weight gain with low TSH?

[KymmyLo]

Hi!

Just got my blood work back, normal range T3 and T4 but bdl for TSH. Feeling a little sluggish and tired, no tolerance to COLD, getting sick a lot and consistently gaining weight over the past 4 months.

Just some background, I got my thyroid removed 2 years ago due to graves disease. I've been on levothyroxine 125mcg and 5mcg cytomel. When I started feeling sluggish and gaining weight, I increased my T3 (cytomel) to 12.5mcg/day hoping it would make me feel better. It seems to have made things worse. Also, my eyes started bugging out...I have graves eye disease as well. So 3 weeks ago I went back down to 5mcg cytomel a day.

I am very active and very careful with what I eat so the weight gain is super frustrating. My doctor completely blows off all my concerns. I asked if I could increase my levo dose and he refused.

Has anyone else experienced this and if so what did you do?? Like I said my doctor is useless...tells me its probably hormonal and I should look into hrt.

Thanks for any help!!

KLo

[Buddy195 Administrator]

welcome to the forum KymmyLo

Regarding your eyes….. I recommend you take a Selenium supplement, 200ug daily, as this has showed to help in mild/ moderate TED when taken in the first 6 months. Many take a maintenance dose of 100ug daily when the active phase of the condition has passed. Preservative free lubricating eye drops are important, such as HycoSan or Hyloforte. For light sensitivity wear sunglasses (even indoors if needed). If you have any eye pain, my TED ophthalmologist said to take ibuprofen (with food to protect your stomach). Also worth doing is using 2 pillows at night, to elevate your head. Above all, please don’t overdo it on Google images, as they show ‘worst case’ scenarios.

Regarding your thyroid medication, having this optimal is key to stabilising TED. pennyannie and PurpleNails are able to give recommendations/ links regarding Graves, so I will tag them in.

Have you tested key thyroid vitamins- ferritin, Folate, B12 & vit D?

[pennyannie]

Hello KymmyLo and welcome to the forum :

Graves is an auto immune disease for which there is no cure - and generally only gets diagnosed when the major organs - either the eyes and or thyroid - become targets of attack from ones own immune system response.

Graves can be life threatening if not medicated with an Anti Thyroid drug to try and offset the worst of the symptoms being tolerated while we wait for the immune system to calm down again and the thyroid reset itself without the need for any drugs.

Every ones journey with Graves is unique to them and why Graves is so poorly understood and badly treated in mainstream medical and simply removing the target of the AI attack - the thyroid - does not resolve the immune system malfunction.

The thyroid is a major gland and responsible for full body synchronisation - from your physical through to your mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual well being, your inner central heating system and your metabolism.

With Graves your body has been in a heightened state for a period of time and it will take time to fully recover from all that has likely gone on and the psychological impact of your eyes and face being affected is enormous - and ' healing ones self ' takes time to adjust and be ' your you ' again - but once optimally medicated, do you think you may consider reconstruction / decompression surgery ?

Do not be too hard on yourself and until your thyroid hormones are back at optimal levels and you feel 100% well again - be kind to yourself - and please stop the exercising as this will be negatively effecting your efforts to loose weight which can be dispiriting and send you into a downward spiral as dieting is not recommended as we need good fats and good clean food cooked from scratch for thyroid hormones to work effectively.

A fully functioning working thyroid would be supporting you on a daily basis with trace elements of T1, T2 and calcitonin + a measure of T3 at around 10 mcg + a measure of T4 at around 100 mcg. - with T3 ( Cytomel ) said to be around 4 times more powerful than T4.

The other treatment option you might like to consider is Natural Desiccated Thyroid which is derived from pig thyroids, dried and ground down into tablets referred to as grains - and contains all the same known hormones as that of the human thyroid gland.

No thyroid hormone replacement works well until your core strength vitamins and minerals are up and maintained at optimal levels - so in order to help you further we really do need to see the following full thyroid blood tests - results and ranges ;-

TSH, Free T3 Free T4 inflammation, antibodies and ferritin, folate, B12 and vitamin D :

You must not be dosed on a TSH reading and your TSH may never recover which is typical of Graves patients - and also taking any form of T3 lowers the TSH - and without a thyroid - there is little point looking at the TSH - as it is a very unreliable marker of anything -

and you must be dosed and monitored your Free T3 and Free T4 results - and your ability to convert well the T4 into T3 will also be down regulated any physiological stress ( emotional or physical ) inflammation, depression, ageing and dieting and I'm guessing if like I was - you have a few of these going on.

I found the most well rounded of all I researched was that of Elaine Moore's books and website - elaine-moore.com

Elaine is Stateside and runs a forum much like this where you can ask questions of the forum members, and Elaine, if around, also makes herself available - and there you will find other members within your time zone - area - and recommendations of preferred medical professionals so this might be a useful base to read and get advice from as it reads you are not getting the help and understanding you need from your doctor.