supplements

[BRITT1DENMARK]

Hi all, lots of supplements are recommended on this forum for thyroid health. Can this be taken as a multi vitamin or are individual vitamins better?

many thanks

[Tina_Maria]

Multivitamins are not recommended, as they use very cheap ingredients. In addition, the individual concentrations of vitamins and minerals are too low to have any effect and the ingredients are not in a form that are bioavailable to the body. Many multivitamins also contain iodine and iron, iodine is not recommended for people with thyroid disease and the iron will block the absorption of other nutrients and vitamins.

Before supplementing, you should really test your nutrient and mineral levels. Recommended tests are for ferritin (iron), folate, Vit B12 and Vitamin D. If your ferritin is low, you could do a full iron panel test to confirm before supplementing. See which nutrients and vitamins are deficient or not optimised and base your supplementation on your results. Tests should be repeated once a year so you can see, if anything has changed or if you need to adjust your level of supplementation.

[greygoose]

Supplements are not recommended for thyroid health - by the time you end up here it's a bit late for that! What is recommended on here is testing the basics - vit D, vit B12, folate and ferritin - to see if you need to supplement and with how much, so that your body can efficiently use the hormone you're giving it.

As Tina_Maria has explained so well, multi-vits are not a good option. They also tend to contain things you don't need, such as calcium, on which it is dangerous to over-dose, which is easily done. Best to avoid them.

[BRITT1DENMARK in reply to greygoose]

Hi, thank you for your reply. These are her recent results. All seems ok except ferritin? Do you agree

Vit D 90.3 50-250

Vit B12 139 >37.5

Folate 12.7 >7

Ferritin 36.3 30-169

[greygoose in reply to BRITT1DENMARK]

Yes, her ferritin is very low. But she ought to have a full iron panel done before supplementing iron. Because her ferritin might be low but her serum iron could be high, and taking iron supplements could just make the iron level higher without raising the ferritin.

Her vit D could be higher.

Folate good.

Is that an active B12 test? If so, it's good.

[BRITT1DENMARK in reply to greygoose]

Hi, thank you once again for your reply. The latest test for iron was 22 (10-30) would she need full iron panel also?

I’m sorry I don’t know what inactive b12 is. This is a mine field for me. Just trying to get her well

[greygoose in reply to BRITT1DENMARK]

There are two tests for B12: active and total. And that's because - I think! someone correct me if I'm wrong - some B12 is bound to protein carriers and some is Free - i.e. active. The body can only use the active B12, so that's the most useful test, but not everybody uses it. You can usually tell which it is by the range, but as this test doesn't give a range - which is really stupid, BTW - we can only guess. And as it says 'over 37.5', which is pretty low for a total B12, I'm guessing it's active.

Well, her serum iron is so-so, not very high. But I really think she should consult her doctor about her ferritin, and they might suggest the iron panel himself. It's really better to let the professionals handle iron, if possible. Of course, he might just tell her to buy OITC supplements! But better to be safe than sorry. What he won't tell is that she needs to take vit C with it, to help absorption and avoid constipation.

[BRITT1DENMARK in reply to greygoose]

Thank so much. We’ll contact the gp