Combined Armour and Cytomel

bartonbogs

Does anyone take both of these? I've been on Armour for a couple years, and felt mostly good. For the past 6 months, I've been starting to feel colder, sluggish, with fatigued muscles. My doc did a blood test and determined my reverse T3 ratio (don't recall what it was compared to) was too high. He said there's new thought in the medical community on keeping that ratio at a certain point. I'm on Cytomel for short term, getting blood labs in 6 weeks. My doc said I will probably start to feel hypo at some point, and that is likely when we'll stop the Cytomel. Have any of you been down this path?

islandmonkey

Hmm, interesting. He's correct on the reverse T3 -- it essentially works like the wrong key in a car ignition; it won't start the engine and it also stops the right key (T3) from starting it.

However, I'm not seeing how flooding your body with more T3 (the Cytomel) is going to help. If you have too much RT3 those receptor cell will be blocked, so more T3 will just float around your body, but can't be used. He needs to treat your RT3 and this doesn't seem like the appropriate method.

RT3 is created when blood levels of T4 get too high; the body "takes care of the excess" by creating RT3 so that your T3 levels don't get too high.


Is your doctor also testing your cortisol, ferritin, iron and selenium levels? High cortisol, and low ferritin, iron and selenium can all have an impact. Have you been dealing with a lot of stress lately....? RT3 in particular should be dealt with a little more holistically. Some good info here:
http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/reverse-t3/