My Armour Thyroid Medication Isn't Working...Try, Try Again?

A question was posted to me if I had ever heard of symptoms of depression getting worse when a trial of Armour Thyroid medication was began. The answer is a resounding YES.

When treating hypothyroid problems, it is very important to make sure to cross all your t's and dot your i's. Before any treatment program is begun, you need to make sure you have measured the appropriate labs and test (meaning thyroid panels and others that indirectly affect the thyroid and thyroid hormone that seem to be playing a role in the case), history and a symptom survey.

If changes in labs and symptoms are favorable, then you are probably on the right trail. If things make no change or get worse, this also tells you valuable information as well.

How about an example:

You come in with normal thyroid labs, low core body temperature, depression, fatigue, unexplained weight gain and chronic pain all over. You begin taking a mix of Armour Thyroid and Synthroid and things get worse.

There are a couple ways of interpreting this pattern:

1. It's not a thyroid problem.
2. You made need to tweak the amount of thyroid hormone, the % of T3 and the % of T4 in the prescription, and/or change the medication to a different type
3. It may not be a problem with lack of thyroid production by your body. It could either be a problem with converting enough thyroid hormone to its useful form, excess thyroid binding structures in your body (binding to already made thyroid hormone, making it useless in the body) or poor binding of thyroid hormone to its receptors.

Going back to a detailed labs, exam, history and presentation, you can piece things together better.

In this example, the normal thyroid panel may lead you to believe that maybe thyroid production is normal. Maybe giving exogenous thyroid hormone isn't the place to start.

A lowered body temperature with depression, fatigue, weight gain and pain still points to a hypothyroid problem, so don't jump ship yet.

This leaves you looking at the third interpretation as your most likely cause. This is where most people are losing their battles. If you fail to look at this as a problem of physiology (how well or poorly your body works) and not just pathology (the body isn't working because of disease), your rate of success will usually be less than optimal.

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