Hashimotos

[sunysgrl]

Hello all, I was diagnosed with Hashimotos about 10 years ago. I was always very thin, hyper, very anxious so never really dawned on me there could be a problem. One day at work, my heart started to race and i had severe palpitations. Luckily i work in the medical field so had an EKG done and labs. My TSH was normal but my antibodies were in the 3,000's. The palpitations lasted  days all day (very scary), then nothing. I had a thyroid scan and uptake done as well as a thyroid ultrasound and both were normal. Antibodies would swing back and forth. My docs never put me on meds, we were just monitoring. Well, I was religious with my lab work until about 5 years ago (labs were always normal after the first few events). I had my first child in March of 2007 and have not felt so great since then. It never dawned on me that maybe the hormonal event of childbirth make my thyroid go "crazy" again. But, since then I have had trouble losing all of my weight (still have an extra 20 on). I eat pretty good an exercise at least 3 days per week. Always feel exhausted, can not lose the weight, losing a bit more hair in the shower, just feel not myself. I went to the doctor last Thursday and go for a follow up this Thursday. I am so curious to see of that is the problem. If so, if my thyroid has now gone HYPO, and I needed to start meds, does that help with losing the weight, and everything else? Seems like the meds are not really the answer.... HELP!

[gimel]

With Hashimoto's the antibodies keep attacking the thyroid glands until they are destroyed.  While this is going on, you can get a lot of variation in the output of thyroid hormone, along with a gradual decrease in thyroid hormone output over time, as the glands are destroyed.   In my opinion, just monitoring without any treatment will only assure that you have lots of hypo symptoms until the doctor decides to medicate you.  I don't really see any downside to treating you in the interim, by testing and adjusting the levels of your biologically active thyroid hormones (FT3 and FT4) with meds as required to alleviate your symptoms.  Don't medicate based on TSH alone.

Here's a good link on this subject.

http://thyroid.about.com/od/hypothyroidismhashimotos/a/preventative.htm

  

[ChitChatNine]

Hi and WELCOME to our Community --- I'm not well versed with Hashi's but wanted to stop by and say hi!~

WELCOME!  C~