Very high blood pressure

[Nutcase52]

I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and subsequently Hashimotos about 20 yrs ago. I was prescribed medication for my hypertension but unfortunately it has never stabilised and remained very high.My latest reading was 175 /109 and I have had no choice but to add further medication.,

I am not overweight and don’t smoke or drink and generally lead a healthy lifestyle.

My hashimoto was treated with Levothyroxine until 2020 when I saw a functional medical practitioner GP and am now taking Armour thyroid NDT.. I have read that Hashimoto can be associated with high blood pressure but in any event I would like to get off the meds or at least reduce them. My functional medicine practitioner for my Hashi has not been very helpful re BPissues.

Any thoughts and or ideas would be helpful.

Thanks

[FancyPants54]

I don't know much about this issue, but I think high blood pressure can be linked to inadequate thyroid hormone replacement. Do you feel that you are optimally replaced at all? For example I am now on Armour too, I much prefer it to Levo and T3. But I have recently discovered that I need to add some small amount of Levo to the Armour to bring the T4/T3 ratio more in line with the human ratio rather than the pig's ratio. Having done that I'm starting to see better numbers and to feel a bit better. I wonder if you still need to adjust meds in this respect.

[Incoguto in reply to FancyPants54]

Hey Fancy, I hope you don't mind me asking, how much Levo are you adding to your Armour? X

[FancyPants54 in reply to Incoguto]

I started with half of a 25mcg levo tablet a day for about 3 weeks and then increased it to 25mcg a day. I'm holding onto this for a while now to see how it goes. I did have a blood test last week for something else that showed my FT4 at 44% of range after about 4.5 weeks on 25mcg a day. On Levo alone it was struggling in the 20's area of the range.

[Incoguto in reply to FancyPants54]

How are you feeling after adding it? Do you mean that on Armour alone it was struggling in the 20s area?

Asking because my ft4 keeps dropping to 20s, whole ft3 is around 70%+.

[FancyPants54 in reply to Incoguto]

Exactly as you say above. On Armour my FT4 was struggling in the 20%s of range area and on my last blood test my FT3 was in the 70%s of range for the first time ever.

Since adding it I have felt improvement. I'm currently feeling down because my menopause doctor has told me to reduce my oestrogen dose a bit because I'm holding onto too much fluid, which I have done. For me, low mood always follows any reduction in oestrogen. So I just need to sit tight for a while and hold on. Hopefully the oestrogen drop will balance out soon.

[Incoguto in reply to FancyPants54]

Thank you 🤗 are you splitting the Armour or how do you take it with t4? My ft4 is not great, ft3 good, but have many symptoms. Then when adding Armour I feel so hot and on the edge. Was this your experience too?

[FancyPants54 in reply to Incoguto]

I do split it all. I take 1&1/4 grains of Armour at 8am. 1 grain at 5pm and 25mcg Levo whenever I go to bed. And sometimes that's not on an empty stomach I'm afraid. I just live with that.

When I tried to increase to 2&1/2 grains of Armour a day before adding Levo, I felt much worse. My body sees a little too much hormone and fires off the enzymes to neutralise it and over-does the neutralising and I end up feeling dreadful. I might feel hot and a bit jittery for a couple of days at the start, but I will also be energised at that point. Then the enzyme reaction kicks in and I turn into a knackered depressed snail.

That's when I backed off and went back to 2+1/4 grains and added in first 12.5 mcg Levo a day and when that settled upped to 25mcg a day. I'm waiting for this dose to bed in a bit more before retesting. But right now I'm thinking I might need to drop the T3 a bit more somehow because although I started off feeling great like this and had almost perfect bloods for FT4 and FT3 at the 4.5 week mark (had to test then for an upcoming endo appointment), now I'm starting to feel weaker and more weary and with very heavy legs. I think I'm overdoing it somewhere. The question is can I hold on long enough to test before I make a change.

The other thing that I'm noticing is my internal body temp has dropped again. At the 4.5 week test that was doing great.

[Incoguto in reply to FancyPants54]

Yeah I have experienced something similar, I increase Armour to 2.625, feel hot and jittery, somehow low in mood, lack of appetite and at times get puffy. But when I reduce I become quite tired too. Added T4 before, but it wasn't working, perhaps because my t3 started to climb, not 100% sure. I'm trying to see what my next step is, either adding T3 to Armour or once again T4. Hard to know. I'm taking 2.375 Armour in the morning with 5mcg T3 and was taking a quarter of Armour in the afternoon, but that's reduce to half since I was jittery, anxious and hot. I'm scared of splitting more (like 1.25 grains + 1.25 grains with some t3), afraid of messing it up further and getting more energy dips.

So you think you're overdoing it with lower temps and heavy legs or is it not enough?

[FancyPants54 in reply to Incoguto]

I'm not really sure. But a few weeks ago my numbers looked very good and my temps were good and I felt better. Now my temps are down, my legs are heavy and holding fluid and I don't feel so good. Dose is the same. I think I might have been rushing the testing in the past doing it at 6 weeks. I'm now trying to hold off to 8-12 weeks between dose change and test to see if things are calmer.

[Incoguto in reply to FancyPants54]

Have you tried adding t3 to your Armour out of curiosity?I'm in a similar boat, I changed my dose end of January, started to feel decent and then it tapered off. I waited 3 weeks more and it's worse. Very difficult to figure it out. I get a lot of blurred out vision and I can't go to the shops because I'm dizzy and get blacked out. Can't seem to figure out if it's not enough or too.much or is it t3 or t4

[FancyPants54 in reply to Incoguto]

It's very hard. I don't "think" it's T3 I need. I have tried T3 on it's own twice now and felt awful. I need some T4. I felt so much better when I first added some Levo to the NDT that I'm hoping when I next test my numbers will have settled and show too low a FT4 again and then I can creep it up.

That we have no help from the medical profession with all of this is ludicrous. That there are not actual real specialists for hypothyroidism alone beggars belief. Current endocrinologists are hopeless.

[Incoguto in reply to FancyPants54]

Yeah zero help, I'm just being told to tweak it myself, because I should know the best what's what. Symptoms are the same for under and over and my labwork is never over range. However, I do take majority of my dose in the morning and TSH is supressed.Hopefully your ft4 will show low and then you'll be able just to add more and/or reduce Armour.

I currently take 2.625 Armour and 5 t3.

With t3, did go up high enough dose? I added t3 throughout the day, but had peaks and throughs, but during peaks I felt pretty good I have to say.

[Elily]

Please check your RT3. I am coming off of high blood pressure meds using a T3 protocol for high RT3 with chronic illness. As the use of T3 stabilizes with the supplementation, one of my major symptoms of temperature too low is a rising blood pressure. I have had to take meds for 25 years, since I turned 30 with extremely high readings and very little control with many meds. Now, it seems to be controlled with no BP meds.

[greygoose]

Hi Nutcase52, welcome to the forum.

I have read that Hashimoto can be associated with high blood pressure

Not Hashi's as such, but high blood pressure can be a symptom of hypothyroidism. So, the first thing to do is to check that you are adequately treated for that. Do you have the results for your last blood test: TSH, FT4 and FT3? If your doctor is only testing TSH, then you probably are under-treated as that is totally inadequate testing. If you have the results, post them here - WITH the ranges - and let's have a look.

High blood pressure that doesn't respond to treatment is almost certainly due to under-treatment. Changing to NDT is a good move, if it suits you, but you have to take enough of it, and most people don't.

Oh, and you don't need to get your rT3 tested. It is an expensive test and takes a long time to get results. And it doesn't give you any information that you can't get from testing FT4 and FT3 at the same time.

[Brightness14]

My blood pressure started to rise back in 2023. I never want to go onto medication and prefer the natural route. Anyway I goggled it and found that in Germany even the GP's prescribe Hawthorn Extract. This has been used for over one hundred years. It works perfectly for me I take two a day. The German have always been into natural health.

All my treatment here in France is free but I have to pay for the Hawthorn but it's well worth it. You could just try it. Natural takes a little longer to work than medication. Of course your could be low FT3 levels.

[Sparklingsunshine in reply to Brightness14]

Hibiscus tea is another natural alternative if you can get hold of it. It has a tart fruity taste rather like cranberries and can be drunk hot or cold. Its very popular in Africa.

[Brightness14]

I have a cupboard full of it but it's much easier to just take the capsules. Lazy that's me. Thanks anyway. I did try it but found the Capsules easier.

[Krissy_PolkaDot]

I am currently incorporating acupuncture into my own health journey and the practitioner keeps checking my pulse throughout the session and based on that she knows what needle placement and warming routine she needs to use on me. It is still early days for me too but I am blown away by the observations they were able to make. So if you get annoyed with western medicine, give Chinese medicine a go too.