A work in progress …
Newsflash: That letter I got saying my T4 & T3 levels were normal? *BZZT* Wrong. Clerical error.
The doc today said she’d only ever seen one other patient with thyroid levels as amazingly LOW as mine. I feel so special! There was nothing normal about any of my initial test results. TSH? Sky high. T4/T3? In the dumpster.
I am now closer to normal… TSH of 7.5 (if I recall correctly), and our target level is somewhere below 5.5 I’m told. Read more
Thyroid, Adrenal, Pituitary, oh my!
The anterior pituitary secretes growth hormone, prolactin, follicle-stimulating hormone, luteinizing hormone, thyroid-stimulating hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone, endorphins and other hormones. It does this in response to a variety of chemical signals from the hypothalamus…. –Wikipedia
The pea-sized pituitary gland seems to control just about everything, including the thyroid and its freqent partner in mysterious maladies: the adrenal gland. Read more
So far so good.
Further research yet to be chronicled, but as a short side note: Your TSH levels can be abnormally elevated while you still have ‘normal’ free T4 and T3 levels. Apparently, that’s the first stage of thyroid exhaustion… your thyroid is slowing down, but is still capable of responding to elevated TSH stimulation.
Getting medication at that point (which I supposedly have done) should, according to my little theory, keep your T4/3 levels at ‘normal’ while allowing your pituitary to slack off TSH production down to normal levels. I’ll be going in for my next round of blood tests in a week or so, so we’ll see if that is indeed the case.
And what about the subjective “how’re you feeling” effects of the levothyroxin, 30 days into the trial? Read more