Ah, the Fourth of July. The summer weather, the fat, juicy burgers, the fireworks, the last day I didn't have a cold for over a month. I woke up feeling good, got a lot done, but by evening I didn't even feel like standing on the corner to see fireworks. I called in sick the following Monday and Tuesday. On August 4--one month later, I took a turn for the worse and saw a doctor, who wrote a prescription for antibiotics and cough syrup. I called in sick for the next three days. Then I went to work--still coughing, coworkers telling me it would be OK to go home--and picked up my natural desiccated thyroid (NDT). I started taking it that Saturday--and soon my cold started getting better. As the week went on and I needed to up my dose of NDT, the cough started coming back to the point that I thought about going back to the doctor. But I upped the dose--and again, the cough mostly went away. I was thinking I'd need Sheriff Grimes on the case to kill the cold that wouldn't die.
Another thing that mostly disappeared when I started NDT: digestive bloating. Bloating happens when your food doesn't digest. I'm now taking half the digestive enzymes I was before without the bloating. Maybe that's been the reason I've needed so many supplements: poor digestion from hypothyroid. In any case, there are supplements I know I need to take: iodine, iron, magnesium, and vitamin D. It'll be interesting to see if it becomes necessary to back off the doses of any of those supplements.
Another thing that mostly disappeared when I started NDT: digestive bloating. Bloating happens when your food doesn't digest. I'm now taking half the digestive enzymes I was before without the bloating. Maybe that's been the reason I've needed so many supplements: poor digestion from hypothyroid. In any case, there are supplements I know I need to take: iodine, iron, magnesium, and vitamin D. It'll be interesting to see if it becomes necessary to back off the doses of any of those supplements.
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(Long story shortened: MD Anderson lost my patronage 3 yrs ago, my local radiation oncologist advised me last Jan to find my own endocrinologist since he no longer “felt comfortable” signing my Rx’s for Synthroid, the hormone replacement I’ve taken for 30 yrs & will obviously have to take until the day I die...
I got the runaround when I called UTSW Medical Ctr - they scheduled my consult with an ENT, not an endocrinologist & nobody has called me back. Guess they don’t want my business either!)
Overall I am fed up w/the (human) medical establishment - I switched myself over to generic levothyroxine & simply want to know where my levels stand. I may be running a bit “hyper” even though I damn sure haven’t lost any weight, nor had heart palpitations.
I’ll let you know how this self-testing thing works out.
Dr. Davis recommends that free T4 and free T4 levels be in the upper half of the reference range, reverse T3 in the lower half, and antibodies be in the reference range. Most endos just check TSH and declare "everything fine" if it's within the reference range. It doesn't work that way in real life!
For 30 yrs, the only way I’ve been able to get out of bed & get moving each morning is by keeping my free T4 near the tippy-top of normal range, with my TSH consequently being almost completely suppressed.
I’ve been through 4 endocrinologists at MDA, with only the last one (Steve Sherman) arguing with me at EVERY SINGLE VISIT for 10 yrs about it - he disbelieved my troughs of fatigue, intractable weight gain (until I cut out those excess carbs!), and brain fog.
But now apparently UPS has misplaced my test kit which I sent off Monday, frustrating!
I've read about a lot of people whose doctors didn't believe them about their symptoms, didn't test anything but TSH and didn't prescribe anything but T4. Hence I bypassed the middleman, or overran the gatekeeper, take your pick.