Re: People with Hashimotos can take Armour, right? Will it help

[Guest guest]

It depends on what type of antibodies. Most people have antibodies

that attack some part of the thyroid and focus their attack on an

intermediary hormone in the pathway of the production of thyroid

hormone. When a person like this takes enough thyroid, it suppresses

the production of hormone in the thyroid gland. When the gland does

not need to make thyroid, then there is nothing to trigger the

production of antibodies and attack of the thyroid. Suppressive

doses of thyroid are known to calm the thyroid affected by

Hashimotos. In fact, if you were to take sufficient thyroid to slow

your thyroid to almost nothing for 6 to 8 years, you would have an

11% chance of a cure and could possibly go off thyroid for the rest

of your life and be normal. (See Werner and Ingbar's " The Thyroid " )

However, there are other types of antibodies that attack thyroid

hormone in the blood as well as in the thyroid. In this case taking

any thyroid hormone has the potential to raise antibody levels,

because you are increasing the very hormone or hormones that are the

trigger for antibody attack.

The solution, you might think for this is to not take thyroid. But,

that is not logical, since killing yourself with hypothryoidism to

lower antibody levels is not a very good solution. The solution when

there are lots of antibodies in the blood against thyroid is to take

lots of thyroid so that the levels of the hormones in the blood are

high enough that you supply extra thyroid to compensate for what is

being destroyed by antibodies. In this type of Hashimotos, it is

possible to need very large daily doses of thyroid to get enough

hormone to allow for waht is being destroyed by antibodies and

supply enough extra to get into tissues to make you normal and

healthy and no longer hypothyroid.

There is no reason to panick about having antibodies in the blood

against thyroid. You just live with them and take enough extra to

compensate for what they take out of the system. The antibodies tend

to be very specific to what they attack and so having them there is

not going to cause attack of other parts of the body. The only way

to treat this is with sufficient thyroid. I would much rather not

die of cancer and heart disease and other terrible things caused by

hypothyroidism just to lower antibody levels. I would rather just

live with them and take enough extra thyroid to compensate for what

they destroy.

It does not matter whether you take Synthroid or Armour, unless your

antibodies attack only thyroid T3 or T2 or another T. In this case,

you would lower antibodies by taking Synthroid, but you would be in

terrible heatlh, because your body absolutely needs T3, T2 and the

other Ts. T3 and T2 are the thyroid hormones that do all the work of

regulating your metabolism and T4 is practically inactive. It would

be better to make sure you are taking enough of all the thyroid

hormones so that your body gets what it needs to be healthy and

there is enough extra there to compensate for what is being

destroyed.

So, fretting over antibody levels does not get you anywhere if you

are going to kill yourself with hypothyroidism just to lower them.

Most doctors who are knowledgeable about this issue say that

patients with this type of antibody attack may need to take

considerably more thyroid and that blood tests are useless for them.

Tish