Not responding to NDT - Thyroid Resistance?

[answersfound]

I've been taking NDT for about 2 months now. It's been a pretty rocky road and I can't seem to figure out how to get this stuff to work for me. At one point I couldn't handle 1/8 of a grain, I was so sensitive. I started using pregnenolone with the NDT and was able to tolerate NDT without this adrenaline reaction. Now I am at a point where I am taking around 6-8 grains a day and am not getting much of a response. I am slightly warmer and my mood is a bit better, but I don't understand why things aren't better. If I stop taking the pregnenolone I crash. However, it seems like no matter how much NDT I take, it does nothing. I read that if I have some sort of thyroid resistance, that flooding the system will eventually make me respond and then I will have to scale back. But I just don't get how I went from highly sensitive to unresponsive to it. Sometimes when I take it, it makes me tired.

Do I need to take even more? Or do I just need to give it more time?

Edit: now my body temp is 98.4 after taking one grain. That is the highest it has been in years, so I guess I just need a very high dose for the time being. My body is so erratic, I experience so many highs and lows throughout the day.

 

[answersfound]

Treatment for Type 2 Hypothyroidism

1. Replacement Hormone

Whether the person’s thyroid gland is not producing enough hormone or the cells are unable (for whatever reason) to process what the gland is producing, the treatment is the same: replacement hormone. From the perspective of conventional medical training, flooding the system with thyroid hormone, in amounts greater than what laboratory blood tests might indicate are useful or prudent, may seem questionable. But consider the highly dysfunctional state of the mitochondria and/or cell receptors. If you saturate the tissues with enough hormone, for a long enough period, even malfunctioning mitochondria and stubborn receptor sites will start processing and utilizing the hormone. Once the body begins to function correctly, it has the potential to self-correct. Then, conceivably, the hormone dosage can be reduced. This points to the need for careful monitoring of people with Type 2 hypothyroidism. It’s easy to assess a body that is starting to heal, Starr maintains. “The increased basal temperature that results from administering desiccated thyroid is a direct result of enhanced mitochondrial activity.”

What type of pharmaceuticals work best? Up until the 1960s, people suffering from hypothyroidism were given desiccated thyroid derived from pigs. This means the entire dried gland and its contents – all four forms of thyroid hormone, RNA, DNA, and other co-factors. But by the 1970s, isolated thyroxin (T4) was introduced as the “gold standard” of thyroid medications. By definition, thyroxin is only a portion of the thyroid hormone complex. Since it does not contain the synergistic effects of the entire glandular material, not surprisingly, it proved less effective clinically than the desiccated thyroid.

One such study on the superiority of desiccated thyroid over thyroxin was conducted in Belgium and was published in 2001 by endocrinologist Jacques Hertoghe and his colleagues in the Journal of Nutritional and Environmental Medicine. Subjects showed marked improvement when they began taking desiccated thyroid instead of only T4. The hallmark symptoms of low thyroid – constipation, headache, joint and muscle pain, muscle cramps, depression, cold intolerance, and fatigue – were reduced by 70% after they switched from T4 to desiccated thyroid. “Symptoms of the patients already taking T4,” notes Starr, reviewing the study, “did not differ from those of the group of untreated patients” [emphasis added].

 

[answersfound]

bump

 

[iLoveSugar]

I KNOW I am hypo also, but like you, I don't respond either.

 

[tara]

Hi looking,
Some questions and thoughts from a non-experienced non-expert. Sorry if I'm repeating things said or asked on other threads.
1. How much are you eating? Would you be around 3000cal and 100-150 g protein?
2. Are you at least covering all the micronutrient RDIs as per cronometer (except iron and pufa)?
3. How fast have you increased your thyroid supp to get to 8 grains?

I wonder if you have ramped up too fast and overshot what your body can use?
T4 has a long half life. So when you start or increase it, it can take 2-4 weeks to reach a stable level, at which point you can assess whether you need more. If you like the effect of a small dose (eg 1/4 grain) and want more of it, and keep increasing dose rapidly (ie every few days instead of every few weeks) I think you risk overshooting optimal supplement levels.
I think if you try to force metabolism up higher than your body has the resources to support, by adding in more thyroid supp than the body perceives as safe, it has mechanisms to defend itself. Eg it can convert some of the T4 to RT3, which blocks T3 and reduces metabolism. Then it gets hard to figure out a good dose. I'm not sure this last bit is exactly how the mechanism works, but I think it is widely reported that too much thyroid can have similar effects to too little.

 

[DaveFoster]

I'm curious to know how you're doing at this point in time answersfound. Do you still take thyroid? I plan on starting at 1/16th a grain soon.

 

[Parsifal]

6 to 8 grains/day seems really excessive, the body produces just 4 grains/day of natural hormones, no? And it seems you increased doses really too fast.

IIRC Broda Barnes asked to increase by 1/2 grain every 2 month as the T4 half-life is 2 weeks.

How do you take your temps, where, which kind of thermometer are you using?

BTW RP is not advising NDT anymore, Armour thyroid's company (Broda Barnes was using Armour) was very guenine and testing EVERY sample to be sure that there was enough T3 and T4 in any supplements but it has been sold and it seems that no other company is doing such a great job and that most NDT are mainly T4 (so might create a lot of rT3 in the body that antagonize T3, so be careful if you are not getting enough selenium, manganese, zinc, etc).

 

[answersfound]

I take about 1.5-2 grains daily. I knew I was getting enough calories, protein, carbs. My digestion was excellent. My libido was great too. Cypro had taken care of a lot of issues. But eventually, I realized two things. My liver was in bad shape, not storing glycogen, so I used caffeine/theanine to fix that. And I was not getting enough Selenium. Selenium helps convert T4 to T3, which is obviously important. I don't eat a lot of seafood so I needed to supplement. I eventually hit a point where I knew my body had plenty of T4, so I knew more thyroid wasn't the answer.

With that 6-8 grain dose, I had a TSH of 4 (previously, mine was 2) and a lot of rT3. And I felt like I was dying. Truly awful. Worse than before I started the thyroid. My doctor put me on Cytomel to "clear out the rT3" but I knew that I had completely over shot the dose and just needed to cut back to the 1-3 grain range. I think Peatarians should go to 3 grains at the most, and if they aren't seeing improvement, then it's something else that needs to be addressed, not more thyroid. As you can see, in my case, I created an rT3 issue because I had read that some people need very high doses if they've been sick for a long time. Mistake. Peatarians have a lot of tools in the bag. They are not ordinary thyroid patients, so it's important to take other people's experiences outside of this community with a grain of salt.

So if you find you need more thyroid, you may just have a conversion issue. I believe taurine is also helpful for t4 to t3 conversion. Also, you may want to chew the thyroid supplement because some fillers/binders can prevent proper absorption.

Let me know if you have anymore questions.

 

[youngandold]

By taking 6-8 grains of NDT you might have lowered your TSH and thus your natural thyroid production so that your T3 may be about the same it was before the NDT.

So you need tests.
You also need to check that T4 hasn't gotten too low as it is badly needed by the brain.

 

[peter88]

I’ve been trialing cynoplus and I can take a whole tablet at once, which is obviously not recommended, but see 0 changes with how I feel. Something is blocking the thyroid (liver?).