is 125 mcg of levothyroxine a high medium or low dosage please

[Sexybeast]

[Derpington]

What's important, more so than whether your dosages is high in relation to others, is whether your dosage is sufficient for your own purposes, i.e. whether it makes you well or if you still feel inadequately treated on it.

So how do you feel on it?

[Sexybeast in reply to Derpington]

cold even in the house i have 2 t shirts 2 jumpers and a hat on i am permanently cold if i have a shower i don't want to come out because i know i will be cold even with the heating on

[galathea]

Well in that case it looks like the dose is too low for you. A normal replacement dose is somewhere around 150 mcg per day but some people take at least double this.... Some take less and are fine.... So much is dependent upon other factors..... Like b 12, iron levels, selenium supplements, ferritn levels. Have you had any of these checked?

G x

[Sexybeast in reply to galathea]

just a normal blood test doctor said peramaters fine but why am i so cold

[Derpington in reply to Sexybeast]

If you only had the TSH test and T4 test then this is insufficient alone for gauging thyroid function.

The TSH test measures a pituitary hormone called thyrotropin, which is affected by a feedback loop often made out of kilter from downregulation of output from period of hypometabolism, which is further augmented from the presence of just enough T3 reaching the pituitary gland to satisfy it, yielding a false 'normal' reference range reading.

T3 or liothyroxine/tri-iodo-thyronine is the active form of thyroid hormone. Most patients are prescribed levothyroxine or T4, a biologically inactive, storage form of thyroid hormone, which needs to be converted into the former for anybody to derive any benefit from it.

The only test that really matters, then, is free-T3, but even this can be insufficient in building the whole clinical picture, for it's only reflective of blood serum T3 levels, not intracellular activity, which can be affected by a number of other factors, such as vitamin deficiencies as galathea describes, or the presence of reverse-T3, which is often not tested for by the NHS.

[galathea in reply to Sexybeast]

You need to see the test results for yourself. Ask the doctor for a copy and post the results on here. Who knows what your doctor believes is fine. Being cold all the time does not show that you are ok, it suggests too little thyroid hormone.

[shaws Administrator]

Before the TSH became the only way to diagnose thyroid problem whilst ignoring clinical symptoms the normal dose of thyroid medications were between 200mcg and 400mcg some may have had higher and were dosed until symptoms went. Dr Lowe said that undertreatment could cause other serious diseases.

[ritz]

i was on 250 - so for me it would be low - but no matter how much levo i took i just got worse.

i changed to armour and t3 which works for me whereas levo just made me ill.

[T0mrich]

OMG, I had a suspected heart attack in June, I had a chest xray & a blood test, I was sent home & 3 weeks later I had a call to go in & see my GP, nobody mentioned the heart thing, or the high blood pressure (the monitor I was told I had to wear for 24 hrs never materialised either) previously I had a Dissecting Carotid Artery (only diagnosed when I went private) & they were fixated with that. Now I've been told 'you have an overactive thyroid' I have NO idea what this does, or why they say I have to be on Levothyroxine forever! I started off on 25mcg every morning, & after 3 months they've upped it to 50mcg,, nobody has said when I shall be tested again, or why, & I don't get what all the fuss is about as my chemist says it's the carotid artery thing & being post menopausal that's the problem. So the answer to your ? of low high doses - who knows?

[hoperoberts]

I am 59kg, is 125mg levothytoxine too much for me?