How does overmedicated feel?

[Soof007]

I would like to know how people who were once overmedicated for hypothyroidism feel. What were the early signs and when did you know something was clearly off ?

[HealthStarDust]

You feel hyper like symptoms. These vary person to person.

[SlowDragon Administrator]

What were you blood test results from 20 days ago

[tattybogle]

Hi Soof007 ,

following menopause , i became overmedicated on the dose that i'd been stable on for 15 yrs .

Symptoms had crept up gradually over several months / maybe a year , so i didn't realise what it was (and neither did the first 2 GP's i saw ).

I had :

Increased frequency of bowel movements (but not diarhoea)

Increased frequency of urination and urge to pee/ urge incontinence , a constant tense feeling in my bladder. (felt a bit like having cystitis , but without the burning pain) ~ Microscopic blood and calcium oxalate crystals was found in urine test.

Very physically jumpy when startled .

A bit clumsy/ inaccurate eg. hitting teaspoon of side of cup, that sort of thing.

Handwriting spidery .

Nasty pain in my ?kidney area .

Gradual Weight loss. (but at the time i thought this was just due to lack of appetite due to feeling so horrible generally )

Over thinking /catastrophising everything ~ needed radio4 on quietly all night as a distraction to stop me worrying about stuff.

Generally just felt really horrible.

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was sent for investigations for ?urine infection / ?kidney stones/ ?cancer ~ (endoscopy / colonoscopy/ CTscan )..... all were fine .

During the course of these , i happened to see another GP , who was more experienced in recognising thyroid symptoms ... she did a proper physical examination, asked some more useful questions and listened properly to the answers , then said "hold your hands out " she saw a VERY fine tremor in fingers.. classic sign of overmedication.

"Has nobody ordered a thyroid blood yet ? .... they should have done that first ..... i think you are just a bit overmedicated"

Test confirmed this ... so dose was reduced from 150mcg to 125mcg .. and all symptoms gradually improved ... some improved in a few weeks , some took quite a few months .

My blood results were not unusual for me, the fT4 was a bit over range , (but i've had higher fT4 and felt ok, both before and since) ...... but the TSH was a little bit lower than my usual ,

it's usually about 0.05 and at this time it had fallen to 0.018 .

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Also , while your here, I'm shamlessly plugging this thyroid research petition ~ (it's asking the govt to give some of the £84Million CMA fine from the price hike of Liothyronine T3 to thyroid research) .

Please consider signing and SHARING this petition if you haven't already done so .. if you have signed already THANKYOU

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

Direct link to petition ~ petition.parliament.uk/peti...

"Give more funding for thyroid research and patients after price hike"

[helen_m]

Being overmedicated has happened to me a few times and the most recent, earlier this year in hospital when they were giving me 125mcg of levothyroxine daily instead of my usual 112 mcg.

Lack of sleep and insomnia usually starts first for me, followed by extreme anxiety and stress, then my hands started shaking badly. I felt like I was drinking coffee all the time. It took me a few weeks to realise what had happened and had to drop down to 100mcg of levo (plus my 20mcg of lio) and that's where I am just now.

All the best.