McCall McPherson explains why thyroid labs need to be drawn when medication peaks in your system. Testing off meds can hide dangerous spikes or let doctors miss overmedication. A clinical T3 target sits around 3.6 to 4.2.
Chapters
Let's keep the conversation going of why you need to take your thyroid medication before you get your labs drawn. Part 2. Go back and listen to part one if you haven't already. But if we do not check your labs at your peak of your medication. So my goal is I want to know what these people's T3 looks like at their highest possible threshold. Why? Because I can always presume that it's not there for the bulk of the day. Right? The peak can last 30 minutes to an hour. I know that when I'm checking their labs, but I want to know how can I keep these people safe from over medication of thyroid hormones? What I don't want to do is ever leave it up to chance and say, oh, well, I hope that these people aren't over medicated. I hope that their T3 isn't freaking 30 at its peak. But I don't know because I'm never going to check. Right? That is the last thing you want to do. You want data. You want data to know that you are safe, that your medication is working, and what to do with it. Now, I want my patients T3 somewhere between 3.6 and 4.2 throughout the bulk of their day, okay? Which means they can actually. Oops. They can actually peak above my range and I can factor that in and use my brain and I'll show you an example. So if this is my therapeutic range, I want them peaking above my therapeutic range. Okay? So this is 3.6, this is 4.2. I know they're spending a very little time up here, so I want them peaking above this. That allows them to spend a good amount of time in a therapeutic range. But again, if I'm not checking this, how can I ensure that these people are safe and they're not at danger for atrial fibrillation or cardiac things that don't often happen with T3 meds, but can happen when they're grossly over medicated. So. So there you go. Second and last thing I will say, this idea to check people off of meds came from one particular original thyroid advocacy organization that very much was powerful in me getting my recovery. I advocate for them to a large degree, but they advocate for over medication, like too much medication too fast and checking labs off meds. I reached out to the woman that struggled, started that thyroid advocacy platform, directly told her who I was, explained the situation about labs and how we are putting people's health at in lives at risk by not doing labs at the appropriate time after meds. And you know, what her reply was? Her reply was, we cannot trust doctors to give people enough T3 so we need to manipulate their lab data to show that they don't have enough T3 so they can get more medication. No, that's actually not how we practice medicine at all. We want to create predictable data, an understanding of these medications and understanding that they are safe and their ebb and flows of levels. We don't want to manipulate data that puts people's health and lives at risk and also compromises the future of medicine accepting the safety and efficacy of these medications because we don't get good data, because we want to manipulate it and not give doctors the full picture. That is not what we are doing at modern thyroid clinic. That is not what I advocate for anywhere. And if you have to manipulate your doctor to get more thyroid medication and you do so by way of compromising your safety and long term health, you need to find a new thyroid clinician. Yeah. I'm releasing my thyroid lab guide that tells you when to take your meds before your labs very soon, so stay tuned.
