pills losing potency/storage of pills

midwest1

These questions are ones that your friendly pharmacist is ready and willing to answer. I find pharmacists to be among my favorite professionals. (No, I aren't one.... lol)

I think they will tell you to absolutely NOT store your Armour or Levoxyl in the fridge; it's far too humid in there for things that should stay dry. You should probably store it in the coolest, dryest place in your house, in its original pharmacy bottle. I keep a week's worth of mine in a pill minder in the vicinity of where I take it each day and the rest of the script in a cool, dry cabinet away from the light.

Levoxyl has a checkered history of recalls for being subpotent. They just finished a lawsuit over that very issue, maybe two months ago... not much longer than that, I don't think. You could ask the pharmacist whether they've gotten other complaints about symptoms returning after refilling a script. Maybe your refill even came from the recalled subpotent supply.... Could happen. Someone reported in this forum a while ago that she had finally figured out why her levels kept fluctuating so badly.... Her pharmacy didn't move much Armour, and so it was using outdated product to fill scripts.

Of course, it could be you need a higher dose. But you should always check out the other possibilities too.

fromos5

I had all kinds of weird problems with Armour. I'd get a refill, things would be great for a month, then I'd crash and my TSH would rise to 20 and my doc would think I wasn't even taking my pills. I called Forest Pharmaceuticals (makers of Armour), I switched pharmacies, I tried getting 1 month's supply at a time instead of 3, I tried keeping little moisture absorption packs in my pill bottles ... I finally just gave up. My first 2 years on Armour were great, then everthing went crazy and I suffered like hell for another 2 years. TSH should not swing from .01 to 20.5 and back on a consistent dose of 3 grains of Armour!

I never did figure any of this out. We even theorized that maybe I had developed some type of antibody to porcine thyroid hormones. Who knows. I've been back on Levoxyl (which I thought I would NEVER go back to) since late April. I felt better within a month and my hair is growing back. My last TSH was still too high, 4.93, but that was only 6 weeks on Levoxyl. We upped my dose just a tad and she insisted on waiting 3 months (I hate that when docs do that!!) to be retested ... that's up this next week. Hopefully things have stabilized.

I don't know what to tell you, other than that through MY experience, I would suspect the Armour (although others swear by it and never have probs). I never ever had swung up and down hyper to hypo like that during my 10+ years on Synthroid or Levoxyl! It varies, yes, but not THAT drastically.

Debbie
-Hashi for over 15 years
-Partial ********ctomy in 1989
-Type 1 autoimmune diabetes

dlkk

Could you give me more information on the lawsuit. I know that synthroid had a lawsuit that paid out, but I didn't know levoxyl did.

midwest1

I used the wrong term... I should have said "recall", not "lawsuit". Here's the information from the FDA:
[url]http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/enforce/2004/ENF00858.html[/url]

redwine842

Thanks, Midwest, for posting the recall page. I called my pharmacist and checked my lot number against the website - my pills are not on the list.

Just another bit of ammunition for the doctors that Armour is not "the one" that has potency problems.

I'm beginning to think that I am experiencing a flair-up of Hashi's because my back hurts - a symptom that I had for years, and I had noticed that it was gone, without any change of excerise on my part - yoga had help immensely in the past but I have not done it for months.

Or, perhaps the week off has something to do with it, but if so, my symptoms should be getting better already, it has been two weeks since I restarted the levoxyl after a weeks hiatus. I'll never stop again - what ever the cause of my symptoms, the wonder of "could it be the week off" isn't worth it and makes diagnosing and maintaining too difficult.

redwine