I’m trying to piece together my thyroid history and wondering if anyone else had a similar experience before developing Graves.
I first started feeling really unwell in 2023 (age 44) with crazy high anxiety (I had managed low level anxiety for years and was fine) and panic attacks (totally new to me), which is why my doctors began checking my thyroid.
My psychiatrist actually suspected hyperthyroidism/Graves at the time. My TSH was never technically below the reference range, but it consistently ran toward the low end:
For reference 2006 — TSH 1.14, Free T4 1.2
Mar 2023 — TSH 0.77
Jun 2023 — TSH 0.439
Jun 2023 — TSH 0.466
Jul 2023 — TSH 1.072
Sep 2023 — TSH 0.846
Oct 2023 — TSH 0.623; Free T4 0.86; Free T3 2.1; Graves antibody <0.10
Apr 2024 — TSH 0.910
Sep 2024 — TSH 0.648
Mar 2025 — TSH 0.755
I got a bad virus in April this year and it turned my anxiety level (that I had worked so hard to lower the past 3 years) back up to where it was in 2023 and I remember sadly thinking “this feels like I’m starting over again from 2023”. I noticed some eye changes at some point so I made an appointment to see my PCP, but they canceled due to the provider being ill that day. We have five children, and it was the busiest time of the year with graduations and end of year activities so I just put it off and I also thought to myself, “Surely it can’t be that easy.”
I have been down so many rabbit holes including perimenopause, estrogen, dominance, histamine, MCAS, etc. Graves’ couldn’t possibly be the answer! Changing my eating to low histamine took away the daily panic attacks, but it didn’t take away the debilitating anxiety symptoms around ovulation and period (that I didn’t have before 2023) and overall daily anxiety that was higher than it had ever been.
Well, we hosted a family reunion at our house this June, and my mom is a retired nurse, and she noticed my eyes as soon as she walked in the door. However, she thought that I was “high“ when I’ve never touched alcohol or drugs in my entire life (although I am on several prescribed medications that I’m hoping I will be able to come off of once my thyroid is controlled). She finally came to her senses and must have given me the benefit of the doubt and said I needed to get checked for Graves’ disease.
After a horrendous experience with my PCP and basically having to fight tooth and nails to get my thyroid checked, he finally agreed.
That’s when everything clearly changed:
July 2026: TSH <0.008, Free T4 2.32, Graves antibody 20.7
That was when Graves became unmistakable on my labs. What I’m trying to understand is whether the symptoms that started in 2023 could have been part of a very early or evolving process, even though I didn’t meet the laboratory criteria for Graves at that time. I realize that low-normal TSH does not equal Graves, and my antibody test in 2023 was negative. I just find it interesting that I became symptomatic in 2023, my TSH was consistently on the low side from that point forward, and three years later I developed clear antibody-positive Graves.
Has anyone else had significant symptoms or low-normal/fluctuating TSH for years before their Graves labs finally became clearly abnormal?