Transcription
Hey guys, this is Curtis Alexander. I'm a pharmacist.
In this video, I want to tackle a question I got from a previous video on thyroid medications. And the person was like, "Hey, if people have trouble converting T4 to T3 and they have these thyroid problems, can I just take T3 by itself?" And in this video, I'm going to cover that.
Before I get going, make sure to go to curtis-alexander.com. I've got a free report on natural things that I do now as a pharmacist that have helped me a lot. So make sure you go grab that.
So let's hop right into it. So, just to kind of go back, in your body, it produces T4 and a little bit of T3. But most of your T3 comes from your T4. It will go out into the body, primarily in your liver, it's converted to T3. And in most people's minds, T3 is the active form. I'll get to that in a second, why that's not totally the case.
But so the question was, "Hey, you know, if I'm having low thyroid problems, why don't I just take T3 and be done with it? My body doesn't have to convert it." In theory, can you do that? Yes, you can do that. And there are people that have done it, and there are people that claim, uh, it's the thing that helped them. So I'm not saying you can't do it, but there are some issues with it.
So, um, first of all, we have to keep in mind, we were talking about going from T4 to T3 in your body, right? So if we just give somebody T3, it bypasses that conversion issue. But you have to remember, T4 is not just a prohormone. It's not just something to be converted into T3. There are tissues in your body that need T4, that respond to T4. Two of which is your brain and your hair follicles. They respond to T4, okay? So let's keep that in mind.
T3, some people will get their labs drawn, and their labs will come back as showing that they have a high reverse T3. Now, I don't want to get into the biochemical stuff of reverse T3, but most people when they see that, they're going to be like, "Okay, reverse T3 is blocking my T3 receptors, I need more T3." And we run into problems with that because it's natural for your body to have a reverse T3. Reverse T3 is not necessarily a bad thing.
What can cause higher than normal reverse T3, though? Aging can do that. When you're on a very calorie-restricted diet, your body will purposely slow your metabolism down by bumping reverse T3 up. You can see it when your cortisol levels are high, when you're stressed, reverse T3 can be elevated. Type 1 diabetics, people on beta blockers can see. Beta blockers, propranolol. I'll search my channel, I've got propranolol videos, other beta blocker videos.
So the point being is that a couple of the reasons why people state this is why I take T3 only aren't great reasons to do that. Again, I'm not saying it can't help, but in general, it's not going to be a cure-all, okay?
Now, another point I want to make. There are pros to taking T3. A couple of them, I've already touched on. Some people do respond well, I'm not saying they don't. Now, here's another one. Like we talked about, for T4 to be converted to T3, this step right here requires an enzyme called deiodinase. All right? Some people have genetic issues where they don't have these D1 and D2 deiodinase enzymes, so they can't convert. In that case, it would make sense to give that person T3 because they, they have difficulty converting, okay? So those are a couple of pros.
Now, some cons. We've already talked about, hey, there's a couple of tissues in your body that require T4, the prohormone. One of which was your brain and hair. And so if you give certain people just T3, this is what we see. They can have brain fog, almost dementia-like symptoms. They can experience hair loss. We can see increased risk of osteoporosis. We can see blood pressure problems. We'll see the blood glucose go up. And a really important one that isn't mentioned a lot is we can have hormonal changes. These people can see their estradiol and sex hormone binding globulin go up. Not what we want to see. So there's downsides to supplementing with just T3.
So what's the takeaway here? Can you do it? Yes, you can do it. Is it the right thing to do? I honestly don't know. What I encourage people to do is generally start with a mix. Most people don't do great just on T4 because usually with low thyroid, there's a problem converting to T3. There's also a subset of people who don't do well just on T3, they experience these symptoms. So a good middle ground to start, talk to your doctor about just going on a mix of T4, T3. You can do this with a one-pill product like Armour Thyroid. Uh, there's also NP Thyroid. There's different products. There's always problems with availability. And if there are, you can go to two separate pills. You can do Synthroid or the generic, which is just T4, and then you can also add on Cytomel, which is just T3.
And then what you could do, and this one's really good because you can adjust the dosages so much more. And what I encourage people is don't chase labs, okay? Yeah, labs are important, but they're not the be-all and end-all. How do you feel? How's your sleep? Is your hair thinning and falling out? Do you have brain fog? All these things we talked about. Base it off how you feel. And a great way to do that is to start with a middle dose. Talk to your doctor about that. And then adjust based off how you're doing.
If you've tried just T3, let me know in the comments. It's helpful for me, it's helpful for other people who watch the video. Speaking of helpful, I hope this video was helpful, and I will see you in the next one. Thanks.