New Hypothyroid diagnosis-help!

[ellesan]

Hi All,

I was diagnosed with premature menopause at 34 and have been on/off hormones for various reasons since then (I'm 38 now). I'm pretty much always some degree of tired because I work the night shift and don't get regular sleep or have a regular sleep pattern. Regardless, I have lost 80 lbs since all this started and never even thought there could be a problem with my thyroid. I went to my doc for a physical and because I was feeling particularly tired and fatigued.

Labs:
Testosterone low
Progesterone low
DHEA low
Estrogen normal (??) My hot flashes suddenly stopped 2 weeks before my appointment
iron low
Vit D low
TSH high
T4 normal
T3 low

This is a MD/NP holistic clinic. They started me on bio-identical creme for testosterone and progesterone and DHEA. (I know there's lots of controversy with synthetics and bio-identicals, I'm giving this a try). They also started me on 30 mg Armour thyroid and 2 drops of Lugols iodine everyday. I already take a vit D supplement in addition to my mulit-vitamin, and I'm now taking 15mg iron.

Concerns:
1. After 5 days of taking this I started to get a lump in my throat. Not hard to swallow, but uncomfortable. Is this a goiter? I NEVER felt this before taking the medication. I stopped the medications x 2 days and it went away. Now I'm nervous about taking it again (will call the doc tomorrow). Has anyone else been told to take iodine drops?

2. In the past 6 months or so, I noticed I don't sweat anymore, even with a really hard workout. My HR will be 80-90% max and I still don't sweat. I googled it and it seems like this could be hypothyroid related?

Thanks in advance for your advice and related experience!

Sandra

 

[twinkletoes129]

You should definitely see your doctor again. With a new symptom like that it could be your thyroid swelling, that's a classic sign—the lump in your throat and hard to swallow. Do get it checked out. I'm not sure why your thyroid should have that response on your thyroid medication unless it's responding to the other hormones. In any case your medical team needs to sort this out for you. If you have hypothyroidism it's very important that you have it treated (among many of the symptoms including fatigue, sluggishness, muscle aches and cramps, dry skin, dry hair and thinning hair, feeling cold, depression, is weight gain). However, some people respond better to one type of hormone medication better than another. Armour Thyroid is a really great choice because it's bio-identical, it's NOT synthetic and it also contains T3 which the synthetics do not contain. It's sounds like you have a very good medical team. However, everybody's body is different and their individual response to meds is different. So work with your medical team to suss out what the culprit is and what the next step is. Also, with thyroid hormones you generally need to start off at a low dose and build up to your therapeutic dose and during that time they should be testing your TSH, T3, Free T3, and T4. I'm curious to know, and you should know this for yourself, how high was you TSH and how low was your T3? Be sure to ask them for your numbers, and keep a file on it. That way you can monitor your treatment better. There are some really great books by Mary Shomon who also has hypothyroidism such as "Living Well with Hypothyroidism: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You. . . That You Need to Know" that you might want to check out. Let us know how everything goes.

 

[wutherhi]

I'm confused about your Armour dosage. I used to take Armour thyroid, but my dosage was in grains (2 grains), not in mg. I remember this particularly because the doctor had a little difficulty converting the Synthroid to Armour dosage in her head. It's been a year or more since I stopped taking Armour, so the way it's marketed may have changed since then, but you might want to check into this to see if there's a problem.

Shari

 

[LauraMax]

That sounds like pretty aggressive treatment to start with. I don't get why your doc didn't just put you on a low dosage of synthroid to start & increase from there?

BTW, my doc HATES Armour. She says it has all kinds of icky stuff in it, primarily pig fat but some stuff medical professionals can't even identify, & will not prescribe it unless a patient insists. She believes synthetic is much healthier.

 

[wutherhi]

Although I asked to try Armour when Levothyroxine wasn't working, I have to agree with Laura. I don't think I'd go with it as a first line of treatment. The way I understand it, because it is made from animals, the dosage can be inexact from batch to batch. With thyroid problems, it's very important that your dosage not fluctuate. I now take Levo (synthetic T4) along with a tiny dose of Cytomel (synthetic T3) and I'm doing much better.

Shari

 

[ellesan]

Update

Hi, thanks for the input and advice.

I stopped the Armour as it was giving me a huge lump in my throat (goiter). Now I'm not so sure my doc wasn't being overly agressive. I very specifically asked to be put on the lowest dose of everything and that is not what he did. I just went back and looked at my labs. I thought he said my TSH was 4.9, but it was 3.9 and the reason he thinks I'm hypo is that my T3 was low (I'll come back and post the number), T4 was normal. So now I'm confused, but I am NOT taking Armour again, ugh! It's taken 3 days off the meds for my thyroid to shrink back down and it's not totally normal yet.

My only symptoms were being tired and fatigued, which can completely be attributed to my sleep pattern (switching back and forth from days to nights) and my hormones. (I never had a problem losing weight, having dry, brittle hair or any of those other symptoms). I've decided to cut back and take 1/2 the dose of hormones and no thyroid medication. My doc still wants me to take the iodine drops but now I'm paranoid and won't take anything until my next blood draws in 6 weeks.

Thanks again for your help!
Sandra