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Some say you should not take your thyroid medication for at least 12 hours before testing thyroid levels. Unless you want to determine how well you convert T4 to T3, wouldn’t it make more sense to test while taking your normal dose so you have an idea of what you levels really are?
The Dr. would have to be dam good at reading this lab on it. Most would lower your dose because your levels can come in very high. My Dr. keeps looking at TSH and trying to lower my dose. I have to keep telling him this TSH is a message from the pituitary to tell the thyroid to make more hormones and on armour TSH should be low if not it means the body is asking for more and lowering the dose by TSH is not a good gage to go by in my case my TSH is low due to my Pituitary being bad.
@chronos 540 wrote:Some say you should not take your thyroid medication for at least 12 hours before testing thyroid levels. Unless you want to determine how well you convert T4 to T3, wouldn’t it make more sense to test while taking your normal dose so you have an idea of what you levels really are?
@chronos 540 wrote:
Some say you should not take your thyroid medication for at least 12 hours before testing thyroid levels. Unless you want to determine how well you convert T4 to T3, wouldn’t it make more sense to test while taking your normal dose so you have an idea of what you levels really are?
Generally, blood levels are done at either peak or trough levels. The peak is where the blood levels are highest. The trough is where blood levels are lowest.
Most of the time, the trough level is the most important one to take since that tells whether or not there is enough of the substance that is tested. The trough level is when the blood draw is done just prior to a dose of the substance.
When problems can occur by having too much of a substance (e.g. liver damage from some antibiotics), then a peak level can also be obtained. The peak will depend on the substance. For testosterone, for example, the peak is about 24-48 hours after an injection of testosterone cypionate. T3 levels peak very quickly on the day of ingestion.
Thank you both.
I really don’t fancy going of my meds for several hours but I suppose I don’t have much of a choice…. bugger ):
@chronos 582 wrote:
Thank you both.
I really don’t fancy going of my meds for several hours but I suppose I don’t have much of a choice…. bugger ):
I usually don’t have my patients go off their medications.
What would the point be of testing the patient in an unnatural treatment state? There is no point. I want to see how they are actually doing.
When I do a morning lab, I just have them postpone the morning medications and supplements until after the lab test. This usually is enough to get a trough level – assuming the patient did not wake up at 2-4 AM and take medications – which rarely happens.
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