When is best to take Armour?

[hlambiase]

I've heard it's best to take on an empty stomach. I usually take at about 5 am and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours. Or I take it when I first get up, I don't eat for a few hours but I do have coffee with cream & sugar soon after taking med. what is best?

[flyingfool]

I personally am on only a very small T4 only mendication dose.  My wife and daughter are on Armour.

My daughter doesn't seem to notice a difference w hen taking it all at once in the morning versus splitting it. And she often forgot to take it in the afternoon. So she since has decided to keep with a single dose in the morning.  I just wish she was more disciplined to take the split dose as she really fades off by the end of the day and is a grumpy butt!  She is a 21 year old adult so she has the maturity to do it if she put her mind to it.

My wife does the split dosage. She is on 180mg (3 grains).  She s imply sets an alarm on her cell phone that goes off at about 3PM in the afternoon and simply takes the 2nd dose then.  Of course women usually have a purse on or near them.  Men will have to carry a pill case, or at least a small zip lock bag or something to keep the pill in their pocket.

If you take the 2nd dose early in the afternoon it should not affect your sleep.  You may have to experiment with the timing of the 2nd dose as everyone is affected different.  My wife can take this as late as 3PM or so with no promblems. I have heard others who can't do it after about 1 or 2 PM.  So it is an individual thing.

My wife doesn't really seem too affected by food and timing for the morning dose. She is not a big person for breakfast so she takes the first dose when she firsts gets up.  She takes any vitamins 4 hours or so after the morning dose of Armour.

[Neeson]

So do you take armour before food?  How in the afternoon do you take your second dose.  Also, does the second dose interfere with your sleep?

Thanks!

[gimel]

I find it easiest to just use my fingers to split the pills.  If that doesn't work, just moisten the pill slightly and it is easy.  

[hlambiase]

Very helpful. Thanks. It's a 90 mg dose. I haven't had great luck physically splitting the pills. Any advice there?

[flyingfool]

First off, what is your dosage?

The most common recommendation for Armour is to split the dose and take half in the morning and half in the early evening.

The reason for this is that Armour has a lot of T3 in it.  And T3 is used up in a matter of HOURS.  It peaks in the blood about 4 hours after taking it and then starts weaning down.  So by taking it in the morning and again in the early afternoon, you more even out the amount of T3 in your blood stream.  The second dose is taken before the first dose is completely gone.  So while the first dose is waning away, the 2nd dose is ramping up.

It is best to keep medicines away from eating by about an hour.  With T4 you want to stay away of supplments and especially calcium as it binds with the T4 and reduces the absoption.  I don't think that T3 is nearly as critical.  And the fairly small amount of calcium in cream in your coffee would seem pretty negligible to me.

So you may want to just sleep in until you normally get up and take it and simply delay eating.  No sense in disrupting your sleep to get up to take the med and then try to go back to sleep.  besides the T3 is ramping up while you are sleeping and thus will be all used up that much sooner in the evening leaving you feeling sleepy most likely before bed.  And the disruption of sleep makes that sleepiness that much worse.

Just my opinion.