T3 Dropping My Temperature And Making Me More Hypo?

[Sexypizza]

I'm mildly hypo, TSH is 6.75. My pulse on average is around 70 and temps stay in the low 36 range.

I tried T4 before from doctors but it just makes me go crazy with anxiety. Fast heart palpitations, losing hair, chest pain. even low doses cause it. like 3mcg.

I'm trying T3 now Cynomel from Mexico and it's doing the opposite. When I take it my temperature drops within an hour and my pulse starts decreasing. I don't really feel anything when I take it. and then after two hours my temp and pulse go back to normal.

I've noticed since taking T3 my eyebrows started thinning a little.

why is this happening? I would really like to raise my temps and lower my TSH but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

 

[HDD]

I'm mildly hypo, TSH is 6.75. My pulse on average is around 70 and temps stay in the low 36 range.

I tried T4 before from doctors but it just makes me go crazy with anxiety. Fast heart palpitations, losing hair, chest pain. even low doses cause it. like 3mcg.

I'm trying T3 now Cynomel from Mexico and it's doing the opposite. When I take it my temperature drops within an hour and my pulse starts decreasing. I don't really feel anything when I take it. and then after two hours my temp and pulse go back to normal.

I've noticed since taking T3 my eyebrows started thinning a little.

why is this happening? I would really like to raise my temps and lower my TSH but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Have you read through these email responses on thyroid?
Ray Peat Email Exchanges - Ray Peat Forum Wiki

 

[jitsmonkey]

I see this frequently where just random pulse/temp metrics are spoken of.
pulse/temp pre fuel/food/meal vs pulse/temp post fuel/food/meal are two completely different animals.
I dare say just pulse/temp is meaningless without a context.

Adrenaline keeps temp/pulse artificially high so no food can actually "elevate" pulse / temp
if T3 breaks that stress your pulse/temp comes down. (not saying this is you,just an example)
if food breaks that stress your pulse/temp comes down.
Elevated Temp/Pulse is only desirable in the absence of adrenaline.
So context of the temp/pulse metric relative to sleep/food/etc matters.

 

[ddjd]

I'm mildly hypo, TSH is 6.75. My pulse on average is around 70 and temps stay in the low 36 range.

I tried T4 before from doctors but it just makes me go crazy with anxiety. Fast heart palpitations, losing hair, chest pain. even low doses cause it. like 3mcg.

I'm trying T3 now Cynomel from Mexico and it's doing the opposite. When I take it my temperature drops within an hour and my pulse starts decreasing. I don't really feel anything when I take it. and then after two hours my temp and pulse go back to normal.

I've noticed since taking T3 my eyebrows started thinning a little.

why is this happening? I would really like to raise my temps and lower my TSH but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

Maybe your cholesterol isn't high enough

 

[ddjd]

Your vitamin A could also be too low

 

[wintagal]

When I take T3 the same thing happens - tired, cold, depressed, lower heart rate, etc. T4 works better for me but only at 200 mcg (high dose) and then I still have high rT3. I have low cortisol and take replacement. That may be why T3 doesn't work - it requires more cortisol than I can generate. T4 also requires more cortisol but seems to work better with my dose regimen.
All endocrinology textbooks say that cortisol should be evaluated before adding thyroid. Low cortisol is probably the primary reason thyroid meds aren't tolerated. You can take a saliva cortisol test - they give much better info than serum cortisol. A saliva test (ZRT labs is one) takes 4 samples throughout the day to give you a profile of your cortisol production. I don't know if they're available outside the US.
You can get prednisone from Mexico. Try 5mg in early morning. That's enough to mimic your own cortisol production. Don't take too much prednisone - dangerous side effects (muscle wasting, skin thinning, diabetes, osteoporosis, cataracts, etc). Thyroid and cortisol interact. Low thyroid will slow your liver function and you won't process or clear drugs quickly so they can build up in your body. Prednisone has to be converted in the liver to the bioactive form, so you may find it slow to work (2 hours +_) . But it's easier to get than cortef or prednisolone (bioidentical).

 

[Lurker]

How are you dosing? From my understanding Peat recommends very low doses frequently throughout the day. Otherwise negative feedback mechanisms take over. You have to feed the higher metabolism.

I believe there are some prerequisites to take care of before Thyroid supps are effective. I haven't tried it myself so others may be able to provide more details.

 

[managing]

I see this frequently where just random pulse/temp metrics are spoken of.
pulse/temp pre fuel/food/meal vs pulse/temp post fuel/food/meal are two completely different animals.
I dare say just pulse/temp is meaningless without a context.

Adrenaline keeps temp/pulse artificially high so no food can actually "elevate" pulse / temp
if T3 breaks that stress your pulse/temp comes down. (not saying this is you,just an example)
if food breaks that stress your pulse/temp comes down.
Elevated Temp/Pulse is only desirable in the absence of adrenaline.
So context of the temp/pulse metric relative to sleep/food/etc matters.

+1

 

[managing]

When I take T3 the same thing happens - tired, cold, depressed, lower heart rate, etc. T4 works better for me but only at 200 mcg (high dose) and then I still have high rT3. I have low cortisol and take replacement. That may be why T3 doesn't work - it requires more cortisol than I can generate. T4 also requires more cortisol but seems to work better with my dose regimen.
All endocrinology textbooks say that cortisol should be evaluated before adding thyroid. Low cortisol is probably the primary reason thyroid meds aren't tolerated. You can take a saliva cortisol test - they give much better info than serum cortisol. A saliva test (ZRT labs is one) takes 4 samples throughout the day to give you a profile of your cortisol production. I don't know if they're available outside the US.
You can get prednisone from Mexico. Try 5mg in early morning. That's enough to mimic your own cortisol production. Don't take too much prednisone - dangerous side effects (muscle wasting, skin thinning, diabetes, osteoporosis, cataracts, etc). Thyroid and cortisol interact. Low thyroid will slow your liver function and you won't process or clear drugs quickly so they can build up in your body. Prednisone has to be converted in the liver to the bioactive form, so you may find it slow to work (2 hours +_) . But it's easier to get than cortef or prednisolone (bioidentical).

LONG before I would try prednisone, I would try liver. Or dessicated liver which works great for me.

 

[wintagal]

Agree. Liver is good.

 

[Sexypizza]

Thanks everyone for the advice.

I will keep all these things in mind.

I plan to test out my Cortisol, Vitamin A, Copper, Zinc, and Iron levels soon and I will try to get more Selenium in my diet. My cholesterol levels are around 150 I think.

These are all the blood tests that I have done so far:
Blood test results

I only tested my Cortisol once and it was low, so that could be the problem.

Right now I'm taking T3 only about twice a day. 2 to 4 mcg each time. While my temp and pulse do decrease each time I take it I have noticed that my daily average temp and pulse have slightly increased overall. In the evening my temp reached 36.8 and 36.9 a few times which is really rare for me and I have noticed a reduction in my PFS symptoms although they come and go.

I still don't notice much when I take T3 though. I'm not sure if that's normal or not. I guess I expected it to be a stimulant kind of like caffeine or something. That's kind of how T4 feels when I take it and its too much. My eyebrows are starting to grow back. I'm now suspecting that it was actually the T4 that made it thin out because when I first started I took T3 and T4 together and that became too much for me.

 

[marsaday]

T3 and T4 need cortisol to work. The cortisol and thyroid hormones work in balance. If cortisol is low or high thyroid is affected. Very often low thyroid patients have low cortisol levels. This makes sense as the two hormones need to match each other. So over time as thyroid drops off cortisol will too. This is usually a gradual process.

So when we give thyroid hormone artificially via tablets we are boosting this side of the equation, but we ant boosting the cortisol side. The two need to be thought about.

So using low levels of thyroid hormones and increasing slowly is the way to bring cortisol levels upwards. However patients still experience problems and so often the reason is not also low thyroid causing this, but an impaired cortisol system due to how we live (stress, over exercise, bad diet).

So the way to tackle these issues involve many areas.

It is good you are using the tiny doses of T3, many people use big doses and this sucks up all the cortisol and so you feel hypo. Dr Blanchard (now deceased) has a great book on thyroid treatment and he advocates a low level of T3 usage along with T4. He says the best ratio is 98 T4 to 2 T3 (98:2). So for every 100 T4 you would just use 2mcg T3.

Using T3 only is probably the same as you will be complimenting your own T4 production which is going to be around 100-150 per day i think. The replacement guidelines for T4 only is 1.8mcg per 1kg body weight.

It sounds like the T3 is helping, just it isn't feeding through into how you feel. Give it time.

PLUS there is one further thing you can try which is very simple but quite revolutionary. This was discovered by Paul Robinson in the UK and he has written a book about it. He couldn't use any T4 and was ill for many years. He then started experimenting with T3 and uses this only now. He takes about 55mcg per day. Effectively his body was not making enough cortisol and this was the reason why T4 couldn't work for him. I think T4 in its conversion process uses up more cortisol.

Anyway T3 helped, but he discovered if he took T3 in the middle of the night he felt much better. He hit up the EARLY MORNING T3 DOSING ROUTINE.

TSH is highest when we go to bed because in the first part of the night we make our thyroid hormones. This production is then matched later in the night by cortisol production. The two hormones are linked as mentioned earlier. So if we artificially provide some T3 (T4 is not as effective as it uses more T3 it seems than it generates) around the window of cortisol production we can boost this hormone for the whole day. I have saliva results showing just this happening for me ! Paul says his cortisol was boosted by 200%.

The time to take the T3 is about 4h's before we wake up. So if you wake every day at 8am you would set the alarm for 4am. If you go to bed late and wake late you would set the alarm still 4h's back from wake up. The dosing amount of T3 will affect cortisol production and so you will need to experiment with what is the right amount. Start low and see how it goes.

Ps, eyebrow loss on the outside is a classic hypothyroid symptom, as is hair loss. Also a TSH of 6 is not mildly hypo, it is quite severe. The range in America is 0-2.5 i think. It used to be a lot higher all over the world, but it is coming down as research is showing people are hypo with only slightly elevated TSH's. you want the TSH to be at 1 ideally. You must also have some FT4 and FT3 numbers. These are important to work out what is happening, plus any antibody results to rule out hashimotoes.

 

[marsaday]

sorry just seen your bloods which are extensive. I will have a look to give some feedback.

 

[marsaday]

You have a lot of data.

Cortisol is very low, but only one reading. This maybe the big issue.

TSH has been very high and is still high at 6.

FT4 is too low, but T4 cocks you up

FT3 is not that high so yes some T3 could be needed.

Prolactin is high

B12 needs to come up

Vit D wants to be a little higher at 100. Better to use a smaller size tablet though. 50000 is too high.

You need the thyroid TPO and TPA antibodies testing. Your results are up and down and this indicates autoimmune thyroid issues. Do you have any autoimmune issues in the family ?

Testosterone is modish range and has come higher. Better thyroid treatment will improve testosterone levels.

Body temp wants to be 36.3C and above ideally on waking. Then in the day it should come up to 36.8-37C. It then tails off into the evening. So your temp is lower in the day.

What does your doctor say ??

 

[Sexypizza]

You have a lot of data.

Cortisol is very low, but only one reading. This maybe the big issue.

TSH has been very high and is still high at 6.

FT4 is too low, but T4 cocks you up

FT3 is not that high so yes some T3 could be needed.

Prolactin is high

B12 needs to come up

Vit D wants to be a little higher at 100. Better to use a smaller size tablet though. 50000 is too high.

You need the thyroid TPO and TPA antibodies testing. Your results are up and down and this indicates autoimmune thyroid issues. Do you have any autoimmune issues in the family ?

Testosterone is modish range and has come higher. Better thyroid treatment will improve testosterone levels.

Body temp wants to be 36.3C and above ideally on waking. Then in the day, it should come up to 36.8-37C. It then tails off into the evening. So your temp is lower in the day.

What does your doctor say ??

The reason it went up and down so much was because when I found out my TSH was 24 last year I got immediately put on T4, so that lowered it after some months, until it reached 2 but then at that point I got so anxious and felt so hyper I was having panic attacks pretty much daily. so I quit the T4 and then my TSH slowly started climbing back up again until now it's at 6.

I did do an Anti-TPO & TPA blood tests and they came back normal. I also did an Ultrasound of my thyroid gland there was nothing abnormal about it so the doctor doesn't know why I'm hypo. I became like this after I quit Dutasteride after 2 years of use and I'm trying to recover now.

My doctor thinks I should just stay on T4 only.

Yeah, you're right it could very well be the Cortisol so Ill have to check that up again soon, along with other things, and find out.

 

[marsaday]

If you have been messing with the hair drugs then yes this will **** up the metabolism.

Good news if not hash's as that makes life more complicated.

So you need to look into cortisol issues and probably try the early morning T3 protocol i have described above.

I would also look into possibly using low dose progesterone as this can help rebalance the adrenal hormones. Use Ray Peats ProgestE as it delivers in 1 drop amounts = 3mg. Max of 2-3 drops per day for a male. Really good hormone to use.

This is also pro thyroid and can help the thyroid work better (because it delivers more cortisol), so i would give this and the early morning T3 routine a go.

 

[managing]

If you have been messing with the hair drugs then yes this will **** up the metabolism.

Good news if not hash's as that makes life more complicated.

So you need to look into cortisol issues and probably try the early morning T3 protocol i have described above.

I would also look into possibly using low dose progesterone as this can help rebalance the adrenal hormones. Use Ray Peats ProgestE as it delivers in 1 drop amounts = 3mg. Max of 2-3 drops per day for a male. Really good hormone to use.

This is also pro thyroid and can help the thyroid work better (because it delivers more cortisol), so i would give this and the early morning T3 routine a go.

Thanks for the Paul robinson reference. I'd never heard of this. Before I started taking tyromix I was using cynomel and cynoplus. I often would wake around 2-3 am (4hrs before my normal). At that time I would have 3-5 mcg of T3 and a little orange juice. It would take up to an hour to get back to sleep, but then I would sleep like a zombie (in a good way) for about . . . 4 hours.

Proof of nothing, but interesting enough that I may buy the book. Since I've started Tyromix, everything is much smoother. But I still often wake around 2-3 to use bathroom, so a perfect opportunity.

Anybody else have thoughts/experiences with this circadian T3 thing?

 

[marsaday]

There are lots of groups following this protocol. Facebook has a few T3 only groups using the circadian method.

 

[Lurker]

Be careful of some of the internet groups. For example, the STTM crowd has recommended taking hydrocortisone to boost low cortisol. That seems like a recipe for disaster after the inevitable crash.

 

[marsaday]

STTM group is also far to pro NTH as opposed to T4/T3 synthetics.

Having said that groups like this are the reason people have been regaining their health because the medical establishment will not open up to how badly thyroid patients have been treated for decades now. All since the TSH test came into use in the 70's.