How long before eating?

[LevoLover]

General advice is leave at least 30 minutes after taking tablets before eating. I’ve seen other advice saying it should be 60 minutes. The reasoning being that there is “better absorption” but no one defines what that means.

What I want to know is what difference does it actually make to absorption? If you take it 30 minutes before or two hours before eating, does it make a 2% difference or 20% difference to the actual amount of thyroxine absorbed? If you routinely only leaves 30 minutes, should you increase the dosage? Does anyone actually know? I can’t find it online.

[greygoose]

I'd be very surprised if anyone actually knew the answer to that question. And I would imagine that it depends on the person. There will always be some people that absorb very well, and others that hardly absorb at all without really knowing why.

And, we always also say on here that consitancy is the thing. If you always leave 30 mins and your absorption is affected, your lab results should reflect that and the dose be adjusted accordingly. But, note the word 'should'! In an ideal world it would happen but this world is far from ideal, and your very lucky if you can get the right tests done often enough for that theory to be realised. So, we err on the side of caution and leave 60 mins to absorb as much as we possibly can. But nothing is perfect.

[LevoLover in reply to greygoose]

Thanks that’s helpful. The reason for my question is that for the last few months I’ve been taking the tablets several hours before eating, usually when I wake up in the night to go to the loo for instance. But that might be an hour before or four hours before eating, and I’m wondering whether, I would be better off just taking it as soon as I wake up and waiting a consistent 30 minutes?

[greygoose in reply to LevoLover]

I don't think you'd be better off doing that. But, look at your labs, see what's been tested and how stable the results are. That might give you your answer.

[tattybogle]

if you're after some research about absorption .... have a look in here : healthunlocked.com/thyroidu.... where-and-how-is-levo-absorbed-....-a-collection-of-information.