Graves' Disease Support Group

Graves-Basedow disease is a medical disorder that may manifest several different conditions including hyperthyroidism (over activity of thyroid hormone production), infiltrative exophthalmos (protruberance of one or both eyes and associated problems) and infiltrative dermopathy (a skin condition usually of the lower extremities). This disorder is the most common cause of...

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/ Graves' Disease Support Group

2nd. opinion:-(

Snippy
Snippy
Not so good today. He most agreed with my first endo. He said that I was right and that even though your TSHis suppose to be low when you have Graves it was not suppose to be as low as mine. My last TSH was0.006. Something was said about that it could cause heart damage.He told me that mostendos concentrate on diabetes bacause that was really where the money was. He was wondering why she had not talked to me about RAD. I told him wouldn't do any good cause I prefer no radiation. He thinks 10 mg is right on the Meth, On&on&on but you get my drift. So what do we do now. He won't treat me cause he is an GP. He said that if I was hypo he would but with graves there was to many ups and downs.So where in the heck do I go from here.
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deleted_user
deleted_user
Hi Snippy, We use different units here in NZ, so I am not sure from the Tsh figure you quote if you are low or high on that, although I expect that it is low. What I can tell you is that the higher dose of methimizole will reduce your FT4 and 3 levels by reducing production in your thyroid, and once they are down your pituitary will start to increase your Tsh level. But because your thyroid won't actually be able to respond to the increase in Tsh, the pituitary will keep increasing it, so your Tsh is likely to go quite quickly from too low to too high, and it is likely to be quite hard to find an optimum does that keeps everything (Tsh and FT4/3) right in the target ranges.

If everything was operating as originally intended, the increased Tsh level would tell your thyroid to make more Ft4, your body would convert some to Ft3, and your pituitary would see the levels and adjust the TSh down a little to maintain the right level of everything. The whole system would automaticaly balance itself. Since in fact we have Graves disease, the changes in level of Tsh don't control the thyroid, our antithyroid drug is controlling that, so the system can't come to a nice balance. Because we only have one control, the dosage of the antithyroid drug, we can really only control one thing well.

regards
John