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HYPERthyroidism and Graves

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  • October 30, 2015 at 5:42 am #24998
    H666

    At 37 I have just been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and graves after 10 years of wrongly being given medication for anxiety and depression. The bike has been my only escape and source of freedom during this time and I really do live to cycle. I ride hard daily and cover about 1000km a month. I really enjoy smashing myself to my limits every time I ride…… the past few months though have been odd, thigh muscle power significantly reduced, out of breathe and fatigued within the first few minutes of a ride, and gaining weight despite a reasonable diet etc. I have been pushing myself through apparently doing more damage (I have ultra low cholesterol values).

    Does anyone have experience with being a HYPER cyclist? What happened? What medication did you take? In short, I want to know can life as a cyclist continue even with this diagnosis?

    Not being able to ride in the great outdoors is really not a life worth living.

    Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

    Cheers

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  • November 10, 2015 at 9:01 pm #862537
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    PonteD

    Hi, about 5 years ago I was
    Hi, about 5 years ago I was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and underwent treatment in the form of carbimazole for a year or so with frequent visits to the endocrinologist and lots of blood tests. I have been in remission for about a 2 years or so and would have been discharged but I have recently relapsed and gone hyper again.

    This time the treatment is radio iodine. Basically I go to the hospital in a couple of days and swallow a radioactive tablet and have to keep away from people for a couple of weeks. At the end, the hope is that the radioactive iodine will kill enough of my thyroid to stop me being overactive. There’s a good chance I will wind up being under active for the rest of my life, the upside of this is that I will get free prescriptions for the thyroxine.

    As for performance, when hyper I found I would tire quickly but I reckon this was mostly from the beta blockers I was on to treat the tachycardia and tremors. This time around though I did suffer from severe muscle weakness and constant cramps in my legs 24 hours a day, at one point I struggled to climb stairs let alone ride the bike, once I was back on carbimazole though it was only a couple of weeks before I was back out and not really suffering. Once you are on treatment you may wind up going HYPOthyroid, in my experience this is worse as I felt like I had no energy and just wanted to sleep all the time, when under active I never felt up to doing any exercise as I was just too tired. I often say it felt like my strings had been cut.

    I would say that once you are on treatment and your levels are back to normal there’s nothing to stop you from getting out on the bike and performing (mostly) as normal. If you are on beta blockers (propranalol) then I found these really did affect my performance.

    I hope your treatment goes well, hyperthyroidism is a crap thing to have. What I find makes it worse is that other people really don’t know how bad it can make you feel and how much of a rollercoaster ride the treatment is. Just speak to anyone else who suffers and they’ll immediately sympathise.

    November 8, 2015 at 11:44 am #862535
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    Leviathan

    12,000k a year is great, I am

    12,000k a year is great, I am struggling to get to 7 this year. I am really sorry you haven’t had a reply yet, since the ‘changes’ a lot of people have left the board. Its really a sad situation that people don’t get replies to thier queries any more. I can’t tell you anything about your condition, but I suggest you post this in the regular forum as it is not casual tea stop stuff, there are plenty of medical posts there about ligaments and such. Good Luck.

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