I am SOOOO glad I stumbled across this dialog.

Sunshine you noticed a difference as soon as you cut out the gluten correct? This could explain some of my feelings of being hyper this week. (anxiety to the hilt!), I thought it might be the weather change and some personal stress issues, but usually I need more thyroid during this time not less.

For the last two weeks I have just eaten meat, veggies and fruit and just enough fat to cook and add flavor and I noticed some anxiety setting in the last two days. I attributed it to some personal stress I am going through not my thyroid, but now I am wondering if it is me absorbing more thyroid and more nutrients. I am going to go call the doc for a blood test. What a concept, maybe the Paleo type diet is working for me?? Gosh I hope so, I like eating the fruit!

Is this your experience Sunshine?

Thanks
Kellie

Yes...I have damaged intestines and malabsorption from gluten intolerance. When I was undiagnosed and still eating gluten my meds werent being absorbed properly...well really nothing was being absorbed properly and as a result I was feeling really Hypo but unlike most Hypo's I had lost 25 lbs.

You should get a lab test but your symptoms could be due to a drastic change in diet or something else. Do you have gluten intolerance?

-Rachel

Well, after lowering my Armour doseage to 2 grains I started feeling awful. But I know 3 grains is too much and 2.5 doesn't really help much either. So I think the problem might be I need more T4. I woke up yesterday feeling exhausted for no good reason. I found some old syntethic T4 pills and took one. It took most of the day but I started feeling better towards the end of the day. Today I feel a bit perkier. I think I'll just take one of those T4's a week until I get my dose adjusted.

I'm going to call Dr. Rouzier and see what he think about changing my thyroid meds so I get more T4 and less T3.

My gluten-free diet experiment seems to have cured my IBS. I can't say as anything else was helped (aches and pains in joints and muscle) but my intestines have not been this well behaved since I was a kid. I'm not constipated in the slightest, despite not eating huge amounts of fiber, and I'm not suffering in the opposite direction either. Its just... I go when I need to and it takes me all of 30 seconds. No sitting there waiting for it.

I had a cat that used to do his duty in his cat box and he'd yowl with joy and dash out and run around the house. I think I understand why now.

I bet you anything I'd probably test negative for celiac.

Thinking back, I remember when I was a teenager and I ate two bowls of wheat bran with apricots and then got massively sick. I thought I was going to die. I bet it was the wheat.

Hmmm. Now that I look back at my results I am confused.

FT4 1.3 (.8 - 1.7)
TT3 178 (70 - 200)
TSH .062 (.2 - 5.5)

I had hyper symptoms but my T4 isnt high at all. Why is my TSH showing hyper when the other numbers aren't? Now that I've lowered my dose how is that going to help...isnt it going to lower my T4 too much? I'm so confused.

Here were my numbers before going gluten free but on the same dose of Armour back in June.

FT4 .9 (.8-1.7)
TT3 93 (70-200)
TSH 3.2 (.2 - 5.5)

Obviously Hypo in my opinion although I had improved tons as far as symptoms. At the time I was on the candida diet...so mostly gluten free but not totally.

What the heck? Any thoughts?

When you are taking a thyroid medication that contains T3, like armour, your TSH becomes an even less meaningful number. It will almost certainly be suppressed. That's why your doctor should be looking at FT3 and FT4. Also, I think Graves patients have something extra going on that lasts for a couple of years after RAI that screw around with the numbers. I don't remember exactly what it is, you might want to look up Eileen Moore and read what she has written about it.

I just sent off some email to my doctor about my feeling like pooh again. One thing that happened to me was I got a terrible case of tendonitis in my forearm from mousing. Anyway, I think my T3/T4 is too far out of balance and I popped a syntethic T4 pill I had left over from my old thyroid meds and my tendonitis disappeared in a matter of hours. So I'm going to think "thyroid" when I get weird aches and pains like that.

I took one of my old .125mcg T4 pills on Saturday and WOW! I'm feeling MUCH better. Maybe slightly too much for me, I'm still taking my 2 grains every day. I felt like sleep was a little less accessible to me last night and I was in danger of bounding out of bed wide awake at an absurd hour. As it was, I did manage to hang in until 5:30 am. Which isn't unreasonable. I dropped 3 pounds in a lovely whoosh and I found myself straightening up the kitchen and cleaning toilets without having to brow beat myself.

Its really amazing how hypothyroid can sneak up on you and start to take you unawares and cause all kinds of problems.

I haven't heard back from the doctor yet.

Doctor is sort of leaving it up to me to figure this out. I have a feeling .125 is going to be too much on a daily basis. Maybe taking that every 2-3 days plus my 2 grains of armour daily will do the trick. T4 is so long acting you don't have to take it every day.

My experiment of taking the T4 on Saturday was interesting. I could feel it wearing off yesterday just a bit. And my tendonitis kind of came back too. So that was about 4 days after taking the T4. I took half of a .125 this morning and asked the Doc to call in a prescription for me of the synthetic.

I hope this helps my weight stall.

Nancy I thought I asked this before, but I am checking my posts and I cannot seem to find it so I will ask again.

Have you eliminated all the things from your diet that effect thyroid absorption? Like soy, the cabbage and broccoli family, and kept calcium and fluoride from your system four hours after your dosage? I meant to ask that before and I think my message got deleted before I sent it.

Kellie

Sunshine I want to thank you for your posts because they helped me realize that grains are probably the real culprits in my diet. I jumped on the scale today and I have dropped 3 more pounds, which is a total of about 12 pounds since I started my new approach four weeks ago, eating no grains and little dairy, but adding fruit back with my low carb regiment. I think what I am doing is working and truth is I am not even watching the fat as much as I thought I would have to. I ate almost an entire jar or Taramosalata with flaxseed crackers a few nights ago and I still lost weight this week.

I am only eating 3 or 4 pieces of fruit a day, but it is enough that I feel satisfied. I have no cravings now (I did the first two days), and my energy and will power is really amazing, I cleaned the whole house today and did not even get exhausted! Yippee!

Kellie

No. The reason is, I ran it past my doctor (top thyroid list guy) and he doesn't think the effect of those things is strong enough to worry about. His philosophy is if it interferes, just take more. Actually, I take my meds on an empty stomach when I first get up without any other food or supplements, so I should be good. My supplements go into the pie-hole at night, before bed.

Also, the effect of goitrogenics is reduced or eliminated by cooking. And they're my favorite veggies. However, I don't eat soy much, just because I think it might not be all that good for one.

I'm pretty convinced my issue is that my T3 is too high and T4 is too low. I think getting them into a better balance will help me a lot.

I'm not even sure how goitrogens work and whether than an issue for someone without a functioning thyroid gland.

Kellie,

Thats great! I'm glad you are noticing some improvements.

I'm starting to get the impression that most people will find they benefit in one way or another from eliminating gluten. I read about all the things gluten can cause in my research but now that I'm seeing alot of people on different message boards telling me it works for them I have to believe it. Actually so far noones told me they didn't notice a difference. I'm pretty amazed. Wish I woulda knew before I got so sick from it.

-Rachel

Well, my trial of switching from mostly Armour to most syntethic is going well. I'm taking a full 125mcg dose of synthetic T4 now and 1 grain of armour. So far those weird heartbeats, rapid heart rate, difficulty sleeping and high body temperature have gone away. I feel wide-awake all day long, but I don't quite have that bustling energy I had before.

Does anyone notice that their menstrual cycle seems to affect how their body uses thyroid? I tend to get hyper before, hypo during. Nancy (Nawchem) mentioned she gets rapid heart beats before. I always felt drugged, half asleep, cold during my period. Then when on Armour I had classic hyper symptoms before. Its very weird.

Nancy, like you I felt excessively hypo before my period. I never feel energetic but after getting on thyroid medication (even when still hypo) about 2 days before my period my heartrate is often 130, I get insomnia also.

About 25% of those with thyroid issues also have mvp, a minor heart murmur. I wrote to Mary Shommon about this as she has mvp and thyroid like I do. She said it is sensitivity to T3 and that she takes propranolol for it.

I also belong to another group www.mvpsupport.com the ladies on there have the same menstrual issues, a lot of them have thyroid problems as well.

I've read the symptoms of menopause are caused by the nervous system reacting to hormonal imbalances. So I was thinking the problem at that time could be an interaction of female hormones/armour that causes the nervous system to react with stress hormones. Propranolol blocks adrenaline getting to the heart and it fixes my heart symptoms.

I was worrying about being hyperthyroid but it only happens those 2 days so I figured I should discount that as a hyper symptom.

What do you guys think?