At 12:36 PM 2/12/02 -0500, Constance wrote:
>I'm another one who consistently gets palpitations as a sign of being hypo,
>not hyper.  My doctor explained this to me as follows:  when there's not
>enough T4, body begins working overtime to produce T4 and convert it to T3,
>leading to excess T3 at the level of the heart muscle
>tissue.  Bingo.  Palpitation, while other tissues are still starved for
>thyroid hormone.

HI Constance and everyone,
That's a nice explanation - your doctor sounds relatively
enlightened.  I've only had palpitations once in my life about a year ago,
and I'm not sure if I was hypo or hyper at the time.

And that's what I'm writing about now.  Seems the more I learn about myself
and managing my own Hashimotos, the more confused I get!  Actually I'm
about to come up with a new theory.  Perhaps many of us spend a lot of time
swinging back and forth from hypo to hyper, and that's why some of us on
Armour could do better with adding in some Synthroid.  Maybe our bodies are
getting better at converting T4 to T3 after being on Armour, and so
sometimes we have too much T3 in our systems.  Then perhaps other times,
when we're under more stress, we do less converting on our own and need
higher dose of medication.  At those times, we'd probably benefit from some
time release cytomel. I'm convinced that in 50 or 100 years there may be
completely different methods for managing thyroid dosing, taking into
account all the changes that we each undergo from day to day and even hour
to hour.

My own case has involved increasingly conflicted symptoms.  For example,
I'll feel a little more nervous/anxious and then find I've lost a little
weight or not gained after eating a lot.  So then I'll say 'aha, I'm
getting a little hyper' ; then next time I take my temperature I'm pretty
low and become convinced I'm hypo.   Seems like I used to be more
consistent about my symptoms.  Does anyone else have this problem?

Also, Strayze has made me more aware of the risk of being thyrotoxic and
not knowing it.  I've been working with docs who believe in temperature
method and listening to how you feel, but now concerned about completely
ignoring lab work.   Does anyone else worry about that?

Susan A



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