• About this site
• desiccated thyroid
• hypothyroidism

Just when you think we’re full of great infor­ma­tion for bet­ter thy­roid care, there’s still more to learn and find out.  Below is infor­ma­tion that you might find inte­res­ting on STTM.

ADRENALS: For those who dis­co­ve­red via the 24 adre­nal saliva test that they nee­ded cor­ti­sol sup­port, we have come to rea­lize that some can’t do the ram­ping up sche­dule from a small amount to a lar­ger amount without having pro­blems from the feed­back loop.

Ins­tead, many simply need to “start” on the higher amount, which would range from 20 – 30 mg. You can read about that on the How to Treat page, and you’ll note that not one mor­ning amount goes higher than 10 mgs.  With the excep­tion of men, higher than 10 mg seems to sup­press the ACTH and adre­nals too much.

A NEW LOOK: To make the STTM home page more unders­tan­da­ble to new­co­mers, the home page has bro­ken down the infor­ma­tion bet­ter into sepa­rate pages, and also has a new inte­res­ting way of using it.

LISTEN TO THIS INFORMATION: STTM has short audio clips you can lis­ten to, or send someone else to, to help unders­tand what this is all about.

STORIES OF OTHERS: Indi­vi­dual real-life sto­ries con­ti­nue to come in, pro­ving over and over that this revo­lu­tion for far bet­ter care really does work.

FEEDBACK and MORE FEEDBACK: I get emails daily about lives chan­ged thanks to this patient revo­lu­tion. It’s won­der­ful to see peo­ple fin­ding out WHY they have depres­sion, less sta­mina than others, rising cho­les­te­rol and blood pres­sure, hair loss plus other lin­ge­ring symp­toms of  hypothy­roi­dism left untrea­ted because of the lousy TSH, or under­trea­ted because of the equally-lousy T4-only treat­ment like Synth­roid. I can’t begin to post them all, but STTM does con­tain a sam­pling of this feed­back.

DESICCATED THYROID BRANDS: Wow, the list is gro­wing for desic­ca­ted thy­roid brands around the world! We now have lis­tings for Den­mark, Ger­many, Italy and New Zea­land, as well as more detai­led infor­ma­tion on com­poun­ded thy­roid in Aus­tra­lia. Thanks to all who contributed.

KEEPING UP WITH ADDITIONS TO STTM: In case you didn’t know, there’s a page meant to inform you of what’s added to STTM. I may neglect to list a few addi­tions occa­sio­nally, but think I’m pretty close to get­ting most of them up there.

MEDICAL RESEARCH TO PROVE WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW: Did you know that STTM has a page which com­pi­les research and stu­dies which prove what we as patients already know? It’s not loa­ded with research yet, but it’s gro­wing. And if you have found more to con­tri­bute to that page, use the Con­tact Me form.

SITE MAP: And bot­tom line, you can always go to the Site Map, or review the infor­ma­tion more com­pactly in the book, which patients are taking into their doc­tors offices.

*Want to be infor­med of these blog posts? Curious what’s on Janie’s mind? Use the Noti­fi­ca­tions on the left at the bot­tom of the links.

*Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness T-shirts are now 50% off! I like sales, don’t you? And by wea­ring these shirts, you’ll never know what seed you put in the mind of someone wal­king past you who’s still on Synth­roid or any other T4 meds, and doesn’t know WHY they have depres­sion, rising cho­les­te­rol, easy weight gain, the need for naps, etc. You”ll also find humo­rous bum­per stic­kers which defi­ni­tely spread the word.

A thy­roid patient and mother of two just infor­med me that her daughter’s pso­ria­sis on her body com­ple­tely went away thanks to being on desic­ca­ted thy­roid, and all that’s left is some on her head. And, her son’s pso­ria­sis com­ple­tely went away thanks to desic­ca­ted thyroid.

Con­nec­tion? Pretty obvious, isn’t it.

Pso­ria­sis is an autoim­mune skin disease that appears on the skin chro­ni­cally due to an immune sys­tem going awry. It results in red scaly patches with a white dead-cell buil­dup. You can often see it hand-in-hand with Hashi­mo­tos. And Rosa­cea is another skin pro­blem, though not autoim­mune, that cau­ses a red­ness of the skin, inc­lu­ding the cheeks and nose, or the forehead and chin.

I per­so­nally had rosa­cea on my nose for years — my roman­tic “clown nose”.  But just like the mother’s son and daugh­ter with pso­ria­sis, my rosa­cea even­tually went away, as well, after I had star­ted on desic­ca­ted thy­roid and rai­sed it high enough to remove my hypo symp­toms.

Chro­nic skin disease is just another rea­son to be ade­qua­tely trea­ted with desic­ca­ted thyroid.

*Below, you’ll find a post about T4 and depres­sion–a very com­mon con­nec­tion with poorly trea­ted or undiag­no­sed hypothy­roi­dism, as well. Under that is infor­ma­tion on how to do desic­ca­ted thy­roid sublin­gually. And on June 2^nd, com­ments con­ti­nue to come in about the newly for­mu­la­ted Armour.

*Pre­fer having all this web­site in book form with more info? Many do, and you can decide by going here.

I recently dis­co­ve­red a very humo­rous and appropo medi­cal blog on the net, writ­ten by a Uni­ted King­dom Gene­ral Prac­ti­tio­ner who wisely stays incog­nito. His blog is called The Job­bing Doctor.

And his most recent and humo­rously bri­lliant post is tit­led Hairy legs are bet­ter than blood tests! He desc­ri­bes his occa­sio­nal con­fu­sion when blood tests don’t agree with the patients symptoms.

Says the UK doc: “The text­books teach that the level of cir­cu­la­ting thy­roid hor­mo­nes (which are called T3 and T4) are inver­sely rela­ted to the Thy­roid Sti­mu­la­ting Hor­mone (TSH). If your T3 and T4 are low, your TSH will be high: this sug­gests an unde­rac­tive thy­roid gland. If the T3 and T4 are high and the TSH is low, then you have an ove­rac­tive thy­roid gland. That’s easy, huh!”

But his con­fu­sion sprang forth when a patient’s labs sho­wed “a highish TSH, T4, and a nor­mal T3.” Yet appa­rently her symp­toms didn’t imply there was any pro­blem, so he chose to do nothing as far as chan­ging her treatment.

A month later at her next appoint­ment, this patient expres­sed her appro­val that he didn’t change anything…because her leg hair and eye­brows were coming back.

And his conc­lu­sion?  “Pah! Who needs blood tests!”

Job­bing Doc­tor, you are dis­co­ve­ring what thy­roid patients have been lear­ning over and over for years: it’s SYMPTOMS (or lack up) which need to pull the cart, NOT lab­work. Sure, we love our lab­work. They can give clues to areas where our bodies are screa­ming for help.  But they defi­ni­tely do NOT tell the whole story.

Look at the igno­ra­mus TSH lab test. Count­less patients have wal­ked into their doc­tors offi­ces with clear and obvious hypothy­roid symp­toms – and des­pe­rate for a diag­no­sis – yet the ink spot on the office piece of paper called the TSH lab result proc­laims they are “nor­mal”. And that dubious “nor­mal” diag­no­sis can go on for years before it rises high enough to reveal what was already there by SYMPTOMS.

Or, while on thy­roid medi­ca­tion, patients will have a lame­brain “nor­mal” TSH lab result, yet will con­ti­nue to have their own brand and degree of con­ti­nuing hypothy­roid symp­toms which the clue­less doc­tor dis­mis­ses as an hys­te­ric female inter­pre­ta­tion, motherhood, stress, a need for psycho­lo­gi­cal help.…or just “something else”. Uh huh.

In fact, Job­ber Doc­tor, patients have lear­ned that when they are opti­mal (on desic­ca­ted thy­roid), along with opti­mal ferri­tin and cor­ti­sol), they will gene­rally have a free T3 in the upper part of the range, and a SUPPRESSED TSH, with no symp­toms of hyperthy­roi­dism.  That is gene­ral, and there can be some excep­tions, but ove­rall, it has spo­ken volu­mes to patients on how ina­de­quate thy­roid lab tests can be.  i.e. being in the “nor­mal” range — anywhere in the nor­mal range – can be mean squat.

Thanks for a great post,  UK Job­ber Doc. And P.S.  Desic­ca­ted thy­roid is an even bet­ter treat­ment than thy­ro­xine.

*Want to be infor­med of these blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Just use the Noti­fi­ca­tions at the bot­tom left of the links.

Because you reques­ted it.…now you can lis­ten to me explai­ning cer­tain sub­jects here: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/audio-shorts/ For slo­wer con­nec­tions, it may take up to 3 minu­tes to down­load each short.  For fas­ter con­nec­tions, it’s a breeze.

Know someone who you think has hypothy­roi­dism but they have a “nor­mal” diag­no­sis? Send them to the above page.

Know someone who’s on T4 who might lis­ten to a new idea? Send them to the above link.

Know someone who has had pro­blems with desic­ca­ted thy­roid and threw in the towel? Send them to the above link.

*If you’re afraid of the newly for­mu­la­ted Armour, check out the post below about Natu­reth­roid.  Below that, read about the Royal College of Phy­si­cians in the UK, desic­ca­ted thy­roid in Den­mark, Ger­many and Italy, and why you may need Potas­sium.

*Want to be infor­med of my blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Use the Noti­fi­ca­tions on the bot­tom left of the links.

*Have you read the STTM book?? It can be much easier to refer to than this web­site!

I can remem­ber a few peo­ple the past year who proc­lai­med fer­vently that Armour was being dis­con­ti­nued because of the shor­tage.  And I chuc­kle about it.  Hope­fully, my pre­vious posts hel­ped calm that fear.

But in case you haven’t heard, those lar­ger sizes are back!  And you can keep track of what’s going via the Forest Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals cus­to­mer pro­duct avai­la­bi­lity hot­line: 1 – 866-927‑3260  As of today, April 19, they state that the one grain tabs (60 mg) and 1 1/2 grains tabs (90 mg) are on bac­kor­der, and will catch up with pro­duc­tion on April 20^th, tomo­rrow as I am wri­ting this.  We’ll see.

Unfor­tu­na­tely, the new for­mu­la­tion has made Armour lac­king in sweet­ness, and it’s almost impos­si­ble to do it sublin­gually.  Sad. Maybe another phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal will get the hint. In the mean­time, if you swa­llow your desic­ca­ted thy­roid, make sure to avoid cal­cium, iron and estro­gen at the same time. And if you’ve been doing it sublin­gually, and have to switch to swa­llo­wing, you may need a tad more.

Remem­ber: if you have any issues with natu­ral Armour desic­ca­ted thy­roid in the treat­ment of your hypothy­roi­dism, you can always ask your doc­tor for a presc­rip­tion switch to Natu­reth­roid or Westth­roid, both fine FDA-approved, US Phar­ma­co­peia stan­dard presc­rip­tion desic­ca­ted thyroid.

Janie

Want to be infor­med of my posts? Curious what I am raving about as a Thy­roid Patient Acti­vist? You can sign up for a Noti­fi­ca­tion at the bot­tom of the links to your left.

P.S. If you haven’t bought the Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness book yet, wan­ted to tell you that nume­rous patients are emai­ling me, sta­ting they find the book even easier to refer to than this vast web­site (plus it has more details and infor­ma­tion).  So if you want the ease of refe­rral, the book may be the way to go.