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  • Anonymous
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    Hi, Jordanna:

    If you think about it, it makes huge sense that you go very hyperthyroid around the time of RAI and immediately after. You were on ATDs, but had to go off them at some point before the RAI treatment. So, thyroid hormone levels were able to start to go back to whatever level they might have been at had you had no treatment whatsoever. (All the ATDs do is interfere with the production of thyroid hormone– they do nothing to interfere with what is causing the problem.)

    Then, after RAI, there is a period of time when damaged cells dump their stored hormone into the body all at once. These damaged cells are not making ‘new’ hormone — but the effects are to make us more hyper for a period of time. This typically happens a week or so after the RAI.

    The TSH is essentially a “running average” of our thyroid hormone levels. So, yes indeed, actual thyroid levels should show progress before the TSH registers major change. The problem is that the measurement process for actual thyroid hormone levels is somewhat less accurate than the measurement process for TSH — and I don’t know why that is. So our doctors do rely on the TSH reading more heavily than they rely on the actual thyroid numbers.

    Typically eight weeks post RAI is too early to determine whether or not your RAI treatment was effective — or even effective enough. I know it’s frustrating, but you do need to be patient right now.

    I hope this information helps, and I hope you are feeling much better soon.

    Bobbi — NGDF Online FAcilitator

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