1. It didn’t help my sweating at all. I’ve still been sweating like a horse when the temperature is even slightly elevated or when I do any remotely physical activity, like walking up a hill.
2. My sleep pattern and schedule were similarly unaffected.
3. One thing it might have affected is my mood. I have been in a great mood for the past month. Maybe that’s just because good things have been happening, so it’s really impossible to say.
4. Also it’s very hard to say, but the Isocort might have increased my sex drive.
5. At the beginning, I felt like Isocort was giving me a lactose reaction, so I started taking a Lactaid pill every morning.

I’m going to taper off the Isocort soon, and in the mean time ask my parents to order some more for me. I’d like to wait at least a month before resuming it so I can gauge my situation off it and judge whether my mood and sex drive decline.

Here is what I’ve observed so far using the Isocort along with my normal daily medications (Armour and Lanton): not much of anything, but I am definitely gassier in a way that tends to happen when I drink milk or eat ice cream (ie, flatulence caused by mild lactose intolerance). I checked the composition of Isocort and lactose/lactase is an ingredient, so that’s no surprise; I think I’ll start taking Lactaid and/or Beano daily to deal with it. Also, I have been pretty fatigued for the past couple days, but that’s likely because a house guest is staying with me indefinitely and making it difficult for me to get my normal sleep.

I also thought it might be useful to put down clearly by which criteria I’ll judge Isocort’s success or lack of it. If the Isocort significantly improves at least two of these issues, without damaging me in some other way, I will be overjoyed: sweating, fatigue, acne, weight gain. If it significantly improves one and moderately improved another one or two, I’ll be pretty happy and keep taking it.

I feel the same.

Maybe I didn’t explain adequately why I’m so excited about the Isocort. I get excited about every new medication I try or even when I adjust doses. I always want it to work and I always go into it thinking that it’s going to work. When I tried Clonidine, I was excited. When I switched from from Lanton to Omepradex and back to Lanton, I was excited. When I switched from Armour to synthetic T3 and back to Armour, I was excited.

But now is the first time that I’m really trying anything related to the adrenals at all. I begged my endocrinologists for years to look at the adrenals, but they always swore that there’s no connection between thyroid and adrenals and that, since I don’t have Addison’s or Cushing’s, my adrenals are fine.

For years, I had what was essentially a severe case of jet lag. Treating my hypothyroidism (or “treating” it) didn’t help. Following all sorts of sleep hygiene advice didn’t help. I complained and complained and complained to doctors, and they didn’t help. They gave me really horrible and stupid suggestions like: “You just have to force yourself to stay awake until 11 pm and then keep doing it every day, and your sleep pattern will correct itself.” Well, I could stay up one night until 11 pm or midnight without too much trouble, but I’d be completely sapped of energy for the rest of the week and there was no chance I could stay up past 8 or 9 pm the next night. I tried using sleeping pills, but they just knocked me out, and then I’d wake up in 10 hours and feel really tired – like I needed to get some sleep after that coma.

Last summer, I got my endocrinologist to refer me to a sleep lab. They did an overnight test in which I was hooked up to some gadgets and then returned to the lab the following morning so they could observe the results. The “diagnosis” was that I had a very moderate case of sleep apnea. Over the next month, I was fitted for a C-PAP machine and it was adjusted a few times, but it actually didn’t work at all and in fact I slept quite a bit worse with it than without it. Finally I had to return the lab’s C-PAP and I realized the whole thing was an elaborate ploy to sell me a C-PAP of my own. Another doctor later confirmed my theory; he read the lab’s report and told me that I didn’t have any more apnea incidents than the average adult of my age and weight has.

Eventually, last winter I read an article recommending melatonin as an over-the-counter treatment for jet lag. Since what I had was basically jet lag, I decided to try some. I went to America in February, flying (west) in the middle of the night, sleeping a little on the plane, and landing in the morning. Because I was with my family, I had enough excitement and activity to stay awake for the whole day into the evening. Before I went to sleep, I took a 3 mg pill of melatonin that I’d gotten during an afternoon shopping trip. I slept soundly and woke up at a good hour. But that didn’t show me much of anything, since I was in my old bed, in my old room that I used to sleep in when I was a teenager. The second day of my visit was also packed with entertainment, so I was kept busy and again didn’t get to sleep until late (ie, a normal time for most people). I felt extremely exhausted and again took some melatonin before going to bed. Again I slept very well and woke up at the right time. Still unconvinced, I tried it for a third evening. And a fourth. And so on. I kept using the melatonin every night on that trip to America, and I kept sleeping well, waking up well-rested at a good hour, and staying awake all day until around midnight. After seven years, my jet lag was ended.

What does melatonin do and how is melatonin different from other medications? I tried pills that knocked me out and pills that relaxed me. I also tried using hashish as a sleep aid. The knockout pills forced me to sleep and I woke up feeling like I felt when I had mono – like I needed to sleep off the terrible sleep I’d just suffered. The chillout pills made me unable to act like a normal person. If I got a phone call, I couldn’t think straight to answer it, and if my dog misbehaved, I couldn’t scold him correctly or swiftly enough. I also felt like they were more effective at making me lie very, very still than at putting me to sleep. As for cannabis, I enjoy the occasional hash brownie, but the last thing I want to do when I’m stoned is sleep. Mostly I want to think about stuff, listen to stoner music, watch terrible movies and eat a lot of food, none of which is conducive to sleeping well.

Melatonin simulates what it actually feels like to get tired and need to go to bed. Or I could say that it actually makes me feel tired and need to go to bed. It doesn’t knock me out: I can still function if necessary after taking melatonin; I’ll just be really tired. It doesn’t chill me out: I can react to things if necessary. But taking it a few hours before bed time, along with using other sleep hygiene ideas, like turning off the lights, effectively tells my body that it’s time for bed in a way that no other technique does.

Now that I have to wake up at 6:45 three days a week (increasing to five days next month), I can’t take melatonin every night. I take a 5 mg pill approximately three nights a week, and that is enough for me to regulate my sleep for those nights and the other nights.

For anyone suffering what I suffered – chronic jet lag – I warmly recommend regulating your sleep pattern with melatonin as I regulate mine.

But I’m hoping/planning to get it by Monday, so within a few days I’ll be able to start seeing if it works. In the mean time, I’ve grown a beard.

Armour Thyroid recently went thru a reformulation that is causing many people to be undertreated. Not only that, but there is a shortage of the base ingredients, meaning that even if you had a doctor who would write for Armour, you may not get it. People are even having trouble finding *any* natural dessicated Thyroid.

I would strongly suspect your increased TSH to the reformulated Armour. Hope you can find the right meds.

Mary Shomon has been covering this issue:
http://thyroid.about.com/od/thyroiddrugstreatments/tp/desiccated-thyroid-2009.htm

I had my Armour refill and after about 2 weeks, I thought I was starting to lose my mind. I had already noticed that it smelled and tasted different. I then found out about the reformulation and had my doctor re-write my Rx for NatureThroid. I got that filled and feel miles better — but even that Rx will be difficult to get refilled due to the shortage. My mail order Pharmacy has already informed me of the shortage and suggested that Levothyroxine was a good substitute – NOT!!

I want to say right away that I’m not one of these people who think that big corporations can do nothing right. Pharmaceutical companies have alleviated more suffering in the past century than practically anyone else, and everyone who depends on medications developed by these companies – for profit – should stop to think about just what would happen if the profit motive were removed from their operations.

That being said, the culture of regulation under which pharmaceuticals operate results in their doing some pretty atrocious things. I’m more intimately familiar with a slightly different example, but one that’s perhaps even more extreme than the psychiatric medications listed in the article, all of which are somewhat new.

The history of thyroid treatment is that natural thyroid hormone replacement therapy existed for a long time – since the 19th century – before technicians in a laboratory developed a synthetic pill meant to replace the natural version. The efficacy of natural thyroid was gauged by how well or poorly a patient recovered to the treatment under clinical observation; the success or failure of synthetic thyroid is measured by secondary blood tests.

I’ve observed and participated in discussions on the margin of the thyroid world for about six years (and suffered from Hashimoto’s for seven and a half years) and in that entire time, I’ve never heard of anyone who’s taken both natural thyroid and synthetic thyroid and prefers synthetic to natural. On the contrary, I’d estimate that roughly 80-90% of people in my circles prefer natural to synthetic moderately or strongly, with the remainder not having a preference.

Granted, people who are adequately treated by their physicians have no need to seek out an internet community, so I must account for some selection bias. But it’s nowhere near enough to explain that kind of tilt, especially when synthetic thyroid is prescribed way more commonly than natural thyroid.

How did it happen that Synthroid and its equivalents are vastly more popular than Armour and its equivalents, given most people’s preference for Armour and Armour’s lower cost? And how did it happen that there are no studies, or almost no studies, comparing the effectiveness (as determined by alleviation of symptoms) of one treatment versus the other?

The answer to both questions is: marketing. And by marketing, I mean money. When a company spends it, someone has to receive it; the people on the receiving end of Synthroid’s marketing budget are doctors. They may seem special in their white coats, but they are also human just like the rest of us – perhaps more so – and if they are presented with a slick and glossy argument on one side, and no argument at all on the other side (to the best of my knowledge, Armour Thyroid doesn’t have a marketing budget), they’re going to go with the slick and glossy argument nine times out of ten.

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Since people are beginning to read what I write, I want to remind them and everyone that the purpose of this site is to publicize my offer: if you diagnose me, I will pay you. For more information on the offer and to discuss the terms, please contact me.

Trying to see a “specialist” doctor in this country is a true nightmare. I’ve had to wait four months just for an initial appointment with an endocrinologist. To coin a phrase, it is cruel and utterly usual to tell someone suffering from lack of thyroid hormone that he must wait a third of a year before he can see an endocrinologist to discuss his problem, after which he might have to wait interminably long for the medication and for it to start working (just imagine the wait for a followup appointment…). Even seeing a “family doctor” (ie, a general practitioner) to get the most basic prescription (for Lanton, which is supposed to treat acid reflux) can be downright Kafkaesque if it needs to be done on that same day.

I’ve struggled and struggled and struggled and struggled with this system for the five years I’ve lived in this country. The doctors here can be personally nice, but as physicians the service they provide is atrocious. They’re really more like accountants, gazing into their computer screens and looking for ways to minimize everything (nothing against accountants – my father is one and so was my grandfather).

I could go on and on about the insane delays, the abusive nurses, the uncaring doctors and everything, but I want to highlight one aspect of the system here that sucks beyond belief. Our country has a Health Ministry that publishes a list of approved medications. Obviously, they’re not going to approve a medication that is more expensive and less effective than alternatives. But what about a medication that is more expensive and more effective? Or a medication that is less expensive but less effective? Or a medication that’s priced similarly but is differently effective?

Or what about an inexpensive natural medication that’s approved by the American FDA but is no longer commonly used anywhere in the world because a synthetic alternative has been developed? Such is the case with Armour Thyroid, which I take for my Hashimoto’s. Armour Thyroid is not approved by my country’s Health Ministry because they have already approved one medication for hypothyroidism – Eltroxin, a generic version of Synthroid – and why in the world would Armour be necessary if there’s already a perfectly good option available?

Well, Eltroxin is a perfectly good option, as is the branded version Synthroid – for those helped by it. For people whose symptoms didn’t improve on Eltroxin/Synthroid, the medical system here offers no solution. I can convince a doctor to prescribe it. But once he’s written the prescription, I can’t take it to a pharmacy to get it filled. I am shit out of luck.

By comparison: in America, as in my country, it is highly uncommon to prescribe Armour Thyroid for hypothyroidism. But if a doctor does prescribe it, the patient can acquire it with hardly any difficulty. The point is, it exists in America (legally, too). If the corner pharmacy doesn’t have it, they can order it. If they can’t order it, another one can. If another one can’t, the patient can order it by himself online – and probably save money, too.

Maybe the patient will spend more so he can see a doctor known to prescribe Armour. Maybe he’ll spend more ordering the Armour and ultimately getting reimbursed by his insurance for less than if he’d taken Synthroid. He has options – some better and more costly, some not as good and less so. Here, we have no options. And we slap each other on the back out of excitement for our wonderful health system.

Though I carry American citizenship, I’m not insured in America and don’t live there, don’t vote there and try not to tell Americans how to run their country. But I will say that it will be a sad day for me and for many other people all around the world who rely on America’s options when Americans accept their president’s proposal to socialize their medical system.

I get the Armour Thyroid I need from my uncle, a dentist in Philadelphia, via my mother. It costs a hell of a lot more than it would if I were insured, but at least I can get it. If an American bureaucrat some day decides that no one needs Armour because Synthroid is already available, I will again be shit out of luck.

I did gluten free this time for two weeks. I will say that it cleared up my diarrhea, which I really appreciate. Unfortunately, it didn’t do anything else for me and had no effect on my sweating.

Then I heard from someone taking Isocort, which I’d somehow managed never to consider. I’m going to get a bottle of it in about 10 days, and I’ll try working it into my daily routine and decreasing my Armour.

I’ve never met an endocrinologist in my country who understands the interaction of the adrenals and the thyroid, and every time I’ve asked one to test my adrenals, he’s either refused or ordered the wrong test and read it the wrong way.

So maybe the Isocort will help a bit?