Every day I get bombarded with messages telling me how much you hate being on Levothyroxine and how it’s to blame for all your symptoms.

Well, I lovingly disagree.

Levothyroxine is a thyroid supplement. It’s not perfect (your body still needs to work hard to convert it) and some (few) people are sensitive to certain brands. But getting off it shouldn’t become your life’s mission.

Here’s what I want you to know about Levothyroxine:

Levothyroxine doesn’t ‘treat’ anything. It does, however, replenish what we’re missing (correcting hypothyroidism).

If you want to heal your thyroid and your body, you want to dig into the root cause and find the imbalances that are fuelling your condition, Levo is not going to help, BUT it’s going to give your body the hormone it needs in the right amounts AS YOU WORK ON THE ROOT CAUSE.

It is truly not the ultimate evil so many people believe it to be. It replenishes the hormone that your body doesn’t produce enough of. It doesn’t change your body’s chemistry like so many super popular drugs do (like PPIs or statins).

It’s not a foreign substance – your body knows it well (even in the synthetic form).

Levothyroxine is a thyroid supplement, not the ultimate evil. Seeing it as this terrible medication you have to be on for life keeps you stuck in the “I’m sick” mentality.

Switching to viewing it as a supplement, supporting your body’s hormonal matrix and supplying what it needs to function well, shifts that identity and allows you to focus on addressing the root cause and long-term healing.

It is possible to lower your dosage or even come off it entirely, but that takes time and patience. Sometimes in order to go down you have to temporarily go up. It won’t make your thyroid ‘lazy’ or whatever other nonsense someone with no qualifications shared online.

Getting off medication should not be your immediate priority

What you should be focusing on right now is not getting off the meds, but putting your symptoms in remission and feeling like your best self again (and that is absolutely possible, even if you’ve been struggling with this for a very long time).

Once you get there (or almost there), then worry about remission of antibodies. And only THEN maybe think about lowering (or at some point getting off) the meds.

You might be wondering, “ok Aggie but what about T3? What about NDT? Isn’t that the holy grail of thyroid medication?”

Well, in my experience not so much, or at least not for everyone.

It works for some people, but not for everyone. I would say the vast majority of people I have worked with had a very intense reaction to T3, with lots of over-stimulation and increased anxiety. This is because your body is not used to receiving T3, inducing that fight/flight, sympathetic activation. And as sympathetic activation is already dominant in hypo, adding fuel to the fire can be a bad idea.

The thing that you need to understand is that your thyroid produces a miniscule amount of T3 (10%, or around 5mcg per day) and the rest is converted from the inactive hormone T4 (thyroxine, or in a synthetic form levothyroxine). So, in my experience, we shouldn’t immediately be seeking the external supply of T3 but focus more on supporting the conversion.

Note: some people have a genetically impaired ability to effectively convert T4 to T3 (DIO2 SNP), in which case the T3 addition would be recommended. I use a genetic testing company called LifecodeGx for testing for my 121 and BLOOM clients.

Here’s how to make levothyroxine work better for you:

• Replenish nutrients – several nutrients are cofactors for a successful conversion of T4>T3. Think Selenium, zinc, magnesium as the key players
• Support your liver and kidney as most of the conversions happen there, as well as…
• Your gut. Compromised microbiome and high inflammation levels can impact your ability to convert
• Use (and grow) your muscles as they also help you convert. Yet another reason to move your body, increased muscle mass!
• Avoid calorie restriction as this is one of the key conversion inhibitors 
• Improve your stress resilience. High cortisol will compromise your conversions. As much as lowering your stress levels is important, developing a greater STRESS RESILIENCE is a game changer
• Experiment with cold therapy. I will be sharing more about this soon, but cold therapy (and I don’t mean ice baths) can help you develop more brown fat, which is where we see one of the highest activities of DIO2 of the two enzymes responsible for thyroid hormone conversion. Brown fat also helps us with temperature and weight regulation, so I would highly recommend exploring this subject if you are always cold and have some weight to lose

And if you are serious about making this happen, check out my self study course called Thyroid Fundamentals! It’s a self-paced course where in daily short lessons, I help you build a foundation of nutrition/lifestyle habits for optimal thyroid hormone levels (and tangible improvement in symptoms).

Levothyroxine is a thyroid supplement, not your enemy. It’s a tool that can support your body while you work on the root causes of your thyroid condition. Instead of focusing on getting off medication, shift your energy towards healing, building resilience, and addressing the factors that contribute to your symptoms. With the right support and strategies, it’s absolutely possible to feel like your best self again. Follow me on Insta for more!