Guidelines for using MMI to treat TED - Question and Answer Forum - Elaine Moore Graves' Disease and Autoimmune Disease Education

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Saturday, February 04, 2012

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Welcome to The Q&A with Elaine Moore. Registered members are invited to ask any question of Elaine Moore on autoimmune diseases, Graves' disease, other thyroid diseases and subconditions, laboratory work, traditional and complementary medicine, triggers and environmental influences, thyroid and immune disorders in pets and animals, and other relevant areas of inquiry.

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Guidelines for using MMI to treat TED

7/24/2010 2:02 PM

DebbieB

Joined: 7/16/2010

Posts: 32

Guidelines for using MMI to treat TED

Hi Elaine,

I know your book on TED talks about people who have used PTU to treat TED. My doctor generally uses PTU to treat TED after RAI. Because of my recent flare up, I tried PTU and had disasterous results. My T3 dropped to 2.3. I felt horrible and my eyes got worse. Six weeks after stopping the PTU, my eyes are still bone dry, blurred, burning, itching, etc. I am taking flax seed but I am post menopausal and live in the dry Arizona desert. Not a good combination. My eye doctor finally gave me Restasis and put plugs in my tear ducts, but they are not healed yet.

I convinced my doctor (endo) to let me try MMI since it does not affect conversion to T3. She is having me start at 2.5mg a day for one week, adding 2.5mg weekly until I reach 10mg. Why do I need to ease into taking MMI so slowly? How long can I expect it to take before I see improvement in my eyes? What is the long term plan as far as staying on MMI? My doctor says most of her patients want to stay on PTU forever. That seems like a long time to me.

Debbie

7/26/2010 2:06 AM

Elaine

Joined: 8/1/2008

Posts: 3150

Re: Guidelines for using MMI to treat TED

Hi Debbie,

After RAI, people with TED occasionally use ATDs with replacement hormone as block and replace therapy. The ATD dose is low and enough hormone is given to keep FT4 and FT3 at the high end of the range and TSH is typically very low. This protocol helps with TED and the ATD dose is gradually reduced and people eventually are on thyroid replacement hormone alone (by 6-9 months into treatment). There's no reason to continue on ATDs after this time frame as your goal is to slow the gland's activity down, and this can be accomlished with replacement hormone alone. best, elaine

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Guidelines for using MMI to treat TED

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