Posted by BarbaraCat on January 16, 2003, at 15:14:12
In reply to Re: Low Thyroid and lithium - not a good combo, posted by Noa on January 16, 2003, at 5:36:32
Thanks for the reminder about Depakote and Lamictal, Mitch. I remember reading about adverse reactions with these two and doubt my conservative pdoc will put me on both. Jeez, when is someone going to develop a one-stop shopping med? Something like a pint of fine single-malt Scotch without the sloppiness, hangover and booze breath.
Noa, can't remember, but did you try Armour or another natural thyoid ever and if so, is the synthetic working better? Did you go on Cytomel after you first tried T4 alone? I'm tempted to go with T4 in the morning and add a slice of Armour just to get the T3 circulating again, but that will just screw up my test results. I'll also start beefing up on my Tyrosine as well. I'm also going to insist upon a referral to a hopefully good Endo, because my doc, while a nice guy, is not skilled enough to handle my tweaky constitution.
Do you know about thyroid.about.com? It's a great site. One article I came across recently is the relationship between bipolar and Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is diagnosed through an antibodies test. The thyroid alternately goes hypo and hyper causing spikes that aggravate or mimic bipolar disorder. Lithium has been implicated in aggravating Hashimoto's. The fact that Mitch had to have part of his thyroid removed is suspicious of this. Another possibility is a **parathyroid** disfunction, which controls calcium levels.
What is needed is to ask the question 'why is it that thyroid disorders are now such an epidemic?'. It seems to me that the Pituitary (HPA axis) is the physical starting place for all this stuff and stress, emotional and environmental, is the culprit that knocks it out of whack. Endo-disruptors of all sorts abound and getting to the bottom line rather than symptom relief is what's not being addressed, don't you think?
poster:BarbaraCat
thread:135769
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030113/msgs/136128.html