Hi all. I am new to this board and am hoping to get some good feedback about Armour and whether it is a good medicine to be on. Awhile back I had a doctor tell me I was hypothyroid according to my symptoms and # that came back. I believe my TSH was around 3.6 at the time. Anyway, he put me on Synthroid. I started out at .25 and then got moved to .75. Well, personally I didn't think it did a thing for me other than make me gain weight. I know that is a symptom of hypothroid and I had gained weight prior to this diagnosis too, but from the moment my doctor put me on it I started gaining more. I gained about 15 pounds pretty quickly during that time. They said it was not the medicine, but I have my doubts. Not to mention I had a family doctor ask why this other doctor really thought I needed to go on it to start with, I stopped taking the medicine cold turkey. I know, big mistake.
Anyway, I recently I went to a new ENT because I was having the same symptoms as before, stuggle to loose weight even when dieting pretty strongly, major fatigue, cold all the time, have trouble sleeping, the lump in the thoat/hoarse voice, losing hair, tightness in throat, etc. Not to mention a few other symptoms that I am wondering could not be caused by this after reading the board such as TMJ (which I a pretty recent ailment), eyes sensitive to light and most recently a loss of balance or light headedness when getting up from sitting/laying. Also can it cause acid reflux (silent type)? I was diagnosed for that before thyroid came into play and I am wondering now if the are not connected...
He has scheduled me to go in for an ultrasound in a couple of weeks and ran some new tests and these are my # now:
TSH - 5.4
Free T3 - 2.8
Free T4 - .92
T4 - 7.3
T3 updake 28.2
This doctor does not much care for Synthroid and prescribed Armour to me. I just want some feedback on how you like it? The last thing I want from this one is to gain weight from it.
Also, one of my very worst symptoms is not just that lump in the thoat feeling, but a soreness down low in my throat or esophagus. Not your typical sore throat though. I don't know how to explain it other than to say it feels like one of my vocal cords is not fully functioning and it can hurt when I clear my thoat or talk. Can thyroid cause vocal cord problems? I know, I have more issues than you wanted to hear about!

Hopefully some of you can give me good feedback though.
~Leigh