For me it was :
To take the medication faithfully at the same time EVERY day.
A proper diet (low carb. high protein-avoiding sugars, milk, peanuts (fungal foods or fungal feeding foods). Also, taking high quality (pharmacutical grade) suppliments (vitamin D, magnesium, fish oil, pro biotics etc.), and giving up or limiting as much gluten from your diet as possible can help.Lots of rest, exercise, and calmness! Just plain ol' taking good care of yourself is helpful when trying to get well and adjust to thyroid medications.
some people feel better at different levels. some people feel better if their ft3 and ft4 are lower than med range and upper mid range. treatment is very individual. it takes so much time to learn and understand how to figure it all out. the most important thing i have learned is to educated myself because KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
bump. weekend post ! I can't wait to post on this one :)
Labs -- the importance of testing the proper parameters; and how to interpret results in relation to the reference ranges, etc.
Symptoms -- the importance of treating according to symptoms, as much or more so, than the labs.
I don't know if your question is in relation to things we've learned HERE or just in general, but one thing I learned HERE, is that there are some great people with a lot of knowledge and that having a place to go, where everyone understands the issues, goes hand in hand with the actual treatment; in fact, it's almost PART of the treatment.
To make things difficult, I included three things. : -) One is not enough.
1) MEDS -What to expect from changing to dessicated thyroid from synthetic T4 (on ten yrs). How to 'ramp up' the dose the first month.
2) Labs -The importance of free T3 levels, how having it in the upper 3rd of the range relives hypo symptoms with some people that were suffering on a T4 only.
3) Symptoms- Learning that my many symptoms that were getting out of control for years were really from Dr. untreating my Hashimotos. It was assuring to know I was not the only one.