The doctor has me on generic Synthroid, 0.025 mg. I’ll be seeing him again for a follow up and more information.
I’m still really pissed at my old HMO doctor.
Last year I was pregnant. The fetus was not developing correctly and I had an abortion. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. At the time, I was working in oncology research, and I blamed what happened on the chemicals I was using on the job everyday. Now I find out that untreated hypothyroidism can cause miscarriages and other complications. Was this why my pregnancy was abnormal? I’ll never know, but I’m feeling really angry about this.
I’ve been taking Synthroid or the generic for like fifteen years with no ill effects. My case is strange. I never felt poorly but a routine blood test showed abnormalities so they put me on thyroid. At first my dosage was way, way too high and I still felt fine but my numbers were abnormal the other way. Eventually they settled on the right amount and I have been fine ever since.
Keep up posted, Mouse. As for the generics being a problem, my doctor said that’s no longer the issue since they stopped using actual animal thyroid in the medication. Even when I didn’t have insurance, I think my perscription ran a whopping $7 a month so it’s well worth it.
Depressed mood is a common symptom of hypothyroid conditions. I always ask my clients with to report their mood and anxiety issues to their medical providers and have a full physical prior to beginning psychiatric medication, since there are so many primary medical problems that include psychiatric symptoms. Did your antidepressant prescriber do any tests or interview you about any signs or symptoms other than depressed mood?
You probably don’t want to hear this, but someone with low thyroid hormones and depression probably shouldn’t be drinking a lot of caffeine and eating a lot of sugar - they’ll both exacerbate both of your problems. Heck, NOBODY should be doing caffeine and sugar in excess.
Your doctor is going to monitor you and see if you still need the anti-depressants once your thyroid hormone levels are normalized, I assume. Seems to me I’ve read that low thryoid hormones emulate depression in a lot of people.
It certainly did with me. I had a lot of the symptoms of depression, which I found out are also the symptoms of low thyroid! Started thryoid replacement, and I wasn’t depressed anymore!
My HMO doctor didn’t run any other tests, but I do have a history of depression - or what I thought was depression. I wasn’t aware of thyroid problems until now.
You’re right featherlou. I have cut back on the sugar and caffine in order to eat healthier. (My younger brother had heart trouble recently and my mother has back trouble. I have decided to clean up my lifestlye to help avoid these things.) Now I have another good reason to avoid these foods!
Yeah, I had some depression over time, some of which I stand by as My Depression, and much of which evaporated as soon as my glucose metabolism problems were identified and treated–after years of depressed mood, of course.
You probably don’t need the antidepressant. At a mimimum, you should reassess after the thyroid med kicks in, because the symptoms of untreated hypothyroidism include those that land you a diagnosis of clinical depression.
Synthroid is the most commonly prescribed med — it’s a T4 med that replaces the body’s thyroxine. It’s not the only show in town, though, and doesn’t work for all hypothyroid sufferers. Some folks do better with some T3 (triiodotyyroxine), as their bodies don’t properly convert T4 into T3 (which is what the body’s metabolic processes actually use). T3 is used more often for patients who report “depressive” symptoms, btw.
Here is a pretty good message board whose members are all thyroid patients. It’s a “board culture” of self-informed patients who do a lot of mutual support. (There are other similar boards on the 'net but I don’t have the URLs handy).
