Thyroid levels are very important and you cant guess!

I just want to remind folks of this. Many possible symptoms of tick borne illnesses are the SAME as low (hypo) thyroid symptoms. Many of the tick illness symptoms are because its taxing your thyroid. Seem that some LLMD's kind of ignore this.

You can guess at it either. You dont know what the natural supplements for thyroid do, most do nothing since there is no hormone in them. Per US law, no supplements can contain thyroid hormone, yes you can research this. If it has "glandular" in them, the hormone is drawn out. Some herbs might "kickstart" a beat up thyroid if your not to far off- but your guessing with out testing.

You need the actual FULL thyroid blood panel to know your levels. Free T3, FreeT4 and TSH. If your T3 and T4 are low then get the Hashimoto antibody tests done - TgAb and TPO.

Unfortunately I've had Hashi for years and learned the hard way. If your thyroid does not improve after lyme is gone you will need thyroid med. If your on the long term lyme plan, you will benefit from proper thyroid levels with additional daily thyroid med (hormone). And you WILL feel better.

Possible Hypothyroid symptoms: Night sweats, hot flashes, aches, brain fog, cold body, weight loss or gain (yes both can be from hypo, not always weight gain), anxiety, depression, much more since all cells need thyroid hormone to function properly. Yep, all. And if your thyroid is messed up, it can throw off adrenal and blood sugar levels to. The Endo system is all connected and affected by infection.

thats all folks...........

You know, we really need a "reset button" dont we!

My doctor tested me on my first Lyme appt along with the mthfr mutations plus a lot of other stuff. Other doctors only ever checked the TSH. My GYN did the TSH and it was high but she would treat it, then a few months later I had my LLMD appt. he wrote a script right then for nature thyroid but then checked me further and found I also had Hashimoto. Hoping the Lyme caused it and I really don't permenantly have it.

Astroman what do you do for Hashimoto and did you have it before Lyme? What were your symptoms?

Revive to answer your questions "Astroman what do you do for Hashimoto and did you have it before Lyme? What were your symptoms?"


I felt my initial classic Lyme symptoms 25 years ago, before the popularity of the internet. Drs blew me off for years. LLMD's? They did not exist. There was good years and bad years. Oh well.......

Then in the late 90's it was discovered I had Hashimoto (a disease they recognized). T4 Synthyroid did NOTHING for my symptoms.

Then I learned on my own about thyroid and other meds for it. Tried the old Armour and felt better, but not as great as I heard others mention. That when I figured I really did have more issues, like Lyme, and was Dxed Lyme in 2013 per LLMD.

So I dont know what came first, or if my Hashi is a result of Lyme since I was sick for 10 years without ANY diagnosis. The internet saved my life almost. Not Drs of yesterday.

I currently use NP thyroid dessicated by Acella. Its like old Armour was years ago.

In 15 years have experience with Synthyroid, generic levothyroxine, Cytomel synthetic T3, old and new Armour, old and new Nature Thyroid, out of business Time Caps and Major brand Armour generics, ERFA thyroid Canadian and now NP Thyroid.......all in that order.

Half of that stuff was because of the Armour production halt of 2009, and the later reformulation that does not work well for me and many others. Armour and Nature Thyroid were both awesome before 2009. They obviously still work for some people, but they might not know how good the original formulations felt.

Many symptoms of hypothyroid and tick infections overlap, it differs in everyone to some extent. When I'm hypo (from blowing off thyroid tests)- muscle pain, hair loss, night sweats, weakness, insomnia, anxiety, fatigue, brain fog are worse. But before ABX, all these were also worse, so abx helped too. They truly overlap (thyroid and lyme). So when I had all of these sym's before ABX, they got worse when hypo, but never completely went away with optimal thyroid levels- the Lyme was showing thru. Maybe Bart too.

I also had some nuero/cognitive /speech, dyslexia that only ABX helped- thyroid med did nothing for some things. And thyroid med did nothing for neck pain either, but ABX did.

No easy answer for the symptom question.

Rev- " I've heard some doctors do nothing for hashimoto till the thyroid burns out" - thats crazy. many people could not function at that point. Some Drs should not be Drs.

Leg is better, swelling down, my foot moves normal again. Still taking it easy though.

Agreed! Some doctors should NOT be doctors!! I went to an Endo and he just wanted to do surgery on me instead of prescribing Armour!

I'm one of those that has no idea what the 'old Armour' was like, so I like the 'new Armour' - as it was the first one my new doc put me on.

When I was first infected, I tested positive for Hashimoto's, but it cleared up when I healed from Lyme. I had developed a hypothyroid condition and severe adrenal exhaustion before I had been reinfected with Lyme the second time, and that's when I was put on the Armour.

I'm so glad to hear that your leg is doing better as well!! It always scares me when I hear of symptoms that can be a blood clot after what my hubby went through!