Hypothyroidism and Hashimoto's: Keep Lab Results, Symptoms and Medication in One Place

Your doctor decides. Blood is usually drawn more often at the start of treatment and after a change, then less often. How long levels take to settle differs from person to person, and Sam can't tell you. Sam doesn't set check-up dates, but it keeps your lab reports in order so dates and values are at hand.

Sam can't judge that. Fatigue and poor concentration have many causes. Depending on the study, about 5 to 20 in 100 people on thyroid hormone replacement still have symptoms with TSH in range (European Thyroid Association guideline 2012, review in Endocrine Practice 2023). Raise symptoms like these with your doctor and do not change your intake on your own. Your doctor can then look at other possible causes, such as anemia, iron deficiency, sleep apnea or interactions with other medicines. You can log Fatigue and Confusion or brain fog in Sam and bring them to your appointment.

It replaces neither an exam nor a blood test, but it gives you something concrete to talk from instead of memory. For a raised TSH, the German family medicine guideline (DEGAM) names well-being as one of the points that go into the decision. In Sam's symptom diary you log each symptom once per day, mild, moderate or severe (a few are just marked present), with no time of day and no note field. Anything missing from the catalog, such as feeling cold, you add yourself under 'Other'.

TSH changes over the day: it rises toward evening, peaks during the night and drops during the day. To make results easier to compare, blood is often drawn at a similar time of day, commonly in the morning. Reference ranges for TSH can also differ, for example by age or lab, and TSH varies naturally from one test to the next. Your doctor puts a change between two reports into context. Whether you should fast and when to take your medication on test day is for your doctor or lab to say. Biotin in supplements can also distort some thyroid tests, so tell your doctor what you take. Which of this applies to you is for your doctor or pharmacist to say.

No. Sam doesn't measure thyroid hormones and can't tell you whether your dose or intake is right. With your consent, Sam reads the values from your lab reports, including TSH, Free T4 and Free T3, and only shows whether a value is above or below the reference range your lab printed. TPO antibodies are not on Sam's list of named lab values. In Sam Chat you can ask about your own reports; the answers are based on your data and are not medical advice. Check values against the original report.

Yes. Hashimoto's, an autoimmune condition, is described as the most common cause of an underactive thyroid in the UK and in Germany, but not the only one. Surgery or radiation to the thyroid, certain medicines, iodine deficiency and a thyroid that never worked properly from birth also occur. Whether you have Hashimoto's is for your doctor to establish, for example with antibodies in a blood test. For Sam the cause makes no difference: you keep lab values, medication and symptoms the same way.

That's up to you. You create the monthly PDF report yourself; it summarizes activity, sleep, stress, and the days with symptoms plus your five most frequent symptoms. For lab reports it only shows an index of the reports you added that month, with counts, including values outside the printed range. Individual lab values and your medication list are not in it, so show those in the app. What belongs on a medication list is covered in this guide.

Severe drowsiness, confusion or an unusually low body temperature in someone with known hypothyroidism can point to a rare, life-threatening emergency: call 112 or your local emergency number right away. Trouble breathing or chest pain also belongs to emergency services, not a diary. For anything that is not acute, call your doctor or the out-of-hours service where you live. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call your local emergency number (112 in the EU) or a crisis line right away.