Debated question.

[Sasah]

I have always been medication adverse. I am worried about been on Levo. For all side effects and been run off synthetic hormones alone as frlm advise here your own natural production of T4 will cease and shut down.

My friens seems to be thriving with 1/2 thyroid and stand by diet and nutrition is key. I do thing here full tgyrpid fucnctioned better than mine.

At the moment tge docs saying i am sub clinical hypo and could try and adjust through lifestyle.

So my questuon is doung this and functioning on natural T4 not better that intoduving levo. Is tge side effects of levo outweighed by the good?

[greygoose]

What side-effects?

[Sasah in reply to greygoose]

Heart cardio prblems, weight gain.... more hair loss....fake hormone not been able to fluctuatr and not organic...

[greygoose in reply to Sasah]

No, sorry, but you've totally misunderstood. Those are hypo symptoms, not levo side-effects. Taking levo is not going to cause all that.

And levo is not 'fake' hormones. It is synthetic, yes, but synthetic does not mean 'fake'. Chemically, it's structure is exactly the same as the hormone made by your thyroid. And plenty of people live very full and healthy lives taking it. Only, you won't find them on this forum - except for helvella - because they have better things to do. Those of us on here are the exceptions to the rule, the outliers, the complicated cases. There's absolutely no reason why you should be like us. The odds are you'll be perfectly fine on levo.

As to fluctuation... once again, you are ignoring the effect of of T3.

When you take a pill of levo, it doesn't instantly get used. It builds up in your blood to form a good store. As I told you before, it doesn't do much until it is converted into the active hormone, T3. And there's your fluctuation: it is converted as needed.

I'm not going to go into conversion in any more detail than that because you're already very confused and it gets a bit complicated. But the T4 pill you take is not instantly converted into T3 and used. It is made as needed and used as needed. More or less as it would be if your thyroid was making it.

[Sasah in reply to greygoose]

Thank you....xx

[greygoose in reply to Sasah]

You're welcome.

[Tina_Maria]

Just to clarify, levothyroxine is absolutely identical to your natural T4, it is synthesised in a laboratory, as it would be very difficult and labour intensive extracting so much thyroxine from natural sources!

So in fact, you are taking exactly the same T4 as your thyroid would be making, if it still could. And as your thyroid can no longer produce T4, you have to take it in the form of levothyroxine as a replacement.