Hypothyroid treatment how long

About 1 to 2 weeks after you start treatment with levothyroxine, you will likely notice that your levels of fatigue have improved. It is important that you take your medication exactly as prescribed and not miss any doses as well as maintain routine checkups with your primary health care provider.

Your doctor will monitor your thyroid stimulating hormone TSH levels about 6 to 8 weeks after you begin therapy and make any necessary dosage adjustments when warranted. If your dose needs to be adjusted, you will require more labs to check your TSH levels. Once you are at a stable dose, your doctor will typically require you to have blood tests repeated in 6 months, and then once a year after that.

While hypothyroidism cannot be prevented, you can lead a normal and productive life if you take your medicine as prescribed. Some important things to remember once you start taking thyroid hormone medication include 3,4 :. Take your thyroid medication and these medications at least 4 hours apart. Excessive amounts of thyroid hormone can cause various adverse effects which include palpitations, rapid weight loss, restlessness or shakiness, sweating, and insomnia. Patient Education Center Web site.

Accessed November 10, What is Hypothyroidism? Abbott Laboratories Web site. Your thyroid gland plays a significant role in how you feel from day to day—energetic, sluggish, up, down, and more—by keeping the body supplied with thyroid hormones.

Given how important the thyroid gland is, you can see how thyroid disorders and abnormal levels of thyroid hormones can negatively impact your health. Unfortunately, thyroid diseases are not uncommon.

You can have an underactive thyroid hypothyroidism , overactive thyroid hyperthyroidism , or thyroid cancer. We will be focusing on hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism in this article. If your thyroid is underactive, it fails to produce enough thyroid hormone to keep the body running normally—this is called hypothyroidism. Without enough thyroid hormone circulating in your body, you may feel low energy and generally wiped out. To make things more complicated, an underactive thyroid can also affect other health conditions.

For example, hypothyroidism can contribute to high cholesterol levels, so people being evaluated for high cholesterol and heart disease may also need thyroid blood tests. Rarely, If the underactive thyroid is left untreated, you can develop a myxedema coma. Hyperthyroidism usually develops as an autoimmune disease. The immune system produces antibodies that stimulate the thyroid to make more thyroid hormone than it should.

The treatment for hyperthyroidism is to remove or inactivate the overactive thyroid. This can be accomplished with surgery, radioactive iodine, or antithyroid medications like methimazole or propylthiouracil NIDDK, Levothyroxine is the most common synthetic thyroid hormone used to treat an underactive thyroid, according to the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the American Thyroid Association Garber, Also sold under the brand names Synthroid, Levoxyl, and Tirosint, levothyroxine is a synthetic version of the T4 thyroid hormone.

Your treatment of hypothyroidism entails restoring your thyroid hormone levels to normal. It may take several weeks, as the peak effect of levothyroxine can take weeks to achieve DailyMed, Levothyroxine replaces the primary hormone produced by the thyroid gland that it can no longer make for itself. For example, you might be instructed to take the same dose daily or different amounts on different days of the week. Your healthcare provider will check your thyroid-stimulating hormone TSH levels with blood tests to see if your thyroid hormones are in balance; a high TSH means that you need more thyroid hormone and vice versa.

Your healthcare provider will estimate what dosage of thyroid replacement medicine to give you based on things like your age, weight, why you have low thyroid hormone levels and other factors. The dosage might also be influenced by other medicines you take—be sure to tell your provider about any other drugs you take, including prescriptions, over-the-counter medications, and dietary supplements.

Levothyroxine is most effective if you take it on an empty stomach, minutes before eating DailyMed, Discuss any treatment changes with your pharmacist. Some medications are processed by the same enzyme in the liver as levothyroxine — this could interfere enough with your thyroid medication to require dosage adjustments. You should also discuss any potential changes to the brand of thyroid medication that you take. The ATA says that you should not switch from one brand of thyroid medication to another, from your brand to a generic, or from one generic to another without talking to your doctor first.

This is because there may be variation in hormone content among thyroid medications. Hormones matter, and so could weight changes. Hypothyroidism is five to eight times as likely to occur in women as men, according to the ATA. And some life changes that women experience — like pregnancy — can require a dose change. By subscribing you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Health Topics. Health Tools. By Julie H.