Posted by noa on April 12, 2003, at 11:14:00
In reply to Wait till you hear THIS saga re natural thyroid !! » noa, posted by Janelle on April 12, 2003, at 0:10:07
Wow. A cautionary tale for sure!
Re Lithium--as a matter of fact, while I had been diagnosed by my pdoc as "subclinical hypothyroid" a few years earlier, it was only when I went on lithium that the importance of my thyroid disorder in my depression became apparent.
I was having more and more recurring episodes of depression and they were worse and worse. Right before lithium, I had gotten so depressed so my pdoc and I went back to reconfiguring my cocktail. That is when he suggested Lithium because he was then hypothesizing that I had a cycling type of depression in the BP family. And, in any event, he said lithium was shown to help poteniate ADs in depression. So I went on lithium, and after about 2 weeks started to feel better. This continued for about 6 weeks and them I started to feel worse and worse. The physical symptoms also got worse. So I started looking into the thyroid factor. My pdoc had my thyroid tests done again, and sure enough, my TSH had gone from 2.5 (as it turns out, this was too high for me anyway) to 3.8 during that 8 weeks on lithium. So I decided the thyroid must be a key factor for me, not just a side factor. I went looking for info and as it happens that months, Mary Shomon's book, "Living Well with Hypothyroidism" was published! And I also discovered Ridha Arem's "The Thyroid Solution" somewhere around that time, too. I read Shomon's book in one sitting and her description of the brain fog was uncannily like what I had been experiencing. I had told my therapist for months that I felt like I had cotton in my head! I couldn't think straight, couldn't figure out how to sort through papers at work, or start a task, or make small decisions like whether to put my skirt on over my head or step into it. Also, the physical symptoms of hypothyroidism matched what I had been experiencing (fatigue, muscle weakness, edema, pain in legs, etc.) Anyway, that prompted me to see an endocrinologist (found on Shomon's doc recommendation page, btw), who diagnosed primary hypothyroidism and had me raise my med doses gradually using symptom improvement (not lab results) as a guide, and stopping at the last level where symptoms had improved. For me, this left me at a TSH of less than 1.
It was then that I started seeing improvement over a period of about a year. I felt like I was responding to the antidepressants for the first time.
poster:noa
thread:218596
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20030411/msgs/218765.html