Posted by Craig (again) on August 13, 1999, at 2:17:20
In reply to To Nancy the Mad Scientist re: T3 & T4, posted by Craig on August 13, 1999, at 2:02:41
The ending of my post somehow disappeared so here goes again:
After reading about your experience of adding T3 (Cytomel) to T4 (Synthroid), I discussed it with my doctor and he was willing to try this augmentation strategy. I've been taking Cytomel for nearly 3 months now and just had a blood test to check my TSH. I think I may have jeopardized the results of that test, so I'd like your opinion. When I began taking Cytomel, my doctor asked me to reduce Synthroid to just 5 days per week. When I went for my blood test, I hadn't had a dose of Synthroid for 40 hours. Could this have affected the test? Should I have had my blood drawn instead on a day when I'd taken both T3 and T4? The results came back abnormal with a level of >Hi. Wow, destroyed the thyroid...drastic. My thyroid was augmented in the past with synthroid, too. But it did nothing at all to alleviate my treatment resistive depression.
> >
> > Then, a brilliant pdoc told me that addind synthroid (T4) was NOT adequate thyroid augmentation. She said that BOTH T4 (synthroid AND T3 (Cytomel) MUST be taken concurrently. The thyroid does not live by T4 alone...LOL. T3 and T4 must be balanced for thyroid augmentation to be effective.
> >
> > When I get my thyroid blood test at the lab now, I ALWAYS request a copy of the results for myself. In the past, I've had "doctors...LOL" tell me that my thyroid was normal without allowing me to see the test results for myself. When, in fact, the test had actually revealed that I was in the LOW NORMAL end of the spectrum for both T3 and T4.
> >
> > BTW, my treatment resistivity ENDED when BOTH T3 and T4 were in the upper quartile of the normal range (as per the brilliant pdoc that I mentioned).
poster:Craig (again)
thread:4835
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990726/msgs/10001.html