Levothyroxin vs armour thyroid

Hi -

My partner had to his have his thyroid removed in 2013 due to cancer.

He is 40 years old and has been on levothyroxin ever since.

He has been on 250mg a day. He has been doing ok on this dose apart from excessive sweating, tiredness , weight gain and heart palpitations.

He recently saw a new consultant who basically said that if he continued to take such a high dose 'it would be like driving a car all day every day with your foot flat to the floor' and eventually it would cause other parts of the body to wear out.

He advised him to drop his dose to 225 mg a day. He recommended drinking coffee and energy drinks to help with tiredness. Unfortunately my partner suffers from bad migraines and cannot drink coffee or energy drinks.

He has now been on the 225mg a day dose for approximately 4 weeks and is really suffering with tiredness, achey legs, weakness and struggling to get up in the mornings.

He has to have a blood test to check his levels since decreasing the dose on Monday and will be having conversations with the consultant following these tests.

After some research we have come across 'armour thyroid. Has anyone used this before and if so what was your experience.

Also interested to hear from anyone who has been through this or anyone who has any information they could give us moving forward.

We have 3 young children and my partner has a very physical job and would really just like to live as normal a life as possible..

Thank you

Hi Laura

It sounds to me like he could have an

Underlying condition

You said he had cancer

And he has also had weight gain

The two usually dont go together

I would seriously look to see if his pituitary

Is working properly

Plus he has headaches so that makes me think

He should have an mri of his pituitary

As far as natural thyroid hormones go

Yes, they are fine

I was on them for a while

Laura

You're much better using the thyroid forum for this issue. See below. There are many users of AT on there with similar issues your partner is experiencing. They will ask for all thyroid test results and test ranges so they can best advise.

https://healthunlocked.com/thyroiduk

Laura. Hopefully my reply will pass the moderator after I referred you to Thyroid UK forum. If not let me know.

I do not take armour, but do take Natur-throid,  with T3,  and it made a world of difference for me on how I felt and ability to lose weight when i worked at it.  I had been on Synthroid.