McCall McPherson explains why patients on active-form thyroid medications like Armour or Cytomel should take their dose before blood tests. Skipping medication before labs gives falsely low T3 readings, which can lead doctors to increase doses dangerously and cause atrial fibrillation or stroke.
Chapters
We are digging in deep on why you need to and must take your thyroid medication if you are on an active form before you have your labs drawn. So this includes medications like Armour, np, Thyroid, Cytomel, Lyothyrenine and Adthisa. I am very well aware that there are so many people online that tell you not to take your thyroid medication before your labs that originated from one source many, many years ago. I'll circle back to that later. But this guys, when we have our labs drawn on medication, it is for the purpose of deciding what to do with our medication, right? If you take Cytomel or armor and you take it once or twice a day on a Monday, you take it Monday morning or even Monday afternoon, then you do not take it again and you have your labs drawn late Tuesday morning. Guess what? Doesn't matter what your dosage of medication is that you took the day before, your T3 is going to be low. Why? Because it's out of your system. So how are we supposed to base decisions on what to do with your medication if we don't know the levels that the medication is creating in your body? We can't. It's impossible, right, that people are guessing. They have no idea what's happening with your medication. And guess what the flip side of that coin is. Unendingly, if you keep checking your labs that way, your T3 will always look low again because it's not in your system anymore. And your clinician will perpetually increase your medication until, guess what? You are so grossly over medicated that, that you actually are at risk for heart attack, stroke, atrial fibrillation, which takes a lot to get to that point. But that is the one way that I see it happen. I'll give you an example. I have patients quite frequently that transfer here from other practices that over medicate on T3. And they come here and they have not been checking their T3 on meds. Their T3 always looks low. It's always 2.6, it's always 2.9. It's always low enough to keep increasing their medication. They transfer here. I check them at their peak and their T3 is literally above the detectable level of 34. That is so not safe, y'. All. It is. The way that these medications get a bad rap is people aren't using them appropriately, they aren't using them in the way that they need to be and no one is checking their actual levels. And so people are grossly over medicated and it leads to serious negative health outcomes. Again, why would we base a decision on what to do with the medication without checking the level that the medication is eliciting. This is part one. Stay tuned for part two. And it's a doozy.
