5 Reasons to Use Thyroid Hormone Cream Over Capsules & Tablets

Have you ever wondered why you don’t see a lot said about thyroid hormone creams?

We talk about progesterone cream, estrogen cream, testosterone cream, and even DHEA cream, but no one mentions thyroid hormone cream. 

You might think that there’s a good reason, but you’d be wrong! 

In fact, one study lamented that topical thyroid hormone remains the “Cinderella” among hormones (1) waiting on the dance floor. 

All other hormones have been asked to dance but not poor old thyroid hormone. 

This isn’t entirely true because T2 does exist in cream form, but the others don’t… at least not yet. 

But this is something we can change because if there’s more interest among thyroid patients then we can create the demand for them. 

So today, let’s talk about why you should be excited about thyroid hormone creams and why they are far better than the capsules and tablets we have today. 

#1. You Get Topical Benefits Where It’s Applied

Your skin is the biggest organ in your body and a major site of thyroid hormone action. 

Think about it… 

Where do symptoms like hair loss, dry skin, acne, and a lack of sweating come from? 

They come from a lack of thyroid hormone activation on your skin!

Whether that be your hair follicles or your exocrine glands, if thyroid hormone doesn’t make it to your skin then your skin won’t be able to perform its functions.

It just so happens to be that your skin is the LAST organ to obtain thyroid hormone if you swallow it by mouth. 

Before thyroid hormone makes it to your skin, it must pass through literally every other organ and tissue first. 

This means your skin gets whatever is left over. 

And, unfortunately, your skin happens to be much more visible to the world than your heart, lungs, brain, or liver. 

Which is fine, because those organs need thyroid hormone too, but it also is bad for aesthetic purposes. 

And, let’s face it, people care what they look like which means the action of thyroid hormone on the skin matters. 

When you apply thyroid hormones directly to your skin, it allows your skin to get your thyroid hormone FIRST. 

It then gets absorbed through the subcutaneous layers where it enters your venous bloodstream which then carries it to the rest of your organs. 

For this reason, topical thyroid hormone application is thought to have special effects on the skin where it is applied. 

For practical purposes, this means it may be more beneficial for treating conditions like thyroid-related hair loss if it’s applied directly to the area where your hair is missing. 

It also means that topical thyroid hormone may have more of an impact on targeting subcutaneous fat and helping with thyroid-related cellulite 

Some of this is speculation, but we have good reason to suspect that this may be partially true from promising in vitro studies (2) that do show that topical thyroid hormone activates these cells. 

But even if we assume that topical thyroid hormone doesn’t have any benefit to where it’s applied, it still doesn’t matter because there are plenty of other reasons to take it. 

Including…

#2. More Freedom In When And How You Take It

Another huge advantage to topical thyroid hormone is the freedom it gives you as a thyroid patient to take your thyroid medication whenever you want. 

Oral thyroid medications like levothyroxine and Synthroid require a strict dosing schedule to prevent the interference and absorption of the active thyroid hormones. 

You can’t take them with food, with supplements, or with other medications, which means you’re required to take them at a certain each day. 

And if you don’t do this, their effectiveness is diminished (3). 

But if you apply your thyroid hormone directly to your skin, none of this matters. 

Thyroid hormone cream doesn’t care if you have gut problems, it doesn’t care if just ate a huge meal or you just drank coffee, and it doesn’t care what time of day it is. 

So long as you don’t wash it off your skin, it’s going to absorb into your bloodstream. 

Based on my experience, I would estimate that probably one-third of thyroid patients are taking their thyroid medication in a way that limits its absorption. 

All things considered equal, swapping to topical thyroid hormone would likely provide a huge boost to many thyroid patients by virtue of solving this problem. 

#3. Better Bioavailability And Absorption

It’s well known among doctors who prescribe hormones that if you are going to give someone an oral version of any hormone, the dose is often much higher than if you were to give that same person a cream. 

To put this into perspective, take a look at this study: 

It compared a dose of 200mg of oral progesterone to 80 mg of progesterone cream and found that both provided near equivalent changes to serum progesterone. 

In other words, the progesterone cream was at least 2.5 times more powerful than the oral version (4). 

We see the same thing with testosterone (5).

Standard testosterone cream doses start at much lower doses compared to oral versions. 

The reason I’m using both progesterone and testosterone here, by the way, is because we just don’t have the data for thyroid hormone yet. 

But given that this phenomenon exists among other sex hormones, we can say with a high degree of confidence that it likely exists with thyroid hormones as well. 

And, as some anecdotal evidence to throw in here, I can say that I’ve seen that my own T2 thyroid hormone cream is roughly twice as effective compared to the capsule version. 

So even if the numbers don’t exactly match up, the trend suggests that thyroid hormone cream is more powerful at lower doses.

The benefit here is more than just more effective thyroid hormone. 

The topical route more closely mimics the rise in thyroid hormone that you would see from a healthy thyroid gland. 

Slower saturation in the tissues and release of that hormone through the body means we are mimicking that physiology. 

The more closely you can mimic nature, the better you will feel. 

Speaking of feeling better…

#4. Fewer Side Effects

Thyroid hormone that is taken in capsule or tablet form will enter your bloodstream at a much more rapid rate compared to a topical version. 

It sort of has to, because it can’t stay in your intestinal tract for longer than a few hours before it’s eliminated. 

This poses a problem, though, especially because the heart is much more sensitive to sudden changes in thyroid hormones compared to other tissues. 

Without going into the specifics, the heart has different receptors that are activated much more quickly (6). 

This is why many thyroid patients report heart palpitations after they take their medication. 

But we know from studies into other sex hormones, that the topical route provides a much more stable rate of absorption (7).

Instead of spiking thyroid hormone levels as you would see with oral formulations, the cream route will cause a more stable and slow rise in the bloodstream. 

This translates into fewer side effects and, ultimately much better compliance.

Which leads us to…

#5. Better Symptom Control

This one is pretty straightforward: 

• If you are absorbing more of your thyroid medication with each dose…
• If you are more compliant in taking your medication…
• And if you don’t have to worry about other supplements or medications interfering with the absorption of your medication…

Then we would expect that medication to actually help you feel better. 

You might not think this is an issue, but it’s a huge problem for thyroid patients taking tablets and capsules. 

Many of them, perhaps even you, do not experience symptomatic relief, despite taking what their doctor recommends. 

There are lots of reasons for this, but a major one is definitely the medication itself and whether or not it’s getting into the body. 

This is why silly things like taking your thyroid medication at night or switching to a liquid version can make a big difference for some patients. 

How to get thyroid hormone cream

All of this said, how can you get thyroid hormone cream?

Despite all of these benefits, there’s only one thyroid hormone that is available in cream form and that’s T2. 

There’s absolutely no reason that the other thyroid hormones, like T4 and T3, can’t be put into cream form, but this is our current situation. 

And while you can’t swap out your levothyroxine or liothyronine for a cream right now, you can still add T2 cream to these hormones to provide some of the benefits we just discussed. 

But let me be clear: 

We are definitely still in the experimentation phase when it comes to thyroid hormone cream.  

We have promising data that suggests it’s both safe and effective, but there’s still a lot of experimentation that needs to be done. 

But if you want to be a part of that experimentation and push forward the use of these creams then you can start with T2 cream. 

The more thyroid patients know and understand about thyroid hormone cream, the better. 

Because if pharmaceutical companies see that there is demand for this type of medication, they will rise to meet it. 

And when this happens, I predict it will be a huge boon to thyroid patients all over the world. 

I realize that many of you may not be familiar with T2 thyroid hormone, so if you want to learn more about this important thyroid hormone then I’d recommend checking out this article next.