• Related conditions due to hypo

I was lucky.

My cho­les­te­rol hadn’t star­ted to raise yet when I was on Synth­roid and later Levoxy. But it was going to, because nearly ever­yone on a T4-only medi­ca­tion has a clim­bing cho­les­te­rol num­ber, soo­ner or later, along with heart pro­blems and/or ele­va­ted CRP. And what do their doc­tors do next? Put them on sta­tins with all the lovely side effects: muscle aches & pains, memory loss, and periphe­ral neu­ro­pathy. (See the Yahoo Stop­ped My Sta­tins group here.)

My mother is the clas­sic exam­ple. We have abso­lu­tely no heart pro­blems in our family his­tory that I know of. Yet, here was my mother who, in her 60’s, was sud­denly in the hos­pi­tal having a balloon pro­ce­dure on her heart, called an Angio­plasty, done to open up a clog­ged artery to her heart. Huh??

It was only years later, when I become a thy­roid patient advo­cate, that I could look back and see why that hap­pe­ned to her. She had been on a T4 medi­ca­tion for the majo­rity of her adult life!

Today, as patients are switching to natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Armour, Natu­reth­roid and Westh­roid and others, and as they are allo­wed by their infor­med doc­tors to raise NOT accor­ding to the TSH but by the com­plete eli­mi­na­tion of symptoms…VOILA.… their once-high cholesterol.…FALLS!!

But guess what else falls? Your CRP.

CRP stands for C-Reactive Pro­tein, and it beco­mes ele­va­ted in res­ponse to an inflam­ma­tion. With that ele­va­tion comes the heigh­te­ned risk of heart attacks and stro­kes. And guess what: con­ti­nued hypothy­roid (as found with T4-only treat­ment) results in an inc­rea­sed CRP level.

On an opti­mal amount of Armour, which for me is 4 grains, my CRP is 0.9. Ideal is less than one. Bingo.

***Have a story to share about your impro­ved lipid or CRP levels since you became opti­mal on Armour? Let us know.

YEEHAW! Check out this study done in 2007 – the higher the TSH, the worse your lipids. Iro­ni­cally, even a TSH IN RANGE does this, accor­ding to the expe­rience of MILLIONS of patients!! Thanks Nita for brin­ging this to my attention!