On Armour 1 month now. When can I increase or retest?

February 23, 2005

I quit Synthroid for Armour a month ago. I feel a little better, but

not as good as I expected. I think I need to up the dose, doc says

wait 8 weeks to retest first. Is this right? I know that was the

norm for Synthroid, but I keep reading here about upping doses on a

schedule.... any info? Fatigue, weight gain that isnt even funny,

old feeling and looking. Just wiped out basically. Just flipping

tired and tired of. I am taking the Armour 4 times a day.

Thanks,

February 23, 2005

What was your synthroid dose and what is your new Armour dose. I

have noticed on this site that doctors will sometimes not give the

equivelent dose of Armour to the person's Synthroid dose. Basically,

they give them less thyroid and then of course the person will feel

worse.

To convert your synthroid dose to the approximate Armour equivelent,

divide your Synthroid dose by 74 or:

74 mcg of Synthroid = 1 grain of Armour.

It's just my opinion, but 8 weeks is longer than neccessary. If you

feel you are still hypothyroid, then two weeks is plently long. You

can make a 15 to 30 mg raise every two weeks untill you approach 3

grains total for the day. Then you need to slow down on dose raises,

so as to give time for the T4 in Armour to normalize in the blood

and so you don't accidentally go up too quickly and become overly

hyperthryoid by accidient.

The healthy human thyroid makes 3 to 5 grains a day. As long as you

don't have adrenal problems, anemia, and other nutritional

deficiencies, you cannot overdose untill your dose exceeds the

amount your heatlhy thyroid would make. The reason for this is

because of the pituitary feedback mechanisms that work to prevent

overdose. If you take 1 grain of Armour, then your pituitary will

drop TSH by the amount needed to tell your thyroid to drop

production of thyroid by 1 grain or more to keep your daily totals

at or below what you need or about 3 to 5 grains.

One really good study found that they were unable to raise the

metabolic rate of have any effect of giving thyroid to people at

doses of less than 3 to 5 grains. They found that the pituitary

worked against them to keep blood levels of thyroid the same untill

the dose got up much higher.

Thyroid doses in the past from the late 1800s up untill about 1975

when the TSH test came on the scene were 2 to 3 times higher than

they are today and averaged 2 to 5 grains. Thyroid patients were

quite healthy as a rule on these higher doses. Doses from this

period or for about 75 years were determined by symptoms, body

temperature, pulse, reflex action, and physical appearance. They did

not have good tests for measuring thyroid in the blood. So, thyroid

was slowly increased up as high as needed to make the patient

healthy and get rid of thyroid symptoms. This led to higher doses

than are given today.

To monitor your progress and help you determine whether your dose is

adequate, go to these two pages or look up on Google the " Broda

Basal Body Temperature Test "

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

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

To read a bit about doses:

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

I am taking 3-3/4 grains and I never felt well on 2 grains. Once I

was able to get my dose over 3 grains, my whole life turned around.

Tish

February 23, 2005