Summary: I think my pre-diabetes went away with a change in my thyroid medication.

I wanted to share this story since there may be other people out there battling too-high blood glucose and taking thyroid meds.

I've been on thyroid meds since my late 20s. I took 125mcg daily. Seemed to work fine, but after menopause, maybe a bit before, it started to be too much. I was getting palpitations, insomnia, etc. So I cut it back myself by skipping one day a week. Eventually even with that weekly skipping of a day it felt like too much, so I finally asked my doctor to cut it down.

She did and it helped with some things fairly quickly, but my blood sugar was still too high. So it has been at least 6 months since we cut it down and suddenly my fasting BG has dropped almost 30 points. WHAT?!

I was mystified about why. Sure, my diet has been low carb with occasional oopsies, but my BG was always very stubborn. Why the sudden drop? Is it because I am exercising more? I would've thought a more gradual drop would happen, but this drop happened over the course of weeks.

I started looking into thyroid and glucose and found a connection between too-high thyroid levels and liver dysfunction and hyperglycemia. Ok, but why the delay in my blood glucose dropping then a sudden major drop? Of course, I can't 100% explain it, but my suspicion is that I had fatty liver from the high BG and lowering the dose resolved that situation over time. When it was better, then the BG finally dropped.

Stunning to go from 115-120 fasting BG in the morning to, this morning, 90!

Also, my BG drops really nicely from exercise now where it didn't before. I ate a sweet treat yesterday and got a reading of 129 (which is much lower than what I would've seen before) and pedaled on my bike for 20 minutes and got down to 91.

So... wow!

Thyroid Meds Increase Risk for Elevated Blood sugar

All your changes are fascinating! Good detective work..I have not heard of this before either.

Why were you prescribed synthroid so young and for so long? I asked about thyroid meds to help with weight loss over the years, but my doctors never bought into the alternative blood work and now I’m glad I didn’t. My TSH was always better than "normal" range so no reason to dig further.

While looking at previous posts in the thyroid sub-forum I found a 2013 thread on Food and Nutrition where we both posted. Another decade gone by

Why didn’t I stick with this???? https://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=449460
Somewhere I fell off eating more nutrient dense carbs, and needed to find my way back to that simple healthy solution. The "keto craze" did not allow enough nutrient dense carbs to keep my thyroid working properly, and I had to discover those again!

And…



https://optimisingnutrition.com/tro...m-losing-weight


The Keto Diet…whatever your internet definition of it is, leaves many with nutrient deficiencies, eating low satiety, high fat foods.

If anyone wonders about the nutrient deficiencies in their diet, Marty Kendall offers a Free analysis. You need the free Cronometer app, and have to be consistent with logging food for 7 days, but better and cheaper than blood work, etc.
https://app.nutrientoptimiser.com/optin1587482063307

I had Graves disease which the treatment for was radio-iodine to disable the thyroid. So I've been on replacement hormone ever since.

However, I came here to retract all that. I think my amazing diabetes cure was actually due to a bad batch of meter strips. BAH! I even tested against a second package of the strips, but they were probably from the same batch.

What a crappy disappointment!

Oh no! Sorry about those strips.

I forgot you had Grave's Disease, but you have remained healthy and doing well after the radioactive iodine thyroid treatment. Amy Berger has been working on a new book on all things thyroid. Her co-author has been slowing things down. I just checked her Amazon Page…nope, not even on pre-order yet.