Maybe it's the Lisinopril and the HTZ (or did you mean HCTZ?) which are causing the problems...?

{{{hugs}}}

Sorry it is - I just call it the water pill...LOL I have a call into my OB/GYN as I was on progesterone a couple of years ago for hot flashes we thought were associated with menopause before I knew Graves existed and it helped. Any ideas if the progesterone would aggrevate the graves? I'm willing to try anything at this point....LOL
I had 6 weeks of "freedom" end of January and Feb before the returned....ugh.....

Thanks much again.

I had problems with taking the 'natural' Progesterone cream, it made me hypER. I find that if I balance with my diet and environmental triggers as well as the 'safe' supplements and any meds I do take, I do much better with the problems I have with the autoimmune diseases.

Right now, as an example, I recently went back on the LDN to lower down thyroid antibodies as well as keep inflammation down from the autoimmune diseases I have. My heart rate jumped off running when I went up to the higher amount of LDN. Now I am back down to the lowest amount and slowly adding as time goes by as not to get the rush of energy from the LDN.

Life marches on!

{{{hugs}}}

I was on a natural progesterone cream for a while. My endo didn't say much about it but seemed to be suspicious of it. I wouldn't do any other kind of progesterone, and in the end, my OB/gyn took me off of it due to potential cancer risk. Are you taking the bio-identical, or some other kind?

What are the ranges for those FT4 and FT3 lab figures?

Concerning the MMI:

Are you saying that you were on 1.25 mg MMI until the lab toward the end of March, when your doctor upped the dose to 6.25?

If so, why so much? why not just up the dose to 5 mg? (you get them in 5mg size pills, right?)

When I was taking the MMI, I preferred taking the whole dose, either 2.5 mg or 5 mg at night, mainly because I would get hypo symptoms anyway, and I would sleep better on the hypo side of normal and be awake better with a little more thyroid function.

I too, have started getting hot flashes again. I had a hysterectomy in August and the hot flashes stopped around November. However, I was driven hypo then too from over medicating. Now I am on less MmI and hot flashes returning. I wonder if this is the reason?
I also was on natural progesterone cream pre Graves diagnosis and it helped allot. I have been afraid to try the cream again.

I was taking progestrone by mouth and I can't say it helped a lot but I didn't know I had graves at the time and we were thinking purely menopause.
Fern, I was on 1/8 of a 5 mg pill .625 bit 6.25 and my FT4 went from
1.2 to 1.3 and I was feeling hyper which could have been transient symptoms. I was on .625 since December. The FT3 stayed pretty steady at 3.2. I am now feeling sluggish and tired so it's like I need to be between the 2 doses or else what was going on was maybe a seasonal thing. I am sleeping better but the hot flashes are just plain ugly at night. I can set my watch by them......and they just roll through and start in the pit of my stomach and go north and south from there LOL.... I am just getting super tired of them...
It's been years.... Like I said I had 6 weeks between Jan and Feb
that they were gone and I felt absolutely normal then I started feeling not "right" and a bit hyper so I had an early blood check and the FT4 was up for me. If I remember right in Feb the FT4 was about 1.15 down from 1.20 and then in 5 weeks went up to 1.32 and I just felt hyper. Love the energy though.....:)) but not the sleeplessness and the hot flashes. The hot flashes keep me from sleeping so its a vicious circle.....
I have never tried the natural progesterone and I'm skeptical of using anything at this point so that is why I asked you guys....:)))
Thanks much!

It was the natural Progesterone cream that I tried (two different brands) and went bouncing to hypER. So I just gave up on the idea and began working on reducing the Estrogen from the plastics I am being exposed to, etc. That seemed to work better for me.

{{{hugs}}}

That's a good point Laura. Sorry I misposted
the amount of MMI in the original post. I had
dropped from 1.25 mg every other day to .625 daily in Dec and like I said was humming along
quite nicely until end of Feb first of March
and I knew something wasn't quite right and no matter what I did as far as diet, exercise, etc it kept getting worse although I'd rather be hyper then hypo...and I'm feeling way more hypo at the moment. The upside is I sleep and my systolic bp is more "normal" and I know that
when my levels are in a better place the systolic number behaves and I can drop to 5 mg lisinopril.....such a vicious circle isn't it??? At the moment, I just want it all to go away....:)))

I read a book several years ago called "Menopause" but I forgot the Dr./Author's name. I liked it because of how it explained the various forms of the estrogen hormone and how there is really only one form of natural progesterone. He said that the "progestins" patented by drug companies to make money, don't work in the body the same way real progesterone does, and that it is better to use natural progesterone because it is naturally a precurser to the estrogens, and the body can use it to form the hormones it needs. He said this progesterone doesn't cause cancer, but the other kind does. He also said it helped the thyroid--presumably hypothyroid issues.

Long before I was diagnosed with GD but while I felt hypothyroid without any labs that would show it--newly postmenopausal, my OB/gyn prescribed me some estrogen "vagifem", but I needed to take a week's worth of progesterone to balance it out every so often. I would forget and start bleeding, and would have to go in for an exam and biopsy. When I read the book, I wanted to use the cream instead of the estrogen/artificial progestin combination. My doctor reluctantly agreed at first, but she refused to renew it 6-7 months ago because of the cancer scares.

I was able to decrease my MMI throughout the last year or two, and have been off of that since December 11th, 2012. Blood tests every month or two since then have found me hypo or very, very low in terms of FT3, but too nearly normal with the TSH for my endo to prescribe supplements.

I have also suffered much more from being hypothyroid than from hyper. Your HR is even lower than mine has been, but I have had low BP and body temperature.

I hope some of this information helps you in dealing with your situation.

Fern
Thanks for the info. I think for now I am going to not look into the progesterone. I really don't want to upset the apple cart anymore then it already is...:)) I am going to try 1.25 mg 1 day and .625 the next and see if that doesn't bring some relief. I know if I take the MMI at night I sleep....so will just skip a day time dose and see how I feel. I knew withing a few days that 1.25 was too much but thought I'd stick it out since it does take 2 weeks for things to settle in....

My resting heart rate because of my physical fitness is usually 52-54 and my BP the systolic is all over the map and was running high to 140-150 before taking the lisinopril. Sometimes I forget to check my bp as if it gets too low on the 10 mg I can feel tired and lethargic from that too so then I cut back to 5 mg. The hctz water pill just isn't enough as long as the graves is busy.....and with the lisinopril which does not affect the heartrate I can exercise and do what I normally do. I take the teeniest dose of a betablocker and I am on the couch and can't move - totally sensitive to most anything.. So makes this trial and error stuff not much fun.

I appreciate all that you guys share with me and others. I am so ready for this to be done with but as you remind me - slow and steady win the race.

I wish I could find a doctor that would try block and replace but have no clue how to go about finding such an animal or if they even exist in my neck of the woods......

Thanks again,
Cindee

My husband takes Lisinopril along with a whole cocktail of other medications including two water pills (Lasix and spironolactone) for congestive heart failure. Do you have CHF, too, or are your medications just for symptom relief?

My systolic bp is elevated. Diastolic and heart rate are fine. The systolic wants to be high except when levels seem to be ok and the graves is calm - its how I know what is going on. The lisinopril keeps it within reason. I bounce between 5 mg and 1- mg and I've been on the water pill forever. That is what I originally started out using to control the BP - no one ever looked for a "cause" if you will. It was talking to a respiratory therapist that I was given the heads up on the high diastolic reading. My heartrate at it's highest before diagnosis with graves was 78.... My normal resting is 52-54
because of all the exercise I do.

I am finding a correlation I think to the intensity of the exercise and the hyper feelings but haven't tested it thoroughly yet. So will keep a log and see what I can find.

BTW the hot flashes have been really really really horrible - did I mention they've been really horrible???? :))

My Doc prescribed prescriptom strength Potassium. Did research and turns out gravves patients are deficient because of the sweating and worse I'd you work out and sweat. It had helped me with the hot flashes.

Thanks for the info. Definitely worth looking into.

I started taking Black Cohosh for hot flashes and and it seems to work. I take one 540mg pill at night. Maybe you could try that. I understand your discomfort, I used to have them 20 a day or so, terrible. After my hysterectomy last year it got better but still had a few.