Synthroid
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It’s More Than Your Thyroid
It’s more than your thyroid!
I read over and over again on Facebook, thyroid patients that go to their endocrinologist and beg for a complete blood work, and not just the standard TSH test. TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) to find out why they, the patient, is not responding to typical thyroid replace therapy. By not responding, I mean they are not feeling any better on thyroid replacement therapy (HRT).
Typical symptoms of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis:
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Sore throat
- Hair loss
- Weight gain
- Dry skin
- Heat or cold intolerance
I tell people, it feels like I have strep throat all the time. To put it mildly…Hashimoto’s SUCKS!
So what do patients do who have a doctor who won’t run a more extensive list of labs for you? You can find another doctor, or pay for the tests yourself. Simple as that.I usually have my endocrinologist run complete labs once a year, (yes, I go in to his office armed with information). In between that I will have a TSH test done every 4 or 5 months just to see how I am doing.
Only approximately 10% of patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis will feel better on HRT alone. That is the disappointing truth. Why? Because it is, NUMBER ONE, an autoimmune disease! What is an autoimmune disease?
Autoimmune disease affects up to 50 million Americans, according to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA). An autoimmune disease develops when your immune system, which defends your body against disease, decides your healthy cells are foreign. As a result, your immune system attacks healthy cells. Depending on the type, an autoimmune disease can affect one or many different types of body tissue.
There are over 80 autoimmune diseases that affect different areas of your body. For instance: Multiple Sclerosis (MS), causes damage to the myelin coating around the nerve fibers in the central nervous system (CNS) and to the nerve fibers themselves interferes with the transmission of nerve signals between the brain, spinal cord and the rest of the body.
IT MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE.
What is wrong with me?
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease that has picked your innocent thyroid to attack. It attacks and attacks until the thyroid no longer produces the hormone needed for your body to run efficiently. Hence: you feel constantly tired and you crawl to your doctor for lab work. What is frustrating, is after years of complaining about being fatigued and your doctor prescribes a medicine like Synthroid, you still feel the fatigue but now you have other complaints such as weight gain, hair loss, foggy brain, etc. You doctor scratches his head and declares that your TSH is now in the “normal” range SO IT MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE. Then he leads you out of the examination room.
Patients have burst into tears at this point. They have come to their doctor in hopes of regaining their once vital life back, and instead they are told it basically is in their heads because, after all, blood tests don’t lie. (SCREAM HERE!)
Okay, take a deep breath, There is hope. I have faced this hurdle head on, and innocently I have believed my learned doctor. Well my doctor, or I should say doctors, are obviously not doing the same in depth research that I have had to take on in an attempt to find out WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME? What I found out…it is Hashimoto’s. Screw the blood tests and the supposedly normal TSH. I have an autoimmune disease with a fancy name…HASHIMOTO’S THRYOIDITIS. (Dr. Haruku Hashimoto, in 1912, published a paper on lymphomatus goiter and when published in American papers, renamed Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.)
When I was first diagnosed 5 years ago, I had never heard of it. Yes, I knew what hypothyroidism was, but the autoimmune disease that was attacking my thyroid was new to me. What set the diagnose apart from just having hypothyroidism is the high antibodies showing up in my lab results.
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The presence of TPO antibodies in your blood suggests that the cause of thyroid disease is an autoimmune disorder, such as Hashimoto’s disease or Graves’ disease. In autoimmune disorders, your immune system makes antibodies that mistakenly attack normal tissue.
My endocrinologist preformed a ultrasound on my thyroid and he said it looked like a typical “beat-up” thyroid caused by Hashimoto’s. If I knew years ago what I know now, I could have stopped the progression of the demise of my thyroid. Now, it has gone past the point of no return and I am on a lifetime of hormone replacement therapy. Oh joy!
So what do you do if your doctor says your TSH is in the normal range and that is all they can do? Pull up your big girl (or boy) panties and it is all up to you! Trust me on this one. I have SEARCHED for the magic pill. There is none. Hashimoto’s patients usually place too much importance on their prescription. It’s all about diet.
Your hormone replacement therapy is extremely important because your body needs thyroid, but it is not how you are going to feel better. It also is not how you are going to lose weight. (I’ve even tried going on the very low side of TSH numbers and didn’t lose a pound. The lower the number, the more thyroid you have in your system,)
What is going to help you is:
- Eliminating gluten, sugar, fluoride, alcohol, junk food.
- Using shampoos and moisturizers that have natural ingredients and no gluten.
- Upping your intake of fresh and organic vegetables and fruit.
- Either having food sensitivity blood tests done or try eliminating foods for a while to see how you feel then gradually adding them back into your diet.
- Coffee is something that is not tolerated well by people with Hashimoto’s.
- Taking D3, selenium, vitamin C, Zinc.
That’s a good start.
Feeling better will not happen overnight.
Sorry to deliver that news but no, this will not happen overnight. It probably will take a good 3 months before you really could resume activities that you could do before being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.
Below are some helpful links. Educating yourself about your disease is a great step toward recovery.
Thanks for reading!
Terry Ryan
http://thyroid.about.com/library/links/blthyroid.htm
http://www.medicinenet.com/hashimotos_thyroiditis/article.htm
http://www.thyroidawareness.com/hashimotos
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis
Hashimoto’s thyroiditits is a fancy name for an autoimmune disease that primarily attacks your thyroid. But while it is attacking your thyroid as if it was a foreign object in your body, it also causes a multitude of symptoms as in the following:
- Extreme fatigue
- Weight gain
- Hair Loss
- Dry skin
- Sensitivity to heat or cold
- Sore throat
- Headaches
- Aches and pains
Just to name a few.
When people ask me what having Hashimoto’s is like I tell them it is like having strep throat. It sucks!
What causes Hashimoto’s thyroiditis? No one knows for sure but fingers point at a toxic environment, genetics, viruses, or the cheap and chemical laden food we have been consuming for years.
My symptoms came on gradually. I became more tired year after year. I would describe it as being tired to the bone. My hair was falling out and it became harder to keep weight off. I went to my doctor for blood tests (all came out normal), and I exercised more, but I continued to become more ill.
As the years went on, a blood test finally presented a high TSH level. TSH means thyroid-stimulating hormone. Higher the level the more hypothyroid you are. You want to be between 0.1-3.5 (I was 45 when diagnosed) however that can differ from doctor to doctor.
A conventional doctor will not prescribe a hormone replacement drug like Synthroid until your TSH is high. Otherwise, they believe they will exacerbate the disease.
The dangers of too much hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is that it will cause heart damage. That’s the last thing a doctor wants to cause, therefore, they dispense HRT with trepidation and extreme caution.
Patients are desperate for relief from their symptoms and beg their doctors to do something. They are convinced if they either take a HRT or UP their current dosage, they will be well again. Sadly, this is not the case and many people do not feel any difference in their symptoms even with drug therapy. It is a mistake to count on your HRT as the miracle cure, because there is no miracle cure.
How to reduce your symptoms with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis?
- Take your thyroid prescription as prescribed and be tested every three months to make your levels are optimal.
- Eliminate gluten, sugar, dairy, soy, and fluoride from your diet.
- Take 5k of D3 per day. Make sure it is not a gel cap that has soy as a filler.
- Take selenium per day.
- Do mild exercise like yoga, tai chi, walking.
- Eat a lot of organic veggies and fruit per day.
- Get into juicing veggies and fruit to up your intake.
- Use coconut oil to moisturize your skin. Think of your skin as a giant sponge that soaks up anything you put on it so watch the scary chemicals.
- Get your hormones tested to see if you are imbalanced in female or male hormones.
- Write down everyday in a journal what you ate, exercised or did during the day and how you feel.
- Good grief….don’t smoke or drink alcohol.
- Get enough good quality sleep. Prepare for sleep at night. Have a routine where you wind-down for the night. Take a shower, read a little, or meditate just before bed. Keep your sheets fresh and your bedroom decluttered.
As you make these changes do not expect immediate results. It will take months of gradual improvements. You are master of your body and it is YOU who is in charge of getting yourself back to optimal health. It took me years to figure this out and I am back to feeling like my old self. You can feel good again, too.
Thank you for reading.
Terry Ryan, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis patient
Here is suggested reading.
Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis by Terry Ryan
Why Do I Still Have Hashimoto’s Symptoms When My Labs Are Normal by Dr. Datis Kharrazian
My Personal Session With Mary Shomon by Terry Ryan
Hello fellow Hashimoto Thyroiditis patients,
I had the great pleasure to have a one on one session with, Mary Shomon,a thyroid patient advocate. I visited her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/thyroidsupport on Monday and saw that for $100.00 you may signup for a personal telephone session with Mary. Impressed with Mary’s knowledge, I signed right up and the next opening was Friday at 3:30. I was booked.
Terry Ryan
Mary promptly called at the arrange time and she introduced herself and got right down to business. I paid by credit card. Then she went over my note I had sent her. “I see here that you want to discuss weight loss.” I have put on about 50 pounds in the ten years since being diagnosed with Hashimoto, and they were 50 pounds that no matter what I did to lose weight, they would not budge. Ack!
Mary speaks in a rapid fire way which is great because that way you get a ton of useful info in the 30 mins. It is also good that I have researched Hashimoto Thyroiditis so I could keep up with her. I had my recent labs done and had previously reviewed them 2x over the phone with my endocrinologist’s assistant, but I had the feeling she missed some things. I was looking at the actually paperwork that was sent to me by the lab, but the assistant was looking at a computer screen and kept on saying, “Wait a minute and let me find that.” Anyway, she had missed a lot and I am glad I spoke to Mary who straightened everything out for me.
Mary asked me for the lab results and then asked me for the range which is on the right side of my lab paperwork. Example below.
TSH 0.102 0.358-3.740 (I was over medicated on T4)
Free T3 2.83 2.18-3.99 (Mary said that was too low)
“Free T3 should to be closer to the 3.99 for optimal health and weight loss,” Mary stated. I had been taking Cytomel (T3) before but in the last few months I had stopped when my prescription was changed to Tirosint (150mcg) from Synthroid and my doctor had eliminated the T3 (Cytomel).
Then going over my lab report she noticed another red flag. My ferritin level was very low. 39
Ferritin (iron) 39 range 0-252 (I was low.)
Mary explained that I could cut all the calories I wanted to and join 10 workout classes a week and with my T3 low and my ferritin so low that I was never going to lose weight. (I should point out that my other lab results were fine according to Mary.)
Her advise was:
- Call my endocrinologist and ask for a prescription of Cytomel. If he prescribes 5mg ask for him to prescribe it as 2.5mg tablets and take one in the morning and the other after lunch.
- Start taking a iron supplement. This is tricky because most will be hard on the stomach and will cause constipation. She recommended a liquid iron supplement called Floradix and said that my local health food store should carry it. I could also call my doctor if I wanted to get a prescription for iron.
- Mary said to go to www.drrosedale.com and on that website there is a tiny heart that if you click on you can download a diet PDF. She said to follow that diet. I did download it (Ron-Rosedale-Health-Plan) and basically no fruit, no sugar, no gluten, no dairy.
I told her about my juicing and she is not too impressed with juicing. She said it was introducing too much glucose/sugar into the body at once. It was okay to juice celery and cucumber but to stay away from spinach and kale because they slow down the thyroid because they are goitrous foods. Goitrous is a substance that slows down the thyroid. It is found in bok choy, broccoli, Brussels’ sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, mustard greens, radishes, soy, soy milk, soy lecithin (often used as a filler in vegetarian food) and tofu and now apparently spinach is on the list. I was using a lot of raw spinach and kale in my juices. Ugh! But I was feeling so much better with juicing and my skin is glowing from all the veggies, but no, I haven’t lost a single pound. (sigh)
Mary also said that some of her clients have had great results on fasting for two days a week. Let’s say you practice a Paleo diet 5 days a week but on Monday and Thursday you only eat 500 calories. Mary said that you don’t have to eat the 500 calories of the fast day and it may be easier to just drink water. She recommended a couple of books. See below.
Other tips were to check out T-Tapp for light exercise on Youtube. Mary said she has lost many inches by practicing the T-Tapp exercises. I checked it out and they look pretty easy so I will give that a try. Also:
- Limit snacking.
- No alcohol!
- Eat only three times a day.
- Don’t eat after 8:00pm
Okay, so that’s why I haven’t lost any weight. I just went out and bought a steak which shocked the heck out of my husband since I have been mostly vegetarian (the dog is thrilled), and I will make a spring salad with lemon juice as the dressing.
Yesterday I drove over to the health food store to purchase the Floradix but they did not have it. The young girl at the counter told me to take a couple of tablespoons of Plantation Blackstrap Molasses ($4.95/15 fl 
oz.) per day. Okay, that certainly was cheaper than the Floradix which runs around $20.00 for 8.5 ounces so I am giving that a try. It tastes okay, not too bad. What is Blackstrap Molasses? Click here.
So, I would honestly say that I am very happy with my 30 minute session with Mary Shomon and I would recommend it for anyone who is having problems with their Hashimoto symptoms. I will try all the things she suggested:
- Take Cytomel (If my doctor will not prescribe it Mary has already given me a name of a local holistic doctor who will but will not take insurance.)
- Try eating more foods that contain iron like steak.
- Take my iron supplement.
- Stop juicing spinach and kale.
- No fruit, dairy, gluten, sugar.
- Try T-Tapp for excercise.
- Try the 2 day fasting diet.
I’ll let you know how it works out.
Thanks for reading,
Terry Ryan, Health Blogger
Read The Thyroid Diet Revolution by Mary The Thyroid Diet Revolution: Manage Your Master Gland of Metabolism for Lasting Weight Loss
Here’s a great article by Mary Shomon titled
Help, I’m Hypothyroid and I Still Don’t Feel Well
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/hypothyroidism/a/notwell.htm
Recommended reading by Mary Shomon
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