Hi Snippy - If I remember correctly there are posts on here regarding that and you can stay at a low dose of MMI for quite a while before that becomes a concern. You might check on posts from NurseNat because I think that is where the discussion started and it was maybe a couple of months ago. Hope that will help you find the answer. Good luck!!!

Much ground-breaking research has been done about Graves' within the last decade.

Any doctor treating Graves' should know to say the same thing my current thyroid doctor says: "We know to ignore TSH in Graves'".

My current doctor practices evidence-based medicine which is supposedly the best kind. She stays abreast of medical studies and incorporates the results into her care.

My 3 former endos and my now former GP were not aware of these studies and grossly mismanaged my care.

Here's a link to an article Elaine Moore wrote about a recent British study that showed "that patients with low TSH levels (between .04 and 0.4 mu/L) did not have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, bone fractures, abnormal heartbeat patterns or overall morbidity. The study showed that an increased risk of these conditions occurred in patients with very low or with elevated TSH levels."

In the article, Elaine mentions: "The authors of the new study did however emphasize the need to correlate thyroid hormone levels with TSH. This would help in determining a TSH level thats truly low (accompanied by high thyroid hormone levels) as opposed to a TSH level thats falsely decreased."

Within the article, there's a link to the famous study about falsely decreased TSH .....it confirms that Graves' patients have suppressed TSH due to our antibodies so doctors should only concern themselves with the FreeT4/T3 levels.

http://elaine-moore.suite101.com/uk-study-shows-that-low-tsh-doesn-a264769

So, if you don't hear those sweet words about ignoring TSH, it's time for yet another doctor.

I sure hope you find a thyroid-savvy doctor sooner than I did - I had entered remission by the time I met my current doctor.

I'm posting this separately for clarity.

You may know that I joined the 20% of Graves' patients that go hypo after remission.

My TSH was suppressed when I went hypo, thanks to the Graves' blocking antibodies (which also were the reason I went hypo).

At the time I went hypo, my labs were almost the same as they were when I went off ATD's.

I had just met endo #3 when I went off ATD's and, after seeing my suppressed TSH, she wanted me to resume methimazole at quadruple the dose I had been taking!

No thank you.... and onto the next doctor who would up being the doctor that cares for me to this day.

My levels slowly rose after going off ATD's but, then then went back to those hypo levels I had when meeting endo #3 (still suppressed TSH). I had over 20 hypo symptoms so, my doctor started me on thyroid hormone replacement.

Hypo people also suffer under the care of clueless doctors. The TSH test is also the bane of their existence.

The real killer is that Armour, a popular thyroid hormone replacement med, indicates in the prescribing information that TSH should be suppressed in patients taking it. Yet, even patients taking Armour have trouble getting medicated properly.

Here's a link to the Armour site that mentions TSH suppression:
(see note 2)

http://www.armourthyroid.com/treatment.aspx

And, if you read this section from the Stop The Thyroid Madness site (geared towards hypos), you'll discover that, before the invention of the TSH test, hypo people took thyroid hormone replacement doses that were 3 times the size of today's average dose:

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/armour-and-your-bones/

There's no reason whatsoever that any doctor should have an issue with suppressed TSH as long as the thyroid hormone levels are within the normal range.

In fact, a truly thyroid-savvy doctor won't have an issue with slightly over-range FT4/FT3 levels as long as the patient doesn't have symptoms.

My doctor has had no problem with the times my FT4/FT3 levels went slightly above-range since I was feeling great.

That's how it should be.

Carol is so right and most docs who still think low tsh causes bone loss went to school in the dark ages. It's high free levels out of the range that are the reason for bone loss. It's been studied and proven. So many people go undiagnosed with thyroid disease because docs don't even have the brains sometimes to rule that out when some signs are so obvious. I have read too many times how people go years without a diagnosis and suffer needlessly (and their tsh is "normal") and they never test the frees.it's crazy!