disturbed sleep

[meme]

since having my t3 cut by 1/3 a couple of weeks ago I now keep waking up in the early hours, around 3 to 5 am. I then struggle to get back to sleep. I was sleeping through the night before the reduction. Any thoughts ?

[pennyannie]

Hello Meme :

Well it sounds simple enough - though sure it is not -

but without looking back at your history - just reinstate your previous regime ?

[humanbean]

My suspicion would be that you are producing more cortisol since you had your T3 reduced.

Since the adrenal glands do the bulk of their production of cortisol during the latter half of the night and early morning, that would be why you are waking earlier and finding it hard to get back to sleep, because cortisol at the wrong levels is a classic cause of insomnia and early waking.

You would need to do saliva cortisol testing to find out for sure. Please don't look up symptom lists for low and high cortisol and decide on the basis of those whether your cortisol is high, low, or "normal". There is a lot of overlap in symptoms of high and low cortisol.

If you want to get a test, this is the best one I know of :

regeneruslabs.com/products/...

You may find other tests available that seem to offer a better deal, but the Regenerus tests include DHEA (which others usually don't), and it is capable of testing extremely low levels, so the patient isn't given results of the type :

Sample result : < 2 (range < 3), which is uninterpretable, and also suggests that a zero result is within range. I think you are unlikely to find a living person with zero cortisol who is "healthy".

[meme in reply to humanbean]

thank you. It was my first thought as well because my palpitations are worse too.

Is my body producing more to compensate for the lack of hormones?

[humanbean in reply to meme]

I think that is likely. When thyroid hormones drop the body compensates with more cortisol.

Cortisol isn't a good substitute for T3 (the active thyroid hormone) but it is the best the body has.