Heart palpitations - could these results be why?

[Loo44]

I’m recently having heart palpitations and wondered if my latest blood test results could be showing my thyroxine dose is not right. Can anyone help please? Many thanks.

[helvella Administrator]

That could look like slight over-medication. But it needs to be interpreted with respect to your taking your previous dose and time of blood draw.

11:01, as shown, would have TSH on the slide towards the low point most of us see in the afternoons.

And 11:01 could be a peak for FT4 if you took your levothyroxine a few hours before that.

Impressive presentation compared to a few characters and no reference interval (range)!

[Loo44 in reply to helvella]

Thanks helvella - yes, blood draw was at 11 am, I have realised I’ve recently added magnesium supplements to my daily meds and now think it could be those causing the palps! Thanks for your advice and help xx

[anetap4545 in reply to Loo44]

You think magnesium is giving you palps?

[Loo44 in reply to anetap4545]

Yes, that’s the only different thing Ive added recently

[helvella Administrator in reply to Loo44]

I agree that magnesium supplements seem an unlikely reason.

Are you in a position to slightly reduce your dose?

[Loo44 in reply to helvella]

Yes, I’ll drop down to 100 from 125. Thanks for your help.

[helvella Administrator in reply to Loo44]

Don't miss that you could drop to 112.5 by splitting the 25 - or 100/125 alternate day dosing (if that suits you).

Or, having tried 100 for a while, go up to 112.5!

See how it goes but when you are very close to an OK dose, baby steps are usually best.

[Loo44 in reply to helvella]

Good advice, thank you.

[arTistapple]

High T4 is a definite ‘known’ contributor to tachycardia, palpitations etc.

Usually with those results medics would want to reduce your Levo, even although it sounds like the test conditions were not ‘scientifically’ completed. Science pays attention to the actual conditions of testing. Same time, same timing of meds etc before test. Has this happened?

As per helvella has pointed out.

If not your results could be skewed. Even time of year can be important. The warm weather could reduce your need slightly for thyroxine, making your present dose just high enough to create the palpitations.

Magnesium unlikely to create palpitations (although certainties there are none) as it actually helps reduce number of incidents, the length of incidents and the level of incident.

[Loo44 in reply to arTistapple]

Thank you, I’ll reduce levo and see how I go. Thanks for your help.

[arTistapple]

Tiny tiny bit. Use a pill cutter to shave an amount off that you know you can regularly take off every day. My TSH shot up when I initially dropped my Levo by a quarter. (Another story) Believe it or not my T4 by comparison dropped very little. So go for a small amount, you can always drop it more later or indeed increase it back up should you need it (come winter perhaps).

My tachycardia has improved somewhat but I know it’s T3 I really need. My T3 is only 0.1 now above the bottom of the range!

[Loo44 in reply to arTistapple]

Great advice, many thanks