Re: T3 Results Question

December 15, 2004

T3 is the active thyroid hormone, it doesn't really matter too much how high the T4 is, if it's not getting converted to the T3 that the body uses, you're still gonna be hypo. With all the symptoms, weight issues and feeling rotten.

Low T3, poor conversion, also means low T2... T2 is linked to metabolic rate.... metabolism is how well our bodies run. Heat production, use of food as energy.... if food is not used as energy it's stored as fat. It's also stored as fat if we skip meals... That's a whole 'nother discussion though. Fat storage/low metabolic rate as a direct result of irregular eating habits and skipping meals.

It won't hurt at all to run this by everyone... as a reminder with the feasting coming up...

Hypos do better with smaller, more frequent meals. It's easier on the digestive system to process in smaller amounts. Keeping blood sugar and energy levels more even helps with conversion rates (T4 to T3) and eases the 'roller coaster ride' of energy levels - when we started getting tired when our blood sugar is low.

Avoiding Goitrogens, foods that bind and inhibit thyroid hormones. The three biggest here are soy, high fructose corn syrup and vegies in the cabbage family. There are others on the list ( www.thyrophoenix.com/bad_foods.htm ) but those are the three worst and the most important to remember.

Selenium, a mineral that we used to get in the foods we eat (now in short supply in those same foods due to chemical fertilizers and high production farming techniques of commercial farming) is used in the conversion process. So adding Selenium to your supplement intake will help with conversion. Up to 400 mcg per day is safe... over 600 per day for any length of time is toxic. If you want a more natural source of selenium, Brazil nuts (due to where they are grown) are an excellent source of selenium.. just a few nuts a day will fill your needs.

Iron and Calcium bind with thyroid hormone... so, silly as it sounds, if your snacking on a lot of cheese/dairy and, say, spinach, at your holiday gatherings... you could be compromising your hormone levels... For myself, I multidose, so if I'm doing 'bad foods' I do them before a dose (which is ALL the time with my current schedule! heheheh) so that I can take that dose to bring my levels back up again, so no harm done from the tasty treat. My favorite iron source is beef liver BTW.

With the Cytomel, or any T3 source (even natural Thyroid like Armour brand and others) It's a good idea to keep in mind how quickly T3 is used up. Where T4 takes 4 to 6 weeks to build up in our tissues and show it's full effect, T3 is 95% used up in our bodies just four hours after taking it.

For myself, a really poor converter, I find that I feel my best when I multidose. To even out the T3 in my system. So for anyone that is taking Cytomel or Natural thyroid, if might not be a bad idea to do a bit of experimentation to see what your body needs....

For some, a big dose of T3 in the morning, to saturate the T3 receptors is what they need. After that their bodies kick up their own conversion and are able to keep things going .... for others a jolt of T3 is too much stress for the heart and other organs and they get palps, panic attacks, over heat.... symptoms of sort term hyper.... So you have to play around a bit to see if you should take it all at once, usually in the morning, or split it up, taking some in the afternoon, to avoid the 'afternoon sleepies' or even some before bed, to allow the body what it needs to achieve recuperative sleep.

That's what makes this all so hard to deal with... it's not a 'one size fits all' situation. We don't all take the same dose on the same schedule.. we have to find out what OUR body needs to be healthy.

Personally my current schedule is really goofy. I'm at 3 1/2 grain per day now. I take it in 1/2 grain doses, so it's 7 doses per day. I take the first as I wake, it's at the side of the bed, along with that dose I also take my dose of adrenal. The rest of the morning I take a 1/2 grain dose every 2 hours... up until noon.... then every three hours... right up until bedtime. My memory cues are even numbers hours in the morning... and third hours after noon.... with the last does at bedtime.

So it's 6 am, 8 am, 10 am, 12 pm, 3 pm, 6 pm, 10 pm. On these really late nights, or the nights where I pulled an all nighter working on these machines, I took an extra half grain around 3 am.

I do try to stick to a regular sleep schedule. I've notice with these late nights and no sleep nights that it really messes me up the next day to alter the schedule... even going to bed two hours late and sleeping in that two hours in the morning will through me off.

....again.. this is something you guys would have to make note of, see how it affects you. This may be my body's quirk, remember, I have no thyroid function and was underdosed for a LOT of years. This may all have to do with damage and stress resulting from that and may not affect those of you that have been able to keep on top of this and get things taken care of YEARS sooner than some of the rest of us.

For the most part, this dosing/timing doesn't affect those on the Synthetics, like Synthroid, Levoxyl, Levothroid, etc. Those are all T4 only meds. The T4, remember - the storage hormone, builds up in the tissues over weeks and is converted to T3, the active thyroid that our bodies use to function.

Mostly it's figuring out what OUR body needs and work with it to feel normal and healthy again. That's why we're here, to compare notes, to learn as much as we can about this and apply to ourselves what works the best.

Topper ()

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 06:35:08 -0500 "" writes:

Thank you , for replying. I am not doing anything nutritionally. Would this small lower level of t3 contribute to or cause my inability to lose 15 pounds? I have tried to lose this for years and cannot. Also regardless of what I do my nails and cuticles are so dry. I do feel better taking the 25 cytomel and he increased it to 50 last week. I am having no side effects at all on this much. My puzzlement is that for years I asked my primary physician to run a thyroid panel. They did and said it was normal. A free t4 was run but never a free t3. I went to my gynecologist for bio-identical hormones. he ran a lot of lab work, and you friends can imagine my surprize when he came back and recommended cytomel. I don't understand this.

I am glad to have found this group.

Mandy

December 15, 2004