To investigate if your thyroid meds are in play, you'll need to be tested around 6 weeks after your last change. That's how long it takes to ensure you're at the peak therapeutic dose from the changes made.
High blood pressure often accompanies hypothyroidisgm, with over medication more likely to cause sweats and palpitations, but as we know, symptoms can be individual.
When you had your proper testing on your thyroid, what were your results? Were you tested for antibodies, and your T4, and T3 tested, along with your TSH? Obviously I have no idea how things work in the Netherlands, but in UK most GP's understanding of thyroid matters is very poor. Much, much worse than for diabetes, in my experience and observation.
Thankfully at the start of that particular journey, I had an excellent GP who admitted she had no clue and asked for Consultant support up-front, because aside from dreadful intolerance to the cold, I had few symptoms. It still took a long time to be near adequately medicated.
Going back to your primary problem of periodic apparently sharp increases in blood pressure, leading to headaches and associated ails, do you keep a diary, a bit like we might suggest newbies do for their blood glucose?
In order to gain further potential insight for both yourself and/or your GP, it could be useful to keep a daily diary of when you take your meds, perhaps waking BP, food and drink, then ANY symptoms you feel, with timings etc. You might just find something really simple.
Don't misunderstand me, Jo. I'm not doubting anything you say or feel, but sometimes it is easier to engage with our (in this case, medical) advisors when we take something to them that demonstrates how seriously we feel the issue is impacting us, and maybe information they might find helpful.
In your shoes, personally, I'd really NOT want to medicate my BP, bearing in mind other medications have been changed recently, sort of aligned to the onset of these symptoms. I'd want monitoring thyroid bloods done, of at least TSH, T4 and T3. If antibodies have already been tested, the value of repeating that again after a few weeks is not that great.
I really hope you start to find a bit of light on all of this soon. It can't be any fun as things are for you.
Ah, and that's where things are.... Somewhat difficult. The GP can't order all those thyroid tests. Just TSH and free T4, all the rest is a no-go for a non-endocrinologist. She literally can't pull them up on her computer, they're not there, even if she could interpret them properly. Antibodies were tested something like 20 years ago, and Hashimoto's firmly established. The GP did say the target for TSH was lowered and I no longer met the criteria for "good control" at 3,2 (I'd been told under 4 was excellent when first diagnosed with Hashi's, so was unaware there was a problem before this, but she'd prefer to have me at 1 or under), so... Let's see if I can find all my test results from this latest adventure.
dec 7th FT4 was 14,3 pmol/l (low 10, high 17), meds upped from 100 to 112,5 due to these numbers
Jan 18th FT4 was 14,6 pmol/l meds upped from 112,5 to 125
mar 5th FT4 was 16.2 pmol./l check whether 125 is alright, no notes from the doc so far
dec 7th TSH 3.2 (low 0,35, high 5,00) meds upped from 100 to 112,5, due to these numbers
jan 18th TSH 2,4 meds upped from 112,5 to 125
mar 5th TSH 0,71 check whether 125 is alright, no notes from the doc so far
Which I guess might be about as useful as a "total cholesterol", (a.k.a. not at all even remotely useful) the doc hasn't been in touch on any further changes needed because the numbers look decent, I guess, and I was busy with the hospital about the kidney stone(s) and continued fever. I just forgot about it until this morning, really. I still get the occasional heart flutter or a skipped beat, but nowhere near as frequently as in the first 4 weeks of each change made. (The last two weeks were okay, then upped again and back to the heart turning into a frightened little bird fluttering all over the place)
Normally it'd be a case of going back to the specialist... But that would, for one thing, be the same specialist who told me 9 years ago, with some loathing, that I didn't have the spine for low carb eating. From her I got long sessions of berating me when I was down and scared already with the T2 diagnosis. And about 10 years before that, she referred me back to the GP for my thyroid, because I couldn't take the Cytomel she would've wanted me on anyway due to a heartmurmer, and now I'd be someone else's problem. (That was the first I heard about a heart murmur, so that came out of the blue and scared me sh*tless. But then, most migraineurs have a heart murmur, I just didn't know it. Not something to throw at someone in casual conversation about something else, though.).
I hope I can get this sorted with the GP. Just muck about with the meds some, maybe start back up with the zinc, selenium and b6 again to make my transition from t4 to t3 better... I dunno. I never could get tested for what the supplements did, so I never knew whether they were effective.
I do make notes in my calendar when something is off. Like when I get a period (I'm not supposed to get any on the Depo Provera injections I get to control the hormonal migraines, so this year I've also been examined for cervical cancer and ovarian cancer: turned out to be a menopause thing instead, though my PCOS has grown considerably. No cancerous cells though, yay!), when something else is off and if possible, why... Just in case there's a pattern somewhere. It's not as neat as an excel file like I did for my diabetes way back when, but I tend to forget to fill those out, and it's easier to just grab the online calendar for exactly the reasons you mentioned: It's data they might be able to work with! (Just like me saving a little jar of kidney stones... Just in case I am, as per usual, not believed by the pro's.). I eat much the same every day, which is why I vividly remember the extremely salty lunch that got my numbers up that time I went to the hospital: it was something out of the ordinary, and it came after an owl workshop where we shot pics of owls in small groups, which was stressful but fun. Other occasions were directly related to stressful, social situations, so it was easy to pinpoint a cause... And now everything seems to be the same/stable far as foods etc are concerned.... Just general stress over the state of the world, hormones being all over the place, my kidneys acting up, and as I realised properly this morning, the fairly recent change in thyroid meds.
So, the letter is written, and since the GP is out today and we're off to Belgium for two days next week, I hope to get a reply when we get back... Though part of me hopes she might put in a call to the endo and ask for advice, as she did with the urologist.... I only had to go see one once for my CT scan results, but the hospital got consulted 3 times without me having to go anywhere over the bleeding and rattling kidneys... So that'd be ideal! We'll see though... Fingers crossed I get a step further with ALL thyroid hormones checked, in a new form from the endo, via e-mail! That'd certainly be nice... Maybe a bit much to hope for, but it worked with the urologist too, so... Who knows? Fingers crossed.
<3 !
