Re: Digest Number 439

[Guest guest]

Hi Elaine thanks for the feed back.

I guess as a relatively new gd volunter:) My lab are still bouncing around a

lot so having trouble deciding what dose of tap to stay on.I was on 5mg bid

and my levels stayed normal for a couple of months,Then started going hyper

again so increased it to 10bid which made me hypo

within two weeks with a tsh of 26.something so downed the tap to 7.5

and was still hypo so now back on 5 bid and tsh has dropped to .562

again in a two week period.So mine seem to change rapidly.Its also

getting to be a pain in the nethers to find the right size pill chip

to take after ive chopped them in different sizes to adjust the dosage.

So hope this is just an adjustment period and thing will level off soon.

THNKS AGAIN DAVEMessage: 2 Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000

13:25:00 EST

From: daisyelaine@...: Re: Digest Number 438Hi Dave,

I'm a med tech too and the last lab I was at did the same thing, saying

these

are the only tests the AACE thinks we need for monitoring. The Free T4 level

is actually more accurate than the T4 since it measures the amount of

thyroid

hormone which is unbound and available to thyroid cell receptors throughout

the body.

Normally, the TSH reflects our thyroid hormone status. By this I mean, the

hypothalamus in the brain recognizes our FT4 and FT3 blood levels, and when

it sees they are too high, it orders the pituitary to quit pumping out TSH

and our levels our low. Likewise, when our blood thyroid hormone levels are

too low, the pituitary churns out excess TSH and levels are high.

However, it takes the pituitary a minimum of 6 weeks to get its act together

and reflect these changes.

So TSH accurately diangoses people who have been hypoT or hyperT for

sometime.

For newly hypo or hyper people, TSH may still appear normal for a while.

And for people on ATD's whose levels are bouncing around, it can take many

weeks to many months for TSH to catch up. For this reason, some endos

recommend that only FT4 and FT3 levels be monitored.

And for those of us who have become hypo after surgery or RAI, the TSH may

take a long time to reflect what's going on. For some of us who have thyroid

antibody titers, TSH never seems to be an accurate predictor. Long term

thyroid dysfunction can also cause the TSH response to be impaired. Hope

this helps, Elaine

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