starting new treatment

5450 Views 28 Replies 7 Participants Last post by Andros, Jan 28, 2011

loretta

Discussion Starter · Dec 28, 2010

hi all, we are moving over from newbie to here to report on our treatment plan and ask a few questions. my daughter had her first appointment with our naturopath and we have a treatment plan. he re- ran her tests and started her on 30 mg or armour and adrenal supplements although her saliva adrenal test came out normal.

we found a few changes in her numbers. her THS has gone down from last summer from 4.36 to 1.69 and her reverses t3 is also lower. it went from 375 to 302. her ft4 is 1.21 and ft3 is 3.3.

however, her cholesterol is high @ 210 and HDL 64 and LDL 132. her B12 is good. everything else is is looking pretty middle of the road. we didn't retest those antibodies. we are going on those previous numbers since it was only a couple of months ago but she does have them...some. (MBH is 5.2, neutrophilis 62., lymphocytes 28.5, lymphocytes abs, 1.5. i don't know much about these last few...i don't know what they pertain to but i will look into it)

so we giving her adrenal support supplements 3 times a day and 30 mg of armour to start. she has been on them for about 7 days and is more exhausted then ever. we are assuming that the 30 mg is the lowest dose and may not do much. In a week he is putting her on a detox fast with lots of nutrients for 11 days which he hopes will get her metabolism kicking into gear. I am reading three books about thyroid treatment and i think that starting out with 30mg is reasonable but i'm wondering where we might go from here. i've heard so many different opinions about armour these days although he says that he has not had any problems with this one. We plan to meet with him after her fast to reassess which will have her on this dose for about four weeks. my guess is she will need more armour to feel better although with her numbers are improved for some reason and she no longer looks that much out of the normal range. I'm wondering if the adrenal support is making her feel worse or if a low does of armour could actually be making her more tired.
any thoughts or opinions would be welcomed. thank you!

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lainey

· #15 · Jan 26, 2011 (Edited by Moderator)

>>In your experience, have you seen labs like this where the person is hypo in spite of most of the labs being in range...also with regards to a high but still within range RT3?<<

People are occasionally treated with borderline numbers in the presence of high antibodies. With the results that you have posted, even when her TSH was slightly high, her Free T4 and T3 were quite good, and your daughter's antibodies are not high.

Do you have current labs? Has anyone ever done a sonogram or uptake scan?

You should know, that RT3 is generally not used to treat and diagnose thyroid problems.
Most doctors do not even run it any more.

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lainey

· #17 · Jan 26, 2011

If your are considering "T3 resistance" as being her problem, you should know that "Wilson's Syndrome" and it's treatment is considered spurious at best in most parts of the world.

IF your doctor were treating her for that, the proper course would be a short interval (several weeks) of T3 only therapy, and then re-test the blood.

These are copied from a post in this thread:
FT3-2.3-4.2
FT4- 0.75-2.00
RT3-90-350
THS-0.30-4.70

ft4 - 1.21
ft3 - 3.3.
Rt3-302

All are well in range--and the second TSH I saw was 1.69, is that correct?

While those numbers are not "ideal" if there is such a thing, the doctor did say:
>>Looking at her current labs he feels as though he can not see enough evidence for hypothyroidism and that if she does not respond to the doubled dose of armour in the next several weeks he thinks that we should give up on this particular treatment all together. He thinks that she does not have a thyroid problem.<<

He has a valid point. I don't agree with increasing the dosage without running the lab work first. You have no idea what her levels are now, if the 30mg of Armour has made her hyper (as it very well could have because her numbers were pretty normal) she wouldn't be feeling any better, and the increased dosage wouldn't help. The only way to know is with a blood test.

If these are the labs BEFORE armour, she should have labs before increasing it to 60mg.

Has she had any GYN testing--full scale female hormone, sonogram for ovarian cysts (polycystic ovarian syndrome) and insulin resistance? They did a c-peptide earlier, but insulin resistance testing includes that with a glucose challenge.

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lainey

· #20 · Jan 26, 2011

>>I understand, however we had just done the lab work before we put her on 30mg. starting dose, after 4 weeks he raised it to 60 mg. he plans to test her in three weeks or so. she has not had any ill symptoms yet on 60mg. no hyper symptoms either.<<

Loretta, I have to repeat myself here, because I feel so strongly, that titrating the dosage up should only be done with lab work in hand that indicates that it should be so.

Symptoms, as you can see, are not the best measurement of disease or it's treatment.

Thyroid medication is very powerful, especially that containing T3, and dangerous in the sense that too much can cause, among other things, heart rhythm disturbances.

If it were my child, I absolutely wouldn't give her the medication without the supporting lab work. By the time she has symptoms, it is too late in this instance.

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lainey

· #26 · Jan 28, 2011

Why would you skip the meds on the day of the test?

If you want to see what her body is doing, you need to measure what is happening when she takes it, not when she isn't. You wouldn't want to make the T3 appear lower than it actually is when she is taking the medication, would you?

Do the bloodwork.

It is not just the TSH that you need to measure. Armour, by it's very nature, will tend to suppress the TSH and the free T4 (which you need measured also) because of it's high ratio of T3. It's the free T3 that is critical and is what must be run while she is on this type of medication.

Once you know where she is, you can make an informed decision based on the results.

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