Hello-

I'm *very* glad to have found this list and thought I'd introduce
myself and where I am on this journey to find out more about my body
and health.  This is long, so it's only for the truly interested, but
I find that I get more info from others if I give more info out.

I'm 43 years old.  About 20 years ago I was seeing a doctor for help
with weight loss (at that time, I was about 20-30 lbs overweight) and
he found my thyroid to be a bit low.  He put me on some replacement,
I don't remember what or how much.  It didn't help me with my
weight.  A couple of years later I moved and another practioner
advised me to try weaning myself off which I did and didn't feel any
different, but I was never retested.  I didn't think this unusual, as
my mother had been on thyroid for a time in her 20's.  (Her mother
took thyroid meds from some point in her adult life on, however.)

I yo-yo dieted my weight up during my 20's until I started reading
the obesity literature, quit dieting, and put effort into accepting
my body as it was.  My weight stabilized.

Flash forward..  I had a baby at age 36.  I felt really drained
afterwards, but assumed, well, I just had a baby, I'm not sleeping,
what can you expect?   When she was 5 or 6 months old, I donated
blood and they gave a free cholesterol test and it came back 330!!
I panicked and raced to my MD - the first thing he thought of was
thyroid.  Yup - TSH was 249 (not a typo).  I started taking a generic
of Synthroid, but it took a year of upping the meds and retesting to
get me "normal".

But, I never really felt great.

2.5 years ago, we moved - well, we moved twice in one year.  I felt
worse and worse.  My allergies seemed to be awful for one thing -
lots of sinus headaches and infections, and I was totally wasted.
Exercise, which formerly would energize me, totally drained me of
energy.  I tried all kinds of allergy meds.  My TSH was redone - it
was 9.39 so my meds were upped again to .2 mg of levothyroxin, which
brought my TSH to .16.  (BTW, I just got these lab values from
someone in my doctor's office, and she also said that beside the lab
values for TSH it said "highly sensitive" on both tests.  Anyone know
what this means?  She didn't.)  I still felt bad though.

A year and a half ago, I finally got my allergies tested and found
out that one of the things I was highly allergic to was cats - well,
ever since moving our cat had been sleeping on the bed!  Oh joy.
Also found out that fatigue is a quite common allergic symptom, which
I didn't know.  I did a whole lot of environmental controls which
helped the allergies - as long as I don't go outside during the bad
seasons for me (now).  I'm considering allergy shots, but I hear
mixed things for my particular situation.

Also for the last 2-3 years my weight, which had been stable (except
that I settled at a stable weight that was +15 lbs after my
pregnancy), began to climb  - along with increasing carbo cravings.
As a result of research, I decided to try a Zone-type diet, and
within 2 days those cravings were gone.  Now I've been on it a month.
 My goal is not weight loss (although I believe I am slowly losing)
but stable energy levels, and hopefully reversing the insulin
resistance/hyperinsulinemia which seems likely to me that I have.

From there I have begun to explore the interconnections of thryoid,
insulin, other hormones, and allergies.  I am convinced that all this
stuff I have going on is all of a piece.  I am also interested in
gathering data so I can propose trying some T3 with my T4, it seems
worth a try as I really still don't feel as good as before I got
pregnant.

I am *thrilled* to find this list.  I almost cried to read some of
your stories in the archives - that there are people like me, who
don't feel good even though the lab work says we "should", and who
are doing something about it.  Thanks to all of you.

Laura Dolson