Originally published on 4th June 2016 Last updated on 2nd February 2024
My history with NDT medication (Natural Desiccated Thyroid) has been long and complicated at best!
- I originally switched from NHS prescribed Levothyroxine to self-sourced NDT Thyroid-S (from Thailand) in late 2015.
- In July 2019, I moved from self-sourced NDT to privately prescribed NDT (Armour Thyroid).
- As of the end of 2020, I have been on a combination of Armour NDT and Levothyroxine (both privately prescribed).
Self-sourcing any medication is risky. There is no way around that. You have to acknowledge that there are risks involved, especially if you don’t follow advice and protocols set by a medical professional for example, but NDT has saved my life when T4-only therapy simply did not work, and has done for many other thousands of thyroid patients. I cannot deny that.
Related: There was a large study conducted in 2020, showing NDT works just as well as synthetics.
NDT medication is available on prescription in the UK and is widely available in other countries such as the US. The problem we have is actually getting a doctor or endocrinologist to prescribe the medication in the first place, which can be hard. This very rarely happens on the NHS in the UK. Read about the complicated history here.
Because of this, I made the difficult decision to self-source my NDT originally as I could not afford to go private, but years later was able to finally get it via private prescription. All of the below links follow this journey.
You can read about my journey on switching to NDT, on the links below, where I check in regularly:
Covering my first year on self-sourced NDT (Thyroid-S):
- The First 6 Months on NDT
- 6 month check-in on NDT
- 8 months on NDT
- 9 months on NDT
- 12 months on NDT
- My NDT before and after photos
Switching to prescribed NDT (Armour Thyroid):
- General Update #24
- General Update #25
- General Update #26
- General Update #27
- My First Pregnancy: on Prescribed Armour Thyroid
Moving to a combination of prescribed NDT (Armour Thyroid) and Levothyroxine together:
- General Update #28
- General Update #29
- General Update #30
- General Update #31
- My Second Pregnancy: on Prescribed Armour Thyroid and Levothyroxine
- Update after my last pregnancy (it is still stable since this update)
You can click on the hyperlinks in the above post to learn more and see references to information given.
See my disclaimer in full here.
If you choose to explore self-medication or something based on what you’ve read here, you do so at your own risk and choice. The same experience for everyone is not guaranteed.
The owner of The Invisible Hypothyroidism and others involved in the preparation of materials contained in this website disclaims any liability resulting directly or indirectly from the use of any information contained herein. A qualified doctor should supervise in all matters relevant to physical or mental health. There are a lot of risks with purchasing your own, non-prescribed medication.
