Hashi's/Hypo switched to Nature-Throid

[Sherri90049]

I'm a Hashi's patient who is hypo but has a normal TSH & T3 and T4 at the moment (despite feeling rotten!). I was on Synthroid for the last 3 months. At the beginning I noticed alot of improvement, but after a while, it seemed like it was helping less and less. (Not sure how well I convert T4 to T3, because my endo thinks TSH test is the only thing that matters so he doesn't usually test for anything else. Don't start me on him!) Any way, I went and saw another doctor who suggested what I had hoped she would - for me to switch to Nature-Throid. I had been on only 50mcg of Synthroid. She started me on 1 grain of Nature-Throid. Today I took half at 5:30am and the other half at 11:30am. I've only been on it for two days now, so I guess it's too soon to know if it will work for me, right? I have been feeling really hypo in the last few days. (really painful goiter) :( How soon would you guess that I'll be able to tell if I'll need more than the 1 grain dose I started on? Also, does anyone else find they do better with Nature-Throid than Synthroid? And last question, did any Hashi's or Hypo women have their cycles thrown off? Or have any hormonal imbalances, like prematurely very high FSH & LH, low progesterone & estrogen, etc.? And if so, did treatment eventually correct all that? Thanks in advance!

[Sherri90049]

Thanks so much for your help! I am waiting for my new integrative medicine doctor to do the adrenal test so I can start that treatment. I have had it forever (probably 27 years) and known about it only for a couple of years. I know there are alot of great herbal things for it, but most of them say not to take if you have ulcers. So I think I'll end up with hydrocortisone. I don't know how much of my problem is adrenal and how much is thyroid. Or maybe it doesn't even matter. I guess I should just be treating both and some day I'll hopefully feel better.

I wonder what it is that makes it take so long for the body to get used to thyroid medication. When you take this stuff it doesn't stimulate your own thyroid into making more hormone, right? It actually IS the hormone and it goes throughout your body to all the organs that need it? Does it just take those organs time to recognize the new replacement T3 and T4 and then start metabolizing it and functioning better? I would think it would be quicker than it is, but what do I know?

So I'll try to take it 3 times a day, except it'll be hard to break the pill into thirds. Fourths would be easy. I wonder if that would work? I hope the dessicated ends up working for me. If it doesn't, I guess I could go back to Synthroid and then beg my dr for Cytomel. Will see how I feel in a month and then see the lab results. Thanks again! :)

[LazyMoose]

Adrenal hormones do not nessessarily get better from improved thyroid, so they need some additional support possibly. Thats a wheelbarrow full of options right there. Might go to the Adrenal or complimentary medicine forum for that.

I cant comment on the dose comparison, since NT did not work for me. It still does for some people though. They do have a dose chart on their website you can see.

And switching from synthetic to Dessicated is a tough change for the body anyhow, you could feel kind of messed up for a month, been there!  Remember that T4 from synthroid will stay in you for a few weeks, and now you get 'instant' T3, so its hard to change over. Best to error on the hypo side. The filler is now the same used in Armour, Micro Crystalline Cellulose. Change was per FDA.

Dessicated is taken best in the morning , then mid after noon. If your taking it sublingually, you can do this 3 times a day (food wont matter) to help get used to the T3. If NT works out for you, go back to twice a day.

[Sherri90049]

Thanks for your response. My adrenals are screwed up, too, so it's a very confusing picture. :( Wish I could go back and add the Cytomel. Problem was that my endo would never give it to me. I had to go to another dr just to get Nature-Throid. Otherwise I'd be stuck on Synthroid only and feeling crappy. I think she was wrong on the dose of 1 grain. Maybe I'm just absorbing it better than Synthroid because I'm crushing it and taking it sublingually, but I went hyper on Friday night. I HATE that. The worst feeling! I get so freaked out when my heart rate and BP jump so high that I always have to take Atenolol and Clonidine to try to bring them down. Problem was on Fri that I couldn't get them to go down so I keep taking a little more and a little more. Then my BP got so low and it hasn't even come back yet. It's stuck around 82/63, which feels almost as bad as 150/95 for me. My BP is normally quite low, but 82/63 is a little ridiculous. Praying it comes back up soon. I guess there must be some Clonidine still left in my system since I took so much. (0.45mg for a 108 lb woman in a one hour period) :(

Luckily the new dr is ordering my thyroid checked in 6 weeks to see how I do on Nature-Throid. Hopefully I do ok. I went to a half a grain today. (Do you recommend I take a quarter grain in the AM and a quarter in the evening?) I took nothing yesterday because I was so afraid of being hypo. I wonder if that didn't help my BP either.

I know what you mean about not being patient and wanting results now. I am so guilty of that. I was lucky with Synthroid. I did get some relief within the first few days. But it didn't really continue, so that's why I wanted to try something else. I think I did figure out one thing that was causing me a bit of a problem. I had been taking several supplements with small amounts of iodine in them. But when you add up the amounts I was getting from that and from food, I think I was getting too much iodine. I am allergic to it (or hypersensitive, or whatever it's called). And have been doing a little better since I cut back on it. I guess some Hashi's patients are sensitive to iodine and it can really really spur the attack of antibodies.

Did the change in the formulation of Nature-Throid just have to do with fillers and stuff or did they change the actual formula of the T3 & T4? That must have been awful for the folks who were doing well when it was changed. I am so over this whole thyroid thing. It seems to have gotten 100 times worse in the last year and a half, but when I go back and look at all my symptoms, I am sure that I had Hashi's starting from when I was about 10 years old. :( Drs are so clueless! How they can miss that for 32 years! I guess it wasn't that obvious, but still! My whole life would have been different had I known and been able to be treated and change my diet and stuff.

Any way, thanks so much for your advice and support! Helps so much! :)