I don’t understand it. I’m on 2 grains Armour. But my FT3 and FT4 results are often in the 30%-40% range. TSH never low enough. But raising the dose makes me more tired. So I’ve been slowly adding Levo to the armour to see if I can get a reserve for conversion. I’ve gone up over many weeks, in 12.5mcg amounts. My last increase was from 37.5mcg a day for 4 days and 50mcg for 3 days. I held that. Then went to 50mcg a day with the 2 grains of Armour.
Within a few days of that I felt unwell. More hypo. Constipation to the point of going to the GP about it. Colder. So tired. So weary. Unable to concentrate or read. Getting nothing done except getting fatter. Eventually I realised it wasn’t right. So I thought I’d best reduce. To wash it out I would have a few days without any Levo, just the NDT. I was fine for a few days. Bowels got going, I warmed up. Less tired and able to concentrate for a couple of days. Then worse.
On the fifth day I woke up to discover that my body was panicking. Anxiety through the roof. Agitation. Erratic heart rate (worse than my usual AFib), various other unpleasant symptoms. So then I had to formulate a plan with a panicked brain! I decided to go back to a daily dose of 37.5mcg Levo with my Armour. I hadn’t felt too bad on that. Within 1/2 an hour of taking it everything calmed down. The agitation and panic went. The HR came down. It didn’t last all day, I was desperate to take my second grain at 5pm and woke up anxious and needing the dose next morning. Since then the anxiety has gone, bowels are fine and I can concentrate. But I have no energy.
We are having some new, bespoke windows fitted in our cottage tomorrow. I’m stressed because we have a house cat, she hates being shut in a room. And because someone is going to come and knock 7 bells out of my house! I still needed to clear the spare room for access. It’s not big, has 2 beds in it and about 10 years of clutter due to me being ill and unable to tackle it.
I just couldn’t face it. I couldn’t even start until afternoon. So I had the bright idea of taking 2.5mcg Thybon Henning T3. 30 minutes later a wash of anxiety came over me. My HR was strong and fast and I wanted to run away from myself. It was intense and very unpleasant. It did not result in more energy. It calmed down slightly quite a while later, but even now, hours later, my HR is faster than usual, I feel on edge, yet physically exhausted. My temperature reached 37.1 about 3 hours ago. That’s very different to my usual readings. I’m not at all calm. I was too exhausted to finish. I had to have a rest on the bed
How can such a small amount have caused such havoc ? I’m nowhere near over medicated by bloods or how I feel normally.
My endo wanted me to add T3, not T4, but I wanted to see if I could get the NDT balance more like a human ratio first no idea what to do to try to get better from here. Taking more of anything just slows me down and exhausts me. Sorry for the moan.
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FancyPants54
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Not sure about vitamin levels right now (I've had a hard time since end of October with injury and then heavy nose bleeds and a bit of PTSD). But I'm due to see the private endo in April so will be getting my bloods done for him shortly.
I feel pretty awful to be honest. No energy at all. But I can't do that to myself again (taking T3 like that). It's the heart rate that worries me so much. It really elevated it to over 100 bpm, where recently it's been running more in the lower 80's unless I do something energetic. 2 years ago I was on Levo and T3. It wasn't like yesterday and at one point I took 40mcg I think, certainly 35mcg a day.
The Roseway Labs prescribing doctor doesn't think I'm absorbing Armour properly. She might be right. She has suggested I go back to Levo and use their compounded slow release T3. I'm getting tempted because I don't think Armour is working properly sadly. In the days when it actually smelt horrible in the tablet bottle, it worked fine. It doesn't smell now, so something has changed with it.
You have my empathy....im in a very similar place and so so frustrated by tiny increments causing havoc, when you know or have many symptoms of undermedicated.
Interesting comment from Roseway re Armour about absorbtion , and i agree with you, when it smelt a bit bacon-ish it was better, seemed more effective ,but i would say in the last 6 months or so its different , more crumbly and no smell/taste. Which could mean the fillers (which Allergan are a bit vague on re the 'starch') which are supposed to be corn starch+........ but it makes me wonder.
You didnt mention the time you take your first dose in the morning. I found that shifting it to Paul Robinson's suggestion of 1.5 hrs approx before my rising time has helped a bit....and im now changing the follow up dose spacing from 8 hrs to 7hours between doses.
I empathise with the stress too.....ironically i find they are on the same loop.....the undermedicated means we are anxious and find it harder to deal with 'situations' and overmedicated causes the same feeling of anxiety.
I wish you all the best, little by little changes, take care, G.
Thank you Gillybean1 . I'm not happy that you have experienced this, but it's nice to know I'm not alone.
I even had a bad reaction today. I take my first grain + Levo at 8am and go back to sleep for an hour (I work for myself) and I don't want to get up and not be able to have a nice hot drink. Then I take my 2nd grain at 5pm. Which I realise now is 9 hours later. I've chosen that time because of meals. Mornings are not my best time of day for sure. And I get very tired in the afternoon. You might be onto something there about shifting the dose forward, I did it in the past when I followed Paul's advice and was using T3 only. Trouble is if I took my first grain + levo at 6am, for example the second grain would be due at 1 or 2pm. Smack bang on lunch time. How do you handle that?
Oh you said 1.5hrs before rising time. Which is usually 9am for me, so that would mean taking my first dose at 7:30, not much sooner at all.
I'm making a note of this in my notebook so I don't forget it. I don't really want to change anything until this has calmed down. I was shaking and feeling like I'd faint this morning around 2-4 hours after my dose, right when I had to deal with the window man the most. Then this afternoon it mostly calmed down, although my legs felt weak and wobbly. I took my second dose and had to go to work for a short while, I stopped off at the supermarket to buy something easy for dinner and realised it was happening again about 1.5 hours after my second dose! I felt like I wanted to just get home. I managed to get dinner and get to work and do what I had to do. It's now calming again. Really weird that it has had such an effect. This means (T3 half life making it likely to clear a dose in 3 days) I could still have another reaction in the morning with an even harder day of window replacements going on. Oh joy! I really messed myself up at the wrong time.
Strangely, this occurred to me tonight, I have been suffering from a dry, sickly cough in my lungs that I could not shift by actually coughing. I was cough, cough, cough and feeling a bit wheezy for weeks, since NY really. As I coughed my way around Waitrose this evening it occurred to me that in the past week, when I dropped the Levo dose for 5 days to restart at a lower level, I didn't cough. I didn't notice it's absence, but I noticed it is back and I was coughing some last night too (always was worse in the evening). I think I might have found another symptom or two there. The wheezing and being out of breath was worrying me. I must watch out for it and see if there is a pattern.
I had the same experience when I added 0.25 grains NDT to my usual 2 grains. I felt warmer, less constipated, more energetic, less fatigued and thought I’d found the answer.
Fast forward ana short while and I felt pretty much as you do now. This did coincide though with a stressful period in my life. I just cut back and came to the conclusion that stress and increases of thyroid hormone - however small - don’t mix. We can’t use T3 as a ‘quick hit’ or a fast fix
Since then I’m afraid that I’ve found this to be the case on several occasions.
I think you are probably right. Stress and dose changes are a match made in hell. I have been very stressed and anxious since November's hospitalisations. I think I need to nurture my adrenals a bit. Only never really sure how. Vitamin C, salt are regulars for me anyway. I will up my magnesium and get more consistent with iron.
Back in the day I was a patient of Dr Peatfield towards the end of his working life. He was so lovely. He used to take Armour. I think 3 or 4 grains a day. But admitted to regularly taking extra grains when he knew he'd be busy! This is what I tried to do yesterday and made a right mess. It was the tiniest dose I could cut.
I might try it again later on and literally add crumbs to my Armour to see if I can tolerate it again given some extra time. The trouble with increasing by 1/4 grain at a time we are getting 2.25 T3. Perhaps, once we have already been on a steady dose for a time, even that is too much of an increase for some of us.
I wish this wasn't so hard. I've lost 10 years to this now. Living a half-life. I hate it.
It is hard FP. It’s a constant juggling act. I think perhaps there’s a difference between being busy and stressed and Dr Peatfield was just using extra NDT as a short term energy boost.
I’ve used large doses of Vit B12 for that purpose and it works for me. Can’t do it when I’m stressed though or I’m a burning, jittery wreck. 😩
I self-inject B12 anyway. I have very painful neuropathy in my feet and B12 injections were the best way to find out if it would help. It hasn't. But I keep up with the injections instead of swallowing another pill. So I'm OK with that. I haven't been too hot or jittery as a result of B12.
Yes, being stressed isn't good. I don't know how to let it go though. I thought I was improving. But it doesn't look like it.
I’ve read so much about stress that I think I could write my own book. I’ve tries yoga, mindfulness and journaling; I’ve had counselling, hypnotherapy and acupuncture
Sadly only now am I beginning to understand that until you can identify and eliminate or manage the stressors you won’t be able to deal with the stress. Of course stress and anxiety lead to irritability and a feeling of being overwhelmed.
Mum lives with us now. She has her own front door and 1 bed abode in our garden, which she loves. But she's 90 and has a lot of physical problems getting about/doing things. I have to do a lot for her and there are always so many appointments. I also have a business, sadly sagging at the seams due to my lack of motivation with everything else.
I cleared her old house of 65 years of clutter and finally sold it last summer. Took me well over a year. I have no idea why I was so conscientious, I should have cherry picked items and had clearance do the rest.
Then I got injured just as I felt I was starting to recover from all that, and then I had a series of serious nose bleeds that scared me half to death. Just before Christmas I went to talk (nearly cried) to a GP in our practice I've not seen before because I was traumatised by my nose. He said it was PTSD. It had snowed that morning and I'd been told to avoid extremes of temps. As I cleared 4" off the car I was panicking. Driving on the snowy lanes was scary. By the time I made his office and he took my pulse he doubled my beta blocker and muttered about heart failure.
In hospital they had been anal about my BP being too high (was fine a few weeks before all this) and put me on Amlodopine, which made my already swollen ankles fit to burst and the pain in my feet worse. By the time I went home I started to feel really unwell and stopped the new drug. I don't need it. My BP reverted to normal. But at this doctor's appointment when I told him this and he increased my beta blocker he failed to tell me I might suffer side effects in a week or two. Christmas and NY came and went and I started back working. I was falling asleep half way through typing a word! Regularly. I was falling asleep reading. Falling asleep at my desk. Falling asleep watching TV. Horrifyingly I was falling into micro sleeps in the car!!! Suddenly I remembered the beta blocker. Sure enough, side effects can take a couple of weeks.
I reverted to old dose and all that nonsense stopped. They never follow up with us to find out how we feel after a new or increased medication!
And now I realise that on Sunday night, after the hyper feelings from the tiny T3, I couldn't get to sleep for a long time because the pain in my feet was so bad. By last night that pain was manageable again. )I didn't sleep last night worrying about being ready this morning for more window replacements.). This made me realise that as I was increasing my Levo dose up to 50mcg a day recently, the pain in my feet at night was getting worse and worse. The week I stopped the increase, the pain in my feet subsided quite a bit. Then peaked again with the T3. So even that looks like it's linked!
I've just ordered the ingredients for adrenal cocktails.
"being stressed isn't good. I don't know how to let it go " ..
. ever tried demolishing / breaking stuff ?
'better out than in ' as they say .
back of my house currently has a broken chair , a bent saucepan , 3 mugs chucked against a wall and just to top it off nicely . a smashed up yard brush and dustpan .... terrifying but effective .
wasn't me lol...daughter did it friday after work ~ works in male dominated industry ...nuff said ~
No armour of any kind , me and hubby bravely hid in dining room. Wearing armour probably bad idea , apparently metal is 'more satisfying to smash up than crockery is'.
I did once see my neighbour loose his temper over something in the garden and yell at his partner as he flung a broom into a new conservatory window. Fortunately it bounced off. He didn't know I was on the other side of the hedge. She's quite controlling and I think he'd just had enough of not getting a say about the garden.
lol , a bloke once popped up very gingerly from behind a stone wall in the countryside ~ "um ,,, is everything ok?" ~ i was thrashing my old ambulance for refusing to start while screaming "WHY ! why are you doing this to me you stupid B,,,,, " (a la 'Basil Fawlty')..... can't imagine where my daughter gets it from ....
I’m sad to hear what you’re going through as I’ve been there myself -and also used to see Dr Peatfield . I’ve never been able to tolerate either Armour or NP thyroid and I remember Dr P said Armour would ‘knock my socks off’. I’ve struggled along trying to juggle Levo and T3 which is a moving feast for me! A couple of things I’ve find helpful - propranolol 10mcg when I get over medicated and the ensuing high HR, temperature etc . The other thing I do is with my Cynomel 25mcgs I crush 1/4 of a tablet and just dab my finger and out on my tongue. I do that when I need a bit of energy, feel weary etc, and it does help!
I’m interested to read that Roseway Labs have a prescribing doctor - does that work well ? Do they do it online? Its becoming increasingly tricky to get my T3 from Mexico.
You make an appointment with the prescriber through Roseway's web site and she calls you on the phone and you have a chat. She's switched on about this stuff. First time costs a little more I think, but not much and you have to fill in a lot of medical questions. Follow ups are around £30 and are useful. She's suggested I might want to think about going back to Levo and T3, but given the instant hit nature of T3 for me (not as extreme as this, but bad enough) she's suggesting I try compounded slow release T3. I'd be willing to give it a go. It's a lot cheaper than Armour apparently.
It's worth having a chat with her. She then issues a prescription for you which Roseway hold and you can order a bottle at a time off it if you wish. She likes to speak to your every 6 months, but you can do sooner if you wish.
I might be stating the blooming obvious here, but your post reads like quite a few tweaks in quick succession.
As a reformed tweaker, I can recommend slower changes (as in stay on the changed dose for a full 8-12 weeks) as the ups and downs of life and our cycles and reactions to food and chemicals around us all change the day to day. If we keep adjusting our bodies can’t settle on a dose we make life even more challenging for ourselves. 🤗
I know that's sensible and I usually do make changes like that. But having built up to 50mcg of Levo with my NDT I could not stay like that. It was unworkable and I have a lot I have to manage, I can't curl up under the duvet and cry for 6 weeks, which is how I felt. I had to flush the Levo out by leaving it off completely for a few days to reduce the store of it and then restart at a level that was OK before. I should have restarted a day sooner to avoid the anxiety which hit on day 5. The T3 was just for a boost, or so I thought. I still had a small reaction this morning. But the T3 should be mostly gone by my 5pm NDT dose later today and it will be back to the slower and softer T3 in NDT, which I can cope with.
Now I need to try to rest my adrenal glands. This is not a good week to have windows replaced. There's stone dust everywhere and trying to keep our indoor cat safe is doing my head in. I will be pleased when it's Saturday. Oh, and on top of all that my husband's side of the business started a new contract on Monday and I am being called on for a lot of admin on that front.
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