Rupp Diagnosed With Hypothyroidism

Even though it's genetic it would be normal for it to appear now or later. Genetic doesn't mean that you've had it all your life, it means you are more suseptable to develop it because of your genes.

If I remember right, though, it usually happens to older women.

ask steve magness about this condition.

it's a dousy.

Been there done that. I was diagnosed a few years back, it's not any fun. Overtraining wouldn't be found in a blood test which is how they figure this one out.

Didn't Jeff See also have this condition the end of his junior year of high school?

He had constipation....uh huh huh huh

Does anyone know if all the overtraining and hard workouts we heard from Salazar could have contributed to his thyroid getting out of wack?

Distannce Runner wrote:

If I remember right, though, it usually happens to older women.

there are different types of hypothyroidism. the most common type, hashimoto's autoimmune thyroiditis, is more common in women, but can certainly occur in men, and in any age group.

other types show no preference for men or women.

I was thinking that it is some coincidence that this happened to one of Al's boy's??

Rupp went to the same doctor that I go to for my thyroid problem. He's in good hands and should be feeling better soon.

The thyroid pills kick in pretty quickly, but the problem is that it is tough finding the right dosage. It's really just a guessing game of trial and error for a while. You try taking one pill for a while, then take blood tests and see if that was too much or too little. There is a lot of fine-tuning and tweaking involved. For instance 5 days a week I take one dosage, and then two days a week I take a higher dosage. That's the combo that has worked best for me for now.

My opinion on some of the questions brought up by the above posters:

-I don't think overtraining has anything to do with it. In actuality, the thyroid problem is probably the reason that Rupp may have showed some signs or symptoms of overtraining. Hypothyroidism really really affects your ability to recover.

I know if I'm off by a bit in my dosage, I'll feel like crap for a while. The legs feel sluggish all of the time, no zip out of the legs, tired all of the time, etc. Plus my sleep cycle can go crazy and I'll start having trouble going to sleep no matter how exhausted I am.

-There's a good reason that this didn't surface until now. I didn't find out I had it until a coach suggested I go get some blood work done. A lot of the symptoms are the same as normal wear and tear of training hard as a distance runner. It's hard to seperate the sluggishness and tiredness b/c you are training hard and that caused by the thyroid thing. Plus, if you have no idea you have that problem, you really don't know how your supposed to recover to normal training anyways. Once I got the problem sorted out, I was amazed out the difference in recovery after workouts. For the longest time I thought I was supposed to feel like crap for a long time after hard workouts.

Anyways, it doesn't surprise me to see some of the results that Rupp has had after hearing he is hypothyroid. It's hard for most people to understand, but it really can affect your training and racing. Whenever I'm racing bad, that's the first thing I always have to check. It's a pain because you really don't know if it's just that the thyroid is off, or if you really are on the brink of overtraining.

ask steve magness about this condition.

Magness Reader, does he have info on his site, and can you tell me where?

I'm hypo, probably via Hashimoto's (38 yo male, diagnosed couple yrs ago). Seems to be under control via medication but I've wondered about the link with training and racing - I was just starting to run when this first came up, and running more and harder all the time.

wondering wrote:

I was thinking that it is some coincidence that this happened to one of Al's boy's??

There wouldn't happen to be any substances that can cause hypothyroidism, nah, there wouldn't be.

shoot me an e-mail if you want to ask some questions. I have Hashimoto's. First found out 4-5years ago, so I've been through the whole thing trying to race/train at a high level with it.

dammit steve, there you go, injecting some common sense into the whole discussion....pretty much ruined it from a letsrun message board persepctive :) hope to see you get back to where you were headed brotha.

I've been around people with it, the problem that I've seen is that while it is easilly treatable, the dosage changes all the time, and you don't find out untill you start feeling like crap. One dosage may work for a while and then all of the sudden it's too much or not enough and from what I understand this never stops. I believe that Gail Devers has one form of this as well, I know she's not a distance runner but she is a track athlete.

common cents wrote:

I've been around people with it, the problem that I've seen is that while it is easilly treatable, the dosage changes all the time, and you don't find out untill you start feeling like crap. One dosage may work for a while and then all of the sudden it's too much or not enough and from what I understand this never stops. I believe that Gail Devers has one form of this as well, I know she's not a distance runner but she is a track athlete.

When you take an exogenous hormone, you down-regulate your own natural production of the hormone. Then, you have to increase the dosage to essentially get the same 'effect'. This is why athletes who take steroids for a long time often become dependent on taking the exogenous-form of the steroid. Whether your body can recuperate if you were to stop taking the hormone, I don't know. You see this a lot too with people who are taking prescriptions to treat psychiatric problems (~depression).

sjm1368

sounds like you have a pretty knowledgable doc. there's been an ongoing thread about hypothyroidism that gets dredged up when someone else is diagnosed and comes to the board for info.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=367006&page=4

the link goes to the last couple of pages.

There are several questions i and many others have had regarding whether there should be differences in treatment for distance runners versus sedenatary people. this thread discusses much of this.

If you have a doc that is treating distance runners who are heavily training, i'm wondering if he would be willing to answer some questions:

1) One poster of this thread has a doc who states that elite runners should have a TSH = 1.00. It makes sense but cannot find documented research on this.

2) The thread discusses an inverse relationship between T3 and exercise time (more exercise = lower T3). Could this be the reason for runners need to have a tighter control of their TSH.

any info you might be able to get out of this doc on this topic would be apperciated. it's tough to tell a doc, you want to up your dose when your TSH is 2.8 which, is considered normal.

I wonder is this another one of AL Sal's scam's to allow Rupp to use a performance enhancing agent? any takers

Shut up Martin

treament for hypothyroidism will not help you if you are not hypothyroid, it will in fact harm you.

think of it like diabetes...if your body does not produce enough insulin, you need to take it.

if your body produces enough insulin and you take it, it will be detrimental to your health.

if you are not hypothyroid and you take thyroid meds, you will end up hypErthyoid which means you will probably be walking around with a resting HR of 100+. sound like a performance enhancing drug now?