What to test for thyroid? Anyone from the philippines?

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HealthisWealth
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tara said:
post 116930
tara said:
post 116676 If you are not able to get regular daily sunlight on your skin (best)
In the Philipines - so I guess you can get sunshine. :)

HealthisWealth said:
post 116858 Hi i tested again in a another laboratory. I was prescribed T4 (50mcg) Is this enough or i need to increase?

I still cannot sleep. More than 72 hours now. When i lie down i feel body tremors and feels my heartbeat. Im thinking of taking diazepam.

T4 has a long half-life. It can take 2-4 weeks at a steady dose to reach a stable blood level. So you won't know if it is enough yet. If it already felt like enough it would probably mean your dose was too high. If it's working, you should get gradual improvements over the next few weeks. How much people need varies, but this is enough that it could well make a difference if it is going to help. Reassess in 3-4 weeks.

Apparently one can be more sensitive to adrenaline for a while when thyroid hormones increase. This should settle down in a few weeks too, from what I've read.

Your body temps and resting pulse rate give valuable information for assessing how your metabolism is going. You can measure this every day and watch to see if they increase.

If you want the T4 to work for you, I recommend assessing your diet to check that you are getting adequate nutrition. If you are deficient in protein, carbs, paricular minerals or vitamins, or overall calories, then supplementing thyroid can cause unnecessary stress, or else just be countered by the body. How much magnesium are you getting?
Also worth avoiding the most goitrogenic (anti-thyroid) foods - esp PUFAs, but also raw cabbage, soy.
Do you want to spell out what and how much you are eating?

If you can hold out and not take the diazepam for now, I'd recommend it - it will just complicate the picture for you and make it harder to figure out what is going on and what you need. There is a good chance the T4 supp will make a difference I'm not familiar with the drug myself, but I'd be concerned partly about setting yourself up for withdrawal issues.

Since you have T4 and no T3 in your supplement, it my be worth you looking up the particular things that help with converting the less active T4 to the more active T3 that your cells need. I don't remember them all, but adequate glucose is one of them. Long endurance exercise tends to reduce it.

How's your breathing? Relaxed, nasal, diaphragmatic? If not, these can be retrained. This may not be you, but sometimes unaware hyperventilation can go with a hard heart beat. I had a patch a while ago waking up with a strong heartbeat in the night. I think among the things that helped were learning to keep my mouth shut at night, and increasing carbs and minerals. It hasn't happened for a while now.


Thank you tara i reallly appreciate the help.

My problem right now is im not anymore functioning. Literally i cannot sleep. I just stay in the house waiting to sleep. I should be sleeping right now but when i lie down i feel my chest is racing but i have normal hearteat, shaking and my head something is moving inside.

My breathing is not relaxed. Its come from the mouth like im tired dog that cannot sleep.

Right now im eating less because of this stress and i cannot sleep. I eat rice beef twice a day. I need to bring back the ice cream. But i need to sleep first.

By the way i went to an endocrinologist today and the doctor want to repeat the TSH test because its conflicting.

Hospital Emergency room
Dec 24 TSH.
1.803 (0.350 - 4.940)CMIA method

Non-Hospital Laboratory
Dec 27 Ultrasensitive HTSH
6.57 (0.270 - 4.20 miu/L) ECLIA

The endocrinologist want me to test TSH using RIA or IRMA method. Is this a good test or i stick with ECLIA. I dont know why the dec 24 test i have normal tsh but in a different laboratory my tsh is high.
 
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tara

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HealthisWealth said:
post 116934 Right now im eating less because of this stress and i cannot sleep. I eat rice beef twice a day. I need to bring back the ice cream. But i need to sleep first.

I used to get into a state sometimes where I was too tired to eat and too hungry to sleep. At that time I was avoiding sugar, and starches were just too hard when I was exhausted. I don't usually have trooule sleeping, but when I have, hunger has been a key contributor. I couldn't tell that untill I tried eating a little when I woke up, and finding I could then go back to sleep, instead of lying awake for hours.
IIUC, if you do not have a good supply of carbohydrates in your system - either from eating it recently enough or from liver glycogen storage - stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol will increase in order to turn some of your fat and lean tissue into fuel. It's hard to sleep when adrenaline is high. Sometimes just a little of something sweet can make the difference that allows sleep. Sometimes something salty helps lower adrenaline. Some people find milk and/or gelatine with supper helpful. I don't know what is preventing you from sleeping, but it seems possible (but not certain) that you can do something about your sleep by restoring something that you are missing from your food.

If your main food is rice and meat, I wonder if you are getting enough magnesium, calcium, potasium and other minerals. Do you have access to fruit and vegetables? Milk? Many people seem to get deficient in magnesium, and this can result in stress that sometimes interferes with sleep. You need enough magnesium to be able to relax well. Well cooked greens are one possible source. Calcium and all the other minrerals and vitamins are also important. It may be that you will need some medicine at some stage, but if the problem is nutritional deficiency, then it is much better to fix this first, and see if that sorts things out. Are you salting your food to taste and drinking to thirst? Do you thin a little icecream might help you sleep? It does that for some people. Or something else that is very easy to digest?

If you are breathing heavily, your CO2 levels could well be low, and that makes it hard to relax well too. I had some trouble with this for a little while. What I did about it, informed by normalbreathing.com, was practice relaxing my breathing whenever I thought about it, a few times a day, practice keeping my mouth closed except when eating, drinking and talking, reactivate my diaphram for regular breathing by restraining my chest with a belt for an hour or overnight a few times, and tape my mouth before sleep. Just a little tape down the middle of the mouth to help keep it closed, with butter or other grease around the lips so it doesn't tear the skin. Before I tried this I thought it would be scary, but I actually found it very calming and relaxing, and quickly came to like it. You can still breath and talk around the sides if you need to. I no longer need to do this unless I have a cold, but I did it for more than a year before the habit was restored. As long as the tape stayed in place, no more waking up with a pounding heart and heavy breathing. Some people use a chin strap instead.

HealthisWealth said:
post 116934 I dont know why the dec 24 test i have normal tsh but in a different laboratory my tsh is high.
I don't know anything about the different methods of testing TSH. I think it can vary a bit depending on what has been happening lately, but that does seem a big change. Your earlier post referred to 2. sthing, not over 6, so I was surprised they gave you T4. But from Peat's PoV, even 1.8 is probably a bit high and may warrant some supplementation, though I think trying other things first may make sense.

Good night, sleep tight. :)
 
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OP
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The Ultrasensitive HTSH = 2.24 (0.270 - 4.20 miu/l) -
FT4 = 10.89 (12.0 - 22.0 pmol/l
These TSH and FT4 was tested year 2013 month of may i think. Im eating the peat diet like dairy diet like ice cream, sugary drinks, cheese. No levothyroxine supplemention. Brand is thyrax. I stopped the thyrax supplementation december 2012.

Fast forward 2015 this last week november when i started having symptoms of different taste in throat and after a week or two brain fog. and dec 21 started that i cannot sleep because of shortness of breath when lying down and my head has a weird senstation that stop me to sleep/ Its not a headache. Its a sensastion like tremor like involuntayr movement.

So far of taking 1/2 tablet of rivotril 2mg tablet i slept ok. But i dont want to be dependent on this regulated medicine. I want to go back with my previous relax sleep withou using sleeping meds. By the way i was planning of taking diazepam but was told to take rivotril.

Last tuesday when i went to a internal medicine doctor and saw the 6.57 TSH (dec27 tested). prescribed me 50mcg levothyroxine thyrax. I forgot to bring the dec 24 tsh result of 1.803 (0.350 - 4.940)CMIA method

I went back wednesday to for an endocrinologist and show both the dec 24 tsh and dec 27 t3 t4,ft3. ft4 tsh. He was shocked why the dec 24 tsh and dec 27 tsh have different number. So i was advised just to take 25mcg of levothyroxine because the endo doesnt know which test to believe so ask for a repeat test like RIA or IRMA method.

My history of taking levothyroxine was year 2002. I stopped taking year 2004 because i felt im too thin or maybe im just not eating the required calorie for my bodyweight. Also in 2004 when i stoppped taking thyrax i enroll in a gym and gained weight and eat a lot. But i bring back year 2005 the thyrax because of dry skin, itchy, cramping. So from 2005 to 2009 im taking thyrax. I tried not taking 2010 and i easily get leg cramped so i take it again until nov 2012.

The head tremors and heart raising/heavy breathing when i was lying down would this related to thyroid disorder like hyper,hypo,goiter? or more of anxiety attack, fear? When i go to bed i try to relax but when i lie down the head tremors starts so makes me not to sleep even i want to sleep. So out of desperation i took 1/2 pill of rivotril 2mg and i relax. But i need correct the root cause first.
 
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HealthisWealth
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Hi again. The endocrinologist ask me to this

-Iodine thyroid scan/uptake,
-thyroid ultrasound
-8am cortisol test
-Anti TPO anitbody
-TSH FT4 (RIA/IRMA)

Back in year 2001 i did the scintigraphy uptake test and thyroid ultrasound.

Thyroid scintigraphy in the anterior, right anterior oblique and left anterior oblique views was obtained 24 hours after oral administration of 50 uci iodine -131. Radioactive iodine uptake values were also obtained 2 and 24 hours after giving the above mentioned iodine.

The thyroid gland has the following measurements.
Right lobe: 4.33cm x 1.81 cm
Left lobe : 4.02cm x 1.76 cm

The thyroid gland shows poor tracer localization. No definete focal labeling defects are appreciated.

Radioactive iodine testing are as follows
2hours: 1.90% (normal values 5-15%)
24hours 3.40% (normal values 20-45%)

Interpretation

Normal sized thyroid gland with poor tracer concentration and low RAI uptake values
--------

I lost my thyroid ultrasound copy but no mass lesion found.

---------

Why is my new endocrinologist need to test again thyroid ultrasound and iodine thyroid scan?

I still have tremors/shaking in my chest and head making me not sleep.
 

Giraffe

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HealthisWealth said:
post 117708 Why is my new endocrinologist need to test again thyroid ultrasound and iodine thyroid scan?
Didn't you mention in the chat that you lost the copy of the test? The lab must have a copy of it. Ask them to send you the test results.
 
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OP
HealthisWealth
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I went today my old endocrinologist. Holiday is over so shes available. She told me no to test for the iodine uptake test and thyroid scan.

Just the Anti TPO antibodies test or anti microsomal antibodie test. TSH and FT4. And she ask me to go see an neuro psychologist for the stress.

Regaring the TSH FT4 test. Is the IRMA method really the best for tsh test and FT4 for the ria method?
 
OP
HealthisWealth
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Hi this is my current labs. Started taking T4- 25 mcg (dec 28,2015) And this is my result. Do i need to increase from 25mcg to 50mcg?

By the way im still shaky (not really visible but internal tremors and heartbeat flutters.) Went to a accupuncturist and holds my pulse many times and told me i have a mitral valve that does not close. Resting pulse 170 beats per minute and ask me what kind of exersise i did and remember last year i keep on doing intense pull ups starting october.

I stopped taking rivotril for almost two weeks and tried sleeping without meds and there a days that literally i cannot sleep. Im now taking for two days clemastine slept a little better and will continue using this. I really dont like rivotril because the sleep is not of quality.

If i feel cold when i get near aircon what kind of medicine or supplement do i need to take? aspirin? B3? I want to be warm so i can be confortable in airconditoned rooms.

Feb 12, 2016 labs

T3 - 88 ( 80 - 220)
Free T3 - 2.09 (1.40 - 4.40)
T4 - 7.8 (5.0-13.0)
Free T4 - 1.22 (0.80-2.00)
TSH - 2.10 (0.32-5.00)
(RIA method)

T3(SI) - 1.35 ( 1.23 - 3.38)
T4 (SI) 100 (64 - 167)
(RIA method)
 
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