I just found out that I have an under-active thyroid. My doctor put me on medication. I am extremely tired all of the time and insensitive to cold. My hair has started thinning and I have only gained about 5 pounds. I will start the medication tomorrow. I am getting married in November. Will my hair continue to fall out and will I continue to feel tired and get worse? Will it start to immediately get better?

Last year I was incredibly active, running around, and now I work and come home and just lay around. I thought I was just getting lazy.

I feel like after reading a lot of these posts that this is very scary and it is making me really anxious. Any advice/help?

Thanks.

what medication did your doctor RX? That will help a bit in answering your questions.
The good news is once you are optimized you will start to feel normal and more energetic again, the slightly bad news is that it can take a while to get optimized.

Have you checked out "Stop the Thyroid Madness" website yet? there is a lot of good information about thyroid, symptoms and the various medications

It takes awhile for the medication to kick in, like 4 weeks to build up to full strength. So they'll test you about every 6 weeks and see if you need more.

One thing you might want to realize is the doctors test you to see if your thyroid falls within a very large range and it might be in range but still might not be optimal, so you might want to push for a dosage increase even if it is in range. My own doctor was happy to adjust my dose just so long as I didn't go into hyperthyroid range.

Another thing you can do is take your meds right before bedtime. It seems to make them more effective.

So sorry to hear that you have this problem at your age, but at least you found out early (before you gained weight and had even more hair loss.) You may want to also have your iron/ferritin levels checked. If you are low in iron, this contributes to the hair loss. I used Rogaine for several months and it really did seem to help. You can get a 3 month supply now at Walgreen's for like $39.00.

If you're on the right medication for *you*, you'll get better within a month or two.

(I have eyebrows again! )

It can sometimes take a very long time to get the right dose and it takes awhile for your body to recover, but you will get there.