McCall McPherson breaks down thyroid medications: T4 drugs like Synthroid and Levoxyl are inactive until your body converts them, while T3 drugs like Cytomel are active immediately. Natural desiccated thyroid combines both, weighted toward T4.
Let's talk about first, the two classes or a few different classes of medications. Right. Number one is T4 inactive or levothyroxine based medications. These include drugs like levothyroxine, obviously Synthroid, Tversin, Unithroid, Levoxyl. That's one class. Second class is the opposite. It's it's pure active thyroid hormone or T3 based medications. These drugs are called lyothyrenine and Cytomel. Okay, so that's just simply a brand versus generic. Cytomel is the brand name version. Lyothyrenine is the generic form. These are the only form of pure T3 available. Okay. Then we have combination medications like natural desiccated thyroid, sometimes referred to as NDT. And these are medications that are largely T4 or heavier on T4 and then also additionally have some active hormone or T3.
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