I have heard that there are weight loss tablets that basically are thyroid medicine. What are the drawbacks to taking this type of weight loss pill?***
From wikipedia the symptoms of hyperthyroid is “These include fast heart beat and symptoms of palpitations; nervous system tremor and anxiety symptoms; digestive system hypermotility (diarrhea), and weight loss.”
But surely after achieve the weight loss one would then go off the pills and gain the weight back since they have not changed their lifestyle.
***I am NOT planning to take any wieght loss pills, just am curious about the side effects of this type of weight loss program.
That would be a very dangerous thing to do. The thyroid is a very sophisticated mechanism, and always seeks to maintain equilibrium.
When Dr.s are treating a slow thyroid, they generally do it by artificailly slowing it even further. This forces the thyroid to Pick up it’s pace in order to maintain daily activity, and generally results in the long-term effect of a “faster” or “stronger” thryroid response.
If the opposite were true, then by “speeding up” your thyroid artifiically, you could be setting yourself up for a lifetime problem with hypothyroidism.
I disagree with that. I have been treated for years for hypothyroidism. They do not “slow down” the thyroid, they give you synthetic thyroid hormone to replace the lost function.
Other symptoms can include hair loss, emotional lability, fatigue, and intolerance to heat.
When I was hyperthyroid, I felt horrible and couldn’t sleep. I could not stand still without shaking. Also had a couple of episodes in the summer where I literally felt like I was dying from the heat.
I did lose 30 pounds in about two months (210->180, I am 6’2’’), but it was miserable and left me wasted and weakened at age 25.
IMO if you are going to torture yourself to lose weight, it is easier to do it in the gym or at the dinner table.
I did gain a lot of weight due to an undiagnosed thyroid problem (obviously diagnosed now) I am in the minority. The majority of people with a hypothyroid do not gain a large amount of weight, I did. When I went on thyroid meds, I did not lose any weight due to the meds. What happened was that I stopped gaining weight. Taking thyroid medicine to lose weight would not work, because it would cause the thyroid to overcompensate for the excess hormones and it would cause your thyroid to slow down, especially if it was normal before.***
***This is a paraphrase of what my doctor told me when I upped my own meds due to still having symptoms of a hypothyroid – turned out I was right and the dosage I self-prescribed put my thyroid right on target, but still, one should not mess with one’s meds without consulting an actual medical specialist.
One of my friends almost died from hyperthyroidism. In about a month’s time before she was diagnosed, her body burned through what little fat she had on her body, a chunk of her muscle, and made a decent start on her heart. Thyroid is not something to mess around with without a doctor’s supervision.
I read an interview with one of Karen Carpernters physicans and she was taking large amounts of thyroid to increase her metabolism.
He said in his opinion that was the chief cause of her heart problem that lead to her death. Though obviously not the only cause.
My mother had hyperthyroidism. She looked like one of those people you saw released from the WWII concentration camps. They just removed the thyroid and she took thyroid in pill form from then on
I’m hypothyroid and abuse of the pills I take (four times normal dose) will destroy my thyroid’s ability to work on its own in short order. I prefer to stay fat.
Untrue. For hypothyroidism, synthetic thyroid hormone is given, to replace the hormone that the thyroid gland is no longer making in adequate amounts.
This does allow the thyroid to ‘rest’, and possibly regain some function for some folks.
As for taking synthetic thyroid hormone to lose weight, bad idea, as has already been noted. Weight loss is only one side-effect of many from hyperthyroidism. One can also trash one’s nervous system, stress the heart, alter kidney function for the worse, and generally give oneself symptoms that make life not really all that much fun.
I’m so glad that someone has posted on this because I was recently diagnosed with hypothyroidism and was going to start a thread myself because I was curious about the facts and myths that went along with it!
As mentioned, bad idea. I lost about 66 pounds in one month before my hyperthyroidism was finally diagnosed (go Florida Central Care!), just by sitting on the couch. That was the most terrible month of my life. Imagine being so jittery that you can’t sleep more than 5 minutes, and so weak that you can’t keep up with others’ walking speed. I had a resting pulse of about 140. When I was finally diagnosed they gave me beta blockers so that my heart wouldn’t give out. I would not recommend that to anyone.