Most of us are in our prime when our health is slaughtered thanks to the lousy TSH lab result – a result which can be normal for years before it rises high enough to reveal our hypothyroidism, or a range which keeps us with lingering hypo symptoms.
But the elderly are also wide open targets of the scandal of the use of the TSH test to diagnose hypothyroidism.
My father-in-law was stout, tall and healthy as an ox his entire life. For the first eighty-eight years of his life, life was active and grand. Oh did I love him.
Yet as he was nearing ninety, fate became fickle. He became like a Rip Van Winkle, sleeping more than being awake the final three years of his life. He slept in the mornings, he slept after lunch, he slept before dinner, and he went to bed early. And he seemed depressed.
Family concern (mine) prompted his doctor to test his TSH, widely used by clueless doctors to ascertain thyroid function. The family doc proclaimed “Normal”
Sad. Because I had to watch him waste away in his fatigue until he died.
Hypothyroidism increases with age, and many of our elderly fall victim to it. Using most any search engine on the net, you’ll find numerous articles on thyroid and the aged. But I suspect it’s an even greater problem that most any article can relay, since most of them are talking about the TSH and thyroxine. So the elderly, just like us, suffer due to the infinitely lousy TSH lab, just like my dear father-in-law.
Read my latest article on OpEdNews titled “TSH: Thyroid Stimulating Hooey and the Loss of Wisdom” (Yup, the first part is the same title of Chapter 4 in the STTM book) : http://www.opednews.com/articles/TSH-Thyroid-Stimulating-H-by-Janie-Bowthorpe-090205 – 60.html
Have you noticed suspicious hypothyroid symptoms in your grandma or grandpa, or your own elderly patients? Tell your story by commenting on this blog post.
Catherine Clark said:
Feb 08, 09 at 7:13 amMy mother-in-law was hugely overweight, fatigued, puffy, couldn’t concentrate, foggy brained, had constipation and gassiness; the list goes on and on. She died from a swift moving cancer, but her life, from my own experience, was lived in the fog of undetected hypothyroidism. As far as I know she was never, ever diagnosed, and if so, than she was grossly undertreated. I know from my own life lived the same way. I just have hope now that was never offered to her. She was an intelligent woman; she just didn’t appear that way most of the time because of her untreated medical condition. Shameful.
Marlene McWilliams said:
Feb 16, 09 at 11:14 amI have hypo thyroidism. I am sleepy all the time, my legs are so weak I feel they wont hold me up. I am tired, irritible, My arms are weak, I don’t even feel like preparing myself some thing to eat. In 1999 I was diagonosed with Graves desease nd given radio active iodine to destroy the thyroid and now am Hypo. My thyroid has hit rock bottom and I feel I jaut can’t go on this way.
Gary Rich said:
May 08, 09 at 3:11 amI’m a grandpa, only 63, and have battled this thing for almost 9 years, and I worry a lot that my beautiful grandkids will know me as the “grandpa” who was always having to lay down, UGH!! I spent my entire life filled with energy and enthusiasm for everything, from work to play. And then they took my thyroid, and gave me a “storage hormone”. I just switched to natural thyroid, and am excited at the prospect of getting some of my life back, I hope. I did not hope much for this past 9 years. I just chuckle at the number of folks I talk to who way, they tested my thyroid, and.….….….….. Jeez, how is that working for you??