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.

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.

I intentionally didn’t get my thyroid blood tests done this time, because I don’t give a damn what the results would say. No matter what, I’ll continue taking whatever medications, in whatever amounts, I find to treat my symptoms.

I desperately want, and have wanted for the past two years, this endocrinologist to address the fact that many of my hypothyroid symptoms have not gone away with treatment for hypothyroidism, whether using synthetic T4, synthetic T3, or natural T4+T3. The main three are weight gain, sleep disturbance and sweating. Right now I’m managing the sleep problem with melatonin, though I prefer not to; the weight gain isn’t such a big deal because I don’t really care about my weight; but the sweating, however, is really awful.

He seemed surprised that I hadn’t tried anything for the sweating yet. He gave me a prescription for Clonidine, which is a medication for high blood pressure that is also used to treat some other things. I am kind of worried to take it because I have already fainted a half dozen times and strongly prefer not to do so again. But I’m going to take it at night when I take my melatonin, so I’ll be in my bed or close to it anyway.

The doctor asked me to call him in two weeks and tell him how it’s going with the Clonidine. His receptionists do a terrible job and he never gets messages, so I guess I’ll have to go back over there to deliver the message in person.

In my case, the problem never was that I couldn’t get to sleep or that I couldn’t get enough sleep, but that my body forced me to sleep at the wrong time of day, and then wouldn’t let me sleep when the right time rolled around. I call it “Sedentary Jetlag,” but I’m sure there’s a much cleverer medical term for it that ends in “syndrome.” It manifested back in 2002, when I was getting sick with Hashimoto’s and not knowing it. I would fall asleep every evening, some time around 7-9:00, and sleep until the middle of the night, waking up about 1-3:00 in the morning, and staying awake for several hours until 4-6:00. Then I could finally get back to sleep after the sun would rise.

This was really problematic for a lot of reasons. I was always tired and always fighting with myself to try to sleep at the right times for sleeping and to be awake at the right times for doing things. More than any other symptom – weight gain, sweating, acne – the sleep problems ruined my social life. It’s hard to ask a girl out for, let’s say, dinner and a movie if there’s a very low chance you’ll be able to stay awake for the movie.

Sure, sometimes I really could force myself to stay awake until midnight. But I couldn’t do it two nights in a row. That was impossible for me. I followed all the sleep hygiene advice, far more than what’s in the article above. I did stuff like wearing socks until right before bedtime, then taking them off. I never used my bed for anything except sleeping. Etc, etc. I also tried sleeping pills, but they just knocked me out and then I woke up feeling like I had missed a whole night’s sleep.

This all lasted for seven years, including five after being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s and no one being able to tell me anything useful. I kept pestering my endocrinologist and he eventually sent me to a sleep lab. They diagnosed me with sleep apnea and sent me home with a CPAP, but the whole thing was actually an elaborate scheme to try to sell the CPAP to me for a huge markup. Truthfully, I wanted it to work, but it didn’t help a bit, and actually I had a much harder time sleeping with it than without it. Eventually a doctor I saw privately looked over the sleep lab’s documentation and told me that my “sleep apnea” was so mild that it easily fell within the normal range for someone my age, and probably even close to optimal.

Finally I decided to try using melatonin. My idea was that I could take it to regulate my sleep schedule, forcing myself to sleep at the correct times so that I would be refreshed in the mornings and wouldn’t need the extra sleep in the evenings. I couldn’t get the melatonin here, so I waited for a visit to the United States last February. Amazingly, it worked – and it’s just as simple as that. I flew to see my family and arrived there in the morning, forced myself to stay awake until about 10 at night, took a melatonin pill that I’d bought that day at CVS, and slept well. Then I was able to stay awake the following evening until 11:00, the night after that until 12:00, and from then on, I can stay awake until whenever I need (within reason), just making sure to use the melatonin a couple hours before bedtime, and also turning off the lights and avoiding the computer and television screens.

I can warmly endorse melatonin for people who’ve had problems like mine and who’ve tried everything else. But I am still bothered that it is not a solution to my problems, only a treatment. I do worry about its long-term effects and am not mollified by assurances that it’s harmless because the body produces it.

I hope one day to find a doctor who will honestly and expertly address the root cause of my trouble with sleep, so I can deal with it correctly.