McCall McPherson explains how levothyroxine can mask hypothyroid symptoms in standard lab tests. When your body doesn't convert T4 to active T3 well, T4 builds up and suppresses TSH, making labs look normal even though you feel sick. You need a full thyroid panel to see what's actually happening.
Chapters
What if I told you the worse you are at using your medication, the better your labs will look to your doctor and the more likely they'll be like to. They'll say, well, it's not your thyroid that's causing all these issues. Your thyroid labs look great. When in fact wildly untrue. We are going deep here. Strap in. Let's go. Hang in there. I will write down the key points at the end that you need to take away and you can take a screenshot. Or better yet, just save this for later. So, number one, most everyone walking around on thyroid medication is on an inactive form of hormone or what's called a T4 based medication. These are Levothyroxine, Synthroid, tyrosine, Unithroid, Levoxal. Okay? I want you to think about these medications like crude oil. Do we put crude oil in our car to make it go? No. Do we need crude oil to make gasoline to make our car go? Yes. If we can't take crude oil and convert it into gasoline, we're not really going anywhere in our car. Right. Same situation here. The problem though, lies deeper. The problem is, is clinicians are only checking TSH or TSH and T4. I want you to understand the dynamic that's happening when you're getting told your symptoms are not your thyroid. Okay? Number one, if you take a bunch of crude oil hormone or T4 and you can't convert it into gasoline, what do you have? You've got a bunch of crude oil, right? You're stockpiling crude oil in your garage. In fact, the worse you are at taking that medication and making it usable, the worse you're going to feel. But the more T4 you will accumulate in your bloodstream, the more T4 you have, the more your body sends a message back to your brain and says, oh my gosh, brain lower this person's tsh. We have so much thyroid hormone. You don't need to stimulate her thyroid. Your TSH lowers and what does that communicate to your doctor when they check your labs? Oh my gosh, your thyroid medication looks great. It's perfect. It's not. Your thyroid is not your problem. Or b, oh, maybe we need to reduce your medication. You're on too much thyroid hormone, your TSH is too low. If they bonus check your T4 and you're taking T4 in your medication. You're taking Levo. You can't convert it to the usable hormone that you need, the gasoline free T3 hormone. What do you have again? You have a whole bunch of T4. So your T4 level in your lab also. What? It looks amazing. The worse you are at using your medication, the more and more and more T4 stockpiles in your bloodstream. So now not only do you have a great level of T4, it's sending a message back and it's suppressing your TSH. So the worse you are at using your medication, the better your labs look. Meanwhile, the most important hormone, your gasoline hormone, the thing that your body needs to run for fuel, is on empty. So you have to. This is the reason why you must, must, must get a full thyroid panel. I'll put a list of all the labs that you need to get that panel.
