Understanding The Risk of Misusing Thyroid Medication

Thyroid medication ranks among the top three most prescribed drugs worldwide and has for decades. With that level of use comes a surprising problem: misuse. Not out of negligence or bad intent, but often from confusion, outdated advice, or trying to “hack” symptoms without understanding the risks.

In this article, we’ll unpack what thyroid medication misuse really looks like and why even well-meaning adjustments can backfire. Most importantly, you’ll learn how to avoid common mistakes and make safer, more effective choices for your thyroid health.

Recommended Product: The T2 T3 Converter, a comprehensive formula designed to support optimal thyroid hormone conversion. This targeted product addresses the conversion process at multiple stages, potentially helping you feel more energized and revitalized. Click Here

Table of Contents

The Top Risks of Misusing Thyroid Medication
Are You Misusing Thyroid Medication?
The Levels of Thyroid Disease
How Can You Avoid Misusing Thyroid Medication?
The Reality of Misusing Thyroid Medication

The Top Risks of Misusing Thyroid Medication

It has been shown that when thyroid medication is prescribed unnecessarily, there are distinct drawbacks. A recent study found that, even when they are described in reasonable doses and blood levels are stable, there is a higher risk of osteoporosis.

We can add to that list a higher risk of mortality and a higher rate of around 15 different kinds of cancers. Those sound like some pretty convincing drawbacks.

The question then becomes: If they’re helpful, could this all be justified? The current evidence suggests that for about 85-90% of those being prescribed thyroid medication, they are probably not going to be helpful. Not at all.

Medications always have side effects. That means that there will always be a sort of cost-benefit analysis that people need to make, understanding if the costs, the side effects, of a medication are worth the intended benefits to their overall health.

Are You Misusing Thyroid Medication?

This is a very tricky topic, and I want to help you get it right. Let me start by detailing a very common example to give you a sense of where you’ve been and what you should do next.

It may be that you have gone on overall treatment protocols that have included thyroid medication, and it has been helpful for you. Maybe it wasn’t complete or on a long-term basis, but for a time, you did feel better. That’s great.

So, how can I tell you that they don’t help when people find them helpful?

It’s important to know that my thinking has evolved on this topic throughout the years. I’ve been a prescriber of thyroid medications for almost three decades now, and for about two of those decades, I prescribed and managed thyroid medications on a full-time basis.

There were many times that I would see that thyroid medications served as a very helpful part of the treatment. But here’s the tough thing: There’s a lot of good in feeling that something is helping us, but sometimes we can lose sight of what is helping and to what degree.

In the real world, when someone goes to see a doctor, they are likely to be going on multiple things at once. Especially in the world of natural medicine, you might receive a combination of the following:

• Medication
• Dietary guidance
• Support and explanation

These are all powerful things. On top of that, many symptoms may get better and worse on their own schedule. When you lump all of that together, you can be completely accurate about the things that you’re considering. And how your symptoms have changed and evolved.

But we cannot accurately gauge the “why” behind the journey to better health. That is where research can help us. And while research is not perfect, we can use it to look at isolated variables and bring that into the mix.

The Levels of Thyroid Disease

Before we go any further, it’s helpful to take a quick pause and discuss the various levels of thyroid disease. This is going to go a long way in helping us further contextualize today’s discussion and the relationship these levels share with thyroid medication.

Thyroid disease occurs in a few different ways:

• Disease of the function
• Disease of the structure
• Inflammation

We’ll start by focusing on the function of the thyroid (how much thyroid is it making). This focuses more specifically on hypothyroidism. This refers to when there is too little hormone coming out of the thyroid.

Hypothyroidism can be thought of in three distinct stages:

1. Suboptimal hypothyroidism – Not an overt measurable abnormality, but something is not performing at its best.
2. Subclinical hypothyroidism – Evidenced by an elevated TSH with normal levels of T4.
3. Overt hypothyroidism – In this case, the TSH is elevated by quite a bit, with low T4 levels (way below range).

The case of overt hypothyroidism is really the only one that has to do with a lack of thyroid hormone overall. This is where thyroid hormones are not being made, whereas with subclinical and suboptimal, we still see levels of T4 and T3.

A very large study, which originated in the British Medical Journal, that came out around 2018 and encompassed around half a million people, found something very interesting. They showed that those who have suboptimal or subclinical hypothyroidism do not need medications.

Answering questions concerning:

• Did medications improve classic hypothyroid symptoms?
• Did they improve health outcomes overall?
• Did they lower the rate of progression to worse thyroid disease?
• Did they live longer? Did they do better?

So while the side effects, which were very real, did show up, it did not lead to substantial improvements in any of the above mentioned questions. If we’re running that cost-benefit analysis, the cost most certainly outweighs the benefits. Full stop.

How can that be? From what we can tell, the only reason that people went on medication and began to feel better was:

• Because they were on other treatments
• They got better randomly
• Their symptoms were caused by other things

In natural medicine, especially, nobody simply goes on medication and stops there. That would be kind of a horrible practice. People are given nutrients, changes to their diet, lifestyle changes, all of that. We can’t discount the impact of those things.

But when we track the single variable of medication in a large, proven research study, we can start to see that medications, as part of the whole package, do very little. It’s the combination of everything else that seems to be moving the needle.

How Can You Avoid Misusing Thyroid Medication?

Now let’s talk about some of the solutions. For starters, if someone is not on thyroid medication, we need to be clear on who needs to be on it (and who does not).

Those with suboptimal hypothyroidism, as well as those who have thyroid antibodies, do not need medications. While they may certainly be struggling with symptoms and disease risk, the fact is that medications are not going to be what solves the issue here.

In the case of subclinical hypothyroidism, there is no debate that medications can improve your scores and make you look way healthier on paper. But when you look at the outcomes, they are likely not improved, and they include many potential harms.

We can get a much deeper sense of that by looking into iodine regulation. But another big part is looking at what I call the comorbidities, which include:

• Latent iron depletion
• Fatty liver disease
• Glucose dysregulation
• Parathyroid disease
• Inflammatory bowel disease

There are about 15 common conditions that often overlap for people already struggling with thyroid disease. This is a matter of really identifying what is going on, what’s wrong, and taking care of those things in turn.

What If You’re Already On Thyroid Medication?

What can you do if you’re already on thyroid medication? The best first step is to work with someone to figure out if you’re still in a place where you need medication, regardless of whether you needed to be on medication in the first place.

Even in cases of subclinical overt hypothyroidism, there is a lot of data to suggest that, for about a third of people, symptoms can go away randomly. If you were put on medication, you would never know that, because you’ll always stay in a medicated range.

The Reality of Misusing Thyroid Medication

The entire discussion around the misuse of thyroid medications comes down to one thing: In many cases, these medications are not helping your overall health. And you could be doing way better by focusing on a more holistic picture of your health.

If this may apply to you, please consider studying it further. I’ve trained many doctors as part of the Endocrine Association of Naturopathic Physicians, which you can use to find a specialist in your area who may be able to help you out.

There’s also the opportunity to consult with me directly on your thyroid health. If you click here, you can learn more about virtual consultations and how it can benefit your thyroid health and get you started on the right track. Here’s to your best health!