Guest guest Posted June 3, 2005 Report Share Posted June 3, 2005 Hello I was waiting on some test results as most of you know. Here is the letter I recieved from my endocrinologist. Dear Deana, I just wanted to inform you about the result of your test for adrenal insufficiency. An ACTH stimulation test , also known as cosyntropin stim tets, was within normal limits. There is no evidence of adrenal dysfunction at this time by standard testing. At this time I do not perform saliva cortisol tests to evaluate adrenal gland function, nor do most mainstream endocrinologists. Certainly if you wish to pursue that testing on you rown, that is up to your discretion. As you kno, you do have a history of hypothyroidism. I did perform TPO or thyroperoxidase antibodies, which were markedly elevated. Normal is less then 40 and your value was 2,000. This indicates that you will need lifelong thyroid hormone replacement. My practice is to prescribe Levothyroxine. Although Levothyroxine is considered a synthetic hormone, it is exactly what the thyroid makes. I generally do not recommend using ARmour Thyroid as it is very difficult to dose this appropriately and more erratic in its absorption. Many people become over-replaced, which places an individual at risk for increased heart rate and rhythm problems, as well as osteoporosis. I have on rare instances used a combination of Cytomel plus Levothyroxine. Most patients have not found this to be helpful. As you may have learned from your reading, T4 is converted to T3 in the bloodstream. As such, most endocrinologists find that almost all individuals can be adequately replaced with Levothyroxine or T4 hormone therapy. If you have other question that you would like to discuss, I would encourage you to make an appointment. Sincerely ----------- Thats the letter - I called my endo to find out what the extreme high TPO number meant and she told me I have Hoshimoto's Disease. Just thought I would update since I havent posted in awhile Hugs Deana Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 3, 2005 Report Share Posted June 3, 2005 Deana, You have yourself a mainstream endo who doesn't think outside the box at all. First of all, Armour is a medication that has been prescribed for many more years than synthetic Levothyroxine. It is stable and the dosage is not varied. The lines this endo gave seem to be from the script given to them in school so they don't have to prescribe something they might not understand. Also, he is wrong about the liver converting all of the T3 your body needs. The thyroid does produce some T3 on its own because it is needed by the brain. Yes, some T3 is converted from T4, but not all. This is why many people will have " brain fog " when on T4 only and feel better when T3 is added. This information is found at www.thyroidmanager.org but I can't remember exactly where in the document I found it. The February 11, 1999 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reports on the results of research that found that " treatment with thyroxine plus triiodothyronine improved the quality of life for most [hypothyroid] patients. " The article is titled: " Effects of Thyroxine as Compared with Thyroxine plus Triiodothyronine in Patients with Hypothyroidism " by Robertas Bunevicius, Gintautas Kazanavicius, Rimas Zalinkevicius, Arthur J Prange, Jr. Research was conducted by the Institute of Endocrinology, Kaunas Medical University, Kaunas, Lithuania along with the Department of Psychiatry, School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Obviously, your doctor is not up on research (and this isn't even recent). Please check out http://thyroid.about.com/index.htm?terms=thyroid - there is a lot of information plus there is forum where you can get lots of good advice and information. <<Message: 9 Thu, 02 Jun 2005 19:24:00 -0500 Deana Brown <squeekyme Thyroid Update 6/2/05 Hello I was waiting on some test results as most of you know. Here is the letter I recieved from my endocrinologist. Dear Deana, I just wanted to inform you about the result of your test for adrenal insufficiency. An ACTH stimulation test , also known as cosyntropin stim tets, was within normal limits. There is no evidence of adrenal dysfunction at this time by standard testing. At this time I do not perform saliva cortisol tests to evaluate adrenal gland function, nor do most mainstream endocrinologists. Certainly if you wish to pursue that testing on you rown, that is up to your discretion. As you kno, you do have a history of hypothyroidism. I did perform TPO or thyroperoxidase antibodies, which were markedly elevated. Normal is less then 40 and your value was 2,000. This indicates that you will need lifelong thyroid hormone replacement. My practice is to prescribe Levothyroxine. Although Levothyroxine is considered a synthetic hormone, it is exactly what the thyroid makes. I generally do not recommend using ARmour Thyroid as it is very difficult to dose this appropriately and more erratic in its absorption. Many people become over-replaced, which places an individual at risk for increased heart rate and rhythm problems, as well as osteoporosis. I have on rare instances used a combination of Cytomel plus Levothyroxine. Most patients have not found this to be helpful. As you may have learned from your reading, T4 is converted to T3 in the bloodstream. As such, most endocrinologists find that almost all individuals can be adequately replaced with Levothyroxine or T4 hormone therapy. If you have other question that you would like to discuss, I would encourage you to make an appointment. Sincerely ----------- Thats the letter - I called my endo to find out what the extreme high TPO number meant and she told me I have Hoshimoto's Disease. Just thought I would update since I havent posted in awhile Hugs Deana<< Discover Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out! http://discover./mobile.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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