Re: hyper - T4 or T3.. how it works, what the books say... and then there is us - LONG

[Guest guest]

Based on what I've read, what I've experienced, and how I interpret both....

Elevated levels of T4, like suppressed TSH, does not cause a hyper state.

But.....

A body that is sensitive to adjustments... or

Has too much hormone added... or

Has increases done too closely together for the body to adjust...

..... can, and often does, experience symptoms of stress which can be the same as, or similar to, symptoms experience during a hyperthyroid (hypermetabolic) state.

If you look a the charts that compare symptoms of adrenal fatigue/stress and hyperthyroid and hypothyroid, many of the symptoms over lap. Often folks can have symptoms from all three lists and actually be hypo (low thyroid hormone levels)... they 'hyper' symptoms 'I believe' are symptoms show by the body to signal us that there is something wrong and we need to take steps.

Normally the our mind and will can not change hormone levels, so these symptoms cause us to change our habits...

an elevated heart rate fatigues us and causes us to reduce activity levels.

an elevated metabolic rate causes (most of us) to feel warm, feel an increase in hunger/appetite, burn more calories and drop weight (not for everyone though)

increased perception of stress (either psychological or physical) often triggers these same types of symptoms... signaling us to reduce activity... reducing the likelihood of damage to our bodies.

The thing is that all the things that I just listed are relative to the current state of the body. What is an increase in heart rate (just using me as an example cuz I'm such of lovely long list of extremes) for me when I'm at 50 beats per minute at rest and what is an increase in heart rate at my current rate of about 72 are very different... For someone at fifty to jump up 10 to 20 beats is a huge deal, the heart is weak and the entire body process is slowed and that heart rate isn't maintainable. Oxygenation isn't sufficient, waste remove isn't sufficient, distribution of nutrients an energy calories isn't sufficient... even digestive function isn't sufficient, or able to kick it's processes into a higher gear, to support the increased activity.

Thinking back to the two hyper episodes that I had when I became brain dead and goofed up my schedule (increasing quicker than my body was able to adjust to, it is what triggered me to move to a 12 week interim between my adjustments) both times I experienced an increase in heart rate (over 100) after minimal activity and then it taking several hours to a day for the heart rate to come back down. Both times I ended up backing off my dose for several weeks until my body could use up the excess hormone and stabilize again.

If we go back to when I first started on Synthroid (T4 only med for those that are new here) I got sick every time I took a pill. It would range from upset stomach to anxiety attacks, to sweats, I don't even remember everything anymore.. it was to an extreme that caused me not to want to take them at all. My Endo, though wonderful in so many ways and so thorough in teaching her students, and me cuz I was the one that she used to teach them with, was a Synthroid doc and told me only evil things about Armour. For two years we tried different brands of T4, difference dosages of tablets (in case it was a reaction to the dies in the pills) and what finally worked was dropping me down to small doses, taken three times a day, well, it was exactly every 8 hours (I had to set an alarm to get up to make sure that I didn't miss a dose) and all the doses were taken with food... Two years of all this messing around and then finding out the only way I could tolerate it was to drop the doses way down and take them with food..... I was then able to gradually work up the dose until I was taking 200 mcg per day in a single dose, right after breakfast, with all my other vitamins and minerals...

Now I know what that worked... taking the doses with food gave me very little of the T4, most of it would never have been broken down (for new folks, it needs full strength stomach acid to remove the sodium molecules from the T4 molecules... synthetic T4 has sodium bound to it to make it more shelf stable but until that sodium is removed the hormone is useless to our bodies) What hormone was available.. well, a good portion of that would have combined with the food and physically have not been absorbable just cuz of being globbed in with the food and some would have been bound to the iron and calcium that I was taking with every meal....

So the solution for the all the negative reactions that I was having to taking the T4 was to take it in such a way as to prevent it from even getting into my blood stream...

E... You are having a very difficult time getting your proportions of T4 and T3 right... I think that is why you are asking the question, hoping to pull in more information to add to what you already have to try to figure out how and why you are having such a tough time with the balance... Am I right?

One thing that struck me as I am writing this is some of the variables involved with synthetic T4...

Consider:

Dosage of the tablets is plus or minus 10 percent of the printed dosage (so a 100 mcg table my be anywhere from 90 mcg to 110 mcg)

Synthroid, the brand, has a higher rate of mislabeling and shelf instability than any of the other brands of synthetic T4. Remember the class action lawsuit against them that they lost for just that reason....

So...

If you are always consistent with how you take it (empty stomach, separate from binders like calcium and iron)...

If you are very thorough/accurate/responsible with measuring, scheduling and adjusting dosages for ratios and totals....

.... you still have an uncontrolled variable that MIGHT have something to do with how hyper sensitive your body is to the adjustments that you are making...

Don't know if this is true... but it came to mind and the only way it can be confirmed or ruled out is to take a closer look and perhaps add a level of control to that variable.

The best way, for any of us, on which ever med we are one, is to try to stay with the same pill for as long as possible and transition when either changing to a different dosage of tablet, or a different brand... many of us know that... but we also have to take into consideration the lot numbers of the batches of the pills we are taking...

I have always tried to get in a supply of pills each time I order.. so that I have a better chance of getting multiple bottles from the same lot/batch number. That greatly increases the likelihood that the pills from bottle A will have the same potency as the pills in bottle B and the same as the pills in bottle C... follow what I'm getting at?

So.. my brain is dredging up this tidbit of wonderment... as you've gone through your adjustments and refiguring ratio.... has the T4 that you've been using been from the same batch? Or have you been using different sizes/dosages of pills or pills from different bottles?

What if part of this fluctuation in how your body is responding and having to rethink proportions again isn't so much your math... or the ratio that had been working no longer working... but a difference in the potency of tablets.?

... to be fair, there is a fluctuation in actual potency from batch to batch in ALL pills and capsules... but Synthroid, the brand, as the worst track record of them all.... And right now I don't remember what brand of T4 you are on.....

I'm wordy tonight... I've been going through computer withdrawal so I hope you grabbed a glass of water!!! hehehehehehe

Going back to the basics of thyroid hormones, how our body manages and uses them and how all of our body processes respond to them..... the single hormone with the most profound impact on our body is T3. Considering I, personally, have bad responses to synthetic T4 and others do wonderfully on it, I can't say that ALL of us are the same, we just aren't. There are far tooo many variables in our genetics, lifestyle, age, ethnicity, geographic location, ancestry, etc for there to be hard and fast rules... but, that said, as a general rule T4 has very little immediate impact on us.. it's an inactive hormone that our bodies don't do much with until it's time to process (yeah, I know.. I'm the one that was barfing my guts out two minutes after taking it and then climbing the walls to find the worms behind the wallpaper...)

.... now I'm crippling up again from adding synthetic T4 to stretch my natural..... that, according to EVERYTHING I've read (and I've read A LOT on thyroid) isn't possible... yet here I am.... I can now demonstrate cause and effect with this tendon thing in my right leg... it's directly linked to the synthetic T4... it took months for it to build to the level where it was consistent... now that I have reached that point... stopping the synthetic T4, no tendon issues starting the next day. Take a single 100 mcg tablet in the morning and something as simple as standing up from the toilet and bending to pull up my pants... will pop that tendon... One day last week I tried another 'test'. (swallow what you're drinking, I don't want you spewing on the monitor!) I was VERY careful with how I sat on the toilet... and how I got up, pulling my pants up over my knees before standing, so that I didn't have to bend over.... I was careful in both sitting down in my chair and standing up from it.... I was WEIRD all that day in how I moved, turned, sat and stood... and I was doing okay... the experiment that day was to see if the tendon would pop and seize without a stressor on it... hence my being EXTREMELY careful....

We'd been having some water puddling in the basement... Ruth and I went down, flashlights in hand, to see if we could determine the source (it ended up being water from the AC condenser leaking back into the house cuz of the ground being so dry that the water was pooling against the foundation and coming in that way) So we are moving boxes, looking behind some paneling... following along pipes to the water heater.. checking along the block walls.... I'm being SO careful I feel like someone following protocol in a hazmat suit.... we're all done and just about to leave and I noticed one thing that we'd not peaked behind and I stepped VERY carefully over a short box, straddling it I saw what I needed to see and then just stepped back. The action of lifting my leg to raise it over the level of the box so that I could just step back... popped the tendon and seized it right there... shot the sucker right up into my back...

For all intents and purposes from doing nothing. That was early last week... I've not taken ANY synthetic T4 since then... and I haven't had one bit of trouble with that leg in all this time... up and down stairs... and, get this... that fiasco with the water and having to rescue all the electronics before they got wet and shorted this morning... that little dance with my feet and the water on the floor... I didn't pop that tendon... nothing.. nada zip....

....but T4 has no immediate effect on us... says so in the books....

Isn't it great... all the facts.... then the personal experiences.. and it doesn't jive... so how do we KNOW what to do? Just what we do so much of around here.... share our stories... ask questions... get opinions... and relate all of that to our own bodies....

Some folks seem to have an easier time getting it all sorted... some of us having more stuff to figure out and it takes us longer... but drat it... even though I'm a 'longer' one... even though I've had a set back with availability and having to rejuggerlate (I'm in a 'make up word' mode) I still feel that being persistent in figuring it out, sticking with it until that magical combination figures itself out...

..... is WORTH it!

E... I know you're getting frustrated.. and exasperated... I get that way too.... A LOT... but you're a smart lady.. you've been sticking to your guns and have been determined to figure out what your 'magic' combo is.... and even if it's exactly what I CAN NOT do (mixing synthetic T4 in) don't give it up, okay?

Okay.. I'm going though past posts of yours, one from last June (June 20, I'm reading my archives, not online, so I don't have the message number)

Here are the numbers you posted.

When the Armour was slightly higher: (60 mcgs /120 Mgs A)t3F 568 (230-420) 178 %t4F 1.9 (.08-1.8) 106 %When the Synthroid was slightly higher: (62.5 mgs /90 Mgs A)t3F 469 (230-420) 126%t4F 1.29 (.59-1.17) 121%

I know you've probably said it before. But could we run through it again?

You're numbers a showing that you're flat out hyper. I know.. ranges cover the majority of folks, and there are folks on either side of those ranges whose numbers don't fit the 'norm' but are right for them.....

Fibro symptoms... can you run through them? Might they not be 'fibro symptoms'? Not critiquing here... just gathering info so that we can explore more...

Lethargy and feeling stress are things you've also listed..... both of those can be hyper or hypo symptoms...

What is your resting heart rate? Have someone check your breathing sometime, when you're not paying attention to the fact that they are watching/listening to you breathe... I'm curious about how the two related...

Have you done the 'simple stupid' adrenal test, the one with the flashlight and the mirror? How do you do? (point flashlight across the eyes, from the side NOT into the eyes. Using the mirror, do the pupils contract and hold or do they flicker/wobble/ go in and out?

I'll stop with that.... lets see what you can add and we'll pick some more...

Topper ()

www.toppers-place.com

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:12:51 -0700 (PDT) E Gillespie writes:

Topper:

Do you feel a difference with t3 hyper symptoms as opposed to t4 hyper symtpoms?

Could you make a list for me...as if you don' t have enough to worry about !!

Thanks!

~E:)

[Guest guest]

Based on what I've read, what I've experienced, and how I interpret both....

Elevated levels of T4, like suppressed TSH, does not cause a hyper state.

But.....

A body that is sensitive to adjustments... or

Has too much hormone added... or

Has increases done too closely together for the body to adjust...

..... can, and often does, experience symptoms of stress which can be the same as, or similar to, symptoms experience during a hyperthyroid (hypermetabolic) state.

If you look a the charts that compare symptoms of adrenal fatigue/stress and hyperthyroid and hypothyroid, many of the symptoms over lap. Often folks can have symptoms from all three lists and actually be hypo (low thyroid hormone levels)... they 'hyper' symptoms 'I believe' are symptoms show by the body to signal us that there is something wrong and we need to take steps.

Normally the our mind and will can not change hormone levels, so these symptoms cause us to change our habits...

an elevated heart rate fatigues us and causes us to reduce activity levels.

an elevated metabolic rate causes (most of us) to feel warm, feel an increase in hunger/appetite, burn more calories and drop weight (not for everyone though)

increased perception of stress (either psychological or physical) often triggers these same types of symptoms... signaling us to reduce activity... reducing the likelihood of damage to our bodies.

The thing is that all the things that I just listed are relative to the current state of the body. What is an increase in heart rate (just using me as an example cuz I'm such of lovely long list of extremes) for me when I'm at 50 beats per minute at rest and what is an increase in heart rate at my current rate of about 72 are very different... For someone at fifty to jump up 10 to 20 beats is a huge deal, the heart is weak and the entire body process is slowed and that heart rate isn't maintainable. Oxygenation isn't sufficient, waste remove isn't sufficient, distribution of nutrients an energy calories isn't sufficient... even digestive function isn't sufficient, or able to kick it's processes into a higher gear, to support the increased activity.

Thinking back to the two hyper episodes that I had when I became brain dead and goofed up my schedule (increasing quicker than my body was able to adjust to, it is what triggered me to move to a 12 week interim between my adjustments) both times I experienced an increase in heart rate (over 100) after minimal activity and then it taking several hours to a day for the heart rate to come back down. Both times I ended up backing off my dose for several weeks until my body could use up the excess hormone and stabilize again.

If we go back to when I first started on Synthroid (T4 only med for those that are new here) I got sick every time I took a pill. It would range from upset stomach to anxiety attacks, to sweats, I don't even remember everything anymore.. it was to an extreme that caused me not to want to take them at all. My Endo, though wonderful in so many ways and so thorough in teaching her students, and me cuz I was the one that she used to teach them with, was a Synthroid doc and told me only evil things about Armour. For two years we tried different brands of T4, difference dosages of tablets (in case it was a reaction to the dies in the pills) and what finally worked was dropping me down to small doses, taken three times a day, well, it was exactly every 8 hours (I had to set an alarm to get up to make sure that I didn't miss a dose) and all the doses were taken with food... Two years of all this messing around and then finding out the only way I could tolerate it was to drop the doses way down and take them with food..... I was then able to gradually work up the dose until I was taking 200 mcg per day in a single dose, right after breakfast, with all my other vitamins and minerals...

Now I know what that worked... taking the doses with food gave me very little of the T4, most of it would never have been broken down (for new folks, it needs full strength stomach acid to remove the sodium molecules from the T4 molecules... synthetic T4 has sodium bound to it to make it more shelf stable but until that sodium is removed the hormone is useless to our bodies) What hormone was available.. well, a good portion of that would have combined with the food and physically have not been absorbable just cuz of being globbed in with the food and some would have been bound to the iron and calcium that I was taking with every meal....

So the solution for the all the negative reactions that I was having to taking the T4 was to take it in such a way as to prevent it from even getting into my blood stream...

E... You are having a very difficult time getting your proportions of T4 and T3 right... I think that is why you are asking the question, hoping to pull in more information to add to what you already have to try to figure out how and why you are having such a tough time with the balance... Am I right?

One thing that struck me as I am writing this is some of the variables involved with synthetic T4...

Consider:

Dosage of the tablets is plus or minus 10 percent of the printed dosage (so a 100 mcg table my be anywhere from 90 mcg to 110 mcg)

Synthroid, the brand, has a higher rate of mislabeling and shelf instability than any of the other brands of synthetic T4. Remember the class action lawsuit against them that they lost for just that reason....

So...

If you are always consistent with how you take it (empty stomach, separate from binders like calcium and iron)...

If you are very thorough/accurate/responsible with measuring, scheduling and adjusting dosages for ratios and totals....

.... you still have an uncontrolled variable that MIGHT have something to do with how hyper sensitive your body is to the adjustments that you are making...

Don't know if this is true... but it came to mind and the only way it can be confirmed or ruled out is to take a closer look and perhaps add a level of control to that variable.

The best way, for any of us, on which ever med we are one, is to try to stay with the same pill for as long as possible and transition when either changing to a different dosage of tablet, or a different brand... many of us know that... but we also have to take into consideration the lot numbers of the batches of the pills we are taking...

I have always tried to get in a supply of pills each time I order.. so that I have a better chance of getting multiple bottles from the same lot/batch number. That greatly increases the likelihood that the pills from bottle A will have the same potency as the pills in bottle B and the same as the pills in bottle C... follow what I'm getting at?

So.. my brain is dredging up this tidbit of wonderment... as you've gone through your adjustments and refiguring ratio.... has the T4 that you've been using been from the same batch? Or have you been using different sizes/dosages of pills or pills from different bottles?

What if part of this fluctuation in how your body is responding and having to rethink proportions again isn't so much your math... or the ratio that had been working no longer working... but a difference in the potency of tablets.?

... to be fair, there is a fluctuation in actual potency from batch to batch in ALL pills and capsules... but Synthroid, the brand, as the worst track record of them all.... And right now I don't remember what brand of T4 you are on.....

I'm wordy tonight... I've been going through computer withdrawal so I hope you grabbed a glass of water!!! hehehehehehe

Going back to the basics of thyroid hormones, how our body manages and uses them and how all of our body processes respond to them..... the single hormone with the most profound impact on our body is T3. Considering I, personally, have bad responses to synthetic T4 and others do wonderfully on it, I can't say that ALL of us are the same, we just aren't. There are far tooo many variables in our genetics, lifestyle, age, ethnicity, geographic location, ancestry, etc for there to be hard and fast rules... but, that said, as a general rule T4 has very little immediate impact on us.. it's an inactive hormone that our bodies don't do much with until it's time to process (yeah, I know.. I'm the one that was barfing my guts out two minutes after taking it and then climbing the walls to find the worms behind the wallpaper...)

.... now I'm crippling up again from adding synthetic T4 to stretch my natural..... that, according to EVERYTHING I've read (and I've read A LOT on thyroid) isn't possible... yet here I am.... I can now demonstrate cause and effect with this tendon thing in my right leg... it's directly linked to the synthetic T4... it took months for it to build to the level where it was consistent... now that I have reached that point... stopping the synthetic T4, no tendon issues starting the next day. Take a single 100 mcg tablet in the morning and something as simple as standing up from the toilet and bending to pull up my pants... will pop that tendon... One day last week I tried another 'test'. (swallow what you're drinking, I don't want you spewing on the monitor!) I was VERY careful with how I sat on the toilet... and how I got up, pulling my pants up over my knees before standing, so that I didn't have to bend over.... I was careful in both sitting down in my chair and standing up from it.... I was WEIRD all that day in how I moved, turned, sat and stood... and I was doing okay... the experiment that day was to see if the tendon would pop and seize without a stressor on it... hence my being EXTREMELY careful....

We'd been having some water puddling in the basement... Ruth and I went down, flashlights in hand, to see if we could determine the source (it ended up being water from the AC condenser leaking back into the house cuz of the ground being so dry that the water was pooling against the foundation and coming in that way) So we are moving boxes, looking behind some paneling... following along pipes to the water heater.. checking along the block walls.... I'm being SO careful I feel like someone following protocol in a hazmat suit.... we're all done and just about to leave and I noticed one thing that we'd not peaked behind and I stepped VERY carefully over a short box, straddling it I saw what I needed to see and then just stepped back. The action of lifting my leg to raise it over the level of the box so that I could just step back... popped the tendon and seized it right there... shot the sucker right up into my back...

For all intents and purposes from doing nothing. That was early last week... I've not taken ANY synthetic T4 since then... and I haven't had one bit of trouble with that leg in all this time... up and down stairs... and, get this... that fiasco with the water and having to rescue all the electronics before they got wet and shorted this morning... that little dance with my feet and the water on the floor... I didn't pop that tendon... nothing.. nada zip....

....but T4 has no immediate effect on us... says so in the books....

Isn't it great... all the facts.... then the personal experiences.. and it doesn't jive... so how do we KNOW what to do? Just what we do so much of around here.... share our stories... ask questions... get opinions... and relate all of that to our own bodies....

Some folks seem to have an easier time getting it all sorted... some of us having more stuff to figure out and it takes us longer... but drat it... even though I'm a 'longer' one... even though I've had a set back with availability and having to rejuggerlate (I'm in a 'make up word' mode) I still feel that being persistent in figuring it out, sticking with it until that magical combination figures itself out...

..... is WORTH it!

E... I know you're getting frustrated.. and exasperated... I get that way too.... A LOT... but you're a smart lady.. you've been sticking to your guns and have been determined to figure out what your 'magic' combo is.... and even if it's exactly what I CAN NOT do (mixing synthetic T4 in) don't give it up, okay?

Okay.. I'm going though past posts of yours, one from last June (June 20, I'm reading my archives, not online, so I don't have the message number)

Here are the numbers you posted.

When the Armour was slightly higher: (60 mcgs /120 Mgs A)t3F 568 (230-420) 178 %t4F 1.9 (.08-1.8) 106 %When the Synthroid was slightly higher: (62.5 mgs /90 Mgs A)t3F 469 (230-420) 126%t4F 1.29 (.59-1.17) 121%

I know you've probably said it before. But could we run through it again?

You're numbers a showing that you're flat out hyper. I know.. ranges cover the majority of folks, and there are folks on either side of those ranges whose numbers don't fit the 'norm' but are right for them.....

Fibro symptoms... can you run through them? Might they not be 'fibro symptoms'? Not critiquing here... just gathering info so that we can explore more...

Lethargy and feeling stress are things you've also listed..... both of those can be hyper or hypo symptoms...

What is your resting heart rate? Have someone check your breathing sometime, when you're not paying attention to the fact that they are watching/listening to you breathe... I'm curious about how the two related...

Have you done the 'simple stupid' adrenal test, the one with the flashlight and the mirror? How do you do? (point flashlight across the eyes, from the side NOT into the eyes. Using the mirror, do the pupils contract and hold or do they flicker/wobble/ go in and out?

I'll stop with that.... lets see what you can add and we'll pick some more...

Topper ()

www.toppers-place.com

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:12:51 -0700 (PDT) E Gillespie writes:

Topper:

Do you feel a difference with t3 hyper symptoms as opposed to t4 hyper symtpoms?

Could you make a list for me...as if you don' t have enough to worry about !!

Thanks!

~E:)

[Guest guest]

Based on what I've read, what I've experienced, and how I interpret both....

Elevated levels of T4, like suppressed TSH, does not cause a hyper state.

But.....

A body that is sensitive to adjustments... or

Has too much hormone added... or

Has increases done too closely together for the body to adjust...

..... can, and often does, experience symptoms of stress which can be the same as, or similar to, symptoms experience during a hyperthyroid (hypermetabolic) state.

If you look a the charts that compare symptoms of adrenal fatigue/stress and hyperthyroid and hypothyroid, many of the symptoms over lap. Often folks can have symptoms from all three lists and actually be hypo (low thyroid hormone levels)... they 'hyper' symptoms 'I believe' are symptoms show by the body to signal us that there is something wrong and we need to take steps.

Normally the our mind and will can not change hormone levels, so these symptoms cause us to change our habits...

an elevated heart rate fatigues us and causes us to reduce activity levels.

an elevated metabolic rate causes (most of us) to feel warm, feel an increase in hunger/appetite, burn more calories and drop weight (not for everyone though)

increased perception of stress (either psychological or physical) often triggers these same types of symptoms... signaling us to reduce activity... reducing the likelihood of damage to our bodies.

The thing is that all the things that I just listed are relative to the current state of the body. What is an increase in heart rate (just using me as an example cuz I'm such of lovely long list of extremes) for me when I'm at 50 beats per minute at rest and what is an increase in heart rate at my current rate of about 72 are very different... For someone at fifty to jump up 10 to 20 beats is a huge deal, the heart is weak and the entire body process is slowed and that heart rate isn't maintainable. Oxygenation isn't sufficient, waste remove isn't sufficient, distribution of nutrients an energy calories isn't sufficient... even digestive function isn't sufficient, or able to kick it's processes into a higher gear, to support the increased activity.

Thinking back to the two hyper episodes that I had when I became brain dead and goofed up my schedule (increasing quicker than my body was able to adjust to, it is what triggered me to move to a 12 week interim between my adjustments) both times I experienced an increase in heart rate (over 100) after minimal activity and then it taking several hours to a day for the heart rate to come back down. Both times I ended up backing off my dose for several weeks until my body could use up the excess hormone and stabilize again.

If we go back to when I first started on Synthroid (T4 only med for those that are new here) I got sick every time I took a pill. It would range from upset stomach to anxiety attacks, to sweats, I don't even remember everything anymore.. it was to an extreme that caused me not to want to take them at all. My Endo, though wonderful in so many ways and so thorough in teaching her students, and me cuz I was the one that she used to teach them with, was a Synthroid doc and told me only evil things about Armour. For two years we tried different brands of T4, difference dosages of tablets (in case it was a reaction to the dies in the pills) and what finally worked was dropping me down to small doses, taken three times a day, well, it was exactly every 8 hours (I had to set an alarm to get up to make sure that I didn't miss a dose) and all the doses were taken with food... Two years of all this messing around and then finding out the only way I could tolerate it was to drop the doses way down and take them with food..... I was then able to gradually work up the dose until I was taking 200 mcg per day in a single dose, right after breakfast, with all my other vitamins and minerals...

Now I know what that worked... taking the doses with food gave me very little of the T4, most of it would never have been broken down (for new folks, it needs full strength stomach acid to remove the sodium molecules from the T4 molecules... synthetic T4 has sodium bound to it to make it more shelf stable but until that sodium is removed the hormone is useless to our bodies) What hormone was available.. well, a good portion of that would have combined with the food and physically have not been absorbable just cuz of being globbed in with the food and some would have been bound to the iron and calcium that I was taking with every meal....

So the solution for the all the negative reactions that I was having to taking the T4 was to take it in such a way as to prevent it from even getting into my blood stream...

E... You are having a very difficult time getting your proportions of T4 and T3 right... I think that is why you are asking the question, hoping to pull in more information to add to what you already have to try to figure out how and why you are having such a tough time with the balance... Am I right?

One thing that struck me as I am writing this is some of the variables involved with synthetic T4...

Consider:

Dosage of the tablets is plus or minus 10 percent of the printed dosage (so a 100 mcg table my be anywhere from 90 mcg to 110 mcg)

Synthroid, the brand, has a higher rate of mislabeling and shelf instability than any of the other brands of synthetic T4. Remember the class action lawsuit against them that they lost for just that reason....

So...

If you are always consistent with how you take it (empty stomach, separate from binders like calcium and iron)...

If you are very thorough/accurate/responsible with measuring, scheduling and adjusting dosages for ratios and totals....

.... you still have an uncontrolled variable that MIGHT have something to do with how hyper sensitive your body is to the adjustments that you are making...

Don't know if this is true... but it came to mind and the only way it can be confirmed or ruled out is to take a closer look and perhaps add a level of control to that variable.

The best way, for any of us, on which ever med we are one, is to try to stay with the same pill for as long as possible and transition when either changing to a different dosage of tablet, or a different brand... many of us know that... but we also have to take into consideration the lot numbers of the batches of the pills we are taking...

I have always tried to get in a supply of pills each time I order.. so that I have a better chance of getting multiple bottles from the same lot/batch number. That greatly increases the likelihood that the pills from bottle A will have the same potency as the pills in bottle B and the same as the pills in bottle C... follow what I'm getting at?

So.. my brain is dredging up this tidbit of wonderment... as you've gone through your adjustments and refiguring ratio.... has the T4 that you've been using been from the same batch? Or have you been using different sizes/dosages of pills or pills from different bottles?

What if part of this fluctuation in how your body is responding and having to rethink proportions again isn't so much your math... or the ratio that had been working no longer working... but a difference in the potency of tablets.?

... to be fair, there is a fluctuation in actual potency from batch to batch in ALL pills and capsules... but Synthroid, the brand, as the worst track record of them all.... And right now I don't remember what brand of T4 you are on.....

I'm wordy tonight... I've been going through computer withdrawal so I hope you grabbed a glass of water!!! hehehehehehe

Going back to the basics of thyroid hormones, how our body manages and uses them and how all of our body processes respond to them..... the single hormone with the most profound impact on our body is T3. Considering I, personally, have bad responses to synthetic T4 and others do wonderfully on it, I can't say that ALL of us are the same, we just aren't. There are far tooo many variables in our genetics, lifestyle, age, ethnicity, geographic location, ancestry, etc for there to be hard and fast rules... but, that said, as a general rule T4 has very little immediate impact on us.. it's an inactive hormone that our bodies don't do much with until it's time to process (yeah, I know.. I'm the one that was barfing my guts out two minutes after taking it and then climbing the walls to find the worms behind the wallpaper...)

.... now I'm crippling up again from adding synthetic T4 to stretch my natural..... that, according to EVERYTHING I've read (and I've read A LOT on thyroid) isn't possible... yet here I am.... I can now demonstrate cause and effect with this tendon thing in my right leg... it's directly linked to the synthetic T4... it took months for it to build to the level where it was consistent... now that I have reached that point... stopping the synthetic T4, no tendon issues starting the next day. Take a single 100 mcg tablet in the morning and something as simple as standing up from the toilet and bending to pull up my pants... will pop that tendon... One day last week I tried another 'test'. (swallow what you're drinking, I don't want you spewing on the monitor!) I was VERY careful with how I sat on the toilet... and how I got up, pulling my pants up over my knees before standing, so that I didn't have to bend over.... I was careful in both sitting down in my chair and standing up from it.... I was WEIRD all that day in how I moved, turned, sat and stood... and I was doing okay... the experiment that day was to see if the tendon would pop and seize without a stressor on it... hence my being EXTREMELY careful....

We'd been having some water puddling in the basement... Ruth and I went down, flashlights in hand, to see if we could determine the source (it ended up being water from the AC condenser leaking back into the house cuz of the ground being so dry that the water was pooling against the foundation and coming in that way) So we are moving boxes, looking behind some paneling... following along pipes to the water heater.. checking along the block walls.... I'm being SO careful I feel like someone following protocol in a hazmat suit.... we're all done and just about to leave and I noticed one thing that we'd not peaked behind and I stepped VERY carefully over a short box, straddling it I saw what I needed to see and then just stepped back. The action of lifting my leg to raise it over the level of the box so that I could just step back... popped the tendon and seized it right there... shot the sucker right up into my back...

For all intents and purposes from doing nothing. That was early last week... I've not taken ANY synthetic T4 since then... and I haven't had one bit of trouble with that leg in all this time... up and down stairs... and, get this... that fiasco with the water and having to rescue all the electronics before they got wet and shorted this morning... that little dance with my feet and the water on the floor... I didn't pop that tendon... nothing.. nada zip....

....but T4 has no immediate effect on us... says so in the books....

Isn't it great... all the facts.... then the personal experiences.. and it doesn't jive... so how do we KNOW what to do? Just what we do so much of around here.... share our stories... ask questions... get opinions... and relate all of that to our own bodies....

Some folks seem to have an easier time getting it all sorted... some of us having more stuff to figure out and it takes us longer... but drat it... even though I'm a 'longer' one... even though I've had a set back with availability and having to rejuggerlate (I'm in a 'make up word' mode) I still feel that being persistent in figuring it out, sticking with it until that magical combination figures itself out...

..... is WORTH it!

E... I know you're getting frustrated.. and exasperated... I get that way too.... A LOT... but you're a smart lady.. you've been sticking to your guns and have been determined to figure out what your 'magic' combo is.... and even if it's exactly what I CAN NOT do (mixing synthetic T4 in) don't give it up, okay?

Okay.. I'm going though past posts of yours, one from last June (June 20, I'm reading my archives, not online, so I don't have the message number)

Here are the numbers you posted.

When the Armour was slightly higher: (60 mcgs /120 Mgs A)t3F 568 (230-420) 178 %t4F 1.9 (.08-1.8) 106 %When the Synthroid was slightly higher: (62.5 mgs /90 Mgs A)t3F 469 (230-420) 126%t4F 1.29 (.59-1.17) 121%

I know you've probably said it before. But could we run through it again?

You're numbers a showing that you're flat out hyper. I know.. ranges cover the majority of folks, and there are folks on either side of those ranges whose numbers don't fit the 'norm' but are right for them.....

Fibro symptoms... can you run through them? Might they not be 'fibro symptoms'? Not critiquing here... just gathering info so that we can explore more...

Lethargy and feeling stress are things you've also listed..... both of those can be hyper or hypo symptoms...

What is your resting heart rate? Have someone check your breathing sometime, when you're not paying attention to the fact that they are watching/listening to you breathe... I'm curious about how the two related...

Have you done the 'simple stupid' adrenal test, the one with the flashlight and the mirror? How do you do? (point flashlight across the eyes, from the side NOT into the eyes. Using the mirror, do the pupils contract and hold or do they flicker/wobble/ go in and out?

I'll stop with that.... lets see what you can add and we'll pick some more...

Topper ()

www.toppers-place.com

On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:12:51 -0700 (PDT) E Gillespie writes:

Topper:

Do you feel a difference with t3 hyper symptoms as opposed to t4 hyper symtpoms?

Could you make a list for me...as if you don' t have enough to worry about !!

Thanks!

~E:)

[Guest guest]

Topper: Half way through...you totally got me. I fell off my chair because I started to laugh and that morfed into a coughing fit. I had to leave the room so I could go get a pack of smokes and a bottle of Jack s!!! Whew! After I posted the question earlier, I realized (it comes at me all at once like a scud missle out of nowhere) that last week I got my new vities and they are full of stuff HYPER folks shouldn't take. While I'm not hyper....if I take too many of these pills, I can and DID get that way... I'm sort of feeling "overcooked," and I didn't recognize it. Too much T3 feeling feels more like a VICE has got me. Too much t4 kind of just weakens me and this didn't feel like either so I was scratching my head all day. So...I figured it out!!! YES!!! I used to

take these vities a year ago...and was on a lower dose of thyroid med...and FORGOT to think about that vital difference. I took a buch too! I thought they would help with my digestion...and they did!!! They drove up my BT to 98.0 this morning...and I had been trying to figure what the relationship was ALL day. This is only day two of the DREADFUL...."overcooked" feeling, so I caught it early. Now...that I have figured it out...I can fix that. NO more handfulls of green pills!! Course this comes as I'm not truley stabalized yet, so I started suspecting my protocol. Its easy to get freaked out. You were looking at my bloodwork. YES...you have it right...they bloods look hyper. For whatever reason...I was not feeling anything then in terms of hyper symptoms at the time. I was

really fibroed out...and stiff and full of nueropathy. I couldn't tell what was going on, didn't have good temps, only had full-tilt brain fog and was in a world of numbness and pain. Its really only been the last two months that I can FEEL what is what. Without those feelings...you are blind and have no antlers. So...I think ultimately I won't be at those levels. I think they are a bit high too. Maybe 20 mgs too high on the Armour and maybe 3 mcgs too high on the Synthetic. That is my best guess at the moment. Now..that I can READ my self and have antlers and all....I've tried to hustle this around for the last month -- lower both one or the other of both without loosing my footing too much. NOT easy. I feel like I'm trying to spin the Queen on a dime. I can see now its both that need downward tweaks ..but

a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure. The thing that is so frustrating is that YOU know which way you want to go...long before you can get there.... I can't thank you enough for going to all the trouble to pick through all the nitty gritty possibilites. I take Synthroid and YES...I have a stock that is from all over. Different expirationd dates, batches and origins. Actually..though I have to say, I really feel that the synthetic for me is SOLID. It always shows itself VERY consistent in the bloods and never seems to ACT stange or weak on me in the slightest. Good insight though...YOU are so good at that!! As kind as you are for looking for something that is not my fault, I don't think I can agree. ITS my fault..... My math was wrong...and like you say about the t4...not having an

instant impact.... I see that it does and in a major way for me. I only didn't take it for three days...and I still have fuzzy headed migraine from that (during that time, I keep the Armour the same), a whole month later. Who knows when I'll get my brain back from that... Just prior, when I tried to increase it...it took less than six days for me to FEEL weakness for the hyper. I had only added 2.5 mcgs per day!!!. THAT is not a big increase. So...I agree with your point -- that books have their theories, but sometimes it doesn't stack up to reality. I happen to think t4 does more than just take up space in a STORAGE UNIT. While one can agree that t3 has more ACTIVITY, that doesn't mean t4 doesn't have some sort of OTHER job or jobs to do. I always remember with my self-education in metaphsyics...that nothing in the Universe

is here without cause. Did you know they found amino-acids floating in space? Next, they'll find MY thryoid hormones out there!!! In medical school they are supposed to teach the docs to be...that every medicine has more than just one ACTION...and they are to be aware of the second or third reaction, not just the MOST obvious. LIKE you, I look for what may be highly relavent...even if its unkown. Topper...you have discovered as many have the synthetic t4 and Armour are quite different. I find that too. We just are looking at the animal from different points. For me...I get really STIFF...like a manican with too much t4 and its hurts in the tendons as you describe. Actually, it feels like sandpaper over broken glass in the joints... HIPs and shoulders being the worst for

me. When I fist I lowered my T4...(too much) but when I did, it was like someone released the Jack-in the-box.. I could bend and reach again. I've started to get back my natural flexibility. YAY!!!! I also couldn't stop laughing either... My funny bone must have been in there somewhere... Like you, I am pretty body concious, being that I was a tiny competive dancer type who worked out a lot. So...now, I've tried to add back, SOME..not all, so I could have a brain and not have stiffness at the same time. I hope its not too much to ask... While I feel pretty crummy these last few weeks..I'm convinced that I have learned quite a bit when I decided to break out of my "holding pattern" that seemed to reach its limit. Its only a matter of time now. I may be good for the FALL...I think. My first FALL in two and half years!!!! Maybe I'll make one trip to the beach in Rhode Island before the sun rides away during September... This "sideways skid" should be over in about a month I think... I go for bloods in October...so it better be... You are the best Topper. I've gotten quite troucned by a few folks lately...folks that I have been quite supportive of and all I can say..is THANKS again for providing this wonderful service, even if you have a wet basement and pig tails!!! ~S:) topper2@... wrote: Based on what I've read, what I've experienced, and how I interpret both.... Elevated levels of T4, like suppressed TSH, does not cause a hyper state. But..... A body that is sensitive to adjustments... or Has too much hormone added... or Has increases done too closely together for the body to adjust... .... can, and often does, experience symptoms of stress which can be the same as, or similar to, symptoms experience during a hyperthyroid (hypermetabolic) state. If you look a the charts that compare symptoms of adrenal fatigue/stress and hyperthyroid and hypothyroid, many of the symptoms over lap. Often folks can have symptoms from all three lists and actually be hypo (low thyroid hormone levels)... they 'hyper' symptoms 'I believe' are symptoms show by the body to signal us that there is something wrong and we need to take steps. Normally the our mind and will can not change hormone levels, so these symptoms cause us to change our habits...

an elevated heart rate fatigues us and causes us to reduce activity levels. an elevated metabolic rate causes (most of us) to feel warm, feel an increase in hunger/appetite, burn more calories and drop weight (not for everyone though) increased perception of stress (either psychological or physical) often triggers these same types of symptoms... signaling us to reduce activity... reducing the likelihood of damage to our bodies. The thing is that all the things that I just listed are relative to the current state of the body. What is an increase in heart rate (just using me as an example cuz I'm such of lovely long list of extremes) for me when I'm at 50 beats per minute at rest and what is an increase in heart rate at my current rate of about 72 are very different... For someone at fifty to jump up 10 to 20 beats is a huge deal, the heart is weak and the entire body process is slowed and

that heart rate isn't maintainable. Oxygenation isn't sufficient, waste remove isn't sufficient, distribution of nutrients an energy calories isn't sufficient... even digestive function isn't sufficient, or able to kick it's processes into a higher gear, to support the increased activity. Thinking back to the two hyper episodes that I had when I became brain dead and goofed up my schedule (increasing quicker than my body was able to adjust to, it is what triggered me to move to a 12 week interim between my adjustments) both times I experienced an increase in heart rate (over 100) after minimal activity and then it taking several hours to a day for the heart rate to come back down. Both times I ended up backing off my dose for several weeks until my body could use up the excess hormone and stabilize again. If we go back to when I first started on Synthroid (T4 only med for those that are new here) I got sick

every time I took a pill. It would range from upset stomach to anxiety attacks, to sweats, I don't even remember everything anymore.. it was to an extreme that caused me not to want to take them at all. My Endo, though wonderful in so many ways and so thorough in teaching her students, and me cuz I was the one that she used to teach them with, was a Synthroid doc and told me only evil things about Armour. For two years we tried different brands of T4, difference dosages of tablets (in case it was a reaction to the dies in the pills) and what finally worked was dropping me down to small doses, taken three times a day, well, it was exactly every 8 hours (I had to set an alarm to get up to make sure that I didn't miss a dose) and all the doses were taken with food... Two years of all this messing around and then finding out the only way I could tolerate it was to drop the doses way down and take them with food..... I was then able to gradually work up the dose until I was

taking 200 mcg per day in a single dose, right after breakfast, with all my other vitamins and minerals... Now I know what that worked... taking the doses with food gave me very little of the T4, most of it would never have been broken down (for new folks, it needs full strength stomach acid to remove the sodium molecules from the T4 molecules... synthetic T4 has sodium bound to it to make it more shelf stable but until that sodium is removed the hormone is useless to our bodies) What hormone was available.. well, a good portion of that would have combined with the food and physically have not been absorbable just cuz of being globbed in with the food and some would have been bound to the iron and calcium that I was taking with every meal.... So the solution for the all the negative reactions that I was having to taking the T4 was to take it in such a way as to prevent it from even getting into my blood

stream... E... You are having a very difficult time getting your proportions of T4 and T3 right... I think that is why you are asking the question, hoping to pull in more information to add to what you already have to try to figure out how and why you are having such a tough time with the balance... Am I right? One thing that struck me as I am writing this is some of the variables involved with synthetic T4... Consider: Dosage of the tablets is plus or minus 10 percent of the printed dosage (so a 100 mcg table my be anywhere from 90 mcg to 110 mcg) Synthroid, the brand, has a higher rate of mislabeling and shelf instability than any of the other brands of synthetic T4. Remember the class action lawsuit against them that they lost for just that reason.... So... If you are always consistent with

how you take it (empty stomach, separate from binders like calcium and iron)... If you are very thorough/accurate/responsible with measuring, scheduling and adjusting dosages for ratios and totals.... ... you still have an uncontrolled variable that MIGHT have something to do with how hyper sensitive your body is to the adjustments that you are making... Don't know if this is true... but it came to mind and the only way it can be confirmed or ruled out is to take a closer look and perhaps add a level of control to that variable. The best way, for any of us, on which ever med we are one, is to try to stay with the same pill for as long as possible and transition when either changing to a different dosage of tablet, or a different brand... many of us know that... but we also have to take into consideration the lot numbers of the batches of the pills we are

taking... I have always tried to get in a supply of pills each time I order.. so that I have a better chance of getting multiple bottles from the same lot/batch number. That greatly increases the likelihood that the pills from bottle A will have the same potency as the pills in bottle B and the same as the pills in bottle C... follow what I'm getting at? So.. my brain is dredging up this tidbit of wonderment... as you've gone through your adjustments and refiguring ratio.... has the T4 that you've been using been from the same batch? Or have you been using different sizes/dosages of pills or pills from different bottles? What if part of this fluctuation in how your body is responding and having to rethink proportions again isn't so much your math... or the ratio that had been working no longer working... but a difference in the potency of tablets.? ..

to be fair, there is a fluctuation in actual potency from batch to batch in ALL pills and capsules... but Synthroid, the brand, as the worst track record of them all.... And right now I don't remember what brand of T4 you are on..... I'm wordy tonight... I've been going through computer withdrawal so I hope you grabbed a glass of water!!! hehehehehehe Going back to the basics of thyroid hormones, how our body manages and uses them and how all of our body processes respond to them..... the single hormone with the most profound impact on our body is T3. Considering I, personally, have bad responses to synthetic T4 and others do wonderfully on it, I can't say that ALL of us are the same, we just aren't. There are far tooo many variables in our genetics, lifestyle, age, ethnicity, geographic location, ancestry, etc for there to be hard and fast rules... but, that said, as a general rule T4 has very

little immediate impact on us.. it's an inactive hormone that our bodies don't do much with until it's time to process (yeah, I know.. I'm the one that was barfing my guts out two minutes after taking it and then climbing the walls to find the worms behind the wallpaper...) ... now I'm crippling up again from adding synthetic T4 to stretch my natural..... that, according to EVERYTHING I've read (and I've read A LOT on thyroid) isn't possible... yet here I am.... I can now demonstrate cause and effect with this tendon thing in my right leg... it's directly linked to the synthetic T4... it took months for it to build to the level where it was consistent... now that I have reached that point... stopping the synthetic T4, no tendon issues starting the next day. Take a single 100 mcg tablet in the morning and something as simple as standing up from the toilet and bending to pull up my pants... will pop that tendon... One day last week I

tried another 'test'. (swallow what you're drinking, I don't want you spewing on the monitor!) I was VERY careful with how I sat on the toilet... and how I got up, pulling my pants up over my knees before standing, so that I didn't have to bend over.... I was careful in both sitting down in my chair and standing up from it.... I was WEIRD all that day in how I moved, turned, sat and stood... and I was doing okay... the experiment that day was to see if the tendon would pop and seize without a stressor on it... hence my being EXTREMELY careful.... We'd been having some water puddling in the basement... Ruth and I went down, flashlights in hand, to see if we could determine the source (it ended up being water from the AC condenser leaking back into the house cuz of the ground being so dry that the water was pooling against the foundation and coming in that way) So we are moving boxes, looking behind some paneling... following along pipes

to the water heater.. checking along the block walls.... I'm being SO careful I feel like someone following protocol in a hazmat suit.... we're all done and just about to leave and I noticed one thing that we'd not peaked behind and I stepped VERY carefully over a short box, straddling it I saw what I needed to see and then just stepped back. The action of lifting my leg to raise it over the level of the box so that I could just step back... popped the tendon and seized it right there... shot the sucker right up into my back... For all intents and purposes from doing nothing. That was early last week... I've not taken ANY synthetic T4 since then... and I haven't had one bit of trouble with that leg in all this time... up and down stairs... and, get this... that fiasco with the water and having to rescue all the electronics before they got wet and shorted this morning... that little dance with my feet and the water on the floor... I

didn't pop that tendon... nothing.. nada zip.... ...but T4 has no immediate effect on us... says so in the books.... Isn't it great... all the facts.... then the personal experiences.. and it doesn't jive... so how do we KNOW what to do? Just what we do so much of around here.... share our stories... ask questions... get opinions... and relate all of that to our own bodies.... Some folks seem to have an easier time getting it all sorted... some of us having more stuff to figure out and it takes us longer... but drat it... even though I'm a 'longer' one... even though I've had a set back with availability and having to rejuggerlate (I'm in a 'make up word' mode) I still feel that being persistent in figuring it out, sticking with it until that magical combination figures itself out... .... is WORTH it! E... I know

you're getting frustrated.. and exasperated... I get that way too.... A LOT... but you're a smart lady.. you've been sticking to your guns and have been determined to figure out what your 'magic' combo is.... and even if it's exactly what I CAN NOT do (mixing synthetic T4 in) don't give it up, okay? Okay.. I'm going though past posts of yours, one from last June (June 20, I'm reading my archives, not online, so I don't have the message number) Here are the numbers you posted. When the Armour was slightly higher: (60 mcgs /120 Mgs A)t3F 568 (230-420) 178 %t4F 1.9 (.08-1.8) 106 %When the Synthroid was slightly higher: (62.5 mgs /90 Mgs A)t3F 469 (230-420) 126%t4F 1.29 (.59-1.17) 121% I know you've probably said it before. But could we run through it again? You're numbers a showing that you're flat out hyper. I

know.. ranges cover the majority of folks, and there are folks on either side of those ranges whose numbers don't fit the 'norm' but are right for them..... Fibro symptoms... can you run through them? Might they not be 'fibro symptoms'? Not critiquing here... just gathering info so that we can explore more... Lethargy and feeling stress are things you've also listed..... both of those can be hyper or hypo symptoms... What is your resting heart rate? Have someone check your breathing sometime, when you're not paying attention to the fact that they are watching/listening to you breathe... I'm curious about how the two related... Have you done the 'simple stupid' adrenal test, the one with the flashlight and the mirror? How do you do? (point flashlight across the eyes, from the side NOT into the eyes. Using the mirror, do the pupils contract and hold or do they

flicker/wobble/ go in and out? I'll stop with that.... lets see what you can add and we'll pick some more... Topper () www.toppers-place.com On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:12:51 -0700 (PDT) E Gillespie writes: Topper: Do you feel a difference with t3 hyper symptoms as opposed to t4 hyper symtpoms? Could you make a list for me...as if you don' t have enough to worry about !! Thanks! ~E:) ~EG Connecticut T-T 26 months ago - 57.98 mcg Synthetic plus 120 mg Armour = 205.98 mcgs...RATIO: 87 % T4 / 13% T3

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Topper: Half way through...you totally got me. I fell off my chair because I started to laugh and that morfed into a coughing fit. I had to leave the room so I could go get a pack of smokes and a bottle of Jack s!!! Whew! After I posted the question earlier, I realized (it comes at me all at once like a scud missle out of nowhere) that last week I got my new vities and they are full of stuff HYPER folks shouldn't take. While I'm not hyper....if I take too many of these pills, I can and DID get that way... I'm sort of feeling "overcooked," and I didn't recognize it. Too much T3 feeling feels more like a VICE has got me. Too much t4 kind of just weakens me and this didn't feel like either so I was scratching my head all day. So...I figured it out!!! YES!!! I used to

take these vities a year ago...and was on a lower dose of thyroid med...and FORGOT to think about that vital difference. I took a buch too! I thought they would help with my digestion...and they did!!! They drove up my BT to 98.0 this morning...and I had been trying to figure what the relationship was ALL day. This is only day two of the DREADFUL...."overcooked" feeling, so I caught it early. Now...that I have figured it out...I can fix that. NO more handfulls of green pills!! Course this comes as I'm not truley stabalized yet, so I started suspecting my protocol. Its easy to get freaked out. You were looking at my bloodwork. YES...you have it right...they bloods look hyper. For whatever reason...I was not feeling anything then in terms of hyper symptoms at the time. I was

really fibroed out...and stiff and full of nueropathy. I couldn't tell what was going on, didn't have good temps, only had full-tilt brain fog and was in a world of numbness and pain. Its really only been the last two months that I can FEEL what is what. Without those feelings...you are blind and have no antlers. So...I think ultimately I won't be at those levels. I think they are a bit high too. Maybe 20 mgs too high on the Armour and maybe 3 mcgs too high on the Synthetic. That is my best guess at the moment. Now..that I can READ my self and have antlers and all....I've tried to hustle this around for the last month -- lower both one or the other of both without loosing my footing too much. NOT easy. I feel like I'm trying to spin the Queen on a dime. I can see now its both that need downward tweaks ..but

a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure. The thing that is so frustrating is that YOU know which way you want to go...long before you can get there.... I can't thank you enough for going to all the trouble to pick through all the nitty gritty possibilites. I take Synthroid and YES...I have a stock that is from all over. Different expirationd dates, batches and origins. Actually..though I have to say, I really feel that the synthetic for me is SOLID. It always shows itself VERY consistent in the bloods and never seems to ACT stange or weak on me in the slightest. Good insight though...YOU are so good at that!! As kind as you are for looking for something that is not my fault, I don't think I can agree. ITS my fault..... My math was wrong...and like you say about the t4...not having an

instant impact.... I see that it does and in a major way for me. I only didn't take it for three days...and I still have fuzzy headed migraine from that (during that time, I keep the Armour the same), a whole month later. Who knows when I'll get my brain back from that... Just prior, when I tried to increase it...it took less than six days for me to FEEL weakness for the hyper. I had only added 2.5 mcgs per day!!!. THAT is not a big increase. So...I agree with your point -- that books have their theories, but sometimes it doesn't stack up to reality. I happen to think t4 does more than just take up space in a STORAGE UNIT. While one can agree that t3 has more ACTIVITY, that doesn't mean t4 doesn't have some sort of OTHER job or jobs to do. I always remember with my self-education in metaphsyics...that nothing in the Universe

is here without cause. Did you know they found amino-acids floating in space? Next, they'll find MY thryoid hormones out there!!! In medical school they are supposed to teach the docs to be...that every medicine has more than just one ACTION...and they are to be aware of the second or third reaction, not just the MOST obvious. LIKE you, I look for what may be highly relavent...even if its unkown. Topper...you have discovered as many have the synthetic t4 and Armour are quite different. I find that too. We just are looking at the animal from different points. For me...I get really STIFF...like a manican with too much t4 and its hurts in the tendons as you describe. Actually, it feels like sandpaper over broken glass in the joints... HIPs and shoulders being the worst for

me. When I fist I lowered my T4...(too much) but when I did, it was like someone released the Jack-in the-box.. I could bend and reach again. I've started to get back my natural flexibility. YAY!!!! I also couldn't stop laughing either... My funny bone must have been in there somewhere... Like you, I am pretty body concious, being that I was a tiny competive dancer type who worked out a lot. So...now, I've tried to add back, SOME..not all, so I could have a brain and not have stiffness at the same time. I hope its not too much to ask... While I feel pretty crummy these last few weeks..I'm convinced that I have learned quite a bit when I decided to break out of my "holding pattern" that seemed to reach its limit. Its only a matter of time now. I may be good for the FALL...I think. My first FALL in two and half years!!!! Maybe I'll make one trip to the beach in Rhode Island before the sun rides away during September... This "sideways skid" should be over in about a month I think... I go for bloods in October...so it better be... You are the best Topper. I've gotten quite troucned by a few folks lately...folks that I have been quite supportive of and all I can say..is THANKS again for providing this wonderful service, even if you have a wet basement and pig tails!!! ~S:) topper2@... wrote: Based on what I've read, what I've experienced, and how I interpret both.... Elevated levels of T4, like suppressed TSH, does not cause a hyper state. But..... A body that is sensitive to adjustments... or Has too much hormone added... or Has increases done too closely together for the body to adjust... .... can, and often does, experience symptoms of stress which can be the same as, or similar to, symptoms experience during a hyperthyroid (hypermetabolic) state. If you look a the charts that compare symptoms of adrenal fatigue/stress and hyperthyroid and hypothyroid, many of the symptoms over lap. Often folks can have symptoms from all three lists and actually be hypo (low thyroid hormone levels)... they 'hyper' symptoms 'I believe' are symptoms show by the body to signal us that there is something wrong and we need to take steps. Normally the our mind and will can not change hormone levels, so these symptoms cause us to change our habits...

an elevated heart rate fatigues us and causes us to reduce activity levels. an elevated metabolic rate causes (most of us) to feel warm, feel an increase in hunger/appetite, burn more calories and drop weight (not for everyone though) increased perception of stress (either psychological or physical) often triggers these same types of symptoms... signaling us to reduce activity... reducing the likelihood of damage to our bodies. The thing is that all the things that I just listed are relative to the current state of the body. What is an increase in heart rate (just using me as an example cuz I'm such of lovely long list of extremes) for me when I'm at 50 beats per minute at rest and what is an increase in heart rate at my current rate of about 72 are very different... For someone at fifty to jump up 10 to 20 beats is a huge deal, the heart is weak and the entire body process is slowed and

that heart rate isn't maintainable. Oxygenation isn't sufficient, waste remove isn't sufficient, distribution of nutrients an energy calories isn't sufficient... even digestive function isn't sufficient, or able to kick it's processes into a higher gear, to support the increased activity. Thinking back to the two hyper episodes that I had when I became brain dead and goofed up my schedule (increasing quicker than my body was able to adjust to, it is what triggered me to move to a 12 week interim between my adjustments) both times I experienced an increase in heart rate (over 100) after minimal activity and then it taking several hours to a day for the heart rate to come back down. Both times I ended up backing off my dose for several weeks until my body could use up the excess hormone and stabilize again. If we go back to when I first started on Synthroid (T4 only med for those that are new here) I got sick

every time I took a pill. It would range from upset stomach to anxiety attacks, to sweats, I don't even remember everything anymore.. it was to an extreme that caused me not to want to take them at all. My Endo, though wonderful in so many ways and so thorough in teaching her students, and me cuz I was the one that she used to teach them with, was a Synthroid doc and told me only evil things about Armour. For two years we tried different brands of T4, difference dosages of tablets (in case it was a reaction to the dies in the pills) and what finally worked was dropping me down to small doses, taken three times a day, well, it was exactly every 8 hours (I had to set an alarm to get up to make sure that I didn't miss a dose) and all the doses were taken with food... Two years of all this messing around and then finding out the only way I could tolerate it was to drop the doses way down and take them with food..... I was then able to gradually work up the dose until I was

taking 200 mcg per day in a single dose, right after breakfast, with all my other vitamins and minerals... Now I know what that worked... taking the doses with food gave me very little of the T4, most of it would never have been broken down (for new folks, it needs full strength stomach acid to remove the sodium molecules from the T4 molecules... synthetic T4 has sodium bound to it to make it more shelf stable but until that sodium is removed the hormone is useless to our bodies) What hormone was available.. well, a good portion of that would have combined with the food and physically have not been absorbable just cuz of being globbed in with the food and some would have been bound to the iron and calcium that I was taking with every meal.... So the solution for the all the negative reactions that I was having to taking the T4 was to take it in such a way as to prevent it from even getting into my blood

stream... E... You are having a very difficult time getting your proportions of T4 and T3 right... I think that is why you are asking the question, hoping to pull in more information to add to what you already have to try to figure out how and why you are having such a tough time with the balance... Am I right? One thing that struck me as I am writing this is some of the variables involved with synthetic T4... Consider: Dosage of the tablets is plus or minus 10 percent of the printed dosage (so a 100 mcg table my be anywhere from 90 mcg to 110 mcg) Synthroid, the brand, has a higher rate of mislabeling and shelf instability than any of the other brands of synthetic T4. Remember the class action lawsuit against them that they lost for just that reason.... So... If you are always consistent with

how you take it (empty stomach, separate from binders like calcium and iron)... If you are very thorough/accurate/responsible with measuring, scheduling and adjusting dosages for ratios and totals.... ... you still have an uncontrolled variable that MIGHT have something to do with how hyper sensitive your body is to the adjustments that you are making... Don't know if this is true... but it came to mind and the only way it can be confirmed or ruled out is to take a closer look and perhaps add a level of control to that variable. The best way, for any of us, on which ever med we are one, is to try to stay with the same pill for as long as possible and transition when either changing to a different dosage of tablet, or a different brand... many of us know that... but we also have to take into consideration the lot numbers of the batches of the pills we are

taking... I have always tried to get in a supply of pills each time I order.. so that I have a better chance of getting multiple bottles from the same lot/batch number. That greatly increases the likelihood that the pills from bottle A will have the same potency as the pills in bottle B and the same as the pills in bottle C... follow what I'm getting at? So.. my brain is dredging up this tidbit of wonderment... as you've gone through your adjustments and refiguring ratio.... has the T4 that you've been using been from the same batch? Or have you been using different sizes/dosages of pills or pills from different bottles? What if part of this fluctuation in how your body is responding and having to rethink proportions again isn't so much your math... or the ratio that had been working no longer working... but a difference in the potency of tablets.? ..

to be fair, there is a fluctuation in actual potency from batch to batch in ALL pills and capsules... but Synthroid, the brand, as the worst track record of them all.... And right now I don't remember what brand of T4 you are on..... I'm wordy tonight... I've been going through computer withdrawal so I hope you grabbed a glass of water!!! hehehehehehe Going back to the basics of thyroid hormones, how our body manages and uses them and how all of our body processes respond to them..... the single hormone with the most profound impact on our body is T3. Considering I, personally, have bad responses to synthetic T4 and others do wonderfully on it, I can't say that ALL of us are the same, we just aren't. There are far tooo many variables in our genetics, lifestyle, age, ethnicity, geographic location, ancestry, etc for there to be hard and fast rules... but, that said, as a general rule T4 has very

little immediate impact on us.. it's an inactive hormone that our bodies don't do much with until it's time to process (yeah, I know.. I'm the one that was barfing my guts out two minutes after taking it and then climbing the walls to find the worms behind the wallpaper...) ... now I'm crippling up again from adding synthetic T4 to stretch my natural..... that, according to EVERYTHING I've read (and I've read A LOT on thyroid) isn't possible... yet here I am.... I can now demonstrate cause and effect with this tendon thing in my right leg... it's directly linked to the synthetic T4... it took months for it to build to the level where it was consistent... now that I have reached that point... stopping the synthetic T4, no tendon issues starting the next day. Take a single 100 mcg tablet in the morning and something as simple as standing up from the toilet and bending to pull up my pants... will pop that tendon... One day last week I

tried another 'test'. (swallow what you're drinking, I don't want you spewing on the monitor!) I was VERY careful with how I sat on the toilet... and how I got up, pulling my pants up over my knees before standing, so that I didn't have to bend over.... I was careful in both sitting down in my chair and standing up from it.... I was WEIRD all that day in how I moved, turned, sat and stood... and I was doing okay... the experiment that day was to see if the tendon would pop and seize without a stressor on it... hence my being EXTREMELY careful.... We'd been having some water puddling in the basement... Ruth and I went down, flashlights in hand, to see if we could determine the source (it ended up being water from the AC condenser leaking back into the house cuz of the ground being so dry that the water was pooling against the foundation and coming in that way) So we are moving boxes, looking behind some paneling... following along pipes

to the water heater.. checking along the block walls.... I'm being SO careful I feel like someone following protocol in a hazmat suit.... we're all done and just about to leave and I noticed one thing that we'd not peaked behind and I stepped VERY carefully over a short box, straddling it I saw what I needed to see and then just stepped back. The action of lifting my leg to raise it over the level of the box so that I could just step back... popped the tendon and seized it right there... shot the sucker right up into my back... For all intents and purposes from doing nothing. That was early last week... I've not taken ANY synthetic T4 since then... and I haven't had one bit of trouble with that leg in all this time... up and down stairs... and, get this... that fiasco with the water and having to rescue all the electronics before they got wet and shorted this morning... that little dance with my feet and the water on the floor... I

didn't pop that tendon... nothing.. nada zip.... ...but T4 has no immediate effect on us... says so in the books.... Isn't it great... all the facts.... then the personal experiences.. and it doesn't jive... so how do we KNOW what to do? Just what we do so much of around here.... share our stories... ask questions... get opinions... and relate all of that to our own bodies.... Some folks seem to have an easier time getting it all sorted... some of us having more stuff to figure out and it takes us longer... but drat it... even though I'm a 'longer' one... even though I've had a set back with availability and having to rejuggerlate (I'm in a 'make up word' mode) I still feel that being persistent in figuring it out, sticking with it until that magical combination figures itself out... .... is WORTH it! E... I know

you're getting frustrated.. and exasperated... I get that way too.... A LOT... but you're a smart lady.. you've been sticking to your guns and have been determined to figure out what your 'magic' combo is.... and even if it's exactly what I CAN NOT do (mixing synthetic T4 in) don't give it up, okay? Okay.. I'm going though past posts of yours, one from last June (June 20, I'm reading my archives, not online, so I don't have the message number) Here are the numbers you posted. When the Armour was slightly higher: (60 mcgs /120 Mgs A)t3F 568 (230-420) 178 %t4F 1.9 (.08-1.8) 106 %When the Synthroid was slightly higher: (62.5 mgs /90 Mgs A)t3F 469 (230-420) 126%t4F 1.29 (.59-1.17) 121% I know you've probably said it before. But could we run through it again? You're numbers a showing that you're flat out hyper. I

know.. ranges cover the majority of folks, and there are folks on either side of those ranges whose numbers don't fit the 'norm' but are right for them..... Fibro symptoms... can you run through them? Might they not be 'fibro symptoms'? Not critiquing here... just gathering info so that we can explore more... Lethargy and feeling stress are things you've also listed..... both of those can be hyper or hypo symptoms... What is your resting heart rate? Have someone check your breathing sometime, when you're not paying attention to the fact that they are watching/listening to you breathe... I'm curious about how the two related... Have you done the 'simple stupid' adrenal test, the one with the flashlight and the mirror? How do you do? (point flashlight across the eyes, from the side NOT into the eyes. Using the mirror, do the pupils contract and hold or do they

flicker/wobble/ go in and out? I'll stop with that.... lets see what you can add and we'll pick some more... Topper () www.toppers-place.com On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:12:51 -0700 (PDT) E Gillespie writes: Topper: Do you feel a difference with t3 hyper symptoms as opposed to t4 hyper symtpoms? Could you make a list for me...as if you don' t have enough to worry about !! Thanks! ~E:) ~EG Connecticut T-T 26 months ago - 57.98 mcg Synthetic plus 120 mg Armour = 205.98 mcgs...RATIO: 87 % T4 / 13% T3

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Topper: Half way through...you totally got me. I fell off my chair because I started to laugh and that morfed into a coughing fit. I had to leave the room so I could go get a pack of smokes and a bottle of Jack s!!! Whew! After I posted the question earlier, I realized (it comes at me all at once like a scud missle out of nowhere) that last week I got my new vities and they are full of stuff HYPER folks shouldn't take. While I'm not hyper....if I take too many of these pills, I can and DID get that way... I'm sort of feeling "overcooked," and I didn't recognize it. Too much T3 feeling feels more like a VICE has got me. Too much t4 kind of just weakens me and this didn't feel like either so I was scratching my head all day. So...I figured it out!!! YES!!! I used to

take these vities a year ago...and was on a lower dose of thyroid med...and FORGOT to think about that vital difference. I took a buch too! I thought they would help with my digestion...and they did!!! They drove up my BT to 98.0 this morning...and I had been trying to figure what the relationship was ALL day. This is only day two of the DREADFUL...."overcooked" feeling, so I caught it early. Now...that I have figured it out...I can fix that. NO more handfulls of green pills!! Course this comes as I'm not truley stabalized yet, so I started suspecting my protocol. Its easy to get freaked out. You were looking at my bloodwork. YES...you have it right...they bloods look hyper. For whatever reason...I was not feeling anything then in terms of hyper symptoms at the time. I was

really fibroed out...and stiff and full of nueropathy. I couldn't tell what was going on, didn't have good temps, only had full-tilt brain fog and was in a world of numbness and pain. Its really only been the last two months that I can FEEL what is what. Without those feelings...you are blind and have no antlers. So...I think ultimately I won't be at those levels. I think they are a bit high too. Maybe 20 mgs too high on the Armour and maybe 3 mcgs too high on the Synthetic. That is my best guess at the moment. Now..that I can READ my self and have antlers and all....I've tried to hustle this around for the last month -- lower both one or the other of both without loosing my footing too much. NOT easy. I feel like I'm trying to spin the Queen on a dime. I can see now its both that need downward tweaks ..but

a few weeks ago, I wasn't sure. The thing that is so frustrating is that YOU know which way you want to go...long before you can get there.... I can't thank you enough for going to all the trouble to pick through all the nitty gritty possibilites. I take Synthroid and YES...I have a stock that is from all over. Different expirationd dates, batches and origins. Actually..though I have to say, I really feel that the synthetic for me is SOLID. It always shows itself VERY consistent in the bloods and never seems to ACT stange or weak on me in the slightest. Good insight though...YOU are so good at that!! As kind as you are for looking for something that is not my fault, I don't think I can agree. ITS my fault..... My math was wrong...and like you say about the t4...not having an

instant impact.... I see that it does and in a major way for me. I only didn't take it for three days...and I still have fuzzy headed migraine from that (during that time, I keep the Armour the same), a whole month later. Who knows when I'll get my brain back from that... Just prior, when I tried to increase it...it took less than six days for me to FEEL weakness for the hyper. I had only added 2.5 mcgs per day!!!. THAT is not a big increase. So...I agree with your point -- that books have their theories, but sometimes it doesn't stack up to reality. I happen to think t4 does more than just take up space in a STORAGE UNIT. While one can agree that t3 has more ACTIVITY, that doesn't mean t4 doesn't have some sort of OTHER job or jobs to do. I always remember with my self-education in metaphsyics...that nothing in the Universe

is here without cause. Did you know they found amino-acids floating in space? Next, they'll find MY thryoid hormones out there!!! In medical school they are supposed to teach the docs to be...that every medicine has more than just one ACTION...and they are to be aware of the second or third reaction, not just the MOST obvious. LIKE you, I look for what may be highly relavent...even if its unkown. Topper...you have discovered as many have the synthetic t4 and Armour are quite different. I find that too. We just are looking at the animal from different points. For me...I get really STIFF...like a manican with too much t4 and its hurts in the tendons as you describe. Actually, it feels like sandpaper over broken glass in the joints... HIPs and shoulders being the worst for

me. When I fist I lowered my T4...(too much) but when I did, it was like someone released the Jack-in the-box.. I could bend and reach again. I've started to get back my natural flexibility. YAY!!!! I also couldn't stop laughing either... My funny bone must have been in there somewhere... Like you, I am pretty body concious, being that I was a tiny competive dancer type who worked out a lot. So...now, I've tried to add back, SOME..not all, so I could have a brain and not have stiffness at the same time. I hope its not too much to ask... While I feel pretty crummy these last few weeks..I'm convinced that I have learned quite a bit when I decided to break out of my "holding pattern" that seemed to reach its limit. Its only a matter of time now. I may be good for the FALL...I think. My first FALL in two and half years!!!! Maybe I'll make one trip to the beach in Rhode Island before the sun rides away during September... This "sideways skid" should be over in about a month I think... I go for bloods in October...so it better be... You are the best Topper. I've gotten quite troucned by a few folks lately...folks that I have been quite supportive of and all I can say..is THANKS again for providing this wonderful service, even if you have a wet basement and pig tails!!! ~S:) topper2@... wrote: Based on what I've read, what I've experienced, and how I interpret both.... Elevated levels of T4, like suppressed TSH, does not cause a hyper state. But..... A body that is sensitive to adjustments... or Has too much hormone added... or Has increases done too closely together for the body to adjust... .... can, and often does, experience symptoms of stress which can be the same as, or similar to, symptoms experience during a hyperthyroid (hypermetabolic) state. If you look a the charts that compare symptoms of adrenal fatigue/stress and hyperthyroid and hypothyroid, many of the symptoms over lap. Often folks can have symptoms from all three lists and actually be hypo (low thyroid hormone levels)... they 'hyper' symptoms 'I believe' are symptoms show by the body to signal us that there is something wrong and we need to take steps. Normally the our mind and will can not change hormone levels, so these symptoms cause us to change our habits...

an elevated heart rate fatigues us and causes us to reduce activity levels. an elevated metabolic rate causes (most of us) to feel warm, feel an increase in hunger/appetite, burn more calories and drop weight (not for everyone though) increased perception of stress (either psychological or physical) often triggers these same types of symptoms... signaling us to reduce activity... reducing the likelihood of damage to our bodies. The thing is that all the things that I just listed are relative to the current state of the body. What is an increase in heart rate (just using me as an example cuz I'm such of lovely long list of extremes) for me when I'm at 50 beats per minute at rest and what is an increase in heart rate at my current rate of about 72 are very different... For someone at fifty to jump up 10 to 20 beats is a huge deal, the heart is weak and the entire body process is slowed and

that heart rate isn't maintainable. Oxygenation isn't sufficient, waste remove isn't sufficient, distribution of nutrients an energy calories isn't sufficient... even digestive function isn't sufficient, or able to kick it's processes into a higher gear, to support the increased activity. Thinking back to the two hyper episodes that I had when I became brain dead and goofed up my schedule (increasing quicker than my body was able to adjust to, it is what triggered me to move to a 12 week interim between my adjustments) both times I experienced an increase in heart rate (over 100) after minimal activity and then it taking several hours to a day for the heart rate to come back down. Both times I ended up backing off my dose for several weeks until my body could use up the excess hormone and stabilize again. If we go back to when I first started on Synthroid (T4 only med for those that are new here) I got sick

every time I took a pill. It would range from upset stomach to anxiety attacks, to sweats, I don't even remember everything anymore.. it was to an extreme that caused me not to want to take them at all. My Endo, though wonderful in so many ways and so thorough in teaching her students, and me cuz I was the one that she used to teach them with, was a Synthroid doc and told me only evil things about Armour. For two years we tried different brands of T4, difference dosages of tablets (in case it was a reaction to the dies in the pills) and what finally worked was dropping me down to small doses, taken three times a day, well, it was exactly every 8 hours (I had to set an alarm to get up to make sure that I didn't miss a dose) and all the doses were taken with food... Two years of all this messing around and then finding out the only way I could tolerate it was to drop the doses way down and take them with food..... I was then able to gradually work up the dose until I was

taking 200 mcg per day in a single dose, right after breakfast, with all my other vitamins and minerals... Now I know what that worked... taking the doses with food gave me very little of the T4, most of it would never have been broken down (for new folks, it needs full strength stomach acid to remove the sodium molecules from the T4 molecules... synthetic T4 has sodium bound to it to make it more shelf stable but until that sodium is removed the hormone is useless to our bodies) What hormone was available.. well, a good portion of that would have combined with the food and physically have not been absorbable just cuz of being globbed in with the food and some would have been bound to the iron and calcium that I was taking with every meal.... So the solution for the all the negative reactions that I was having to taking the T4 was to take it in such a way as to prevent it from even getting into my blood

stream... E... You are having a very difficult time getting your proportions of T4 and T3 right... I think that is why you are asking the question, hoping to pull in more information to add to what you already have to try to figure out how and why you are having such a tough time with the balance... Am I right? One thing that struck me as I am writing this is some of the variables involved with synthetic T4... Consider: Dosage of the tablets is plus or minus 10 percent of the printed dosage (so a 100 mcg table my be anywhere from 90 mcg to 110 mcg) Synthroid, the brand, has a higher rate of mislabeling and shelf instability than any of the other brands of synthetic T4. Remember the class action lawsuit against them that they lost for just that reason.... So... If you are always consistent with

how you take it (empty stomach, separate from binders like calcium and iron)... If you are very thorough/accurate/responsible with measuring, scheduling and adjusting dosages for ratios and totals.... ... you still have an uncontrolled variable that MIGHT have something to do with how hyper sensitive your body is to the adjustments that you are making... Don't know if this is true... but it came to mind and the only way it can be confirmed or ruled out is to take a closer look and perhaps add a level of control to that variable. The best way, for any of us, on which ever med we are one, is to try to stay with the same pill for as long as possible and transition when either changing to a different dosage of tablet, or a different brand... many of us know that... but we also have to take into consideration the lot numbers of the batches of the pills we are

taking... I have always tried to get in a supply of pills each time I order.. so that I have a better chance of getting multiple bottles from the same lot/batch number. That greatly increases the likelihood that the pills from bottle A will have the same potency as the pills in bottle B and the same as the pills in bottle C... follow what I'm getting at? So.. my brain is dredging up this tidbit of wonderment... as you've gone through your adjustments and refiguring ratio.... has the T4 that you've been using been from the same batch? Or have you been using different sizes/dosages of pills or pills from different bottles? What if part of this fluctuation in how your body is responding and having to rethink proportions again isn't so much your math... or the ratio that had been working no longer working... but a difference in the potency of tablets.? ..

to be fair, there is a fluctuation in actual potency from batch to batch in ALL pills and capsules... but Synthroid, the brand, as the worst track record of them all.... And right now I don't remember what brand of T4 you are on..... I'm wordy tonight... I've been going through computer withdrawal so I hope you grabbed a glass of water!!! hehehehehehe Going back to the basics of thyroid hormones, how our body manages and uses them and how all of our body processes respond to them..... the single hormone with the most profound impact on our body is T3. Considering I, personally, have bad responses to synthetic T4 and others do wonderfully on it, I can't say that ALL of us are the same, we just aren't. There are far tooo many variables in our genetics, lifestyle, age, ethnicity, geographic location, ancestry, etc for there to be hard and fast rules... but, that said, as a general rule T4 has very

little immediate impact on us.. it's an inactive hormone that our bodies don't do much with until it's time to process (yeah, I know.. I'm the one that was barfing my guts out two minutes after taking it and then climbing the walls to find the worms behind the wallpaper...) ... now I'm crippling up again from adding synthetic T4 to stretch my natural..... that, according to EVERYTHING I've read (and I've read A LOT on thyroid) isn't possible... yet here I am.... I can now demonstrate cause and effect with this tendon thing in my right leg... it's directly linked to the synthetic T4... it took months for it to build to the level where it was consistent... now that I have reached that point... stopping the synthetic T4, no tendon issues starting the next day. Take a single 100 mcg tablet in the morning and something as simple as standing up from the toilet and bending to pull up my pants... will pop that tendon... One day last week I

tried another 'test'. (swallow what you're drinking, I don't want you spewing on the monitor!) I was VERY careful with how I sat on the toilet... and how I got up, pulling my pants up over my knees before standing, so that I didn't have to bend over.... I was careful in both sitting down in my chair and standing up from it.... I was WEIRD all that day in how I moved, turned, sat and stood... and I was doing okay... the experiment that day was to see if the tendon would pop and seize without a stressor on it... hence my being EXTREMELY careful.... We'd been having some water puddling in the basement... Ruth and I went down, flashlights in hand, to see if we could determine the source (it ended up being water from the AC condenser leaking back into the house cuz of the ground being so dry that the water was pooling against the foundation and coming in that way) So we are moving boxes, looking behind some paneling... following along pipes

to the water heater.. checking along the block walls.... I'm being SO careful I feel like someone following protocol in a hazmat suit.... we're all done and just about to leave and I noticed one thing that we'd not peaked behind and I stepped VERY carefully over a short box, straddling it I saw what I needed to see and then just stepped back. The action of lifting my leg to raise it over the level of the box so that I could just step back... popped the tendon and seized it right there... shot the sucker right up into my back... For all intents and purposes from doing nothing. That was early last week... I've not taken ANY synthetic T4 since then... and I haven't had one bit of trouble with that leg in all this time... up and down stairs... and, get this... that fiasco with the water and having to rescue all the electronics before they got wet and shorted this morning... that little dance with my feet and the water on the floor... I

didn't pop that tendon... nothing.. nada zip.... ...but T4 has no immediate effect on us... says so in the books.... Isn't it great... all the facts.... then the personal experiences.. and it doesn't jive... so how do we KNOW what to do? Just what we do so much of around here.... share our stories... ask questions... get opinions... and relate all of that to our own bodies.... Some folks seem to have an easier time getting it all sorted... some of us having more stuff to figure out and it takes us longer... but drat it... even though I'm a 'longer' one... even though I've had a set back with availability and having to rejuggerlate (I'm in a 'make up word' mode) I still feel that being persistent in figuring it out, sticking with it until that magical combination figures itself out... .... is WORTH it! E... I know

you're getting frustrated.. and exasperated... I get that way too.... A LOT... but you're a smart lady.. you've been sticking to your guns and have been determined to figure out what your 'magic' combo is.... and even if it's exactly what I CAN NOT do (mixing synthetic T4 in) don't give it up, okay? Okay.. I'm going though past posts of yours, one from last June (June 20, I'm reading my archives, not online, so I don't have the message number) Here are the numbers you posted. When the Armour was slightly higher: (60 mcgs /120 Mgs A)t3F 568 (230-420) 178 %t4F 1.9 (.08-1.8) 106 %When the Synthroid was slightly higher: (62.5 mgs /90 Mgs A)t3F 469 (230-420) 126%t4F 1.29 (.59-1.17) 121% I know you've probably said it before. But could we run through it again? You're numbers a showing that you're flat out hyper. I

know.. ranges cover the majority of folks, and there are folks on either side of those ranges whose numbers don't fit the 'norm' but are right for them..... Fibro symptoms... can you run through them? Might they not be 'fibro symptoms'? Not critiquing here... just gathering info so that we can explore more... Lethargy and feeling stress are things you've also listed..... both of those can be hyper or hypo symptoms... What is your resting heart rate? Have someone check your breathing sometime, when you're not paying attention to the fact that they are watching/listening to you breathe... I'm curious about how the two related... Have you done the 'simple stupid' adrenal test, the one with the flashlight and the mirror? How do you do? (point flashlight across the eyes, from the side NOT into the eyes. Using the mirror, do the pupils contract and hold or do they

flicker/wobble/ go in and out? I'll stop with that.... lets see what you can add and we'll pick some more... Topper () www.toppers-place.com On Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:12:51 -0700 (PDT) E Gillespie writes: Topper: Do you feel a difference with t3 hyper symptoms as opposed to t4 hyper symtpoms? Could you make a list for me...as if you don' t have enough to worry about !! Thanks! ~E:) ~EG Connecticut T-T 26 months ago - 57.98 mcg Synthetic plus 120 mg Armour = 205.98 mcgs...RATIO: 87 % T4 / 13% T3

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I tried to limit the email to what I was responding to and erased it. I'm a "didiot". What I was responding to was the fact that you have joint pain along with this thyroid fubar. I've had quite a bit of joint pain and stiffness as well, but I always thought it was because I'm a bit "stove up" as you could say from being tossed off horses and stomped and kicked by cows. I thought it was just my younger days coming back to haunt me.The msm has been working, but not as well as it used to a year ago, for pain relief ( it also helps rebuild joint tissues ). I'm beginning to think my thyroid's been on the blink longer than I thought, maybe 2 years, and never knew it, thought it was just due to my prior mashings. How does one tell the difference between thyroid and an overactive youth? SpiffE Gillespie wrote: .

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DerSpiff wrote: How does one tell the difference between thyroid and an overactive youth? SpiffWell Spiff: In your case of having the anches before you found that you had thryoid issues, it would be rather hard to tell. Your best bet is to treat your thryoid to optimal and then see what you have left over. Good luck...sorry to hear you were kicked by a horse. That sounds kinda painful. ~E:) Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. ~EG Connecticut T-T 26 months ago - 57.98 mcg Synthetic plus 120 mg Armour = 205.98 mcgs...RATIO: 87 % T4 / 13% T3

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Well, not kicked by a horse, but tossed off like a yard dart a couple times. The cows are the ones who did the damage. I must look like a football to them. I'd rather be kicked by a cow 3 times in a row than kicked by a horse once, they've got more oomph. Been whiffed by a mule....LOL He missed, lucky for me! Felt it go right past my arm, little beggar anyhow. Thanks! SpiffE Gillespie wrote: DerSpiff wrote: How does one tell the difference between thyroid and an overactive youth? SpiffWell Spiff: In your case of having the anches before you found that you had thryoid issues, it would be rather hard to tell. Your best bet is to treat your thryoid to optimal and then see what you have left over. Good luck...sorry to hear you were kicked by a horse. That sounds kinda painful. ~E:) Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free. ~EG Connecticut T-T 26 months ago - 57.98 mcg Synthetic plus 120 mg Armour = 205.98 mcgs...RATIO: 87 % T4 / 13% T3 Yahoo! Music Unlimited - Access over 1 million songs. Try it free.

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Spiff: Wow..you have had an intersting life so FAR. My apologies for my typos... I've got a migraine and can't see the computer screen without blinking! ~E:) ~EG Connecticut T-T 26 months ago - 57.98 mcg Synthetic plus 120 mg Armour = 205.98 mcgs...RATIO: 87 % T4 / 13% T3

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[Guest guest]

Hey E,

I need to blink too, and not just to see my monitor

Sue

Spiff:

Wow..you have had an intersting life so FAR. My apologies for my typos... I've got a migraine and can't see the computer screen without blinking!

~E:)

[Guest guest]

Typing with a migraine? Wow that's brave! From what I've heard about having those, I'd rather be kicked! AND by a horse at that! You best take something to help and lie down. This isn't good.SpiffE Gillespie wrote: Spiff: Wow..you have had an intersting life so FAR. My apologies for my typos... I've got a migraine and can't see the computer screen without blinking! ~E:) ~EG Connecticut T-T 26 months ago - 57.98 mcg Synthetic plus 120 mg Armour = 205.98 mcgs...RATIO: 87 % T4 / 13% T3 How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low PC-to-Phone call rates.

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