Transitioning off of Thyroid Medication with Iodine

“I feel great! I'm going to QUIT my thyroid medication.” or “I feel jittery and over stimulated it must be to much thyroid medication.” I hear statements like these all the time and I have no doubts that you know best how your body feels. Following symptoms alone is a popular method amongst many doing iodine therapy when deciding to stop medication. The problem... there is a BIG chance you're selling your therapy short. While symptoms are valid, following them alone can lead to some tricky problems that are simple to solve with a little planning and help. The reason for this is that adrenal fatigue symptoms combined with iodine therapy can mimic the early stage symptoms of excess thyroid hormone. Distinguishing between the two, purely by symptoms, is nearly impossible even to the experienced eye.

“Knowing your numbers is like knowing which way to turn. Knowing how you feel, tells us how fast or slow you should be going.”

Why we use Baseline Tests

Knowing the difference between thyroid and adrenal symptoms during iodine therapy is scary at its worst and confusing at best. For this reason, I prefer to follow symptoms and some simple tests together to distinguish between symptoms stemming from iodine/thyroid activity and adrenal function. I like to see a recent thyroid panel of TSH, free T4, free T3, and reverse T3, along with 3 days of daytime oral temperatures before starting iodine. See “How to Take Iodoral” for my Getting Started Baseline Check List. This baseline gives us a point of comparison for the future if you should develop symptoms later into therapy. It also allows us to decide if you need thyroid medication or an adjustment to your medication at the outset.

Lets break this out into two examples that illustrate Adrenal Dominating Symptoms and its twin Thyroid Dominating Symptoms.

Adrenal Dominating Example:

For our first example lets say that about 6 weeks (or any time for that matter) into starting iodine you begin to feel jittery, stressed, aren't sleeping well, your blood pressure is up a bit and you have had some heart palpitations. These are just a few symptoms you could have, but you get the picture. All of these can come from either an imbalance in the thyroid/adrenal axis or more thyroid hormone stimulation than you need. So which is it? So we now run a TSH test, and some daytime temperatures and compare them to your baseline.

Test Results: TSH is unchanged from baseline to slightly higher. Daytime temperatures are relatively unchanged to lower from baselines.

Interpretation: Adrenal imbalance is the likely cause. Decreasing your thyroid medication or quitting iodine in this instance would temporarily solve the symptoms you are having, but would do so by lowering thyroid function. Not exactly the direction we wanted to go is it.

Course of Action: In this example the thyroid/adrenal axis is imbalanced toward the adrenals. The thyroid isn't all well it's just a bit ahead of the adrenals. So the course of action here would be backing off on the iodine dose just a tad to ease the stress on the adrenals. And then focus on a little more adrenal support to help them to catch up with the thyroid. Keeping you moving forward toward health.

Thyroid Dominating Example:

Now lets look at the opposite situation. For our second example everything you experience is the same. About 6 weeks into starting iodine you begin to feel jittery, stressed, aren't sleeping well, your blood pressure is up a bit and you have had some heart palpitations. Again, all of these can come from either an imbalance in the thyroid/adrenal axis or more thyroid hormone stimulation than you need. So which is it? So we now run a TSH test, and some daytime temperatures and compare them to your baseline.

Test Results: This time though the TSH has dropped (say from 2.1 to 0.8). The daytime temperatures are up from baseline of 97.5°F to an average of 98°F. much closer to a normal ideal 98.6°F.

Interpretation: The drop in TSH from 2.1 to 0.8 indicates a significant change toward increased thyroid function. The average daytime temperature of 98°F is much closer to a normal ideal of 98.6°F. Both of these tests indicate increased thyroid hormone activity, but not ideal. Ideal would be no symptoms, average daytime temperature of 98.6°F, and a TSH between 1.5 and 0.4 (TSH remains useful until it goes BELOW 0.4, then one has to determine optimal thyroid by free T4 and free T3)

Course of Action: In this instance, decreasing the thyroid medication dose may make perfect sense. Consult your physician or an iodine literate professional about a lower dose.

This is how knowing your numbers can tell us which way to turn. Knowing how you feel tells us how fast or slow you should be making changes. The stronger your symptoms the slower you should go.

I have made these examples simple and clear cut to demonstrate the reasoning behind this protocol. Your personal experience may not be as clear and under no circumstance should you go it alone when prescription medication is involved. If you are having trouble deciding what direction to go, seeking out experienced support can make a big difference.