Guest Author - Jim Lowrance

Armour has a set dose of hormone, just like synthetic does. It contains 38mcg of T-4 (levothyroxin) 9mcg of T-3 (liothyronine) per each grain (60mg).
The only changes it makes once it enters the body, is that the T-4 in it, will partially convert into more T-3, if the body determines it needs more. The other change would be the percent of absorption of it, that can be affected by other things you are consuming at the time of taking your dose. Taking calcium or iron, within 6-hours of taking thyroid medication (either type), can limit its absorption and so can too much dietary fiber, so these need consumed 4 to 6 hours apart from taking the thyroid dose.

I mention these things because there is misinformation out there about Armour not being consistent in doses. Forest Pharmaceuticals, the manufacturer, has been cleared by the FDA for not having dosage inconsistencies. Synthroid fairly recently again had to go through the same approval, so the accusations that sometime arise are likely from Pharmaceutical wars for market shares, more than anything else. Forest makes synthetic T-4, just like Synthroid does. They also make a combo synthtic T-4 & T-3 combo (Thyrolar).

I am not recommending Armour over Synthroid because I believe some patients do better on Synthroid however, I also believe Armour is given an undeserved "bad rap", by Doctors who are simply parroting what the Pharmaceutical companies are telling them. The fact is, Synthroid has had bad press on it, just as Armour has. I maintain my own belief that patients need trial regimens of the opposite type medication, if they are tried on one and are not having success.

As far as the hormones taking over for the thyroid, to where it atrophies (stops working), this is actually the whole point of thyroid hormone replacement therapy. If a person waits until the thyroid gland completely stops functioning before starting thyroid medication, they risk death by myxedema coma. This is the dilemma, even for Doctors, to know at what point to actually start patients on hormone replacement because it always results in eventual shut down of the patient's own thyroid.

Symptoms are one of the most important reasons medication needs to be started but also, to reduce antibody levels (sometimes takes years) and to prevent goiter and nodules from developing, so you can see there are multiple reasons for starting medication in patients with developing hypothyroidism.

Many medical resources state that thyroid medications help reduce antibodies over time (opposite of what others say). If antibody levels increase despite being on medication, this does not necessarily mean the medication is the cause but could just be thyroiditis flare ups that happen commonly with autoimmune hypothyroid disease. The point to all this is that it is unavoidable to take hormone replacement medication if you have Hashimoto's as the cause of hypothyroidism because it is very rarely ever reversed.

There are companies who market non-prescription natural "thyroid supplements" and they know many Doctors will not approve these in combination with thyroid hormone replacement and so they claim you should take it instead. It's very possible that these would help for a while but to claim they will reverse autoimmune thyroid disease is a false claim. If there were supplements that could do this, medical research would have discovered it many years ago.

In regard to iodine deficiency hypothyroidism, is not the same as the autoimmune type and is somewhat rare in the US and most other countries. Its main characteristic is large "edemic goiters". So when these natural thyroid supplement manufacturers claim you need iodine supplementation, this is just a plao to market their non-presciption products.

The bottom line is that if you have hypothyroidism, prescription hormone replacement medication is the unavoidable answer.