Hello everyone, not posted here for a very long time as i have been supported for 18 months by a sports nutritionist and been working away hard at improving general health etc.
I started on levo 5 or more years ago and despite being moved up to 100 dose I have never had my TSH come down much if anything below 3. Numbers for the other thyroid tests have been OK and GP would not plan to amend dose unless TSH raised above 5.
Most recently over the past few months I have refined supplementation and gone for a much more robust exercise regime and have found general energy levels substantially higher than for the past 5 years and sleep improving more i.e. c 6+ hours of sleep per night rather than 4-5 hours max.
The point of the post was to say that for other reasons than my thyroid I took a full blood test that came back yesterday with a TSH reading of 1.5. I have read in the past people saying here that you are not really fully at your best unless TSH is under 2 and having magically got to this area i would have to agree.
A lot of the supplements that are touted for helping TSH have absloutely made no difference at all eg. selenium/zinc and a number of others. The final mix I now use daily are D3/K,B complex,Magnesium, Taurine, Choline&Inositol.
I will never know in the end how much of the diet vs. exercise vs. supplement vs. sleep improvement ultimately turned the dial but it has certainly needed the most focussed slog over 5 or more years to get the overall balance spot on.
We are all unique, but please take this as encouragement to persevere if you are finding this all takes a long time to get your full health back post hashis.
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Danielj1
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You've obviously found a magic formula for now for you, and I hope it continues to do well for you. Bear in mind that you may have to change this formula in years to come. I am sure you will be able to find out more about this thyroid game than your GP ever can with the help of this fantastic forum.
If symptoms of hypothyroidism persist despite normalisation of TSH, the dose of levothyroxine can be titrated further to place the TSH in the lower part of the reference range or even slightly below (i.e., TSH: 0.1–2.0 mU/L), but avoiding TSH < 0.1 mU/L. Use of alternate day dosing of different levothyroxine strengths may be needed to achieve this (e.g., 100 mcg for 4 days; 125 mcg for 3 days weekly).
The optimal daily dose in overt hypothyroidism is 1·5–1·8 μg per kg of bodyweight, rounded to the nearest 25 μg. In younger patients with no substantial comorbidities, the full required dose can be given at the start of treatment.
Most important results are Ft3, followed by Ft4 and symptoms and optimal vitamin D, folate, B12 and ferritin
So great to read this! Well done, I've started to enjoy resistance routines after a long tapering build up and I seem to be having some benefits, but the tiniest things can trip me up, a stressful event or day, an unexpected late bedtime, a cold or flu bug (thankfully rare these days). Interesting, I've had to stop the Selenium, I was over range. I take the same as you now with the exception of the taurine, the choline/innositol are in the B Complex, but I do take Creatine. What does Taurine do for you?
Taurine makes a huge difference to aerobic exercise possibilities - after a while of taking I can train with far better consistency and intensity without the previous crash and burn.
Of all the 101 variants of all the so called "clever stuff" including all the amino acids ending in "....ine" it is the only one that made an important and noticeable real world difference.
My 5k interval sessions are at such a decent pace now that I have decided to return to masters athletics on the track in 2025 and compete with national level runners over the shorter distances - 100/200 metres.
Not competed properly for decades i.e. since being a teenager over 100m racing. I just want to see with my body now returned to very near normal what is the very max I can achieve now I am retired and can train all the time.
Following years of such poor health as I had not fully understood the implications of being B9/B12/D3/Magnesium deficient I am living in a sense of joy that a new world is opening up - this board is owed a massive dose of thanks of course for all I have learnt here
100mcg is not a high dose, especially for a bloke and if doing a lot of exercise
Agreed
Just testing TSH is totally inadequate
This was a general blood test for wider health review and TSH was captured as a bonus really, I have done regular annual checks which have shown goodish conversion and TSH too high as you note around 3ish over a number of year. I will test again at the end of this year and see what other thyroid markers have moved if at all as well and report back on those too.
GP would not plan to amend dose unless TSH raised above 5.
GP is incorrect
Agreed - but that is the policy and not really up for discussion as I have found out
TSH should always be under 2 as an absolute maximum when on levothyroxine
Agreed - hence my surprise and excitement to hit this important target unexpectedly, but I do feel massively different from even a year ago and would very much agree that you only can feel "normal" once TSH is controlled to this level - huge difference really between 3 and 1.5
Danielj1 - thanks for sharing and good to hear. If it is okay to share then I'd like to know when do you take D3/K,B complex,Magnesium, Taurine, Choline&Inositol. And what sort of robust exercise you went through. Thanks
Levo on waking then wait an hour or two have breakfast with all the supplements. Happy to accept some split the timings of these pills, but I have always taken them together.
I train most days of the week - typically 1-2 days of intense weight training, 2 days of longer slow runs and 1-2 days of sprinting usually up hills.
There is some recent stunning research from Norway on the heart health improvement from regular sprinting - most days do 15 mins of yoga/stretching too.
It has taken 2 years of 2 steps forward/1 back to get to a point that my body can handle this training load.
Nutrition has been critical i.e. to up carbs on intense training days and hence the input from a sports nutritionist has been critical to provide the holistic approach to manage high intensity without spikes to inflammation and extreme fatigue...much more nuanced balance to achieve than you migth expect!
My story was I was dx 12/2012 and started on Lev 25 and over 2 1/2 boosted up to 75, The problem is I had no symptoms of hypothyroid prior, but had consistent hyperthyroid sx after starting Levo after (r 4 3/4 years) and after the first year I developed low grade hypertension and placed on a 2 drug combo I was feeling worse and worse. We had been living in challenging conditions so I had plenty of stress, but after the sale of our farm and moving full time back to our home I decided to take the "bull by the horns" cause my doctor wasn't listening and although I didn't want to be my own doctor I decided to wean myself off the Levo ( done after good deal of reading) and eventually weaned myself off the BP drugs ( I did inform the doctor and he was not pleased and told me a little bit of anything wasn't harmful which is a LIE. Thyroid replacement is a hormone replacement!) . In short it has been rocky, but I am better to be sure. Trying to balance supplements to have healthy thyroid function can be tricky. Just this last month I decided to try Dr. Westin Childs T3 Conversion Booster and so far pleased. Among other sources I have listen to Dr. Childs and he seems to have a good grasp ( I have a science background) . I don't recommend Levo to anyone from my experience. If you can avoid it I would, but I don't believe I had a failing thyroid and that was ever an issue. Something was out of balance I believe, but doctors don't seem to like to get to the source/ root cause before they start writing scripts. I am being 100% honest and hope this sharing helps you.
thanks and very encouraging. I would love to come off levo but have not simply the health status to produce sufficient thyroid hormones. My thyroid has been quite damaged over many years and is unlikely to provide much hormone on its own. I do not give up hope hence the ongoing health restoration efforts.
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