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Cytomel Treatment - how to take?
Hello,
I was on .50 of tirosint and i didnt seem to be doing very well. It seemed like it was too much " treble and not enough bass" is the best way to describe it.
I dropped it down to .25 tirosint and feel a little better. But after my last round of tests, my Dr. wants to try to add in a tiny hair of t3. She gave me 5mcg pills. From what i read on here, this stuff is very potent. I have been on a lower dose of t4 for 4 days now. I want to add in the t3. I gather i will only take 1/4 of the 5mcg pill to start.
My question is - do i just take it with the t4? do i wait a little bit? If it works, should i eventually bump it to 1/4 a pill twice a day?
Last time i tried this stuff was a year ago and i failed miserably. Took it one time and that was it. It was way too much for me. I want to try to do this right this time.
Thanks,
Bruce
I was on .50 of tirosint and i didnt seem to be doing very well. It seemed like it was too much " treble and not enough bass" is the best way to describe it.
I dropped it down to .25 tirosint and feel a little better. But after my last round of tests, my Dr. wants to try to add in a tiny hair of t3. She gave me 5mcg pills. From what i read on here, this stuff is very potent. I have been on a lower dose of t4 for 4 days now. I want to add in the t3. I gather i will only take 1/4 of the 5mcg pill to start.
My question is - do i just take it with the t4? do i wait a little bit? If it works, should i eventually bump it to 1/4 a pill twice a day?
Last time i tried this stuff was a year ago and i failed miserably. Took it one time and that was it. It was way too much for me. I want to try to do this right this time.
Thanks,
Bruce
Here we go again. There is a missing componet here with me. I'm not sure what it is, but there is something missing. Having both my ears ringing and aching at the same time as well as my neck hurting so bad I have to ice it every night is just a little abnormal for someone that just has hashimotos? I don't have a lot of the stuff I had a year ago. My symptoms have changed. Ihave been reading about "painful hashimotos". Which looks more similar to mine. Could it be?
This post is a little more than 10 days old and has 92 comments. wow.
Bruce, after reading all this, it looks to have a similar pattern to your earlier posts. From last year.
No one will ever feel better if they keep changing the amount of any thyroid med on a daily basis as quick as you do. Its not possible.
After more than a year of us telling you, looks like this basic information has not sunk in yet. How do you expect to feel better when you change meds / amount / time at the drop of a hat? Even though T3 is fast acting, the total benefits cannot be felt for quit a while. So it cannot be 'judged' in a day or even three weeks.
Just saying it like it is.
Symptoms will surface from changing meds / amounts so much, that is what happens to anyone doing that.
Yes, patients is a virtue. And more challenging for some of us. Just a basic reminder, sometimes we need that.
Bruce, after reading all this, it looks to have a similar pattern to your earlier posts. From last year.
No one will ever feel better if they keep changing the amount of any thyroid med on a daily basis as quick as you do. Its not possible.
After more than a year of us telling you, looks like this basic information has not sunk in yet. How do you expect to feel better when you change meds / amount / time at the drop of a hat? Even though T3 is fast acting, the total benefits cannot be felt for quit a while. So it cannot be 'judged' in a day or even three weeks.
Just saying it like it is.
Symptoms will surface from changing meds / amounts so much, that is what happens to anyone doing that.
Yes, patients is a virtue. And more challenging for some of us. Just a basic reminder, sometimes we need that.
im going to houston in the end of the month to see a endo that appears to be someone who knows what they are talking about at MD anderson hospital. His name is Dr. Elhaj. Has anyone seen him?
I know I'm a bit late getting into this discussion but as a former user of Tirosint (stopped taking it after 6 weeks because my periods stopped -- which is no good when TTC) and former user of Cytomel and/or NatureThroid, Bruce have you ever tried 37.5 mcg of T4? I can believe Tirosint 25 mcg can be too high if you are sensitive. Maybe because the delivery is way too fast being in a gelcap. If Tirosint is giving you serious tinnitus then maybe you can go with Levoxyl or just try compounding? As a previous poster mentioned that your Selenium may contribute to high conversion maybe you don't need Cytomel. And with Cytomel why did you add .5 + .5 within a day? That will send you to hyper-hell b/c it is way too much for a newbie. Not trying to gang up on you but we want to make sure you do not do anything that can be fatal. The T3 in Cytomel is NOT the same as the T3 in dessicated where the dessicated is not as strong. Please be careful and take it slow. Remember, slow and steady wins the race. Hormones take a while to work.
I have plans.... They just never work out. It's amazing how this disease has metamorphasized over the last year...
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I suggest you do the work and read De. Arem's book and see what YOU think about his practice. I live in Santa Monica CA, so I haven't been to the clinic, but because my sister lives in Houston, I'm considering it if I don't get better results with my labs next time.
I can tell you that my sister in Houston has Hashimoto's and thinks she does well on Synthroid alone, although she has a hard time keeping her weight down. But it took several years before she was properly diagnosed, and she had some nearly psychotic psychological episodes before she found a good doctor that she trusts. Thyroid hormones have a very profound effect on your brain and your emotions. At first they thought she had rheumatoid arthritis and then lupus before Hashi's was correctly diagnosed. Even then, she had to go on a wheat-free gluten-free diet for a year before her medication worked properly, a food allergy that is not uncommon in hypothyroidism. She did all her own baking and cooking for an entire year while taking care of 4 children with a husband who had to travel a lot for work, and sometimes her body and joints hurt so badly that she had a hard time forcing herself out of bed. But she did it, and reintroduced wheat back into her diet.......Although she has a few bad days occasionally, mostly she's well. Her thyroid doesn't function at all any more. She loves her doctor.
On the other hand, she has a friend in Houston with hypothyroidism...not Hashi's....who went to various doctors and felt terrible all the time on T4 with many symptoms but a "normal" TSH. She found out about Dr. Arem's clinic, and told my sister about the book to recommend to me. The friend went to Dr. Arem and got better and is thriving on T4 /T3 therapy. However, she says, and I have heard from others, that Dr. Arem's "bedside manner" is not the warmest and he doesn't suffer patients who don't do as they are told. He is also a cllinical teaching professor at Baylor. So I wouldn't go there unless you are prepared to do exactly what they recommend for as long as it takes. So far, it doesn't seem you've been willing to give protocols a proper chance to work.
I urge you again to read the book and to at least explore that website I gave you . While that and other websites such as http:www.thyroid-rt3.com and http://www.altsupportthyroid.org sometimes advocate dessicated thyroid, which didn't work for me, the information contained therein is applicable to whatever form of replacement you choose. You have to DO THE WORK and study the disease, you can't just expect people on this forum to give you all the information you need to have an informed discussion with your doctor. We are here to support you emotionally and give you what benefit of our own predicaments that we can. I think I've been reading your posts for nearly a year and haven't seen much change in them.You get yourself very worked up. And don't get me wrong......as someone who is extremely drug sensitive and has sometimes been known to have paradoxical response to drugs (they work the opposite) I am very sympathetic to your plight, otherwise I wouldn't take all this time to respond .
Barb is right about self-medication and your seeming impatience and others have told you the same. You should listen to her. Everyone wants to help you, but it gets hard when you don't seem to listen or take advantage of medical information that is made available to you. We're all pretty much going through the wringer with this disease, otherwise we'd have better things to do than hang around on this forum.
Be gentle with yourself, Bruce, T3 is 4X stronger than T4, so just taking yourself off it suddenly is a HUGE shock to your system. Yes, your body is taking you on a wild ride, so being as calm as you can possibly manage to be is of great benefit to you. Stress is not your friend and will tweek your levels. If you decide to take a small dose....like .25....of Xanax or Valium....I suggest taking it every day for a while, perhaps at bedtime and always at the SAME time. Use it to get your body out of an over-reactive neural loop. Routine IS your friend. Kudos on the exercise regime. Kudos on finding work you like to do at home......you have a lot going for you and you have the loving support of your family.
If, after reading Dr. Arem's book you decide to try the clinic, I'll be really interested in what you think. I wish you all the best.