Armour thyroid?

[bubblepony]

Why does everyone want armour thyroid and why do so many doctors not want to prescribe it?

[gimel]

Not a problem, Bruce.  I am taking 3 grains of Armour Thyroid.  I've done a bit of experimenting with the time when I take meds, and I'm currently taking 2 grains in the morning and one grain in early afternoon.  Since my FT4 is below the middle of the range, I am planning to ask my doctor to add a bit of T4 med.

[Brucergoldberg]

Gimel,

Can i ask your current protocol for meds?   Im curious to know what you take  if its not too personal.  Bruce

[gimel]

When taking large doses of thyroid meds, TSH is frequently suppressed.  TSH can be suppressed from either T4 meds or T3 meds.  That does not mean that you are hyper, unless you also have hyper symptoms due to excessive levels of the biologically active thyroid hormones, Free T3 and Free T4.  When taking thyroid meds, TSH becomes totally inadequate as a diagnostic by which to medicate the patient.  

TSH causes no symptoms directly.  It 's purpose is to stimulate the thyroid gland to produce thyroid hormone.  TSH is supposed to accurately reflect the levels of thyroid hormone; however, it cannot be shown to correlate well with either Free T3 or Free T4, much less with symptoms, which are the most important.

T4 meds work well for hypo patients as long as their body is adequately converting the T4 to t3.  When conversion becomes inadequate to keep your Free T3 level high enough to relieve symptoms, that is when T3 needs to be added to the meds.

A good thyroid doctor will treat a hypo patient clinically by testing and adjusting Free T3 and Free T4 as necessary to relieve symptoms, without being constrained by resultant TSH levels.  Symptom relief should be all important, not just test results.  You can get some good insight into clinical treatment from this letter written by a good thyroid doctor for patients that he sometimes consults with from a distance.  The letter is then sent to the PCP of the patient to help guide treatment.

http://hormonerestoration.com/files/ThyroidPMD.pdf

When you do go back to the doctor for testing, make sure to request that they test for Free T3 and Free T4 (not the same as Total T3 and Total T4).  If the doctor resists, then you should insist on it and don't take no for an answer.  Free T3 is the most important, because scientific studies have shown that it correlated best with hypo symptoms, while Free T4 and TSH did not correlate.

By the way, while taking 200 mcg of T4 med,  my TSH was been about .05 for well over 25 years without ever having hyper symptoms.  In fact I continued having hypo symptoms until learning about the importance of Free T3 on this Forum and after testing found mine to be low in the range, consistent with being hypo.  Doctor revised my meds to a T4/T3 combo type (Armour) and after some tweaking I now feel best ever.  My FT3 is 3.9 (range of 2.3- 4.2) and FT4 is .86 (range of .60 - 1.50).

[LazyMoose]

The longer and more thyroid hormone your on in time seem to make TSH supres. Some report are close to zero. Thats when you find a Dr that looks at ft3, ft4. TSH is not accurate.

[lafay13]

Have you ever heard of the Armour Thyroid causing your pituitary glad to fair? My PA refuses to prescribe Armour and seems to think it is what's causing my TSH level to be extremely low(.03). But I think it's because I was taking 300 mcg of sythroid before my old PA put me back on 180mcg. I've been back on Armour for 2 months now and I feel 200% better than I ever did on the synthetic. I took the test after a few weeks to being on Armour so I really don't think my low TSH is do to the Armour. I think I'm going to test my thyroid again, just to proove the Armour is not hurting my pituitary glad, maybe she will then realize I need to stay on the Armour.
What do you think?

JD

[LazyMoose]

Ahh!!!!! The liver converts into active T3. I forgot reading about that  some time ago during my brain fog days! Thanks for the simple explanation Stella!