levels are normalising or maybe the symptoms haven’t manifested yet. I will start going gluten free. LDN sounds like a wonder drug for autoimmune diseases do you know if gp’s are reluctant to prescribe?
Jayayd,
Possibly if they are in the know. Otherwise most get a consultation here. ... dicksonchemist.co.uk/new/ld...
I wouldn't take it if you are breast feeding though but the prescriber/pharmacist would go through it with you.
The LDN trust is really helpful too.
'Remission'... easy to prove when you're talking about remission from Graves disease (Autoimmune hyperthyroidism) , but a tricky concept to prove when it comes to autoimmune hypo.
Therefore it's easy to be misled .. so read things you find on the internet with a degree of caution so you know what they really mean by 'remission'.
(a lot of remission stories you will come across have no precise details about what they had in the first place ( level of antibodies , which antibodies, level of TSH / fT4 etc ...whether thyroid hormone replacement was definitely needed in the first place , whether they still take some thyroid hormone replacement , and often no follow up at all about 'what happened to them next 'after they wrote the glowing account of 'putting their hashi's into remission' in 2015 ....)
Also , many stories about remission are based on .. "i did 'x' and my TPOab level came down a lot" (therefore 'x' caused them to come down)
but when you are reading these accounts, do bear in mind that levels of TPOab will usually come down over time anyway ( and will also fluctuate ). eg mine were >3000 in 2003.. in 2016 they were 195 .. i've smoked and drunk and eaten donuts (sometimes prolifically) over those years and never tried to do anything whatsoever to reduce my antibodies .. ( i might have tried something if i'd know quite how high they were , but i didn't find out how high they had been till i got hold of my medical records in 2020 )
Also bear in mind there are other reasons (to do with different antibodies TRab ) that explain some rarer cases of big fluctuations and 'remission' of hypothyroidism.... where the thyroid really does go back to producing normal levels of thyroid hormone for a few yrs , or swings the other way to proper hyperthyroidism .. some of these case will not have understood why their thyroid function is fluctuating , (because the TRab antibodies are rarely tested, so they don't know they have them) . so they believe they are in remission, but really they are just passing through on the way to something else( this scenario is relatively rare , but it does happen ). For an explanation of that , this is very good .. thyroidpatients.ca/2020/04/... remissions-and-fluctuations-trab/
most of that article won't make any sense to you at this point so don't worry about the detail ... but i link to it because if you ever need to understand anything technical/ scientific about thyroid function / hormones / autoimmunity , the information on ThyroidPatientsCananda website is reliable and well referenced . (list of all their articles here ~ site map thyroidpatients.ca/home/sit... )
For some people the level of antibodies correlates to symptoms and for others practically not at all. I think Datis Kharrizian explains it somewhere why and the end result is that as the time goes by the antibodies levels are not something to be obsessed with unless you can see the direct relationship between them and your symptoms.
LDN can be marvelous from what a lot of people say but it can also have some very unpleasant side effects as I experienced, and if you have Hashi you need to start slow and low, if you manage to get it which is practically only possible from a private presecription.
Sex hormones are also a major player in thyroid health so things might be changing when you have settled into your more 'normal' hormonal mode. Education is key so when you are enjoying your new arrival try squeezing in some reading on thyroid and Hashi but first and foremost stay calm so both you and the baby are as stress free as possible 
I read an article recently that if your hashimoto's/hypothyroidism is from autoimmune pancreatitis, that once the autoimmune pancreatitis is in remission, it's likely the hashimoto's/hypothyroidism will go into remission as well. The link below under "conclusion" mentions the thyroid getting better, but not cured. I will try to find the other link as it has been a while.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
but in this study they gave prednisolone (steroid) to treat the autoimmune pancreatitis.
and so their comment that the hypothyroidism was 'improved' seems rather odd to me ..
because i thought prednisolone was known to lower TSH production, and also to reduce conversion of T4 to T3 ?
The study found the TSH was lower after prednisolone treatment , BUT it found the T4 was lower too (figure 1)
So the hypothyroidism wasn't really improved .. ? surely it was actually worse because the T4 level was lowered ?.
and the only reason the TSH went down was because prednisolone reduced the secretion of TSH .. ( it didn't go down because the T4 level had improved )
unless i'm confused .. which is also quite probable
Yeah i'm trying to understand it as well. The only thing I can think of is the autoimmune pancreatitis being the trigger for hypothyroidism and once the trigger is corrected, the hypo corrects. Similar to many hypos lose 20% of their kidney function, but this is reversible once on the correct dose of thyroid meds. Blood pressure, gut issues included.
The case study i'm after mentioned a patient with hypothyroidism. The patient was treated for years with thyroid meds, but continued to suffer a lot of other health issues that many of us have "gut, heart, kidneys". His igg4 levels were elevated high enough to warrant more testing. He was diagnosed with autoimmune pancreatitis. Treatment with prednisone was started for a month, followed by a year of low dose prednisone. His tsh dropped to normal and he was able to get off of his levothyroxine. He was also able to eat gluten foods again.
agreed ,, that one is more interesting . will look out for it in my random travels.
another thought just to complicate matters further ICE ... can we even use hypothyroidism from IgG4 Related Disease as a comparison for what may happen in 'common' autoimmune hypothyroidism( Hashimoto's/ Ords) ?
.. it's clearly quite a different beasty , as for some reason affects mainly males, which is the direct opposite of Hashi's / Ord's .
to be honest, i still haven't got my head round this whole IgG4 thing . I have come across interesting papers about it before, but have usually given up due to how much of it didn't understand .
Completely agree—the hypothyroidism wouldn’t appear to be improved at all. I think the thing to take away from that study is that if you’re on pred you need to make sure your doctor knows it can depress your TSH levels.
tats,
But you have to also factor in all the other mechanisms at play, one of which is the the damaging effects of inflammation that can make us hypothyroid. Pred reduces inflammation so although also reduces TSH there will be an offsetting effect with a reduction in inflammation and I suspect many other reversals too.
Thanks radd ... my brain cogs are going round .. need oiling though .
Food intolerances. My TPO antibodies went to zero after I had been off gluten 18 months.
100% off gluten. I was not trialing; tests like gliadin antibodies and TTG reveal whether gluten is a problem. My thyroid cannot function alone, it is effectively dead ... not surprising, since my thyroid was under attack from birth to age 57. It took my badly damaged gut over 9 years to heal, after gluten was eliminated.
Honestly just relax take your time and do some patient research, dont go making instant decisions based off comment on a forum, buying up loads of vitamins, changing diets without full knowledge of what outcomes to expect. Theres plenty research you can do to build a broad knowledge base and work out who t listen to and who not to. There is loads of conetnt in here to look through. Took me about a year to understand hashi and 3 more to understand my own body. Hashi affects us all differently so ultimately you will go by what your body tells you. many of people on levo with hasi are asymptomatic, if you start off start devling into the forums you are going to get the worst cases and all sorts of remedies which will outpace your own journery of discovery.
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