[Ski]

#1072937

Good questions! I’m glad to hear that your doctor understands this critical element of our healing. It’s true, our personal normal can be anywhere within that normal range, and it’s important to our future health to find it. The process of finding it is a little bit time-consuming, but since you are within the normal range all that time, it’s tweaking levels that feel pretty good, until they feel GREAT, so it’s not like wild swings from high to low. At first, it’s smart to keep a symptom diary, to see if you can tell which side of your normal you might be on. Some of the symptoms of hypo and hyper are the same, so it can be helpful to see a range of symptoms in order to get some idea of how YOUR body "likes" this level. If you and your doctor come to some conclusion about where you may stand in relation to your normal, try changing your dose by one level in that direction. Then you need to take that dose for six weeks so your body fully adjusts to it and gives accurate results in a blood test. In the first couple of weeks after changing that dose, you might feel a little weird ~ meaning that one day you might feel as if you’re getting a little hyper, the next you might feel as if you’re getting a little hypo. That evens out within a couple of weeks, after that it’s just waiting to have your blood drawn. All the while, keep the symptom diary. Each possible adjustment, obviously, takes at least six weeks, so you can see how this ends up taking a good deal of time if you are at all far away from your normal. Starting from the middle, maybe you could say that it’ll be quicker for you than for some.

If you find that you are feeling "too high" at one dose, "too low" at the next below it, it is possible to take both doses, on alternate days, and end up with a blended blood level between the two. You wouldn’t feel "high" on the one day and "low" on the next by doing this. The hormone builds up in the bloodstream. They actually say that, technically, we could take seven pills once a week and end up feeling the same way, but it’s easier for people to remember once a day.

The easiest way to know YOUR personal normal is with old blood tests, before you were hyper, LONG before. Not everyone has them, but if you do, BONUS. ” title=”Very Happy” />

Good luck! Let us know how it’s going for you.

[erobinson219]

#1019626

My recent labs show normal – right in the middle – results for all my thyroid tests. My doctor said that sometimes people need to live more towards the end of either end of a range to feel normal (or without bothersome symptoms). How often does that happen? How can someone know if they should take a little more or less of their drug? Isn’t it difficult to play with the dosages since they only come in certain increments? And how long does it even take to determine if it’s better?

[erobinson219]

#1072938

Part of what i struggle with is what is related to my graves disease and what is just me? For instance, I talk a lot. Is that thyroid hormone? If I talk more or less is that T4 talking? I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to figure that stuff out. especially since I can’t really remember what I was like before being first diagnosed at the age of 31 and now I am 54.

[npatterson]

#1072939

We have both had Graves’ a long time! I have always talked a good bit. The feedback I have had (especially when I was really hyper) was that I talked a LOT, talked LOUD, talked OUT OF TURN, and at times, talked about OTHER THINGS than everyone else was talking about. I only remember one incident of that – all those years ago–but it was certainly true that day.
So, a couple of points. 1) You have been taking thyroid hormone for a long time. It doesn’t make sense that your dose would be making a difference, unless your levels are vascillating all over the place. 2) It is what you say, and how you say it that makes a difference.

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