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What are your thyroid labs like ? have you any figures. i am in the uk also and have just been tested for RT3 for the first time in 2 1/2 yrs since thyroid diagnosis. i became ill at 21 and was very fit. i struggled for 16 yrs until i found out about the thyroid. stopped the anti depressant and have self treated for the last 2 1/2 yrs. now the NHS is helping me.
if you are still tired are you still exercising a lot? if so you need to stop because your body cannot handle it.
i am doing very well now, but still have absorption problems of the T3. i have been blood tested for lead because i have also found out i have very high hair lead levels. still waiting for results. this maybe why i am having absorption problems. i take 25mg hc and am on 125 T4 and 37.5 T3. The T3 has made a big difference.
you should try real thyroid help for info and in the UK, thyroid patients advocacy, run by sheila. This is a very good group in the UK and they have meeting in different cities.
Crohns complicates things i am sure.
Hello there J
To me you dont look as though you have a testosterone problem, but instead a thyroid one.
Have you tried any thyroid hormones. They are easy to buy and relatively harmless to use. All you do is monitor how you react to them, starting on a low dose and building up.
your FT4 is 12 and so is bottom of the range. My FT4 pre thyroid meds was also 12 and recently it has been 12 again. I have just increased the thyroxine as my tank is pretty empty when around the 12 mark. I am pretty active and so my body uses up a fair about of thyroid hormone.
Your FT3 wants to be higher as well. Your tSH isnt too bad, but you should ignore this and focus on the FT3 and 4.
Thats it to me – quite simple and straight forward. You will probably come back and say you have tried thyroid meds and this isnt the answer, if so i cannot help you with the testosterone side of things as i have no experience of that.
ps, my Testosterone level came up from 15 to 18 just by using thyroid meds. I have now gotten even better on them and i assume they testosterone levels has gone up even more.
Ok, this is good news for me as there may be a tangible reason why the adrenals are not working correctly.
So salt reduces inflammation then ? and aldosterone causes inflammation ? I tried florinef (1/2 tablet) for 2 days earlier this yr thinking the aldosterone was part of the problem and it made me so unwell – very low in mood, depressed even. I stopped it on the second day.
Would this make sense to you ?
I exercise a lot (always have done since a kid) and i play sport 4 times a week. Usually i am playing something and resting the next day. I dont often go 2 days without having a sweat.
Now ever since i was 13 and playing more competitive sport i have been a “sweater”. I sweat loads and people laugh at me sometimes for it. It is just the way the body works. Does this mean anything? Since i started the salt dosing last yr i have noticed a big improvement in adrenal health.
One other thing which may be relevant. When young (pre 21) i had a very sensitive para sympathetic nervous system. By this i mean i was very sensitive to personal contact and could sweat easily in the day and go red very easily. I wasnt very relaxed at all.
My body was basically finely tuned to my environment ready to spring into action (thats how i see it now). We lived through a traumatic upbringing from 7 until 18 when i left home. mum liked drinking and had many boyfriends and so i know this is why i was very sensitive to life. Then i became unwell and all this dampened down – i was much less sensitive. Now i am well and older i am no longer as sensitive which is a good thing i reckon. life is different and much calmer.
According to you i still have some signaling problem going on caused by the youthful stress ? If true then how can i fix it without have counseling ? I have done this many yrs ago and it helped a lot. I have my wife to talk to now and i am really over everything that has happened, so trying to fix stuff mentally is not how i see it. This is definitley some hormonal problem and i have been proved correct by sorting out the thyroid and addressing vitamin problems (like the salt).
I take a lot of vit and minerals as we are trying for a baby and i have a low S count. So far nothing has worked and we are down for ICSI hopefully soon. I can say only the salt, hc and thyroid meds make a difference.
thanks for your input.
Right so Dr M is saying something else is causing the adrenals to not work properly.
What about the length of time my thyroid has been good (11 weeks fully optimised and 2 yrs since i started thyroid hormones with success, but not optimisation) versus being ill for 16 yrs?
So for many yrs my adrenals and thyroid have been “sick”. Would this affect the length of time HC would help the healing process.
I have no stress in my life, am happily married and mortgage free, but still have this adrenal problem. I had stress growing up, but that is in the past and am happy – certainly when i am optimised.
In the last 2 days i stopped taking sea salt and today i noticed my adrenals have shut down (similar to reducing the HC). So i have taken salt this afternoon and can feel the adrenals working again.
So i am sensitive to salt intake and coming off HC. I have no emotional stress, but i still have this prolem. How else can i feed my adrenals what they want?
I have 2 adrenal stress profiles and both show the same pattern – Plenty of cortisol in the morning, but dropping very quickly by noon. What is making the cortisol disappear ?
june 08 started thyroid meds, coming off anti depressant usage (one tablet per day). This is when i found out about low thyroid due to low fertility as trying for a baby. I stopped the anti depressant one month after this test.
8am 34.9 (12-33)
noon 10.8 (10-28)
4pm 8.8 (6-11.8)
midnight 3.4 (1-5)june 09 still taking thyroid meds. fully off anti depressant for 10 mths. this result seems worse than the first test.
8am 15.6 (12-22)
noon 2.7 (5-9)
4pm 3.4 (3-7)
10pm 0.9 (1-3)i dont use the forum that often as not much is going on here, but i will post what has happened to me recently.
i hit another brick wall and felt pretty bad for a few days. i wasnt sure if it was cortisol or thyroid again. i raised to 4 1/2 grains and felt better for a week. then i felt ill again. so i raised again to 5 grains and i feel fine again. however, i dont know if this will last.
It may be my body is working through the thyroid hormones and wants more. it seems that way at the moment. it could be poor adrenals, but temps seem pretty good. when ill my basal did drop a lot to 36.2c (currently a near perfect 36.5C).
So doing ok, but been a bit shaken recently.
how did you get to 7 grains? was it slow and steady, say increasing 1/2 grain every 2 weeks?
you may need the 7 grains. a woman i have heard about takes 16 !!
have you had blood tests to show where your ft3 and 4 is ? if they are high in the range then this says your dose is perfect for you.
what temps do you get in the morning on waking?
what is your HRate. if all is still the same as when you were on a lower dose then that is good. it really pays to monitor the body to see how increases affect you.
Well i have stopped the florinef today. it was making physical things improve, but mentally i feel terrible. very quiet and low in mood. i dont know if it was my body getting used to it, but it affected me big time within a few hours of taking it.
i went with it at first, but i just cannot take this low mood. physically i noticed i was stronger playing sport. i wasnt sweating as much (because i sweat too much).
not sure what to do really. i will see how i balance out off it, but still feel pretty crap today.
anyone know why this has affected my mood so much ?
I had a wobble the other week and again it turned out to be low thyroid. i have increased 1/2 grain to 4 grains. feel fine again. however, i started to do some research into hc and low aldosterone. if high doses of hc are not having too much of an effect it could be due to low aldosterone.
anyway i am trialling a 1/4 dose of florinef to see if i need it. i pee a huge amount and i notice this has vastly reduced.
What are your sodium/potassium levels like???
peeing a lot is connected with these two things. i think you may be low in potassium.
To me it sounds like you have adrenal/thyroid problems.
you need to work on the adrenals first. have you done a saliva cortisol test to see how they are doing. this test is key to seeing what is happening with them.
1) correct electrolyte levels first (sodium/potassium) as this affects how well the adrenals work.
2) correct adrenal function after this as this affects how the thyroid works.
3) address low thyroid function and this will help you T levels come up. I dont think you will have a single T problem causing all this, it sounds like it is multiple hormone problems and you need to start with the basics first.
you should post your story on the mens board at real thyroid help and ask for phils opinion.
sounds like the higher hc is helping too.
not sure about my temps as i wasnt monitoring them when using the hc.
still doing really well on 3 1/2 grains and 25mg hc.
i big change has now been my hair !! i always thought i had shit hair because of male pattern baldness. i am not bald at all and have loads of hair, it is just poor quality and slow growing. this has changed in the last few weeks and it has got thicker, softer and is growing faster. i cannot believe this as i have had crap hair since 17 years old. so it must be the thyroid started to go wrong at this age and didnt hit me with physical symptoms until 21.
I am doing better again and think i know why. thyroid-s has a hard coating so it acts as a slow release formula (so someone says) and so i have taken all 3 grains at 8am and feel fine.
fingers crossed all will be ok.
not feeling good today and it is due to a switch in meds.
I have been using thiroyd from a canadian pharmacy. they are white tablets in a small white plastic container. today i have switched to thyroid-s from thailand (the brown tablet) and wondered if i should feel a difference between them at all.
i dont think i feel as good on the Throid-s and am a bit worried. is it normal to feel some differences and then you settle down again? i just notice my breathing isnt as free as yesterday.
ive been on hc since sep 09.
i use thyroid-s, not armour. erfa sounds the best and armour is no more i think, so stick with erfa.
i think you will need to balance your thyroid and adrenals. work on both and monitor how you go. only make one change at a time because you will have no idea what is helping you. i imagine you will want to be on hc first at a decent amount -say 15mg a day, then try upping the thyroid meds.
ibs is an adrenal/thyroid symptom. i am not sure which is the main cause though. when i am not well i break wind a lot.
i dont have any food allergies that i know of, but i have been reading a good book on stress and the dr says a poor diet causes the bowl to inflame. this causes cortisol to rise and so cause these adrenal problems. my cortisol, however, was too low and so i dont think i have this problem.
still doing really well and my stomach muscles are really coming through. i havent changed anything with regards to diet and exercise. it is just the body working as it should.
my legs muscles are getting really strong now which is great. before, when unwell, my body just would not respond to any amount of training.
