My Recovery with T3 and Paul Robinson’s Help – the Recovering with T3 Book is Simply the Most Important Book I Have Read in My Life!

I would like to just quickly let you all know of my recovery with T3 and Paul Robinson’s support.

In 2006, after 12 years of Prozac treatment for severe depression, 15 years of steady weight gain and chronic fatigue and numerous trips to the doctor for what I now know were classic symptoms, I was finally diagnosed with “hypothyroidism” by a locum doctor while suffering from “Carpal Tunnel”. Although my TSH reading was only 6, I felt so relieved that my suspicions were finally recognised, I persuaded the doctor to put me on Levothyroxine  straight away as, at that stage, I believed that my chronic health issues would soon be behind me and I would have a chance to get my life back!

After a couple of weeks I felt that things improved slightly, but then they nose dived again. At this stage my doctor retested my TSH and declared everything as normal saying there was nothing more to do but carry on taking the pills.

My sister, who is a nutritional therapist, had a copy of Peatfield’s original book and reading this was my turning point, leading me to discover the importance of other treatments for Hypothyroidism, particularly Armour Thyroid, the natural T4/T3+ combination drug. It was obvious that there are inadequacies in the standard Levothyroxine treatment, coupled with the incompetence of the standard medical approach of basing treatment protocol on blood test results. The book also gave me the confidence to be more proactive in my treatment and I found a private doctor who could prescribe me “Armour”.  Again I felt better at first on Armour but soon worsened.

I then introduced Adrenal Glandulars, which greatly improved my symptoms and chugged along on 2 grains of Armour and 600mg glandulars for the next two years, believing that this was as good as it gets.

Unfortunately, my private doc retired and, as I had returned to full time work leaving me no time to research or find another doctor, I resorted to NHS T4 again. Within the next 6 months, I became more severely hypo than I had ever been and had to resign from my job, settling back onto my sofa to snooze my way back through life again. At least I managed to start reading and researching again and managed to get Armour on the internet and set about trying to raise my dose of both the Armour and Adrenal glandulars. Unfortunately I found that raising my Armour dose only made my symptoms worse. I tried cutting right back and re-starting 3 times but each time when I reached 3 grains my hypo symptoms worsened.

I hit the books again and began to think that logically (I know us girls aren’t supposed to do this!), if my body was becoming thyrotoxic when I got to this higher dose, I must be building up a backlog of unutilised T4, or possibly RT3, that was messing up the feedback loop and blocking conversion of T4 to T3. I realised in a Ureka moment that if I couldn’t properly convert T4 into useable T3, then why couldn’t I just use T3 and go straight to the sharp end? I went back to the books researching thyroid hormone  resistance and T3 use as I knew it had been mentioned but found only tantalisingly cursory reference to it.

So I decided to check out Thyroid UK for any mention of T3 medication and started reading blogs by Puret3paul (Paul Robinson). Paul was amazing and took time to discuss my situation and send me the manuscript of the book he was writing (Recovering with T3). Reading the incredible amount of information and personal experiences that were in the book gave me all the confidence I needed to continue with my chosen path of T3 only treatment.

I visited Dr P and told him of my conclusions about the need for T3 only medication and he completely agreed suggesting a dose of 1/2 tablet twice a day. Fortunately I had already learned the right approach to dosing through Paul Robinson’s book and knew that I had a lot more to do before establishing my correct daily dose and wouldn’t need Dr P’s help for this.

I managed to get some Liothyronine sodium (T3) and started my new protocol and life on the 1st July 2011.  At first I was still taking  1000mg of Adrenal Glandulars and after two weeks, had a salivary test showing no abnormalities so decided to drop them. I had been taking my first dose of T3 at 8am and had raised my dose gradually to 92.75mcg a day in 4 doses. At this stage I became a little confused about my symptoms as I experienced palpitations and tiredness at odd times.

After talking it through with Paul Robinson again, I dropped my doses down to three, halved them and took the first dose at 5am in the cortisol window. I then slowly started re-raising, starting with the circadian T3 method.

Within 3 weeks I had raised to only 62.5mcg and felt amazing!

I can now report that for the last year I have felt better than I have since the birth of my youngest child 21 years ago.

I have bought 2 copies (gave 1 to my endo!) of Paul Robinson’s book on Amazon – called Recovering with T3 and would urge anyone who has any interest in taking responsibility for their own health and recovery to do the same – simply the most important book I have ever read in my life!

Good luck!

Posted by Julie W
8th July 2012