Yeah I eat plain skim yogurt pretty much every day for breakfast - but I'm up at 6am, take my meds right away, and eat breakie at ~9am. Lots of time between. I did cut dairy back drastically for a while, thru Nov and Dec, more as an experiment, and I found no real difference.

AP

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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS

Sadly I'm up at 6 and eating within 30mins and straight into work for 7. Going to have to redesign breakfast. Maybe toast and PBJ and have oatmeal later in the AM. I have been on 100micro grams of thyroxine for 3 weeks now. I have bloods in the next week or so. First Tri of the season on Sunday too. Looking forward to seeing how I recover after. It's an Oly, so shouldn't be toooo bad! Training has been less than perfect due to being so bad before i got the thyroxine.

So 5 weeks in and after an initial up I'm now worse than before I went on T4. I've given up all hope of competing this summer as I haven't done any constructive workouts for about 3 weeks and feel dreadful. I ran 8 miles the other week, not usually a problem got to 5 and a bit and my legs were in so much pain. Like nothing I've ever experience. I am so tried, depressed and constantly have headaches amongst other symptoms. I saw an endo specialist who was very dismissive of my symptoms and I'm now trying to find someone who can make me better! The worst bit is being motivated to do anything.

Keep looking. It's hard to find a good endo. Most are dismissive i.e.: the drugs are enough, go see a naturopath. You could ask you endo if they know a good nutritionist who works with hypothyroidism,

FWIW, I eat my breakfast at work, at my desk, every day. Yes it means no fud for ~3hrs after waking, but it has made a huge difference for me.

Give it more time. It took me months and months to feel better, and a few years to feel "normal".

AP

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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS

Seconding what Andy said - it will take months if not years to feel better. Most endos would argue that you need a minimum of 6 weeks before they can even test your blood to see how you're reacting to changes in medication. That being said, if you're not happy with your endo then find a new one. A good endo who listens to what you say and how you feel is worth their weight in gold!

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http://smallfoodbiz.com
</blatent self-marketing>

just for moral support i'd back what the others are saying - when i started in on meds it took a good while before i started feeling normal. then, we still had to re-jig the dose a handful of times in the months and years after. i started treatment in 2001 and we just changed the dose again a few months ago!

-mike

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

I fit in with what most of the others say. Plus, I have found that the only way I can do hard exercise is to take T3, AKA cytomel, along with levothyroxine. Without T3, I get that leg pain thing someone described above.

Be sure to have your thyroid antibodies checked - I did that and discovered I had Hashimoto's disease (my body is rejecting my thyroid) and I'm producing no thyroid hormone. I don't do synthetic drugs, not the way I roll, so I went on Naturethroid and I've been symptom-free for years. It comes from pigs, and has me squealing with delight: weight has dropped, energy is up, sleeping's perfect, the whole bit. I can recommend a phenomenal Naturopath who is an expert in thyroid disease (just finished his book on thyroid disease) located in Scottsdale, AZ if you're interested.

The body is a chemistry lab, different for all fo us, and the interplay between the various hormones in the body requires time to tweak to get it right.

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MirZ

Triathlon Lifestyle Expert and Licensed Sports Nutritionist

Get your FREE training blueprints at http://www.triathlonexperts.com

I was hoping to go natural but being in the Army I have to take what the give me. Taken me a while to get sorted on thyroxine but now I take it last thing at night and I'm feeling the best ever. Actually sleep and don't get lows in the day. Feeling so much better for the first time since i started on meds. Finally getting some training back in. And to those who said scrub you're season - you were right!

Sorry to jump into this thread so many weeks later, but wanted to provide you a link to a bunch of information I have found very useful as I start to wade into potentially having hypothyroidism.

http://thehealthyskeptic.org/...ns/thyroid-disorders

This guy falls into the "you have an auto-immune disease" camp, and thinks that in a lot of cases that dietary changes can make a huge impact. But he's also not against the thyroid drugs, and has several well researched posts (all his are very well researched and link to a lot of studies) on what types of the medications will work best for you given your various test results.

He's big into gluten is the enemy, so eliminate wheat and other major offenders like that. Vitamin D would a useful supplement for you, especially if you have hypothyroid and are a lady. This is probably also related to those reporting they need more medication in the winter, it could be the lower sunlight exposure and lower Vitamin D levels.

I'd recommend that you take an hour or three to read over a bunch of his posts and see how it strikes you.


My GP was not a fan of dietary changes, she said pretty much flat out "That won't help." Which I didn't like. I haven't sought a second opinion yet as I'm heading for a 3rd round of tests for my levels soon, and had an ultrasound recently.

Some great advice here that is worthy of a bump. I was diagnosed as Hypothyroid 18 months ago. At the start of 2010 I noticed that I couldn't recover between training sessions and my TT times were way off. Went to the docs and my TSH levels were at 120, the highest the doc had seen. She said she was suprised I could walk let alone race.

I've now been on a synthetic T4 replacement for about 18 months and really dont feel it's working. Started off on 100mcg, then reduced to 80 at my request, back to 100 and now on 125mcg. Had more bloodtests than you can imagine. My TSH levels are currently spot on at 1.0 (0.5 - 2.0 is considered normal). Thing is no mater where the levels lie I never feel much better. Sometimes I have good days, but these are few and far between. My doc and endo keep saying give it more time, but I think 18-months is plenty.

Starting to think I should be pushing to try a T3 replacement (combination treatment). Although here in the UK the docs and endo's dont seem too keen to offer this treatment as they do in the US. I've got an appointment on Monday and was considering asking if I could switch to Armour which has a natrual amount of T3 present. At least then I'd get to try T3 which I think may be the key in my case.

Anyone else switched to Armour or anyone on a combination treatment of T4 and T3?? Be greatful for your thoughts and if it made a difference.
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Fear is your only god.

Personally, although I have several times tried to make it on T4-only replacement, I find that I cannot do hard exercise, long bike rides, cycling tours, or otherwise be an athlete, without taking T3, too. I have never tried Armour. The nice thing about taking T3 separately is that it allows you to adjust your ration of T3 to T4. Armour's ration is something like 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 (I can't remember) which can be a bit high for some people. Still, if it turns out to be the only way you can get some T3 into your medication mix, it could be worth a try. Eighteen months is long enough to have sorted out a T4 dose. I think it's time to seek another option. Good wishes to you!

Thanks for your reply. Out of interest what ratio of T3 to T4 do you take? As I understand it T3 is about 4 times more potent than T4, and when taken in combination, the T4 dose should be reduced as to not over compensate.

ie. if I was on 100mcg of T4 and my TSH levels were okay, then incombination with 10mcg of T3 my T4 dose would have to be reduced to 60mcg to ensure my TSH levels remain normal. Does that sound about right?

Also theres the question about the half-life of T3, from what I've read it's about 12hrs which makes balancing things very difficult. Do you take 2 doses a day to keep the T3 levels consistant?

Once again many thanks for your replies and input. Seems there's loads of info about thyroidisum but very little about how it effects athletes.
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Fear is your only god.

     I believe you are correct about how you need to adjust the T4 dose down when you add T3 ... and that T3 is 4 times as potent as T4. I would recommend you start with just 5 mg of T3, which means you would lower T4 by 20. And I would take half the 5 mg pill in the morning and the other half around noon-2:00pm. Then try that for a few weeks to see if you get any improvement.
I agree with you about the difficulty of information about these meds for athletes.

 Jumping in a bit late here, but for what its' worth: Avoid what I went though and get yourself to an endocrinologist. After years of them continually increasing my Synthroid, my new Doc prescribed Armour thyroid as it has T3 and T4, you NEED both! They'll tell you all you need is Synthroid, and that your body will use it to make the T3, but if it's already having "issues", this just taxes it further. Synthroid has been pulled off the mkt 12 times since its' introduction, and has also lost a class action suit, so it's not alll its' cracked up to be from reports I have gotten from my Doc.
As previous posters advised, it takes several mos to see how your body is uptaking the meds, so hang in there! You will have people tell you that Armor Thyroid is unstable, but do your research and see how your body responds.
Good luck!

S.

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Thanks all for the tidbits of info, its great to have thyroid info from a fit training crowd. I was diagnosed hypothyroid in my mid-forties in 2009 but I can now see blood levels were out of whack since 2004. I was hoping that Naturopath approach would be successful for me and tried Thyroid Plus for 18 months, unfortunately just couldnt get my blood (or escalating weight!) regulated. So have been on synthroid for 4 months, feeling MUCH better than previous 2 years, i.e. who was that imposter with the low motivation, fatigue, general yuckiness? Its good to hear that at least a few months is par for the course for a somewhat normal state to return. FYI, when diagnosed with hypothyroidism, I also had very low iron and Vitamin D, which also played a significant role in the whole low state. My Naturopath told me they often travel in threes. Like some of the others posters my Reynaud's-like symptoms also started in at same time as hypothyroisism, I've got quite a collection of gloves/mitts/whatevers so i can still get out there and ski. And finally, grrrrrreat to hear that I may be able to blame part of my unusually lackluster tri performance this past season on hypothyroidism. Fantastic cuz surely it couldnt just be my declining ability or age :) !!!

Good deal! Also watch those "natural sea salts" ideas...we need a certain amt of Iodine in our diets, and if you don't eat fish, it has to come from somewhere. That's why they called the midwest the goiter belt as it had big problems yrs ago beforr the added Iodine to the salt. In our attempt to get healthy, we sometimes do the opposite! Also, the re-formulated the ranges last year for thyroid levels.

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My vitamin D was also super low-I was on a mega dose (10,000 units!) to get back up and now at 2,000/day and tremendous difference...
bad Raynaud's here too...last year I was in a clinical trial for a cream you put on before going out in cold-and really worked for me-hope it is available soon