Over active thyroid to under active?

Mrs W

After having a baby in February I was feeling completely exhausted (normal I know) and my hair was falling out drastically, I was getting sweats all up the back of my neck and very shaky.

Had bloods done and was diagnosed with an over active thyroid. I was prescribed 40mg of neomercazole and 10mg inderal. After 6 weeks the bloods were repeated and while they had improved they still weren't great so the dose was upped to 50 mg neomercazole and 20 inderal.
They make me very bloated and uncomfortable and as I had a wedding to go to (and a nice dress to fit into) I stopped taking them for a few days. I felt so much better so didn't take any for 10 days.
I was back in for more bloods and didn't tell the doc I had stopped taking them but took them religiously for the 2 data before and since.

She rang me today to say I've gone from over active to under active?? I'm back to 20mg a day now and have a referral to the endo clinic but was just wondering if anyone else had this or could shed some light?

kangaroo

Mrs W wrote: »

After having a baby in February I was feeling completely exhausted (normal I know) and my hair was falling out drastically, I was getting sweats all up the back of my neck and very shaky.

Had bloods done and was diagnosed with an over active thyroid. I was prescribed 40mg of neomercazole and 10mg inderal. After 6 weeks the bloods were repeated and while they had improved they still weren't great so the dose was upped to 50 mg neomercazole and 20 inderal.
They make me very bloated and uncomfortable and as I had a wedding to go to (and a nice dress to fit into) I stopped taking them for a few days. I felt so much better so didn't take any for 10 days.
I was back in for more bloods and didn't tell the doc I had stopped taking them but took them religiously for the 2 data before and since.

She rang me today to say I've gone from over active to under active?? I'm back to 20mg a day now and have a referral to the endo clinic but was just wondering if anyone else had this or could shed some light?

Sounds to me, as a non-professional, that it might be hard to get reliable data from those tests, given you taking drugs the way you did. Thyroxine (T4) has a half life of 7-8 days, if I recall correctly.

In case you don't know:

Carbimazole is an anti-thyroid substance which depresses the formation of thyroid hormone. It reduces the uptake and concentration of inorganic iodine by the thyroid but its main effect is to reduce the formation of di-iodotyrosine and thyroxine. Carbimazole is absorbed rapidly from the gastro-intestinal tract and is widely distributed throughout the body. Carbimazole is completely metabolised to methimazole and it is the metabolite that is responsible for its clinical activity.
http://home.intekom.com/pharm/lagamed/nmercaz.html

You might need to be honest with your doctor about when you took them and ask to be re-tested.

cltt97

I think you need to start from scratch. It's good that you have an endo referral. It's not uncommon to have thyroid fluctuations during pregnancy and it may well be transient. From what you're describing your system is all over the place and as kangaroo said you should tell the docs what's been going on. I have better knowledge of underactive thyroid, so I'm not so familiar with the over activ thyroid, but I know it takes ages for things to stabilise. Maybe you should post in the thyroid misery forum, there are a number of people with overactive thyroid and might have a better idea.

Mrs W

Thanks for the replies.
I had a panic attack in Thursday night so went to the doc yesterday and told her everything. I'm off the neomercazole and just taking the inderal and she also prescribed Xanax.
I have my clinic appt in 10 days so will see what happens then