Are you having trouble refilling your Armour Thyroid?
Although I do not prescribe thyroid medication many of my patients take Armour Thyroid, the natural form of thyroid, and I have often recommended that they ask their doctors to switch them to this form of thyroid medication from the more common synthetic forms. Over the years, many people commented that they felt better after switching to Armour from an equivalent dose of synthetic.
A few months ago Armour Thyroid was reformulated and this coincided with people commenting to me that they felt symptoms of low thyroid creeping back although their dose of medication had not changed. To read more about the reformulation go here: http://thyroid.about.com/od/thyroiddrugstreatments/a/armour-reformulation.htm.
More recently, Armour thyroid has been simply out of stock and people have not been able to get refills. One person I know switched back to synthetic thyroid and later told me she had been feeling severely depressed since doing so, presumably because her body was no longer getting the natural combination of thyroid hormones her needed. Unfortunately it appears that Armour will be out of stock for quite a while and may never be produced again. To read more about this go here: http://thyroid.about.com/b/2009/07/01/forest-pharmaceuticals-armour-thyroid-and-thyrolar-are-still-back-ordered-and-the-company-couldnt-care-less.htm.
The best alternatives to Armour are Nature-thyroid and Westhyroid, both made by RLC Labs. I actually felt that these products were better than Armour all along, but they were also harder to obtain and doctors were more reluctant to prescribe them because they were not familiar with them.
If you prefer these products your prescription needs to call for them specifically. Then any pharmacy can order them from the manufacturer at 877-797-7997. However, I have learned that, while the manufacturer is committed to keeping up production of these products, they are both on backorder because of a dramatic rise in demand.
The only other option is to have your thyroid medication compounded to the same specifications as Armour. This will cost a great deal more, but reports are that it works equally well. Any compounding pharmacy can do this, but if you don’t know a good compounding pharmacy with experience in this field I recommend Village Compounding in Houston at 713-464-5069.
