Is your Thyroid being Overmedicated- Who is at the most risk and symptoms of being over medicated you should be aware of.

Hey guys! Dr Hagmeyer here if this is your first time to my YouTube Channel, I want to welcome you.

Today. I want to talk about the 10 symptoms you should be aware of when it comes to being overmedicated with Thyroid medication. Unfortunately, this happens more than you could imagine and it’s not necessarily the fault of your doctor and I will explain why being overmedicated with thyroid problems happen and what you can do to avoid this.

So, in today’s video I will explain

1. Who is at greatest risk for being overmedicated with thyroid hormones,
2. Symptoms of being overmedicated with thyroid medicine
3. Testing you should have done is you suspect that your dosage of thyroid medication is too high

 

Who Is At GREATEST Risk For Being Over-Medicated With Thyroid Medication/Replacement?

There are three main groups of patients that can  easily being overmedicated with Thyroid Hormones/Replacement

1. People who have Hashimotos,
2. People who have had their thyroid removed- Thyroidectomy
3. People with thyroid nodules

Risk Factor #1- For Being Over-Medicated With Thyroid Medication/Replacement– Hashimotos-

If you have never heard of Hashimotos, Hashimotos is the number one cause of low thyroid in the United States, it is also an autoimmune disease which means that your immune system has mistakenly started attacking and destroying your thyroid gland.

For many people who have undiagnosed Hashimotos disease and are being treated for low thyroid, being overmedicated is super easy.

The reason being, as your immune system attacks the thyroid gland, thyroid hormones in the blood initially build up, but as they go up, these elevated thyroid hormone levels are picked up by the brain and your brain reduces the TSH levels.

TSH tells your thyroid to make thyroid hormones.

So, if you have too much thyroid hormone levels in the blood, the brain is simply going to reduce the signal to the thyroid gland thereby lowering the levels. If I lost you in all of that

Think about it like this in your house you have thermostat and furnace. If it gets too hot in the house, your thermostat tells the furnace to shut off.

When levels get to high in the blood, the brain shuts off the thyroid hormone production.

The more your immune system is attacking the thyroid gland, the more erratic your levels may be. Your levels may be good for a few months, then they are too high, then they are too low- So it become this ongoing raising and lowering your thyroid medication. So at any given time you are either being overmedicated or undermedicated.

If you have NEVER been tested for Hashimotos, but you have been diagnosed with low thyroid or hypothyroidism, you need to get tested for Hashimotos because treatment for Hashimotos is very different than the treatment for just hypothyroidism.

Risk Factor #2- For Being Over-Medicated With Thyroid Medication/Replacement– Thyroid Removed.

Perhaps you are watching this today and you had thyroid cancer or you had a large nodule that was affecting your breathing and talking, and so you had your thyroid gland removed.

I bet your doctor told you, you would be fine as long as you take your thyroid medication. So you had the surgery thinking everything would turn out fine.

But that’s not what is happening, you are in the constant battle gaining weight, brain fog, trouble concentrating, mental decline, losing hair, feeling depressed at times than anxious at times, feeling hot then feeling cold and so many of the other thyroid symptoms.

For people who have had their thyroid removed, Unfortunately, being overmedicated is common and it can happen fast.

Risk Factor #3- For Being Over-Medicated With Thyroid Medication/Replacement– 

Thyroid Nodules 

So in addition to the thyroid hormone you may be taking, the nodule begins producing extra thyroid hormones.

So now you just have too much thyroid hormone circulating around. Luckily, this is usually caught pretty quickly, and your doctor will send you for RAI or radioactive iodine, to kill a portion of the thyroid, or recommend antithyroid medication or that the thyroid be removed.

If you have nodules, there are two video that I highly recommend you watch.

The first video reviews the Real cause of thyroid nodules and goiters and the other video I did, reviews When you need to be concerned about thyroid nodules.

Some Additional Things To Know About being Over-Medicated With Thyroid hormone

Now, few other reasons for being overmedicated I want you to be aware of.

Something worth considering and happens from time to time is that you get a more potent batch of thyroid medication or that your pharmacist made a mistake in your dosage.

Sometimes the slightest change of potency from one refill to the next, can be enough to push you into hyperthyroid state.

So, my advice here is that you should always pay attention to how you feel when you refill your thyroid medicine and always check the pills dosage just in case the pharmacist made an error.

The last thing I want you to think about when it comes to thyroid overmedication relates to over the counter supplementation.

Over the counter supplementation would be things like “Thyroid glandulars”, “adrenal glandulars”, “bovine glandular”, things that say “Thyroid support”, “Thyroid boosters”, “dessicated thyroid supplement” and any kind of supplementation that may contain Tyrosine, Phenylalanine, Iodine, bladder wrack, kelp, bugleweed, Irish moss or seaweed.

I can certainly appreciate the desire for patients who have thyroid disease to want to tackle their thyroid disease naturally, but many supplements can actually make you much worse if you haven’t had the proper testing done.

For example giving Iodine to a person with Hashimotos or undiagnosed Hashimotos, has been shown to damage their thyroid even more- I have seen this too many times to keep track of.

Here is just one study showing effects of Iodine on the Thyroid.

I want to be clear and go on the record and say that I use ALL of these natural support tools with patients, but I would NEVER, NEVER NEVER recommend a patient take any of these, without first getting a complete thyroid panel and understanding the Pro’s and Con’s to each of these as well as understanding why each one is or is not beneficial.

Ok, so we just covered who is at risk for being overmedicated with thyroid disease, let’s review the symptoms I want you to be aware of when it comes to being overmedicated with thyroid hormone.

The first thing I want you to know is that symptoms and the severity of being overmedicated with thyroid hormone are going to vary from person to person.

Just last week, I had a new patient who reached out to me because she had just spent the night in the hospital- during the morning she woke up feeling tense and more irritable than usual, as the day progressed she became incredibly agitated, uneasy, felt her heart was racing, she was feeling flush and warm, she had her husband drive her to the emergency room because she thought she was having a heart attack.

At the ER, doctors ran all kinds of EKG testing on her heart and what they found was that her thyroid levels were off she had been overmedicated.

10 Of The Most Common Symptoms Of Being Thyroid Over-Medicated

1. Anxiety,
2. Elevated pulse,
3. Agitation or irritability
4. Insomnia or difficulty sleeping
5. Increased sweating or feeling warm when all your family members or friends are comfortable
6. Sudden weight loss within the last few weeks with no change in your diet/exercise routine
7. Diarrhea or lose bowel movements
8. Muscle aches and weakness,
9. Hair loss or eyebrow thinning.
10. Fatigue and exhaustion

If you have been diagnosed with existing thyroid disease, its very important you commit these symptoms to memory and if you notice that these symptoms rear their ugly head over a few week or months – it’s time to get your thyroid levels retested and avoid the thyroid overmedication roller coaster-

Testing That Will Help In Understanding If You Have Been Over-Medicated With Thyroid Hormones

The one thing that I think is so important and something I want you to be aware of, is the problem with TSH testing especially when you are already taking thyroid replacement like Synthroid or levothyroxine.

It is not enough to use TSH as the indicator for being thyroid overmedicated and this is what a lot of doctor’s do- Many doctor’s run what is called a “TSH with reflex”

What this means is that if the TSH is normal, it does not reflex to the other thyroid markers, If the TSH is out of range meaning high or low, then the test will reflex to the Free T4 levels. But,

This can be a big problem for those of you who are taking any kind of T3 replacement such as Cytomel, or

T4/T3 combination, like Armour or Naturethroid. If only the TSH with reflex is run, you will miss out on what is happening to those thyroid hormone levels.

TSH is a signal from the brain that provides instructions to the thyroid to make thyroid hormones. If levels are low in the blood, the Brain will increase the TSH levels. If the Thyroid hormone levels are High, The brain will reduce the TSH Levels.

If you feel you are being overmedicated, its very helpful to have a complete thyroid panel which includes total T3 levels, Free T3 levels and Reverse T3.

I also recommend that you read my article or watch the video I did that provides 6 tips to ensure accurate thyroid lab testing.

If you liked todays video don’t forget to subscribe to my You Tube Channel, I try my best to answer the questions that many of you have about your health.

Also, if you need help getting a complete thyroid panel contact us- and the last thing I want to tell you is that If you haven’t already downloaded my free thyroid guide, I encourage you to do this as well. There is some really great information in this guide that you will find tremendous value in.

We will see you Next time! take care!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1070767/