Hashimotos & Medication

[gertie]

Does anyone with Hashimotos feel worse after starting meds? After 3 weeks on meds I seem to be getting more lethargic/tired & brain fog. Is this normal? I thought I would be feeling some better by now not worse. Thanks.

[EarthMother]

What meds? Thyroid meds? It takes 6 weeks to adjust to a new thyroid dose, so feeling out of sorts while your body is making the adjustment could be normal. However, my own experience with Hashi is that after a wild ride of hyper symptoms (because the Hashi is in rage mode) I can experience a period of Hypo symptoms (after the anti-bodies have died down for a while.) Unlike "normal" hypo-thyroid, which some patients eventually do become with auto-immune thyroid disease (Hashimoto) -- Hashi folks can expect periods of Hyper as well as Hypo.

If you are feeling only the Hypo (sluggish, low thyroid) symptoms and these persist after 4-6 weeks, you may want to talk to your Doc about upping the dose of thyroid meds a smidge at a time. Most of us don't feel "good" unless out TSH is 1 or a 2.

Good luck.

[gertie]

Thanks, Sorry, I should have said I was taking Armour thyroid meds.

[jump]

Are you recently diagnosed?

If you've never taken thyroid medication before then it's very, very normal to feel worse after starting. Your body has been trying to manage without a necessary hormone, and it's kind of adjusted itself somewhat to not having it... then you start taking it, so the body has to re-adjust. Also, for many people with hashi's, when they're first diagnosed their thyroid is usually still producing a small but inadequate amount of thyroid hormone. When you start taking this hormone orally, your thyroid glad usually does one of two things: stops all hormone production (in which case you feel MORE symptomatic than before, and often means that the next time you see your doctor you should increase your dose), or, conversely, goes into some kind of strange, death-throes over-drive (there's a scientific term for this but I forget what it is), causing you to be temporarily hyperthyroid and have all the corresponding symptoms to that (tachycardia, anger and irritability, sleeplessness, intense hunger). Both situations are very common -- so keep an eye on what you're feeling, but chances are it's just a normal part of the process.

Also, there are several foods and supplements that interfere with the absorption of oral thyroid hormone - make sure you do some research about this or ask your doctor or pharmacist. Otherwise, you could be taking the medication and not absorbing it all, which will make you feel worse, too. Some of the common culprits are: no dairy or calcium supplements, no iron supplements, no walnuts, and no fiber supplements two hours before or two hours after you take your medication; and no more than 10 grams of soy protein a day at any time of day, preferably less.

[mcaimless]

Armour Thyroid was reformulated in 2009 and there are LOTS of complaints out there about it. Now everyone is switching over to Naturethroid or other brands. Forest Labs that makes Armour claims they've only changed the fillers but there are postings on the realthyroidhelp forum where people have posted their labs before and after the reformulation and the differences in their T3 and T4 levels are marked.

Are you familier with Stop the Thyroid Madness website and book? Janet Bowthorpe has a protocol for Hashi's and using desiccated thyroid and it might be useful for you. Also, have you checked your adrenals? If your adrenals are fatigued (as they generally are with people with thyroid disease) then you are not getting the thyroid hormones effectively into your cells. That's is the number one reason why people who start out on Armour or other meds don't do well because once you take the meds you will have more circulating hormones but they aren't going where they need to go. You must treat your adrenals first and get them functioning right before you can treat your thyroid.

Here are some helpful sites. Hope you get this figured out and start feeling better!

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/hashimotos/

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/adrenal-info/

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/armour-vs-other-brands/

[Maxine]

As far as adjusting to meds, I never had an issue. This was before major POTS symptoms, but I did have tachycardia before, and panic attack type symptoms.

When I crashed hard with POTS symptoms and my beta blocker wasn't working fully to slow my heart rate, my thyroid levels were normal---(I had been on meds for 5 years for hashemotos already with an increase in dose only once from .25 to .50 of synthroid. Now I'm on .75. I don't understand anything about anti=tpo levels, but mine are always above 1000. I've never been in a "hyper" state that I know of, (I had a terrible endocrinologist with a GIANT ego), so I'll probably never know if I was managed correctly. Mine was found by accident ata gyno appt., as the nurse practioner was great with actually looking at family history. She saw thyroid problems in my family, so she ordered the test.

I'm just shocked after having this almost 15 years now, and have never had a "hyper" thyroid spell. I never noticed anything one way or the other in adjusting to meds-----I never had symptoms. Back when I had my spells of tachycardia, and panic attacks, my thyroid levels checked out normal----(this was earlier in my 20s). I was diagnosed with hashemotos in 1995 at age 36.

It does take a while for thyroid meds to get metabolized into your body and start doing it's thing. I just didn't notice because I didn't have hypo-thyroid symptoms that I noticed.

I hear so many different ways that thyroid is managed, and it pretty confusing because i have never been given anything other then synthyroid.

Maxine :0)

[mcaimless]

Maxine:

Hypo/hyper thyroid symptoms are very simliar to POTS and other autonomic dysfunction and could actually be causing many of your dys symptoms.

If you don't feel like you are doing well on your T4 only treatment you might want to consider trying to find a Doc who will put you on dessicated thyroid instead. Many are not doing well on Synthroid after a while and T4-only meds tend to put a huge strain on your adrenals and causes a whole host of problems. I strongly suggest you get Janet Bowthorpe's book and/or read her website to get another point of view about this. It makes sense to me that it's better to treat thyroid problems with the full host of thyroid hormones that Armour or Naturethroid have rather than the T4 only (T4 isn't the active hormone that actually goes into the cells, it has to be converted to T3 first and many aren't able to do this well). But, again I stress that you should check your adrenals as well because long-term T4 only use can cause them to become fatigued and you have to deal with that before you will feel better. The best way to test the adrenals is with a saliva test.

I've also heard good things about Low Dose Naltrexone being used for Hashimoto's as well. There aren't any studies out about this use for it (again, it's not anything Big Pharma is interested in since it's a generic) but a trial of that wouldn't hurt if you can find a naturopath to prescribe it.

http://www.ldninfo.org/