[Mickey65]

#1019916

I’m on another board, where they can talk about thyroid issues. They have a resident Thyroid advocate there who helps out with people who are having issues.

Something she brought up was both interesting and disturbing. Here is my cholestral readings from my bloodwork I did last month when my physician discovered I had an overactive thyroid.

Strangely enough, when my doctor had run my bloodwork and found my overactive thyroid in the mix, my cholesterol was pretty low and he was amazed by it. Especially because I’m overweight and smoke!

Total Cholesterol – 119 (Normal Range 140-200)
Triglycerides – 133 (Normal range 30-160)
HDL (Good Cholesterol) – 43 (Normal Range 28-83)
LDL (Bad Cholesterol) – 49 (Normal Range 80-130)

The thyroid gal on the other board said her levels were like mine and she said she was having a "hyper" swing at the time of her bloodwork and later found out she had Hashimotos, after taking more extensive tests.

I already did the RAI, so it’s too late for me.

When they did the uptake, would they have been able to tell if it was Hashimoto’s rather than Graves? Should I have waited and taken more tests?

Now part of me feels as if I rushed into something, altho another part of me feels okay with things. But I just wish I had a more solid answer from my endo about it all.

Anyone else know about this sort of thing in regards to Hashimoto’s?

[Bobbi]

#1075005

Some of us have the antibodies for both Hashimotos and Graves autoimmune diseases. There can then be fluctuations between hypo and hyper conditions at different points in time. Both are disease conditions, and your thyroid is permanently diseased. The standard treatment for someone with this condition is to treat the hyper end of things first. Why? Because the hypo conditions (whether caused by the antibodies, or caused by removing thyroid tissue) get exactly the same treatment. If you only treat the hypo end of things, you would be subject to swings into hyper from time to time, which has really bad long-term consequences for your health, not to speak of the awful effect of hormonal seesaws. So they eliminate the hyper swings and simply treat the hypo.

Bobbi

[npatterson]

#1075006

Mickey ~ The scan and uptake are designed to measure size and extent of the iodine uptake in your thyroid. There are "typical" patterns for Graves’. "Further testing" may have referred to auto antibody tests (blood tests) that may have measured the individual antibodies for Graves’ and/or Hashimoto’s. It is fairly rare, but the condition known as "Hashitoxicosis" presents symptomatically as Graves’, but is really Hashimotos. In that case, the scan would have been different than with Graves’, and the doctor would be able to recognize it.
Everyone’s lab results are different, and since we are not doctors, we don’t interprete them. That’s not our job. I hope this informatiion helps. Welcome, and feel free to visit and post.

[Mickey65]

#1075007

The doctor’s office did tell me that if it wasn’t what they thought it was when they saw the scan/pictures, I wouldn’t have had to do the RAI. They even told me they’d be able to tell if Hashimoto’s was present.

The advocate on the other board I mentioned is pretty intense to everyone about getting all their lab work done – especially the free t-3’s and t-4’s, autoimmunes, etc. She’s kind of scary about it in a way. But a lot of the people there at Hypo, rather than Hyper. Not too many Hyper’s on that board!

I feel okay with doing the RAI. I’d rather have done it that way then take a handful of pills for the next few years and find out later that I’d need to RAI anyway.

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