Re: Stopping armour.. 'drugs' vs 'natural hormones' and their use (and how it is seen by others)

[Guest guest]

> I have been on armour for almost 10 months. My initial thyroid test

> results were:

> //

>

> How would i go about stopping armour, has anyone else done it?

> Would i have to wean of it slowly (on 3.5 grains), like with HC?

>

I'm kind of in the same boat - I'm weaning off of IsoCort, and the

Armour at the same time (my body lets me know quite quickly if I'm

over-stimulated thyroid-wise, although it may initially say I am when

I'm not really, just adjusting to the slight shock of a lower cotil

level). As I've posted on the list, this will make my mother's hope

of 'telling what the thyroid does alone' (there will BE no thyroid,

and anyway it's effect is tied to cortisol level)

The thing is - while I wean off the cortisol (I'm doing it fast,

off of 13 pills in 3 or 4 weeks), I AM going to have the symtoms that

went away when I was on it - partly because of the low cortisol,

partly because of low thyroid (or low binding due to low cortisol) -

ease of getting up, how I feel in the morning, ease of going to bed

and " wanting to go to bed " (when cortisol is actually low enough),

stimuli and emotional over-sensitivity, etc. This will make my

mother thing the IC is a " drug " (which I suppose technically it is),

and with it brings all the 'baggage' that some attach to taking

'drugs' - rather than replacement of natural hormones (how many

people see the difference? I see a BIG difference between 'taking an

antidepressant because I need it clinical depression, which is (or

seems quite) real " and " taking insulin or thyroid or cortisol (which

I need to stay alive or optimally functional).

What *kind* of difference betweeen these, I'm not quite sure, even

after 10 years of the depression (and treated for those 10 years

thankfully). But I see a difference. Perhaps it's just 'synthetic'

vs natural (or bio-identical if your talking about syn-LT4/3) - but I

feel it's something more about what I feel about the nature of the

problems. Depression *isn't supposed* to exist in humans (debatably)

and be corrected with the very-blunt-ax of our current drugs (which

go EVERYWHERE in the brain, aren't as specific as we might like them

to be). Whereas thyroid and cortisol problems, while they also

aren't supposed to exist, ARE meant to be corrected with the proper

hormones. Now, if we found some " natural " form of prozac that did

act specifically if the proper places in the brain? (The brain must

have chemicals that do about the same thing as prozac in modulating

the re-uptake of neurotransmitters) Would I consider that

" natural " ? I don't know.

As for 'being in denial', I have a female cousin who had some kind

of childhood hypothyroidism (presumably auto-immune - her mother also

has hypoT). She was in denial about 'having to take this for the

rest of my life' when her mother finally told her that 'no, it's not

really going to go away'.. But she got used to it (having seen the

symptoms of what happened when she skipped a dose). Sadly, she (and

her mother) are on The Big S. And the cousin should know better -

she's a damn RNP.. Although that doesn't mean she reads endocrine-

dogma-critical articles and studies necessarily.

Jim