And Isn't This Interesting....

[Guest guest]

.........A way to determine if your own gland is outputting it's own hormone, all this while taking thyroid hormone orally. Hmmmmm----hadn't known that thyroglobulin measurement (not the antibodies to it, but the thyroglobulin itself, the raw material produced by the gland itself) was ever used for this purpose, other than maybe science researchers.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=endocrin & part=A290#A249

From same book: Endocrinology---An Integrated Approach----S.S. Nussey and S.A. Whitehead

"

Approximately 100 μg of thyroid hormones are secreted from the gland each day, mostly in the form of T4 with about 10% as T3. Eighty percent of the T4 undergoes peripheral conversion to the more active T3 in the liver and kidney (T3 is ten times more active than T4) or to reverse T3 (rT3) that has little or no biological activity (Box 3.1). Very small quantities of other iodinated molecules, such as MIT and DIT as well as thyroglobulin, are also measurable in the circulation. As this thyroglobulin originates from the normal secretory process, its measurement in the serum is used, for example, to detect endogenous thyroid secretion when patients are taking oral T4 replacement (an important clinical use)."

I find it quite interesting, also, that it says that a normal thyroid gland only secretes around 100 ug a day. Hmmm.