Re: for Tish -advice/info for Mo

[Guest guest]

Thanks again, much appreciated

> Mo (in England - Devon to be precise)

______________

Good luck. It seems like when the adrenals are involved, recovery is

much slower. Just getting your thyroid dose up high enough becomes a

challenge in adrenal fatigue.

Tish

[Guest guest]

The doctors that are more knowledgable about adrenal problems and

thyroid treatment, usually prescribe glandulars, cortef or some

other cortisone to be started about one week before starting thyroid

therapy. My first doctor did not do this and I had a terrible

meltdown and truely lost my health. The adrenals are so vitally

important for your health and well being, that when they have

problems, you really have problems. Increasing thyroid or starting

thyroid, greatly increases the demands for cortisol and other

hormones from the adrenals. In hypothyroidism, the body's metabolic

rate slows down and in this way, cortisol from the adrenals is

spared. When the body is slow, you may not notice that your adrenals

have become weak because the slow body has a slow liver, which does

not break down and remove cortisol very quickly. So, the lower

amount of adrenal hormones you are making are kept in the system

longer and in this way the body adapts. Similar adaptations happen

with thyroid and that is why you can become very hypo and still get

by.

Anyway, when you start to take thyroid or increase your dose, you

increase the need for cortisol since you are speeding up the

metabolic rate and you speed up the breakdown and removal of

cortisol in the liver. These two things together qickly deplete

cortisol from the system. At the same time, the adrenals are weak

and small from hypothyroidism and cannot make enough hormone to

replace what is lost and keep up with the new higher demands. This

is when you get into trouble. It takes about 10 days to two weeks

after starting thyroid sometimes for the problems to show up. You

will feel really terrible when adrenal hormone levels are too low.

Some of the things that happen are: hypoglycemia, insomnia, tight

sore muscles, muscle wasting, weakness, extreem fatigue, headaches,

very poor stress and activity tolerance, rotten sleep, thirst,

sugar, salt, and carbo craving, emotional disturbances and

irrational anger and on and on. Also, when cortisol goes too low,

thyroid hormone can't work. It can't get into tissues and builds up

in the blood giving you a combination of hypo and hyper symtpoms.

You will become very intolerant of thyroid hormone and have a lot of

difficulty with thyroid dose raises. Cortisol is needed to give the

body enough glucose so that thyroid can make energy and to convert

the inactive thyroid hormone T4 to the energy producting hormone T3.

So, if there is not enough cortisol, you can't use thyroid and you

can become what they call thyrotoxic. But, this is not true

hyperthyroidism as the tissues are very deprived.

Then, doctors, who are quite ignorant about this, will run the

thyroid tests and everything will come back high. Since tests only

measure what is in the blood and not what is in tissues, tests are

quite inaccurate in adrenal fatigue. Dr. Peatfield says that this

situation makes nonsense of tests. Often body temperature is very

low even though tests come back high. So, the majority of doctors

will keep patients at very low doses of thyroid for long times due

to over reliance on tests. This can be harmful to your health.

If you develop trouble with thyroid at doses less than about 3

grains or 222 mcg of Synthroid, then the problem is usually low

adrenal fucntion, anemia or some other deficiency or weakness in the

body not allowing it to be able to use thyroid. In this situation,

thyroid dose raises need to be very tiny and you will need to wait

longer between them I was only able to make 1/8 grain raises every 4

weeks. A typical person with few adrenal problems can make 1/4 grain

raises every two weeks. In adrenal fatigue, you will have to wait

untill you are stong enough before antother dose raise and if you

have a lot of trouble with a dose raise, then you might have to

occassionally drop back down for a while untill you can handle going

up again. It takes 4 months to two years for the adrenals to fully

recover normal function. It takes the body some time to adapt to

faster metabolic rates caused by thyroid medications. You have to go

slowly to give it time to recover before more dose raises.

People with adrenal problems with their hypothyroidism, can easily

get stuck at too low of doses due to the problems with inaccurate

tests and ignorant doctors. Then, their adrenals never get better

and they get stuck in a kind of miserable life. That was me for a

year.

Studies have shown that low dose thyroid replacement does not work

for the vast majority of people. The heatlhy human thyroid makes 3

to 5 grains a day or about 222 to 370mcg of synthroid equivelent a

day. Low dose thyroid therapy has been found in several studies to

be ineffective at raising the metabolic rate. Doses of 3 to 5 grains

or at least 222 mcg of synthroid up to 400 mcg of synthroid are

needed to change the status of a hypothryoid person. In low dose

therapy, the pituitary works to zero out low doses. In other words,

when you take 1 grain of Armour, the pituitary will drop production

of TSH to tell your thyroid to make another 2 to 4 grains or less so

that everything remains the same in the blood. Doses less than 3 to

5 grains or 222 to 370mcg of synthroid seem not to work to make the

peron normal and healthy and sometimes they can overly suppress

pituitary function making the person even more hypothyroid than

before medications. This happened to me. Having adrenal fatigue will

often confuse the doctor into thinking you have adequate thyroid

levels and this can leave you undermedicated and stop you from

getting your dose up where you need to be healthy.

http://thyroid.about.com/library/derry/bl11.htm

So, it can be very difficult to get your thyroid dose up to a point

that makes you healthy, when the adrenals are weak. But, it is

essential to get your dose up high enough so that the adrenals can

with time become normal in size and function.

To monitor your progress with your thryoid treatment and to see if

your adrenal situation is improving, check out the following pages:

http://www.drrind.com/tempgraph.asp

http://www.thyrophoenix.com/self_monitor.htm

http://www.alternate-health.com/thyroid.html

If you monitor your own thyroid and adrenal function, you will not

allow the doctor to keep you at too low of thyroid replacement doses

and you will know when you need another dose raise and when a doctor

says you are fine when you aren't, you will know when it's time to

find another doctor and not allow your health to be compromised by

being undermedicated for too long.

The tests above were how thyroid doses were adjusted for over 75

years before the tests we have today. They are very effective

methods of determining metabolic function, which is controlled by

thyroid and adrenal function mostly. I think they are better than

blood tests when used over the long run.

Tish

[Guest guest]

Tish,

Your insight and explanation of why and how to carefully support adrenals and

thyroid is just superb. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

....

[Guest guest]

> Tish,

>

> Your insight and explanation of why and how to carefully support

> adrenals and thyroid is just superb. I thank you from the bottom

of my heart.

Please quit telling her that or I will have to send her even MORE

money that I already do.

grin.