June 15 2006 – The final entry

Hashimoto say: One failure is just one lost battle. The war can still be won

My experiment to kick-start my own thyroid has failed.

My specialist will give me a blood test on Monday and I expect this to confirm my thyroid stimulating hormone has rocketed.

My voice is gravely, my legs feel as heavy as if they were bollards, I’ve put on a few pounds despite the fact I have deliberately dropped my food intake and my leg muscles hurt, I’m knackered and my head is fuzzy.

Thank god I’ve only dropped my thyroxine tablets by 15%. If I’d gone cold turkey, I reckon I’d be bed-bound.

I am slightly irritated with the alternative health brigade and the author of a book who claimed to have cured his own thyroid disease using a regime of supplements which has cost me more than £100 a month. I still advocate alternative/complementary therapies, especially spiritual/energy healing and acupuncture. When I went to my spiritual healer two weeks ago, I felt dreadful. I walked out of there with a bounce in my step. Explain that one. And I find my acupuncturist helps boost my immune system.

I am pretty calm and relaxed at the moment – that is the one aspect of an underactive thyroid gland that I love. One of the reasons I wanted to get off thyroxine in the first place was because the amount I was taking was making me feel hyper, nervy and tense even though with the thyroxine supplementation of 100mcg a day my TSH and T4 levels registered “normal”. Clearly, it was not normal for me.

So while I’m resigned now to not being able to stop taking thryoxine and increasing my dose again, I don’t want to increase the dose to what it was before. I found that when I dropped just one 100mcg table on Sundays for six weeks, I felt good, much better than before but when I dropped two tablets twice a week I became ill within about three weeks.

I imagine the logical thing once my blood tests confirm what I’m feeling is to go back to dropping one tablet once a week. Or perhaps to make up for the thyroxine I have lost I will initially have to go up to my original dose of 100mcg every day.

This does not mean you will fail dear reader. We are all different. And, indeed, it is not really a failure. In a few years time I might try again. Our bodies change. I think, perhaps, one of the reasons I haven’t been successful is because I have not been able to practise daily Yoga because I hurt my back and could not do the shoulder stand which helps stimulate the thyroid.

I’ve lost the battle folks but not the war. As my old mate Elton John once sang: “I’m still standing better than I’ve ever been”.

But I have to take thyroxine.

Well so what. It’s not the biggest deal in the world.

C’est la vie!

Over and Out

Hashimoto!