If you do have Grave Disease do your research before you consider the rai - i had graves disease and did the rai - and have been hypo since nov - and am still not a normal tsh reading - i have had to switch doctors - if i had done more research i would have gone a different route but trusted what was told to me -

It depends on the cause.  If it is Graves, then the other option is anti-thyroid drugs.  If toxic nodule(s) then usually I-131 or surgery are best options.  If it is thyroiditis there is no treatment other than controlling the symtpoms as this resolves on its own in 4-8 weeks usually.

Well you definately have to be careful with the heavy exercise as you are slightly hyperthyroid.... and that is already putting strain on your body and using your heart more than it should be.... I think your body is telling you to slow down... I say give your body the chance to and some treatment options to do normalize your thyroid.

I was too diagnosed with hyper.  The cause of my turned out to be a toxic goitre (a nodule that was producing for my thyroid).  My options were to take mythemizal (spelling?) for a short amount of time.  They do not recommend staying on this for an extended amount of time.  I took that for a couple of months just to get a good point before more permanant treatments.  After that, my options were RAI, surgery, and a treatment were they inject ethanol (I believe thats what it was) into the thyroid.  Because of the uptake scans showing that the nodule had too much function to be able to tell if my thyroid was doing anything at all, I opted out of the RAI.  With the RAI they really don't know what will be left when its done, and there is a higher chance of being hypo afterwards.  I chose surgery, and they took the left half of my thyroid including the nodule.  It has been 6 months since surgery, and I have just started taking Synthroid.  Before going through surgery, I was told that I would end up on Synthroid at some point, but the big question was when.  It was definitely sooner than I would have liked.  I needed to have something done soon because my heart rate (resting) was over 130 bpm, my TSH was 0.011 (not too bad), and my blood pressure was also high.  So I needed it done to keep my heart from working too hard.

Be carefeul. The RAI will destroy your thyroid. That will make you hypo. I am not sure if TSH 0 needs RAI. I am a hypo on Armour and my TSH is around 0.009 I feel fine. How do you feel? Do you have strong hyper symptoms? There are nontraditional MDs who will not take the RAI step just yet but try to put a break on your thyroid in other ways. There are other ways. Try researching this... and read on www.about.thyroid.com too - lots of good info. It depends how your other lab results are and some Uptake tests and I am sure there are other tests for hypers which can detect how much - like FreeT4 and T4 totals - will signal how much over you are the limit. All this and how you feel, your blood pressure (if high can be because of too much Th hormone) or if your heart beat is racy at 100 per minute - then yes I say it puts a strain on your body and it needs to be controlled and put a break on...There is lots of stuff on Graves deisease on the site and I think you should do your research before you commit to RAI. Most doctors will tell you that RAI is good and OK and rush you to remove a thyroid too. Some cases - cancer etc. it is neccessary to do so. Not always. A 0 TSH is not too much of a concern, but you do have to monitor yourself. Check for Hyper antibodies too...... I wish you lots of good luck and even better health!

thanks for the feedback.  I actually feel pretty good with no real symptoms to speak of.  lately I have been  little fatigued but nothing serious.  My only issue has been my heart rate.  I am a cyclist and was told by some racing buddies that my heart rate was way to high for the rides we were doing.  I was about 30-35bpm faster than the others for an avg heart rate.  Resting HR now is about 80-90 but during hard excercise or rides it will stay elevated at an avg of 170-180 and a peak of about 205bpm.  This is what prompted me to go to the doc in the first place as if it werent for cycling I wouldnt have recognized a problem for who knows how long.  I have been anxious to get back to racing but the docs wont clear me until my scan results come back and they can get the Thyroid normalized.  I was just curious of treatment options and how long to recovery before I can resume heavy excercise.