Re: * Adrenals

[Guest guest]

Wow! Glad you are back. I am just new here for a couple of weeks and have

learned a lot...things that would have quite possibly avoided you ending up

in the hospital.

I am sure the other gals will help you out a lot more than I can.

Sounds like you sure did put yourself on a roller coaster ride. Thyroid

should be raised and lowered gradually. Raising thyroid supplement levels

puts and extra burden on your adrenals

I think most everybody here is dosing according to symptoms and watching

their temperatures to see where they are at.

1) Here is one of the first ones they gave me when I got here:

http://www.drrind.com/tempgraph.asp

This should help you understand temperature taking a bit. I am sure other

will chime in to help you out.

_________

2) Next go read some of the stuff in the " files " section

_________

3) Take this into your own hands.

Here is a list of all the most currnet sources for thyroid W/O A

PRESCRIPTION. After I send a few emails off, I am going to try the last one

as it is CHEAP!

1) http://www.smart-drugs.com/ias-order-Intro.htm#Thyroid

2) (FOR THOSE OUTSIDE THE US)

http://www.internationalpharmacy.com/browse.asp?

similar=Armour & language=en & searchlang=Armour%20Thyroid

3) http://www.biogenesis.co.za/pi-thyroid.asp

4) (TEMPORARILY DOWN)http://www.myrxforless.com/

5) https://secure.wsa.u-net.com/www.antiaging-

systems.com/acatalog/Online_Store_United_States___Buy_Here_1.html

6) http://www.antiaging-systems.com/a2z/thyroid.htm

7) (CHEAP)

https://host117.ipowerweb.com/~rrigamon/secureinput/anagen.net/myrx2.htm

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4) Are you MORE tired and weak than before you started taking thyroid? You

probably through your adrenals into a spin....but I guess you have already

figured that. Tish explains some stuff on dosing and adrenals below...

(hope you don't mind, Tish...)

" You can raise your meds as often as you can get away with, as long

as you don't crash your adrenals. For the average person that is

once every two weeks. When I was on all T3, I was instructed to

raise my dose every day or two. Your thyroid adjusts to increases if

it needs to by dropping production of hormone by the amount you

take. The thyroid can adapt to taking pills quite quickly, within a

day. The problem with raises comes from the adrenals. Raising the

metabolic rate with thyroid hormone makes a big jump in adrenal

demand and also increases the loss of cortisol from the body. So,

you can have some real adrenal problems from going up too quickly

and not allowing the adrenals to build up their capacity and

strength between thyroid raises. This can send you to the hospital

or to bed for weeks. The results of overtaxing your adrenals will be

that thyroid hormone will build up in the blood and cannot get into

tissues, so you will get symptoms of thyroid excess, even though you

may still be quite hypo and your hair is falling out and you are

freezing inside, etc., etc. Thyroid cannot get into tissues without

sufficient cortisol from the adrenals. And the adrenals can only

handle raises at a pretty slow rate for most people.

So, if your adrenals are in good shape, you can make increases every

day. Few people are in that good of shape, especially if you have

had hypothyroidism for a long time and your adrenals have become

weak from it.

But, you must be careful when you get up to around 3 to 4 grains.

when you get there, you need to slow down on raises and wait at the

very minimum 2 weeks before another one, 4 weeks is better. The

reason is that you are approaching the level of hormone that a

healthy thyroid would make, which is about 4-1/2 to 5 grains. It

takes a bit of time for T4 levels to stabilize in the blood after

each raise and it is very easy at the upper end to go too high too

quickly. You don't want this. You want a slow rise at the upper end

so that you don't end up in the emergency room getting meds to deal

with way too much thyroid in your system. Any amount of thyroid that

you take that is below what your healthy thyroid would make, your

own thryoid theoretically will drop production by that much so as to

keep blood levels proper for you. But, you don't want more than what

your healthy thyroid would make as the body has few avenues for

correcting it and you will overdose.

Also, low dose thyroid therapy, less than about 2-1/2 grains can

suppress the pituitary and cause it not to tell your thyroid to make

up the difference between what you are taking and what your body

needs. In theory if you take 1 grain of Armour, your pituitary

should sense that and tell your thyroid via TSH to make 3-1/2 to 4

more grains so that your daily total is about 4-1/2 to 5 grains.

But, in reality for many people taking a pill seems to overly

suppress the pituitary and it will not tell the thyriod to make up

the difference. In such people, me included, they will become more

hypothyroid on low dose therapy than on nothing. If this happens to

you, then you will need to get your dose up higher to overcome the

effects of this suppression. Dr. Derry says that that is usually a

minimum of 3 grains. Since doctors are fixated on the TSH test, they

often think the patient is perfectly fine and send them off to a

shrink for those nasty complaints they still have that there is no

basis for. The average thyroid replacement dose before fixation on

the TSH test was 3 to 5 grains a day. This was the average for over

50 years. Doses were adjusted by patient symptoms.

Tish " (thanks)

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5) There has been a lot of good stuff written here in the last couple of

weeks.

I might try and forward you a few that I have saved. Just what IS your

personal email?

It looks like it has about 4 underscores in it. Am I correct???

I hope this helps you get started...

~Inga

on 11/15/04 11:19 PM, Akasha____ at akasha____@... wrote:

Hi everyone,

I lost my computer, then got deleted from the group. I am so glad

to be back now! I have missed the advice in here, and I am desperate

for some now.

I started taking armourthyroid about 2 and a half months ago and

have been on a weird roller coaster ride every since. My Dr Started

me off on 3 grains. Well I tried that for about 2 weeks and got

shakey so I dropped it to one and a half grains for about 4 more

weeks. I upped it back to 3 grains because I felt so tired and

weak. I was ok for about two weeks except I was extremly HOT! I

presumed it was the menopause thing and just let it go at that.

Well, I ended up at the hospital with chest pains. They said it

was my mvp, but I know what that feels like and this was different.

However, they sent me home with paperwork on mvp lol. I hate Dr.s

sometimes. Then I remembered someone else in here had had similar

side effects when they had increased their thyroid medicine, so I

cut mine back to one and a half grains in the morning and one half

grain at night. So far I haven't had any side effects, but I am

still so tired and weak. I had my labs done 2 weeks ago, and have

an appt on Fri to get the results. I marked the box for them to

check my free t3 since he decided it didn't need to be checked lol.

He is a t4 worshipper. What I really need to know is how do I get my

Dr to test for adrenal function?? I am sure that this is what my

problem is. Or should I even ask him and just self medicate? Seems

like this is a never ending process! I am afraid he is going to

decrease my armourthyroid as it is, and don't want to make him

think, that I think, he is incompetant. Eventhough he probably is.

lol. Help!! Thanks, Debi ps i hope this makes sense cause the

brainfog is back a bit too