Liver and T3 conversion / high Bilirubin anyone?

[LazyMoose]

I bet Stella knows this (?), but it's also a poll / question for any that have it - so please respond, its a rare question!  

My question comes up after I was reminded that T3 is converted via the liver on another post. Thyroid is linked with so much other stuff its hard to keep track!

I, like many here, might have a T4 to T3 conversion problem that does not show on the lab tests. I dont know how a conversion issue is proven, is there a way? My docs dont seem to know or care about conversion. All I know is I feel somewhat better with T3 in dessicated and I am driven to find out the very reason. Below may or may not be the reason why.

I just had a AMA comp panel (physical), and for years my Bilirubin is over the range (double!). Doc always brushes off the high Bilirubin since the other liver tests are OK. This has something to do with the liver and Juandice. My other liver tests (Alkaline Phosphate, AST and ALT) have always been and still are in the middle range, they are OK!. There is a name for this unbalanced condition.

My question(s): 1) Does anyone else have high Bilirubin with Hoshi's and have the other liver tests in range?

2) Anyone no what high Bilirubin has to do with the Liver converting T4 to active T3 in a Hoshimoto Hypo person?

Thanks, getting educated on this for my next appt if need be. I will admit I don't know much about the liver, but I know enough to take it easy on Tylonel (and booze)!

Moose

[oldie]

i know that obsessive thinking. It won't go unless you sit up and shake your head. Then you can't even remember what it was about. But then you're awake...
First amiodaraone then propafenone held my pulse to 60. after a year with up to 20,000 skips in one day.I was not too comfortable with 60. Now on the lowest dose of propa in the history of cardiograhpy, 150/day, it's 64 to 70. Good.
When I felt weakish at 60 I found that some slight exercis would put it up 5 points or so and I felt better. Proof for me that 60 was too low for my system.
during my echocardioram or graph the doctor got a panic call on his cellphone and talked for 20 minutes with what was clearly a young cardio with a desperate situation with a nine-year-old with heart attack. I couldn't grudge this but started to yell that's enough! he was watching th screen hold the sensor to my ribs and talking. I got very peeved anfd upset. No wonder I got a bad diagnosis of triple CAD (of unknown extent until they catheerize, whtich I won't  do). I pray you had a quieter time in your test.

[Barb135]

My heart problem is that my aortic valve is leaking (regurgitating).  I've known it for about a year, but when first discovered, it wasn't bad enough to be concerned - they couldn't even hear a murmur or anything, nor did I have any symptoms.  Over the past few months, I have developed symptoms, including shortness of breath, pounding heart beat and horrible fatigue AND they can now hear the murmur very distinctly.  I was put on atenolol a month ago and it calms the pounding, but has slowed my heart down, almost too much.  

I had an EKG, which came back "normal".  I also had an echocardiogram and will get the results of that Monday of next week.  

I don't necessarily have the feelings or thoughts of "doom" -- I just mull things over - and over- and over -------- seems like once something invades my mind, there's no getting it out; or it THAT one things goes away, something else "moves in".  

[oldie]

You don't know how serious your heart issue is? me neither, becasue I had a echocardiograph with dubotaminbe (dye). The conclusion was that the test 'suggested' heart problem and that the examning doctor thought it was 'probably' trifasicular (triple block). The next step, they say, is  catheter and dye exam and probably put in a stent or two while they're at it; or, if it really is triple, go for a bypass. I said I'd go the medication/execise/diet route while i think it over. Did you not even have an EKG? Mine shows a left and right bundle block. I am now looking for a noninterventionist cardio because I don't think my meds are the best combination. My heart doesn't pound so much as before. I can feel it at times nd listen to it. It is steady on what evryone calls a clearly inadequate dose of propafenone - only 150mg/day.
Ruminations. I thought I saw this in a list of hypo symptoms. I confess to taking .50 alprazolam at night for the past week.  I sleep eight hours and have not  had the dooms. the hot/cold sweats stopped too. Doom, of course, can hit in daylight but don't last more then a minute. Why? because you're doing something. That means when you get a 2am doom, get up. That's what grandma used to say.

[Barb135]

Okay, you two, let me in on this with you.  I'm hypo and also have heart issues, although I don't know at this point how severe it is.  I have the same ruminations in the middle of the night -- but what usually wakes me up is the horrendous pounding in my chest.  This usually happens after I've been asleep for a few hours, so I'm just at the point where I'm tired yet, but can't go back to sleep.  Like goolarra, I feel like I "should" get up and do something constructive, but I lay there in the hope of going back to sleep because I know if I get up TOO early, I will never make it through the day, since I often have a hard enough time doing that.  

I'm finding it more and more difficult to exercise much without being short of breath and it seems like it takes longer each time to recover.  

I'll be happy to hear the solutions you guys come up with.

[goolarra]

I have to say that's a good question.  It seems your symptoms don't fit the test's diagnosis, but we're all very familiar with that scenario...  If you wanted to explore it further (and relieve yourself of some cash in the process), you might consider a nuclear stress test.  This actually sees what's going on in the heart during and after exercise.  

My heart problem is a congenital defect that predisposes me to tachycardia.  Obviously, I've had it since I was born, but never knew exactly what it was until just a few years ago.  Long story...but I had been made to feel like a whack case in childhood when I talked about my tachycardia/palpitations, so I always kind of kept it to myself.  I believe it was when my thyroid went hyper prior to going hypo, the tachy went from a few times a year to 20-30 times a day.  It was back to its few times a year until I got on levo.  Anyway, to try to start making a long story short, I finally went to a doctor to find out what was wrong when it went wild at 20-30 times a day.  Of counse, she did an EKG and said, you've had an MI.  Wrong, I said, I've had this all my life.  No, you haven't, she said, this is something different, you've had a heart attack.  Anyway this went back and forth for about eight hours during which time I got my tachy in her office.  She couldn't believe my HR was 208, but aside from that I was doing fine.  After faxing my EKG all over the state, she finally very reluctantly believed that I hadn't had a heart attack...but, man, I'll tell you, after that EKG popped out with MI written all over it, there was no convincing her until the specialist's specialist got in on the act.  Despite the best of modern tests, thing's still aren't always what they seem, and as much as they want to discount those messy, subjective symptoms, it simply can't be done.

I wish I knew the answer to the nightly ruminations as both my husband and I and several of my friends suffer from them.  Of course, I stubbornly stay in bed and "try to go back to sleep".  I often think I should get up and distract myself instead of torturing myself.  But I don't.  I think this started when I was overmedicated/hyper and has become a bad habit.  I wake up at almost exactly the same time every night...even automatically adjusted for the change to standard time the other night!!!!  If you come up with a solution, let me know.

[oldie]

I haven't a  theory but the germ of an idea. It's about heart, not hypo. If my echocardiograph 'suggested' a 'probable' triple block (of unknown extent), and the clearest symptom of this condition is breathlessness and chest malaise, especially after exercise, how is it I can really push it on the bike for full 30mins and breath easily, slow and steady and feel fit for all or most of the day afterwards? If there are narrowed sections in my heart arteries, where are they when I'm pedalling ike a lunatic on the flat and pushing hard  uphill?
My 2am dooms are acute. Once they were rather anger over past errors and missed opportunities. Now they are real anguish over the same events and unaccountably painful sympathy with the small hurts of others, hurts not of my doing. I tell myself to wrench my head away from these ruminations and latch onto some small bright spot in the day - like cutting a minute off my time for 6.5kms biking. It's a struggle. It clouds life.