Armour & Your Bones

It’s a com­mon scare tac­tic by unin­for­med doc­tors when you’re on desic­ca­ted thy­roid and fee­ling great: “Your TSH is too low and you will get osteoporosis.”

But patients have found out that this is totally ludic­rous. A low TSH while on desic­ca­ted thy­roid simply means you are giving your­self the thy­roid hor­mo­nes you need, and the pitui­tary gland has no need to demand a thing.

Dr. David Derry, in his book “Breast Can­cer and Iodine”, remem­bers that before labs were used to diag­no­sis and treat thy­roid disor­ders (i.e. before 1973), “the nor­mal dose of thy­roid was three times the level seen now and there were no cases of frac­tu­res or osteo­po­ro­sis ever repor­ted in the pre­vious 80 years.”

In fact, he also sur­mis­ses that patients on doses used before labs came into exis­tence “felt bet­ter, ener­ge­tic and moti­va­ted, so they remai­ned more active during all of their lives.” And this fact would be another fac­tor in stop­ping Osteoporosis!

The follo­wing is a remar­ka­ble tes­ti­mony of a patient con­cer­ning Armour and her bone density:

“More than ten years ago, while taking synthe­tic Thy­roid repla­ce­ment hor­mo­nes, a bond den­sity study was done on me. The results were “okay” (that was in the days before I cared enough to get the real results).

I had my second bond den­sity test done today. I have been on Armour since late 1999. The results? The test shows that I am adding bone mass! The nurse star­ted to check my records to see if I was taking any medi­ca­tion to accom­plish this, but I told her not to waste her time because I wasn’t taking anything for that. She chec­ked my his­tory sheet and records to see what else I am taking. The only presc­rip­tions being used right now are Armour (every day) and Cele­brex (PRN when nee­ded). That is when I told her what she nee­ded to know…. “Armour Thy­roid con­tains T4, T3, T2, T1 and Cal­ci­to­nin. The Cal­ci­to­nin is what is nee­ded to build or rebuild bone mass.”

The doc­tor resis­ted put­ting me on Armour because he had been told that T3 can speed up the loss of bone mass. Now I can tell him that the proof is in his own records that when it is given in *Natu­ral* form via Armour, it is bene­fi­cial, not detri­men­tal to the body. Hoo­ray for Armour! Oink! Oink!

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And, the follo­wing ques­tion and sur­pri­sing ans­wer comes from the ultra con­ser­va­tive Thy­roid Foun­da­tion of Canada web­site (http://www.thyroid.ca/Guides/HG13.html#7), refu­ting the scare by doc­tors that taking too much thy­roid meds (i.e. sup­pres­sing the TSH) can cause osteoporosis:

QUESTION 7:
I have been taking thy­ro­xine 0.15 mg for the past 30 years. At my last appoint­ment with my new family phy­si­cian, I was told my dose is too high. I feel very well and don’t look for­ward to the pos­si­bi­lity of chan­ging my hor­mone level. Howe­ver, I unders­tand there are risks of osteo­po­ro­sis when thy­roid hor­mone levels are too high. I won­der how great these risks are and whether my current sense of well-being should be taken into con­si­de­ra­tion when making a deci­sion to change my dose of thyroxine.

ANSWER:
The treat­ment with thy­ro­xine can be for two pur­po­ses, either to sup­press thy­roid tis­sue or merely to treat hypothy­roi­dism. It would be appro­priate to sup­press TSH in the case of a goi­tre or pre­vious treat­ment for thy­roid car­ci­noma. A low (sub­nor­mal) TSH may be due to pitui­tary damage, or may be due to excess pro­duc­tion of thy­ro­xine or T3, or excess intake of these agents. In the lat­ter situa­tion, the TSH is supres­sed. Howe­ver, when one is trying to treat hypothy­roi­dism, the ideal treat­ment would be to bring TSH down into the nor­mal range, but not sup­press it neces­sa­rily. Neverthe­less, con­cerns which many phy­si­cians have expres­sed over the past few years about osteo­po­ro­sis if TSH is sup­pres­sed by thy­ro­xine have pro­ven recently to be inco­rrect. Stu­dies have shown NO reduc­tion in bone mine­ral den­sity, and no osteo­po­ro­sis when thy­ro­xine is taken even in sup­pres­sive doses. Only when patients have had actual Gra­ves’ disease — “ove­rac­tive thy­roid,” is there a risk of osteo­po­ro­sis and even that risk is small. Neverthe­less, one should strive for ideal the­rapy and the ideal for hypothy­roi­dism is to have all tests of thy­roid func­tion normal.

Bot­tom line: don’t get foo­led by the war­ning that a sup­pres­sed TSH, or a free T3 at the top of the range, equa­tes to Osteo­po­ro­sis!! And being in the “nor­mal” range does not always equal opti­mal treatment.

And for you who put weight on stu­dies, click here for one which did not find a corre­la­tion bet­ween a sup­pres­sed TSH and loss of bone density.

For STTM desig­ned LAB WORK:

LAB WORK pac­ka­ges desig­ned spe­ci­fi­cally for rea­ders of Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness. Use the dis­count code STTM10 which will give you 10% off the already low pri­ces! STTM Thy­roid and Adre­nal Lab Pac­ka­ges You can choose just saliva for cor­ti­sol, or use Lab­Corp faci­li­ties around the US for blood draws.