A short YouTube monologue by McCall McPherson arguing that many patients on T4-only thyroid replacement (levothyroxine/Synthroid/Levoxyl/etc.) continue to have hypothyroid symptoms because they cannot convert inactive T4 into active T3. She claims excess circulating T4 can normalize TSH/T4 lab results while symptoms persist, and advises obtaining a full thyroid panel to detect this problem.
Chapters
The worse you are at using your thyroid medication, the better your labs will look to your regular doctor and the worse your symptoms will be. I'm going to blow your mind. You will not hear this anywhere else, period. If you are on Levothyroxine, Synthroid, tyrosine, unithroid, Levoxal, any T4 based medication, and you feel terrible with fatigue and brain fog and dry skin and weight gain and hair loss and hair shedding and low libido and all the things it is because you are not taking that medication and activating it. T4 is an inactive hormone, does not help you at all until it's activated into its usable form, T3. You're taking this T4 medication. It's all sitting there. It's not activating. So you are accumulating T4 in your bloodstream. Your doctor is checking your TSH, which directly correlates to your T4 level. So if you have a whole lot of T4 because you can't activate your medication, it will make your TSH look fantastic. And they'll say it's not your thyroid that's causing all these symptoms. If your Doctor checks your TSH and your T4, same situation, your T4 looks great, so your TSH looks great. Meanwhile, no one is ever finding out that you are not able to take that medication. Activate it to T3, and that is why you need a full thyroid panel, my friend.
