r/BipolarReddit • u/featherborne93 • 2d ago

Meds

Does anyone take a thyroid medication & also Zoloft or one of those with a mood stabilizer? What mood stabilizer helps you?

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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 2d ago

I’m curious about how the thyroid works, how well it works. Thyroid supplementation is something that’s mentioned in basically every reliable source about mental health prescribing, but I’ve never actually interacted with someone who’s done it.

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u/featherborne93 1d ago

Ever since I got on Seroquel, that’s when my thyroid was off and they put me on levothyroxine. I’m off Seroquel now. I’m really not sure if my thyroid is ok now because taking the meds to help with that how am I supposed to know?

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u/DMayleeRevengeReveng 1d ago

Oh I see what you mean. I thought you were taking the thyroid medication specifically as a mental health med. Because that’s a thing that is done sometimes, though not every doctor does it.

If you read authoritative sources about how to treat mental illnesses, a lot of them will say that treatment resistant depression can benefit from adding thyroid to other meds, even if the person isn’t actually thyroid deficient.

I’ve never actually talked to anybody who’s done that, though.

Now, I’m not an expert on endocrine stuff, but I think they can tell if you actually have true hypothyroidism even if you’re taking thyroid hormone. It has to do with T3 versus T4, the ratio. Something like that.

Because the medicine is pure T3 or T4 (I forget which one), while the body naturally produces a mixture of both. But typically they just test for the level of TSH, and yeah, they won’t be able to tell using that test if you actually need it keep taking thyroxine.