Hashimotos + Low T

If you have Hashimoto’s, why would you ever be off thyroid medication? Also, burning 2000 calories at a time sounds like a real lot.
First and foremost, your thyroid levels have to be optimal, or TRT won’t work.

I read this entire thread and the whole time I’m wondering why neither @galgenstrick nor his endocrinologists made the connection between being undermedicated and low T. T3 affects almost every cell in your body.

Would be nice to have an update from anyone in this thread.

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I have been hyper and hypo thyroid With low T. I would guess that there is a connection between low T and low thyroid, but I don’t think that’s the full story in my situation.

For me it seems my low T was due to sleep deprivation and at times was worse due to being in a calorie deficit.

My T is doing great now. I haven’t measured it but everything seems to be back to normal (except I still have a difficult time gaining muscle)

Taking the trazodone and getting some sleep every night made a huge difference. I also make sure to get about 60grams of unsaturated fat in my meal plan.

Also, I can’t stress enough that you should be taking a thyroid medication and regularly checking your levels. I would suggest taking only T4 at first. Get your TSH and FT4 normal, and if your FT3 is not normal at that point then you can consider taking T3 on top of the T4. Getting exactly the right dose is tricky. It’s easy to slip into being hypo because the symptoms aren’t nearly as bad as being hyper. You might not notice a huge difference, but without the thyroid your health will slowly deteriorate.

My suggestion:

  1. Get a good 8 hours of sleep every night
  2. Perfectly regulate your thyroid levels (this is much easier with T4 only)
  3. Eat enough healthy fats in your diet, but don’t go overboard.

Once you do those three things and have been consistently doing them for 3 months, then reevaluate you T levels.

PS: gluten free did nothing for me. Didn’t effect how I feel nor effect my thyroid level, nor did it have a positive effect on my thyroid antibodies.

PPS: If your sleep is crappy, you need to fix it. That should be a number one priority next to getting your thyroid regulated. If your sleep quality is crap, you’ll feel like crap every day. It will have the most noticeable detrimental effects, and will crash your testosterone levels.

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Absolutely. In your case, it appears that insomnia and sleep deprivation did indeed crash your T levels. I think taking a T3 medication caused those wild fluctuations in your thyroid hormone levels, making you feel hyperthyroid, which is why I am suspicious of T3 medications.

It doesn’t appear that you had cortisol levels checked at any time. My guess is your severe stress and insomnia raised your cortisol, which counteracted your testosterone production.

From my own research it appears that being overmedicated or undermedicated will lower testosterone levels. Overmedication will also raise SHBG, thus lowering free T.

Overtraining is another thing that will raise cortisol. When you are overmedicated, any kind of exertion will burn you out.

It’s good to hear you’re feeling much better. When thyroid levels are out of whack, you can feel anywhere from miserable to insane. I wish their was more information on Hashimoto’s and TRT.

I agree about the T3. The half-life of the medication is just too short to be an effective way of controlling your levels. It seems to spike your levels, and then they come back to normal fairly quickly, or worse they can drop below normal. A long time ago I fell into that trap because so many thyroid books recommend it. I was taking armour thyroid and testing my blood levels every few months and the blood levels would be all over the place. I was rapidly swinging between hyper and hypo, and I kept adjusting my dose to compensate which just made things worse. When I was hyper I’d have terrible night sweats and I would be really angry and irritable all the time. When I was hypo I felt decent and my mood was better, but my toe nails would split and my hair would thin out.

Since the half life is so short your levels will read differently depending on how close to the blood test you took the medication.

Which leads me to my next point. If you’re taking only T4, which I recommend to start. Then make sure to take the medication early in the morning and don’t eat anything for a couple hours. I just do intermittent fasting so I don’t have to worry about it. Secondly, on blood test days make sure to have the blood test before taking the medication that day. That will give you the most regulated results.

My thyroid labs were in good (t3,t4,rt3)range but my antibodies were elevated. Hashimotos)
…I suffer from no energy and takes me forever to revcover after working out. And I’ll feel flu like. Low mood. Test levels were low but then i got them somewhat elevated. Would you recommend synthroid first then Armour. I have Amour but I haven’t started yet. Sometimes adding things make me feel worse. So I’m very hesitant. Thanks

There is a product I came across recently that people have used to treat thyroid antibodies. It’s a bovine glandular extract that has its DNA removed and you take it orally then once the immune system senses it’s presence in the body it redirects the antibodies away from the thyroid and towards the new target. The idea is that you take this for awhile and let your thyroid heal. It’s called Thytrophin PMG I’m not having much luck finding it online however. Sounds great in theory and there are some positive reviews. Worth looking into.

It is made by Standard Process.

Yes but they seem to only sell through their chiro dealer network and none to Canada…

Been looking into it this morning. Thanks. I need to get some relief

Thats it! the answer is gluten. Gluten causes a change in the intestinal cell barrier that allows proteins to enter the bloodstream, causing an immune response, which unfortunately the thyroid has a structure similar to that generated in the antibody that fights the invading protein and at the same time destroys its thyroid.
There are medical specialists who can help you with this.
but the basics would be cutting gluten, ingesting probiotic and prebiotic foods, (fermented foods). Insert kelp or lugol associated with selenium and glutamine.

Check out your RT3. I was on armor and felt great for a while but then felt horrible. What was happening was that the T4 was not converting to T3 - it was turning to Reverse T3, the inactive form. I switched to a T3 only medication, Liothyronine, just .5 mcg 2x per day keeps my Ft3 levels at the top of the range. I feel great. I have Hashimotos as well. Go slow,with this med. I felt so good on it I kept titrating up to .15 mcg which put me in a major hyper state. I backed off and feel better than I have in years.

One other point. Even though your labs are normal if you have antibodies and feel like crap then you will benefit from meds. Especially T3. Check out the book Recovering with T3 and related posts in Thyroid forums on the internet. I

T4+T3 is a win-win. I have hypothyroidism and I use 75mcgs of T4 + 0.25mcgs of T3. I feel extremly well, and it’s pretty easy to gain muscle/loss fat. I usually had dificulties even dieting and doing cardio ED in the past using only T4, and some days still had hypothyroid symptoms, it sucked.

What thyroid medication are you on?