Am I being over medicated?

Hi Jennifer, I'm sorry to hear you've been feeling bad. Overmedication of thyroid medicine is truly awful. It's tough to say exactly what is going on but certainly the anxiety, palpitations and tinnitus can be related to being over medicated. For what it's worth, you can click on my username and see my med history info and experience replying to another person who was over medicated. It is a finnicky process to go through and get out of as well. I had a fairly low heart rate as well despite being over medicated. I don't know how to put all the pieces together quite yet but I think taking levothyroxine in too high of an amount increased the extra T4 to Reverse T3 causing me to not get enough T3 into the cells and therefor felt hyper while also feeling hypo. It's just a theory! I had a bizarre mix of both. Sadly, my case went on for two years before being caught, mostly because my lab work didn't always reflect being hyper. I still have no idea what exactly went on with me but I've read cortisol problems from being stressed and too much T4 (from medication) can cause problems with reverse T3. I also went gluten free prior to my emergence of hyper symptoms and from what I've read, I think it really starts to heal the thyroid and you don't need as much medication. I've lowered my dose quite a bit and feel MUCH better. Just as a heads up, there's another big piece to being over medicated and it relates to histamine. It's still kind of new in the medical community but hyperthyroidism creates too many histamine receptors (being undermedicated creates too much histamine) and a lot of hyper symptoms mimic or are related to histamine problems (i.e. heart palpitations, anxiety, jittery, insomnia, hot flashes, rashes, etc). Check out histamine intolerance and maybe start a food diet to see if your symptoms are corresponding to certain foods. Fermented foods, wine, chocolate, spinach, tomato, etc are all high histamine foods. If you've been over medicated it's likely you're sensitive to histamine until things level out. Be careful to not decrease your thyroid med dose too quickly because then you can build up histamine. Too much histamine with too many histamine receptors is a recipe for feeling awful. It took me months to work through that and I'm still trying to find exactly the right dose. I hope you feel better soon and hang in there! It will get better!

Also, since it was a year ago that your dose was increased and you started to experience symptoms more recently, I do wonder if you have started to create too many histamine receptors from being overmedicated. I've read it takes a while of being over medicated for this to happen and unfortunately takes some time to level back out. Definitely try a food journal/diary. Also, see if it corresponds to having experienced any recent stress in relation to the cortisol problems. Another tidbit is having low iron can contribute to some bizarre thyroid problems and difficulty tolerating thyroid medication as well. If you visit with your doctor ask them to run a comprehensive iron panel on you including ferritin, iron percent saturation etc. One last thing is take your blood pressure. A very, very helpful person shared in this forum about an equation a doctor once told her to see if you're over medicated/hyper. I found it to be true for me when I went through this. Of course you have to take it periodically since there's always some one off situations where blood pressure is flaring up, or not fully accurate of your current status. The equation is to take the systolic number (top number) minus the diastolic number (bottom number) and multiply it by your heart rate/pulse. If the number is above 3200 it is possible there is some hyperthyroidism going on. The reasoning is a wide pulse pressure (large gap between systolic and diastolic) is indicative of too much thyroid hormone. I read in a medical journal article that hyperthyroidism can increase the systolic number but lower diastolic. It affects how the heart refills or something along those lines which is what diastolic is measuring. (It was very in depth lol!) Are you able to see an endocrinologist to follow up? They could rule out any adrenal problems as well just to make sure there's not something else going on.

Exercise and eat lots of carbohydrates.