McCall McPherson explains why levothyroxine stops working for some people: your body can't convert it into active T3 hormone. If you still have fatigue, brain fog, dry skin, and puffiness despite dose increases, ask your doctor about adding free T3 instead of raising levothyroxine again.
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These are the signs that your levothyroxine is actually not working. So you go to your clinician, they increase your medication, they reduce your medication, you get labs, and every time you end up either right away or a few months later feeling the same fatigue, the same puffiness, the same brain fog, dry skin, flat mood, and you're just honestly pushing through every day. And so what I thought when that happened before I got into this was, oh, I just need a dose adjustment of my levothyroxine. But y'all, that's not it. So if you've been living this way for years, sometimes even just months, it doesn't matter how much levothyroxine you get, that medication is not going to work in your body. Think about it like crude oil. We don't put crude oil in our car to make it run, but we do need it to make gasoline to make our car go. A lot of people are taking crude oil, AKA levothyroxine, but can't convert it to gasoline. So they're honestly, their car's just sitting on empty and it doesn't matter how much crude oil we have. We can't convert it into gasoline. It's not going to do us any good. So at that point, people need to consider an alternative medication or an additional medication with active thyroid hormone, or what's called free T3. Life-changing in these cases. So don't settle for just taking levothyroxine. Don't settle for the never-ending increase decreases of doses. Ask for more, advocate for yourself, and get empowered because on the other side of that lies your ability to get your life back.
