I’m a 25 year old male and have been on levothyroxine for about 4 year now. Sound ridiculous, right? I’ve always been around 155-160, smaller frame and always been pretty damn lean.
What caused me to be on T4 replacement?
Prior to going on it, I was having issues with an antidepressant causing excessive sleeping issues and possible brain fog/constipation, etc. I’ve had multi tests done as far as colonoscopy, endoscopy and upper and lower GI - no GI issues that were causing my constipation or fatigue at the time. I ended up coming off the medication (cymbalta) and had an eating disorder (OCD with body image issues) and lost significant amount of weight (remember, I’m already very lean as it is and what i was losing was just more muscle mass…whatever I had lol) got down to 130 and realized what i was doing to myself - got a psychotherapist to help along with friends and family support. Continued to get blood work for check ups and the doctors had found my test levels at 18ng/dl (non existent) and my thyroid was in a subclinical hypo level based on the above first few tests of a high"er" TSH,but my T4 was still mid range for the labs. They started me on test cypoionate shots of 250mg every 14 days (lol) this is when i was started on 50mcg of T4/daily and was referred to an endocrinologist. after about 6 treatment shots with test cyp. - levels were around 1300 ng/dl and was taken off/stopped the shots, yet stayed on T4.
began to recover and gain weight back and checked test levels periodically to make sure they were rising without the help of the shots. they were then checked and were 350then 460 - 2 weeks apart and haven’t had them checked sense. ---- plan to get those very soon at my next end appointment as well as an array of others while I’m getting my blood sucked outta me.
Eventually once i hit 165 (highest I’ve ever been) i was upped to 75mcg of levothyroxine but none of this helped my constipation and fatigue still.
I’ve always had a very strict diet with low sodium/no salt added to anything. so any salt i was getting was from whatever was in the products i was consuming. So definitely assuming i was iodine deficient even with a multi - sport vitamin that had 100% of iodine supplied in it.
As of being upped with the T4 and having no differences aside from my t4 going down a little and realizing my RT3 was slightly higher (1 point above the end high range). My doctor said that could’ve been due to an infection or the over activity of my immune system from psoriasis flare up.
Gonna shoot in the fact that january of this year (2017) i had a sebaceous cyst on my forehead that was aggressively treated (overly aggressive for what it was) with a shot of dexamethasone, antibiotic shot (didn’t specify) and oral Medrol pal of 6 days (60mg, 50mg, 40,30,20,10) and oral doxycycline. after all of this I’ve had horrible breakouts on my back and shoulders that took months to go away and now i have extreme hyper pigmentation from the lesions.
Anyways, I’m hoping that this T4 replacement was unneeded and my test results were slightly skewed originally (like my test was) due to lifestyle choices and i wish i got off of it earlier like i did with the test shots. I’m wondering if 4 years is too long to ever come back and fully recover my thyroid production or not. I’ve had an ultra sound of my thyroid and it showed like 2 benign small nodules (this is while i was on levo so i have nothing to compare to) and i have had an MRI of my pituitary gland and that was “outstanding and perfect” noted the doc.
Last thing about any bloodwork ill note is that my bilirubin has always been pretty high with no reason why. the high end of the range is 1.2 and mines always been 3.0 - 3.2ish.
Let me know if theres anything else i should add, and ill probably update when i go to Lowcountry male and my endocrinologist in august - with all labs too.
Thanks