What to do about Thyroid health? I’m noticing on my blood work my TSH level is going up and up and now outside of range at 4.28. I know from reading on here that ranges are bullsh*t and it should be around 1.
I’ve been supplementing Iodine as suggested in the guide yet its made no difference and my TSH level continues to rise. Are there any thyroid gurus on here with some advice? My GP doesnt care that much (NHS).
Latest results are here and can post the others if it’ll help:
Supplementing iodine will cause TSH to rise and render a diagnosis useless. Your doctor didn’t even think that perhaps Reverse T3 is pooling therefore blocking Free T3 at the receptors. I’m willing to bet Reverse T3 is high and is why TSH is elevated. In this case T3 only medicine should be used.
The ranges for TSH are BS, no one wants to acknowledge it because many people previously who were told their thyroid is normal would now be eligible for treatment, the NHS is underfunded and couldn’t afford to treat everyone in need.
Go private and all of a sudden you are approved for treatment. It’s also shown in the medical literature that a person can have normal thyroid labs and still have symptoms of hypothyroidism that resolves after thyroid treatment commences.
Labs are not the word of God, there are not foolproof, individual processes hormones differently and people can have resistance at the T3 receptors needing higher levels to function normally.
Though TSH remains the most commonly used endocrine test in clinical practice, the issue of an appropriate TSH, and to a lesser extent, free T4 and free T3 reference ranges is still under debate. First of all the distribution of TSH reference range is not normal, with median values (also depending on population iodine intake) usually between 1-1.5 mU/L
It has become clear that previously accepted reference ranges are no longer valid as a result of both the development of more highly sensitive TSH assays and the appreciation that reference populations previously considered normal were contaminated with individuals with various degrees of thyroid dysfunction that served to increase mean TSH levels for the group. Recent laboratory guidelines from the National Academy of Clinical Biochemistry indicate that more than 95% of normal individuals have TSH levels below 2.5 mU/liter
Taking iodine supposedly raises tsh so that a iodine transporter, or something like that, can take iodine where it needs to go - or at least that’s what some of the high dose advocates say. I don’t know if I believe it.
In some of the studies it lowers total thyroid output - you won’t see that in the free numbers until it’s been going on a while. I’d be curious to see if the total t4 is lowish.
You also can’t be sure you have great levels anyways. This doesn’t mean you’re okay it just means you might not be able to tell if the iodine is shifting things around.
You could wait a month and retest. I used to supplement iodine but I can get enough from fish, salt, and seaweed occasionally (I like the stuff anyways).