taken off levo

[djdean7]

My family dr had a blood test run and said I was hypo and put me on levo 25 mcg. I had no syptoms of it other than I am obese, no one in my family has ever been diagnosed with hypo and they all have blood test done regularly and the women in my family are all obese. Ever since she put me on levo I have been sick. I was never sick before. I went to her because I had laryngitis for 4 months. Which I finally went to an ENT dr since my family dr would just give me nasal spray and not test or anything for that. I finally went to an endo, he took me off the levo about a month ago. I feel like my old self again. I went on a 1300 calorie a day diet and quit smoking all within 2 1/2 weeks. I ended up in the hospital with a pulse rate of 43. They checked my heart and said everything was fine. Dont know why my pulse so low.  While there they ran blood test every 6 hours. My 1st test my TSH was 4.851 and 20 hours later was 6.711 and my T4 free was 1.25, they only had the T4 result on the last test (20th hour). My endo dr is doing a ultrasound of my thyroid cause he thought he felt a lump in my throat. I am glad I am off the thyroid meds and feel so much better but why did he take me off and does it sound like I will need to go back on. By the way he is running a blood test on me next week. He wanted me off the levo at least 5 weeks before he checked my blood

[Barb135]

Many members report feeling worse when they first start on a thyroid medication because it takes time for their body to get used to having hormones it's been doing without.  Others can have reaction to the fillers/binders in the pills and simply switching to different manufacturer is sufficient.

It sounds like your endo is trying to get a "baseline" test panel done, which would be done after all the med is out of your system.  Because levothyroxine has a long 1/2 life, it will take a while to get it all out of your system, which is probably why your endo is waiting 5 weeks to retest.

Yes, you will most likely have to go back on the medication at some point.

In addition to the TSH test, you also need to have the Free T4 (FT4) and also a Free T3 (FT3).  FT3 and FT4 are the actual thyroid hormones and correlate best with symptoms, especially the FT3, which is the active hormone.  TSH is a pituitary hormone, that stimulates the thyroid to produce hormones.

Hopefully, your doctor will also run antibody tests to determine whether or not you have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune disease in which the body sees the thyroid as foreign and produces antibodies to destroy it. If he doesn't run these tests, you should ask for them.  They are Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies (TPOab) and Thyroglobulin Antibodies (TGab).  Hashimotot's is the number one cause of hypothyroidism in the developed world.

When you get new blood work done, please post the results and reference ranges, and members can help assess the testing/treatment.

[djdean7]

sorry, the ref range of my T4 free is 0.76-1.79 ng/dL