Posted by BLPBart on April 24, 2002, at 0:39:11
In reply to Actually......Thyroid med as an AD.....????, posted by ST on April 21, 2002, at 16:58:03
> Hi noa,
>
> Thank you so much. I looked through the archives...
> However, I am not experiencing thyroid problems. (I had a test a few months ago before my pdoc and I realized a weight gain of mine was caused by Celexa) My pdoc wants to prescribe a medication for those with hypothyroidism as an AD. I've never heard of that.
> Sarah
>
>
>
>
> > Yes, there are other discussions of thyroid and depression from last week, and in the archives. Also, see the links at:
> >
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/psycho-babble-tips/links/Noa_s_thyroid_links_000963272558/I'll add my 2 cents worth here because I spent a considerable amount of time researching thyroid issues several months ago thinking that I was experiencing symptoms of hypothyroidism (in my case it turned out to most likely be prozac). You mention that you don't have any indications of hypothyroidism. I don't know if that means you are not having any of the symptoms or if your doctor did a blood test and told you that the results were normal.
What I have learned is that there are a large number of people out there living with an underactive thyroid. This is tested usually by simply measuring the level of TSH in the blood. TSH is secreted by your pituitary in response to your blood levels of the thyroid hormones T3 and T4. If they're too low, then your TSH levels go up, if they're high, then TSH is low. Often when a doctor is looking for signs of hypothyroidism, they simply measure TSH. The labs will say what is considered a normal range, something like 0.5 to 5.0 and if you fall within this range then the doc says everything's fine. What people are finding now is that the test is not really meaningful unless you also measure free T3 and free T4 levels. This is because you can have what's considered a normal TSH and your hormone levels could actually be low. The current thinking is that the ideal range for TSH is actually probably narrower (like 1-2) and that people feel best when their TSH levels are in this range. The explanation I've seen is that because so many people are suffering from subclinical hypothyroidism but have not been diagnosed, then these people were factored in when they averaged out TSH levels and decided what "normal" was. This may have skewed the range towards the high end.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is I'm not sure if you should completely rule out thyroid if it was based simply on a blood TSH test.
On the other hand, I've done a lot of reading that indicates that augmenting ADs with T3 (Cytomel) to ADs has been found to be effective for some people. At one point my doc almost put me on it because I was so tired all of the time even though my thyroid tests came back normal. I ended up going on dexedrine instead because we determined that I might have ADD.
Anyway, if you do an internet search on T3 and antidepressants, or T3 augmentation you'll find some interesting information about this.
poster:BLPBart
thread:103405
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020416/msgs/103967.html