Bipolar Medication = Thyroid problems??

I was wondering if anyone else has experienced a sudden Thyroid problem after taking Lamictal (or any anti-sezuire medication). I never had any problems before I started taking this medication. The strange thing is I never had any symptoms of a hypoactive thyroid.. until I started taking medication for it! Now my hair is falling out and I have a failing memory. They had tested my thyroid many times before I was diagnosed with bipolar and it was never an issue. And just recently my doctor has told me Im now anemic. If anyone has a similar experience or any information on my current issue, please help! I'm just at a loss

Hi there. It's great that you asked this question and I saw it today, as I a development on the Thyroid front today. One of my medications is Lithium, an excellent medication for me but it can bugger the Thyroid. And as a person who went from 60kg to 114kg becuause of psych meds, including the mood stablilisers, this is really an issue for me. Low thyroid function has a lot of other health implications, but I don;t understand it all. My osych rattles of medical information a mile a minute and I have no idea what he's talking about.

Anyway, to address the low Thyroid function I was put on a med called Thyroxine last year. I get test regularly to see my thyroid function and there has been very little improvement since I first started being tested. Well, today, my Thyroid function has showed up as normal. I nearly did a jig in the office because I didn;t think it would ever get back to normal. And I have a lot of parallel health issues, many related to medications so it is very exciting when we get progress on one of them. Please ask anything you like and I'll do my best to answer.

Eek - holding thumbs I'll come through unscathed. Had full bloods done about 2 months ago and Thyroid was fine.

2.5 weeks ago I started on Epilim and have been warned about possible weight gain

My pdoc put me on synthroid when he started treating me. He uses it as an adjunct to antidepressants and since many of these meds play havoc with the thyroid it was a proactive move. He has my thyroid level tested whenever he tests other levels and adjusts the synthroid as needed.

How nice Chris...if only other doctors did that. I blew out my thyroid with Lithium. The specialist told me that he didn't see a reason the quit Lithium if it was working because of hypothyroid. Synthroid easily controls it but I think it is very important to have it monitored. My blood work always includes it.
Lamictal has worked very well for me and fortunately I am not having much of a side effect. I did have to reduce my dose as I was having problems with blurry eyes and dizzyness. Some days I am more spacy than others but I am very fortunate.
I am sorry this happened to you Juliet. I hope that your doctor gets a clue soon.

I echo the others. I have had a hypothyroid issue with the Lithium and was started on levothyroxine which has brought it back to normal range. I have never heard of thyroid problems being associated with anything other than Lithium. I was on Lamictal for a little over a year prior to starting the Lithium and I never had any thyroid side effects. Google it and see if there's any info on Lamictal and thyroid. Are you on other meds that could be contributing rather than the Lamictal?

I have hypothyroid and have gained weight- as if I needed more of that. And now I have fatty liver from the lithium too. And the drs just tell me to exercise and eat whole grains. *insert swearing here*

Moose, I so relate, the side effects certainly for me, can be worse than the illness, almost fatal and I'm sure fatal for other people around the world. I'm an 11 years sober alcolholic in AA and three years after I got sober I surrendered to the fact that I have serious mental illness too. I started seeing psychiatrists and they started medicating me. I got sicker and sicker and sicker over the course of seeing four psychiatrists over 6/7 years. I ultimately lost everything - material and non material things, my career, my house, my family and friends (as they couldn't deal with a person with daily suicidal ideation and a person with mental illness). And two years ago, in a 100% serious attempt to take my life, I nearly succeeded and was just so tenuously attached to life during a 5 day coma.

Fast forward to moving from Melbourne to the town I am now in 20 months ago and my psychiatrist soon established that for me (not for all Bipolars though) SSRI's are CONTRAINDICATED for me and were responsible (along with my illnesses themselves of course) for all the losses, all the years of daily suicidal ideation and finally the near successful attempt on my life.

Parallel to all of that, when I started on psych meds I was 60kg, a very healthy weight for me. I had been up and down all my life but had struck on a healthy way of eating, but that went out the window as due to two classes of meds, my weight ballooned to 114kg - way beyond the highest weight I had ever been in my life before that. One factor was Seroquel, which makes a person ravenous 24 hours a day - I still wake up in the middle of the night from a deep sleep and want food. I am on a huge dose of 800mg at night, which I must take, as I simply wouldn't sleep without it and if I lack sleep, I manifest all the complicated aspects of Bipolar and panic and anxiety disorders and my functionality plummets and I get hopless, and then suicidal really quick. So unless something else comes along that would replace Seroquel, I'm stuck with it - I even have additional night meds on top of that - the chronic life-long Insomnia (coupled with sleep apnea) mean I need that.

Then there are all the mood stabilisers, I have been on - loads of different ones and I am on Lithium now, which works really well, but has all the aformentioned Thyroid problems everyone has discussed. And when the Thyroid is not functioning properly it slows down metabolism and thus affects weight as well. My latest test has shown normal (after years of abnormal) and that is just so fantastic.

Three years ago when I hit the highest weight of 114kg and couldn't do anything about it I had a Lap Band put in but it was a disaster from the start. The physical trauma, and thus psychological trauma it caused was unbelieveable I begged a surgeon to take it out last year. (They call is "keyhole sugery" but that ******** - I have huge slashes across my abdomen). But unfortunately the Lap band sugery, or the band being in for that two and a half years has caused permanent damage to my swallowing function. Even though the band is out I still choke and throw up on food. What a disaster!! I have a new gastro guy who has put me on meds to help my swallowing function and they are helping to a certain extent, but I still choke and throw up at times -and that's without that band being in now.

There's loads more side effect stories in my psych history but these are the most serious ones and I like to post about them because not only does it help me to vent, but they are cationary tales for other patients too. In particular, if I had known that SSRI's are cointraindicated for some Bipolar patients I would have been informed and made decisions based on the facts, rather than being driven by psychiatrists who have an "unholy alliance" with BIG PHARMA, which I believe is part of the problem. It was very clear to them that I was getting sicker on those meds but it didn't stop them prescribing them to me.

My pdoc just gives me a pity face when i complain of what the mwds are doing to me. We're supposed to discuss changing from lithium but i think she mentioned tegretol which i read here is horrid too! Ive had that for migraines as an injection and it worked but that's once every so often, not every day. If taking it for bipolar would then make it ineffective for bad migraines.... I'm about ready to wean myself off lithium and levoxyl and exercise more easily, get my metabolism normal and leave this mess behind. Sounds health to me, but if I said that to my pdoc she'd think I was going manic.

Moose, I take 800mg tegretol and I really haven't had any problems with it. It might not be a problem for you. I don't know about the headache issue though; that's a good question. Are you going manic? You need to talk to you pdoc before you make any med changes.

See if you can mention Lamictal..it was a replacement for my Lithium and few side effects.