It Was Like a Light Was Switched On – Today I Am Well on T3 (Liothyronine)

I am thrilled and utterly relived to tell my story feeling, healthy, happy and as I used to feel before my battle with the thyroid began.

Today I am well. Today I am near to fully recovered.

I am a 38 year old mum, wife and business owner. I have always been incredibly active and adventurous. My mother, my aunts and my brother all have an under active thyroid, so I was always expecting the same to happen to me. I had the usual TSH test annually from my doctor which I thought to be the appropriate measure of how I was doing.

Throughout my adult life I went through phases where I would suddenly lose a lot of weight & suffer from insomnia. This would then swing in the other direction and I would gain lots of weight and feel horribly sluggish.

I had my daughter in 2012 and after her birth, again I lost a lot of weight, became very thin and put this down to being stressed with a new child.

When my daughter turned 3 years old I started to gain weight, feel sluggish again and overall feel pretty horrible. I tried to eat better and be generally more healthy but it didn’t make an ounce of difference. I play a lot of sports and exercise very regularly. No matter how much exercise I did, the weight would not shift.

Some months later I took a downturn and felt like I was seriously ill. I couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings, I would fall asleep incredibly early in the evening & I ached all over. I went to my doctor who ran blood tests. They all came back normal.

Soon after this my whole body crashed. I could not move out of bed, I could not think straight, my mind was a total blur and I honestly thought I would never be the same again. I stayed in bed for days in end. I wasn’t getting better despite the endless sleep I was getting.

Throughout those months, despite my blood tests coming back normal, I suspected it was my thyroid. I spoke to my doctor again who suggested I pay privately for a full thyroid function test.

While waiting for my results I read as much as I could make sense of online. My mother and my brother both take Levothyroxine (T4) and had experienced horrid symptoms, no real relief from their thyroid symptoms and did not found it to be an effective treatment. I knew the likelihood is that it would be the same for me.

It was while I was researching from my bed that I came across Paul Robinson’s book and the prospect of a treatment that offered a real solution with T3.

I waited for my test results to come through and indeed I had an under active thyroid but it also revealed I had antibodies for Hashimotos. I had no idea what this was. But have since come to understand this was likely the reason for my fluctuating weight and symptoms all through my adult life.

I read Paul Robinson’s Recovering with T3 book, I took every bit of advice from the book. I began with taking all the right vitamin supplements and then preparing myself for T3 exactly as Paul described. I joined the online forum on FB where I found others like me and plenty of incredibly helpful people ready to support. I went ‘gluten free’ as suggested, slowly began to exercise again, and then took a saliva cortisol test so I knew where my adrenals were at before starting.

Once all this was in place I finally got started with taking T3, the online admins supported me while I was trying to fine-tune my T3 dosage, and the book was my guiding light all through the process of finding my optimal dose.

8 weeks into taking T3 I began to feel better. And finally another 4 weeks after that I feel truly well.

It’s like a light has been switched on for me. I can think straight, I feel energetic, I sleep better, my body weight is levelling and my husband and daughter have their wife and mummy back.

My husband has said that ‘his wife is back in the room’. That for me was powerful to hear.

I had been so lost in my illness. Now my house is (fairly) clean and tidy, I’m able to run my business, I do sports or workout most days, and I’m feeling pretty alive in the world all thanks to taking T3.

If you’re knee deep in your illness and you’re desperate for solutions, I would seriously encourage you to keep fighting for your health. Recovery is out there. And it could be yours, like it has been mine.