Posted by nancy on April 21, 1999, at 11:34:30
In reply to Depression and Thyroid, posted by Lee on April 14, 1999, at 1:02:19
Hi. Wow, destroyed the thyroid...drastic. My thyroid was augmented in the past with synthroid, too. But it did nothing at all to alleviate my treatment resistive depression.
Then, a brilliant pdoc told me that addind synthroid (T4) was NOT adequate thyroid augmentation. She said that BOTH T4 (synthroid AND T3 (Cytomel) MUST be taken concurrently. The thyroid does not live by T4 alone...LOL. T3 and T4 must be balanced for thyroid augmentation to be effective.
When I get my thyroid blood test at the lab now, I ALWAYS request a copy of the results for myself. In the past, I've had "doctors...LOL" tell me that my thyroid was normal without allowing me to see the test results for myself. When, in fact, the test had actually revealed that I was in the LOW NORMAL end of the spectrum for both T3 and T4.
BTW, my treatment resistivity ENDED when BOTH T3 and T4 were in the upper quartile of the normal range (as per the brilliant pdoc that I mentioned).
> I am a 32 year old female who has suffered from depression almost all of my life. Seven years ago I was put on Prozac and Librium, and wow...I never felt better in my life. Obesity had always been a problem as well, and I lost a significant amount of weight and had enormous energy. But, my medication was stopped when I got pregnant, (though I had to return to taking prozac during the final phase of my pregnancy) and after I had my child, I developed hyperthyroidism. Medication didn't work, so I had to undergo radioactive iodine treatment to basically destroy the thyroid. Since then, I've been on synthroid, and the depression remains (though the thyroid is "supposedly" stable.) I've been on just about every type of antidepressant there is, all of the SSRIs, a few of the Tricylics, as well as Effexor (which I had a bad reaction to). I'm currently on Prozac and Xanax, and it's having no effect on me whatsoever. Obesity is once again a problem, even though I really don't eat much fat or high calorie foods. Migraine headaches, fatigue, agoraphobia and nonsocial behavior are also a problem. I don't understand why Prozac worked so well for me before, but now isn't working at all. I don't want to try any more tricylic drugs because of the weight gain side effect, and of course, I live in one of those parts of the country where there's neither a psychiatrist nor an endocrinologist to monitor my psychotropic drugs or thyroid disorder. So I've had to rely on the judgment of a nurse practitioner. I've heard that thyroid tests, although appearing normal, can still be abnormal. Could this be the reason for my constant depression, fatigue and inability to lose weight? Or could it have been the combination of Prozac and Librium that worked before? This has been going on for 5 years now, and it's sooo frustrating. Help?
poster:nancy
thread:4835
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990726/msgs/5126.html