Does Cytomel Help with Weight Loss?

Cytomel may be one of the most effective thyroid medications on the market.

And because your thyroid plays a role in regulating your metabolism, it also happens to be one of the best for helping with weight loss.

Does that mean that every thyroid patient should be taking it?

No!

But it definitely means that it can and should be considered, especially if you are someone who is doing everything else right and still struggling to lose weight.

Before you run out and start taking it, here’s what you need to know:

How Cytomel Can Help You Lose Weight

Looking at available research on physiology, you can say with some degree of certainty that your thyroid controls about 50-60% of your basal metabolic rate (1) (pinpointing an exact amount is more difficult than you might think).

This is the rate at which you burn calories at rest and is one of the most important values when determining whether or not you will be successful when losing weight (2).

People with a higher metabolism will lose weight faster and more easily compared to someone with a lower metabolism. It’s pretty simple.

Because Cytomel contains the most powerful thyroid hormone, T3, it’s considered stronger when compared to more standard thyroid medications like levothyroxine.

So if you take it instead of levothyroxine, you are providing a much more significant boost to your thyroid and, therefore, your metabolism.

The end result? More weight loss.

But on top of this, thyroid patients who take Cytomel also see a benefit to fluid retention which is another common cause of weight gain among this population.

When you combine the increase in metabolism with a loss in water weight, many thyroid patients do see a drop on the scale when they start taking Cytomel even without diet and exercise.

Understanding how it works is fairly simple. Understanding how to use it safely is slightly more complex.

How To Use Cytomel Safely

Because Cytomel is stronger than T4-only thyroid medications, there are a few extra steps that should be taken if you plan on using it.

As someone with a thyroid problem, you’re probably well familiar with the need for thyroid lab tests which should be assessed regularly if you are taking any sort of thyroid medication.

This recommendation still applies if you are using Cytomel, but on top of the standard tests (TSH and free T4), a few extra are required.

These lab tests include:

• Free T3
• Total T3
• Reverse T3

These are not lab tests that are generally ordered by most doctors so you will likely need to specifically request them.

But when taking Cytomel, they are important to track to ensure you are never taking more than what would be considered normal or physiologic.

Again, because T3 is so powerful, taking more than you need can lead to problems such as bone loss (3) or even heart problems (4).

Don’t let these symptoms scare you because they are preventable as long as your dose is normal.

On top of these extra lab tests, you’ll also want to keep track of a few other metrics including:

• Your resting heart rate (5) – Your resting heart rate should stay under 70-80 beats per minute when taking Cytomel. If you see it increasing into the 90s or even the low 100s then your dose is too high.
• And your basal body temperature (6) – Your body temperature should never exceed 98.6 degrees. If you see it increasing higher than this then it’s an indication you are pushing yourself into a hyperthyroid state.

You don’t have to keep an eye on your body temperature or resting heart rate, but I do find them to be very helpful especially when you first start taking Cytomel and are trying to optimize your dose.

Once you determine if using Cytomel is right for you the next step is to figure out how much you need.

Cytomel Dosing For Weight Loss

Like any other hormone in the body, Cytomel isn’t going to help unless you are taking enough of it.

The balance that you must strike is finding a dose that is not too high, as to cause unwanted side effects, and not too low, as to cause no benefit at all, but somewhere in between.

For most people, this dose will be somewhere between 5 mcg and 20 mcg per day.

This dosing recommendation is based loosely on the physiologic production of T3 from the healthy thyroid gland which is around 10-25 mcg per day.

By the way, the healthy thyroid gland also produces around 90 to 100 mcg of T4 each day, which will come into play in just a minute so keep this value in mind.

If we start on the basis that we are trying to mimic what the healthy thyroid gland produces, we will automatically minimize the risk of unwanted side effects while maximizing benefits.

This is because we already know that the healthy body can tolerate this dose.

This range of 5 to 20 mcg is just a guideline, though, as there will be people who need more or less.

For perspective, I’ve seen people use as little as 1-2 mcg of T3 per day or as high as 70 mcg per day.

If you do decide to start taking Cytomel then make sure that you start at a low dose and slowly increase your dose (titrate) over time.

For instance:

A typical starting dose may be 5 mcg which then increases by 5 mcg every 10-14 days.

It’s been my experience that this slow increase over time allows for the body to adapt to the T3 thyroid hormone which further minimizes the risk of side effects.

And in the event that side effects do occur, you can always back down on your dose to a dose that previously worked for you.

Bottom line? Cytomel does come with some extra baggage in the form of side effects but the tradeoff is that it’s much more powerful.

Here’s how it compared to some other thyroid medications:

Cytomel vs Synthroid For Weight Loss

​As far as weight loss is concerned, Cytomel will be superior to levothyroxine and Synthroid in almost every instance.

In terms of magnitude, T3 is roughly 80 to 100 times more potent than T4 which is what levothyroxine contains.

But instead of thinking about which one is better, I think it’s more useful to think of them as a complementary pair.

While it is true that some people do benefit from using only T3, referred to as T3 monotherapy, many people do even better on a combination of T4 and T3.

And it’s this combination of T4 and T3 that I think you will really start to see significant benefits to your health and weight.

In fact, I would say the majority of thyroid patients need some combination of T4, T3, and T2 because this mimics the natural production of thyroid hormone from your thyroid gland. 

And if we look at someone with a healthy thyroid gland, we see that their metabolism and weight are both normal.

From a practical standpoint, this looks like taking two different medications at the same time:

Both Cytomel and Synthroid, in this case.

This is the case for Synthroid and levothyroxine but what about NDT?

Cytomel vs NDT For Weight Loss

This one is a little different than the levothyroxine example because NDT formulations, like Armour Thyroid and NP thyroid, come with both T4 and T3 built into them.

NDT contains a static combination of both T4 and T3 to the tune of 38 mcg of T4 and 9 mcg of T3 in each unit (termed a grain).

This ratio puts us pretty close to the 80:20 ratio that was mentioned previously when combining levothyroxine and Cytomel together, so they are very similar.

For this reason, the answer regarding which one is better has more to do with dose and personal preference than anything else.

I’ve found that some people, for whatever reason, do better on Cytomel and some do better on NDT formulations.

If you spend time on social media or the internet in general, you will find groups of people who advocate and evangelize both.

But don’t fall for the hype either way. One is not inherently better than the other even when you start throwing around terms like “natural” or “synthetic”.

The reality is that both can work and both can help you lose weight. Which one you choose is more a matter of preference, tolerance, and trial and error.

The next thing we need to talk about is side effects.

Side Effects

If you are planning on taking Cytomel then you should be aware of its potential to cause side effects.

These side effects tend to be dose-dependent so whether or not you will see good or bad side effects depends on how much you are taking.

The higher your dose the more likely you are to see weight loss but also the more likely you are to experience hyperthyroid symptoms.

For those who start taking it, here are some common side effects that you may see:

• Hair loss
• Heart palpitations
• Increased heart rate
• Increased body temperature, hot flashes, or warm flushes
• Weight loss (most common) weight gain (uncommon but does happen)
• Jittery sensation or increased anxiety
• Headaches
• Loose stool or diarrhea

Let me be clear in stating that these are the negative side effects that may occur only if you are taking more than you need.

If you are taking the exact amount that your body requires, which is always the goal, you should not experience these negative side effects.

Instead, you should experience these positive ones instead:

• Weight loss
• Increased energy
• Decreased hair loss
• Increased cognition and improved memory
• Decreased brain fog
• Improved sleep

Again, whether you experience positive or negative side effects has everything to do with how much you are taking so make sure to spend time optimizing your dose.

Cytomel is definitely one of my personal favorite thyroid medications because it’s far more powerful than alternatives like levothyroxine.

But this power does come with some added responsibility and it will only work if you dose it correctly.

If you can nail down both of these things, though, it will go a long way to helping you effortlessly lose that extra weight caused by low thyroid function.

By the way, if you are a thyroid patient trying to lose weight, make sure to check out this article next.

It walks you through how to use T2 thyroid hormone which, much like T3, is stronger than T4 when it comes to boosting metabolism and most thyroid patients have no idea that it even exists.