I am amazed.
The Society for Endocrinology in the UK recently reported that taking higher doses of thyroxine (which will lower the TSH lab result) may be safer than has been purported for decades.
And how low a TSH lab result did they find to be safe? As low as 0.04 – 0.4, the research found, is still safe enough to not cause an increased risk of “heart disease, abnormal heartbeat patterns and bone fractures”, aka HYPERthyroid symptoms.
And those of us worldwide who know about the superiority of natural desiccated thyroid can also use these research results in our fight to be on enough desiccated thyroid with TSH-obsessed doctors, who view research as the end-all to the truth rather than solid clinical presentation, sadly. Because when we are on enough desiccated thyroid to feel fabulous again with all symptoms removed (in the presence of good cortisol levels, adequate ferritin, B12 and digestive issues), our TSH lab result is always low, aka suppressed, and without one iota of hyper symptoms.
Patients have experientially known this truth about the lousy TSH lab test, without research, for years!
But here’s what’s missing from their research:
- Those “safe, low levels of an “ink spot on a piece of paper” do not mean the 16,426 patients they followed will be without numerous issues related to being on a storage hormone. i.e. the body is not meant to live for conversion alone! A healthy thyroid will convert T4 to the active T3, but it will also provide direct T3 in addition to the T2, T1 and calcitonin…none of which a T4-only med provides directly.
- Additionally, the TSH lab test only reveals the action of a pituitary messenger hormone called the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH). The lab test does NOT measure whether your tissue is receiving enough thyroid hormone, which is why so many patients on T4 end up with depression, rising cholesterol, high blood pressure, low B12, low ferritin and many symptoms, as well as adrenal fatigue thanks to the inadequate treatment of T4.
- Raising T4 often encourages an excess production of Reverse T3 over time, which will block cell receptors and increase the very symptoms the researcher state is avoided, as well as far more hypothyroid symptoms.
But on the positive side: this is just one more research study that ends up being on our side in our quest in teaching our doctors about far better treatment protocols. I have also included mention of this study on the following page on STTM, where I keep a ongoing list of research which supports what patients already know by their experience and clinical presentation: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/medical-research/
This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 and is filed under +Audience, Research studies, tsh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Kara S said:
Mar 19, 10 at 3:55 pmHullo!
Here’s a comment with medical abstract urls that I’d written recently about suppressed TSH — which is how I function best. Luckily, I found a doc who supports me (and just to be sure, I’d printed out these abstracts and taken them to our first meeting).
Hope it helps someone — enjoy!
Kara
—-
When I looked into what endos/etc actually said about the negative effects of a suppressed TSH, the only one I see mentioned is OSTEOPOROSIS. That’s it, unless I’m missing something. (And if I am, please do correct me.)
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However, many medical research papers detail groups of patients who were purposely medicated to suppress TSH due to thyroid cancer; The papers show that these patients exhibit NO OSTEOPOROSIS, as long as they have not exhibited physical hyperthyroid symptoms (arrythmia, tremors, etc). These patients were cancer patients, since TSH suppression is the common treatment for that; however, the same findings can be extended to non-cancer patients.
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In other words, THE ONLY WORRY ABOUT A SUPPRESSED TSH IS OSTEOPOROSIS, AND THAT DOES NOT OCCUR WHEN THE PATIENT DOES NOT EXHIBIT HYPERTHYRIOD SYMPTOMS.
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Other papers point out that the TSH test was developed from a bell curve of “normal” patients, and that any scientist will recognize that bell curves have legitimate outliers (people — like myself and many on these forums — whose perfectly good numbers happen to fit on the tails of the bell curve). In other words, as you already know, high and low TSH’s can be perfectly normal for some people.
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I had printed out these abstracts and other websites in order to take them to my doc so he would hopefully feel comfortable dosing Armour to my symptoms instead of my TSH. (And yes, he is currently doing so, and we are keeping an eye on my bone density, just to be sure.) With luck, they will be useful for others as well.
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T4 Suppression / Osteoporosis — Randomized trial of pamidronate in patients with t… [J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 1998] — PubMed result
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9661603?dopt=Abstract
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Lack of deleterious effect on bone mineral density… [Endocr Relat Cancer. 2005] — PubMed result
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16322336?dopt=Abstract
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Treatment of benign nodular goitre with mildly sup… [J Intern Med. 2002] — PubMed result
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11982740?dopt=Abstract
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Clinical value of a sensitive immunoradiometric as… [Ann Clin Biochem. 1985] — PubMed result
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4062219?dopt=Abstract
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California Center for Pituitary Disorders at UCSF — Pituitary 101 — Pituitary Disorders — Hypothyroidism
http://ccpd.ucsf.edu/hypothyroidi.shtml
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TSH and Patients’ Experiences: Suppressed to 0.5 / Alt.Support.Thyroid Newsgroup Website
http://www.altsupportthyroid.org/tsh/tshexp1pr.php
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MyThyroid.com: Osteoporosis
http://www.mythyroid.com/osteoporosis.html
Eva M. O'Keefe said:
Mar 19, 10 at 4:55 pmYou have NO IDEA how much your website has helped me.
I was literally dying on T4 only and having every symptom of adrenal fatigue. I switched to Naturethroid (which is what I had to begin with before the shortage) and I am taking isocort.. I am a human being again..
Thank you so much for your valuable research..
I am buying the book shortly…
Thank you,
Eva
Theresa said:
Mar 23, 10 at 8:21 amI plan to print everything on this page to take to my doctor next visit. The replacement doctor I saw last time had never seen such a low TSH test result (0.04). I had a bone mineral density test last year, just before I turned 50, and the result was that my bones are 20 (thanks to desiccated thyroid and it’s contained calcitonin)! I use milk products semi-regularly, and rarely supplement with calcium, so we know where the credit lies! The doctor ordered the test due to very low, out of normal range TSH (consistently in the range of 0.03 — 0.04), which always seems to freak him out. Sadly, I’m still cold, fat, and not very energetic, but I’m awaiting the results of a 4-point cortisol saliva test to determine my adrenal status. If the stress of living 20 years with hypothyroidism alone didn’t stress my adrenals, then raising 3 teenagers and dealing with my husband’s traumatic brain injury from a long fall onto a concrete floor 9 years ago certainly contributed. (He’s fine, even more a workaholic than ever before!)
Dr. Swerdloff said:
Mar 25, 10 at 2:15 amUSC did a study that found that the upper limit of TSH was way off and published it in the Journal of Endocrinology 2003 where they found that a TSH of >= to 2.4(not 4.5 – 5 as was previously thought) was already associated with thyroid disease of some sort either nodules or Hashimoto’s disease. So I would venture to hypothesize that the lower limit of the range is also incorrect by at least the same amount. It would be nice to see some research in that direction as well. Remember Dr. Thiery Hertoghe’s great grandfather Dr. Eugene Hertoghe described hypothyroidism as a set of clinical signs and symptoms( including the “Hertoghe Sign of Low Thyroid the loss of the lateral 1/3 of the eyebrow”) (not as a lab condition) that improved with administration of thyroid. It wasn’t till many years later that labs determined that there were four thyroid hormones and that T4 was the most prevalent. The makers of Synthroid equated the most prevalent to most important, little did they know that T4 is similar to pro-insulin in its low activity and that if an individual doesn’t have enough of the Thyroid Peroxidase Enzyme because of Hashimoto’s disease they will not easily be able to cleave off the iodide and make active T3 which is more easily assimilated by the brain and the rest of the body and will ultimately exhibit symptoms of low thyroid.
Jolie said:
Mar 25, 10 at 7:04 amI find it’s best not to listen to British thyroid ‘experts’. They seemingly don’t have the first idea what they are talkng about!