thyroidpatientsca
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Interpreting Free T3 and Free T4 in therapy
Hypothyroidism is a thyroid hormone insufficiency, so it’s only logical to measure the success of therapy by the goal: T4 and T3 thyroid hormone sufficiency. Especially T3 sufficiency, the active hormone. Lab tests like Free T3 and Free T4 can indicate “relative” T3 and T4 sufficiency in bloodstream … but one has to carefully interpret…
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HISTORY: L-T3 monotherapy in 1957
Sometimes science does not retain knowledge, but rather chooses to forget. After endocrinology fell in love with L-T4 monotherapy, it was too tempting to forget the history of the OTHER monotherapy — L-T3 monotherapy. Modern doctors might assume that because they didn’t have the TSH test back then, they were blind! They had no way…
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Give therapy options to thyroid patients
Hypothyroidism is a thyroid hormone deficiency, so it makes sense that our primary therapy involves ingesting either synthetic or animal-derived thyroid hormone. There are 2 primary forms of thyroid hormone in the human body. T4 is the relatively inactive form, with only minor non-genomic activity. It converts to T3 or to Reverse T3. T3 is…
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History of the three thyroid medications
Three thyroid hormone medications have had a long history of effective use. I discuss them in chronological order, from the earliest thyroid medication to the most recently invented. No new thyroid medications have been invented since the 1950s, although all three of them have been further refined, and various manufacturers exist for each of them.…
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Why T4 monotherapy has dominated
All thyroid hormone medications have the potential to be effective: L-T4 (Levothyroxine), L-T3 (Liothyronine), and natural desiccated thyroid (DTE / NDT). However, each patient is unique in their response to these medications. Optimizing a patient’s lifelong therapy involves finding the right thyroid hormone medication, or a combination of them, to relieve as many symptoms of…