# Do you take your thyroid hormone on blood test days?



## Swimmer (Sep 12, 2013)

Hi, do you take your thyroid hormone on blood test days?

So say I take armour at 4 am, have a blood test at 10am or so, should I have not taken it that morning, should I skip the whole day or take it after the blood test? Then do you wait 24 hours or on the next day can you take it at 4 am again?

What is the understanding regarding this, and do doctors know what you are doing? Like do you tell the doc, yeah I skipped the thyroid pill this morning -- are they good with that?

Thanks for your thoughts to help me understand.


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## Lovlkn (Dec 20, 2009)

Consistency is key -

I quit taking my thyroid hormone the morning prior to the test. Since the last year or so I began taking my levo between 2-5 a.m. and my 1st Cytomel dose around 5-6 a.m. which means I now postpone both of those until after labs have been drawn. I try my best to have labs done at the same time frame and will take my med's after labs are drawn - usually on the way home with alot of water.

What I see as more of an issue is having labs drawn at different times during the day and having taken med's a few hours prior to having them drawn. Now - if you take your replacement at 4 a.m and have labs drawn at 4 p.m and do this every time - than you have set up a baseline of where you should be. I personally prefer to know my labs being off my med's for, which turns out to almost 30 hours of T-4 replacement and 15 hours of T-3 replacement which I guess skews my results but I've been doing this for awhile and know where they should fall.


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## CA-Lynn (Apr 29, 2010)

I think people worry unnecessarily about this. For over 20 years I take my Synthroid with about 10 other pills in the morning, all at once, EVERY morning, even on blood test days.

You want to be consistent. Over time the drug is in the system anyway. Too, you will have a steady history of test results if you're consistent.


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## bigfoot (May 13, 2011)

Same here -- consistency. I try to get labs drawn in the morning, which means it's been about 10-12 hours since my evening NT dose, but before my late AM dose yet. This gets even easier if it's going to be a fasting lab, because there's no way I'm waiting all day to eat!


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## Jgarris84 (May 11, 2014)

My doctor says not to take my armour before labs since the T-3 is most active the first few hours after taking it that it can falsely be higher.


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