• +Audience

Thy­roid tid­bit #1 COCONUT OIL: Thy­roid patients con­ti­nue to report that the daily use of Coco­nut Oil (extra vir­gin is good) cau­sed an inc­rease in meta­bo­lism and even weight loss in  somewho wan­ted the lat­ter. How much daily? It varies from 2 – 4 T. but be care­ful, as too much can cause diarrhea. 

Thy­roid tid­bit #2 GRASS FED DESICCATED THYROID: Are you worried what the pigs were eating before the thy­roids became desic­ca­ted?? If so, try Dr. Lowe’s Thyro-Gold, which is actually from cow who are pasture-fed. Then report back to STTM on the Con­tact Me page and tell us how it works for you as a treat­ment, or not work. I will com­pile infor­ma­tion and report it here.

Thy­roid tid­bit #3 ALZHEIMERS DISEASE: Impro­ving your thy­roid func­tion just may les­sen your chance of get­ting demen­tia. But research has also found a Lep­tin con­nec­tion: http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20091215/more-leptin-may-mean-less-alzheimers

Thy­roid tid­bit #4: ASHWAGANDHA: If you have slug­gish adre­nals and are on cor­ti­sol, adding the herb Ash­wa­gandha can be an exce­llent and natu­ral addi­tio­nal sup­port for your adre­nals. Even without adre­nal fati­gue, it’s also good in the face of excess emo­tio­nal stress, and is an anti-inflammatory.

Thy­roid tid­bit #5 REVERSE T3 – IS YOURS TOO HIGH? The body natu­rally con­verts T4 to RT3 as a way to clear out excess T4. But you can also make too much when your ferri­tin is too low, your adre­nals are stres­sed, B12 is low, in the pre­sence of dia­be­tes, and other chro­nic issues. High levels of RT3 can cause a poun­ding hear­trate, con­ti­nued hypo, and just a fee­ling that you aren’t fee­ling great yet. To learn more, go here.

Thy­roid tid­bit #6 BI-POLAR: Have you been diag­no­sed with bi-polar disease? If so, you might want to do the right tests for hypothy­roi­dism, since there can be a strong con­nec­tion bet­ween the two, and you can either be undiag­no­sed thanks to the wrong test, or under­trea­ted thanks to Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin or other T4-only medi­ca­tions. Read more here plus more detail in the STTM book.

Thy­roid tid­bit #7 GREEN POWDER and CHOCOLATE: Don’t like green veg­gies but want to be healthy? Look into the dif­fe­rent varie­ties of “Green Pow­der” that you can stir into your favo­rite juice or water. Read the labels, tho, and avoid those with soy. Like cho­co­late?? They now make CHOCOLATE FLAVORED GREEN SUPERGREEN POWDERS and I am a huge fan. Just goo­gle what is all in caps before this.

Thy­roid tid­bit #8 YOUR GRANDMA: Thy­roid func­tion will natu­rally go down­ward in the elderly.That’s why grandma starts wea­ring that pur­ple swea­ter in weather you are swea­ting in.  But put­ting those over 65 on T4-only thy­ro­xine is not the ans­wer, as a recent study sho­wed.  That’s why YOU AND I are lucky to be on desic­ca­ted thy­roid with its direct T3, or even those of you who are on T3 only.

Thy­roid tid­bit #9 EGGS ARE A BIT SCARY RIGHT NOW: Not neces­sa­rily for thy­roid folks only, but you should be aware that with the recent recall of huge amounts of eggs in the US, there are reports of a four-fold inc­rease in Sal­mo­ne­lla Ente­ri­ti­dis infec­tions since May 2010 because of eggs and health offi­cials fear the worst may be yet to come. Why? Because the same eggs have been used in other pro­ducts. Scroll down this page to see list of reca­lled eggs. P.S. if you get sal­mo­ne­lla and are on cor­ti­sol for adre­nal fati­gue, you should dis­cuss with your doc­tor about using OTC cor­ti­sol cream, since you may not be able to hold down the pills. 1/4 tsp equals 10 mg cortisol.

Thy­roid tid­bit #10 FLU SHOTS vs. VITAMIN D: Just when you are making pro­gress trea­ting your hypothy­roi­dism and/or adre­nal fati­gue comes the sea­son for the flu. And if you goo­gle the same same title of this tid­bit, you’ll see nume­rous artic­les about the effi­cacy of taking Vit. D rather than the flu shots.  How much? Gene­ral recom­men­da­tion are 1000 IU’s daily at the mini­mum. Others point to more. Do your research.

As a hypothy­roid patient, think you are fine drin­king that purely fine mine­ral water from a plas­tic bottle? Think that fluo­ride and chlo­rine are the only subs­tan­ces we need to worry about when it comes to our thy­roid health?? Think again.

Thy­roid patient Amy McMu­llen, who has con­tri­bu­ted before on STTM’s blog as a GUEST POSTER (Con­fes­sions of a Under­co­ver Thy­roid Advo­cate) and has a pas­sion about human rights, has writ­ten another impor­tant article below which should be of keen inte­rest to all of you.

BPA — A POWERFUL ENDOCRINE DISRUPTER THAT AFFECTS YOUR THYROID

Perhaps you have read recently about how the che­mi­cal Bisphe­nol A (BPA) is found to be pre­va­lent in our food and water. As a hypothy­roid patient, I was sur­pri­sed to see that not all artic­les about this harm­ful subs­tance ade­qua­tely desc­ribe the con­nec­tion bet­ween thy­roid func­tion and BPA. This is an over­sight that should be addres­sed since hypothy­roi­dism is esti­ma­ted to affect over ten million peo­ple in the US and this num­ber is gro­wing. It makes per­fect sense to look to envi­ron­men­tal toxins as a likely cul­prit in this serious health epidemic.

BPA is a synthe­tic estro­gen and an endoc­rine dis­rup­ter that cau­ses mul­ti­ple health pro­blems. There are over 200 stu­dies lin­king it to breast can­cer, obe­sity, atten­tion defi­cit disor­der, early puberty in girls, geni­tal abnor­ma­li­ties in boys and girls alike, polycys­tic ovary disease and infer­ti­lity in women and pros­tate can­cer in men. Stu­dies indi­cate that up to 92% of Ame­ri­cans have BPA in their urine. Also BPA doesn’t leave the body quickly; fas­ting adults still had BPA levels in their bodies after 24 hours.

BPA comes from many plas­tic sour­ces. It’s used as a har­de­ner in plas­tic manu­fac­tu­ring. Many tin cans have plas­tic linings that con­tain BPA inc­lu­ding soup and toma­toes, and it’s also in plas­tic water bott­les, some infant for­mu­las and can­ned jui­ces. BPA is also found in PVC water supply piping.

How does BPA relate to thy­roid disease? Accor­ding to a seve­ral good stu­dies, BPA is a thy­roid recep­tor anta­go­nist. This means that BPA will inter­fere with the bin­ding of the thy­roid hor­mone T3 with cell recep­tor sites. This will cause hypothy­roi­dism, not only with peo­ple with under-functioning thy­roids but also for those who are currently taking medi­ca­tions for hypothy­roi­dism or even those who have nor­mally func­tio­ning thy­roids. BPA was found to accu­mu­late in many organs when injec­ted into rats inc­lu­ding the lung, kid­neys, thy­roid, sto­mach, heart, spleen, tes­tes, liver, and brain. In this way, BPA has the poten­tial to inter­fere with thy­roid hor­mo­nes in each organ that has accu­mu­la­ted the subs­tance. A study also indi­ca­tes that the levels of BPA that are con­si­de­red safe (upper limit of emis­sion is set to 2.5 ppm [µg/liter], which is more than 90 µM) are high enough to inhi­bit thy­roid hor­mone recep­tors. Yet another study shows that BPA appears to accu­mu­late in rat fetu­ses in sig­ni­fi­cantly high levels and dis­rupts thy­roid func­tion in baby rats.

There’s also evi­dence that BPA may influence the meta­bo­lism of endo­ge­nous ste­roids, which may be a fac­tor in adre­nal fati­gue and its treat­ment, as well as and its treat­ment, as well as dysau­to­no­mia stem­ming from adre­nal pro­blems. Many with hypothy­roi­dism also suf­fer from co-morbid adre­nal fati­gue and BPA may be a con­tri­bu­ting fac­tor in this.

What this means for ever­yone, but espe­cially for thy­roid patients, is every effort should be made to remove BPA from food and water sup­plies. For those who are not able to get pro­perly opti­mi­zed on their thy­roid meds or who are fin­ding they are suf­fe­ring from hypothy­roid symp­toms des­pite nor­mal levels of TSH, free T3 and free T4, con­si­der BPA as a pos­si­ble source of the problem.

Steps you can take to mini­mize you expo­sure include:

• Avoid all can­ned foods with plas­tic liners and avoid bott­led water. Buy your can­ned toma­toes in glass jars, not metal cans or stick to using fresh ingre­dients. Most other can­ned foods use BPA as well, espe­cially green beans (Here is a list of BPA-free can­ned foods).
• Drink water out of glass or stain­less steel con­tai­ners (and make sure there’s no plas­tic liner or lids that have BPA) or BPA-free plas­tic. Low den­sity pol­yethy­lene bike bott­les con­tain BPA.
• Do not mic­ro­wave foods in plas­tics or use plas­tic wraps when mic­ro­wa­ving. Avoid poly­car­bo­nate (“PC” or #7 and #3) plas­tic food con­tai­ners altogether.
• Since most muni­ci­pal water piping is PVC and some hou­ses have it as water supply lines, con­si­der ins­ta­lling a reverse osmo­sis sys­tem for your drin­king water. This will also remove fluo­ride and chlo­rine (other thy­roid dis­rup­ters) and many other harm­ful subs­tan­ces from drin­king water.

Most impor­tantly we need to make our voi­ces heard that BPA is not an accep­ta­ble subs­tance and that its use in our food and water supply must cease. Recently Sena­tor Feins­tein intro­du­ced a ban on BPA to the Food Safety Moder­ni­za­tion Act but this was modi­fied to remove the ban due to pres­sure by industry groups. Sena­tor Feins­tein still has an effort under­way to ban BPA from child drink bott­les and toys and seve­ral sta­tes have enac­ted such bans but this does not go far enough.

Con­tact your repre­sen­ta­ti­ves today and let them know that a natio­nal ban on BPA must be enac­ted. If they don’t lis­ten then I sug­gest you make your­self heard at the ballot box this November.

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• Have you cut down on your expo­sure to Fluo­ride? Buy non-fluoridated tooth­paste as a first step.
• Cut down on more che­mi­cals by using baking soda under your arms rather than commercially-made unde­rarm deo­do­rants. Note that the baking soda may at first cause red­ness, but it will go away within days and is a great way to kill odors.
• Have a poun­ding hear­trate that you can’t explain? You may be making too much RT3.
• Check out typi­cal Ques­tions and Ans­wers about thy­roid treat­ment and rela­ted issues.
• Want to write a GUEST BLOG POST on STTM? Go here.

Tonight was a beau­ti­ful night to do my aero­bic wal­king. It had pou­red this after­noon for 30 minu­tes, so the early eve­ning air was slightly cool and very clean.

And on the last leg of my jour­ney, I stop­ped and said to Car­lin as she was wal­king out of her front door “Where you have been lately? I haven’t seen you out wal­king with your husband.”

Car­lin and her hus­band Clint are pro­bably in their late 70’s – both vibrant indi­vi­duals and fre­quent wal­kers in the same area.

“Well”, she said wist­fully as she glan­ced down the street I had just wal­ked, “I have to go in Mon­day for a Pacemaker.”

Turns out she has fibri­lla­tions and other heart issues, and even wal­king from her bedroom to her living room can exhaust her.  I told her how well my mother-in-law has done with her pace­ma­ker. She told me she’d be in the hos­pi­tal for at least 3 – 4 days for the sur­gery and observation.

And as we were chat­ting over the low white fence, I couldn’t help but notice the scar on her neck – the same scar my own mother had from the remo­val of her thy­roid years ago.  And the rest of Carlin’s story, and the rea­lity of her story, made me want to punch the nea­rest elec­tri­cal pole in disgust.

Carlin’s thy­roid was remo­ved over 40 years ago.  She remem­bers being on “2 grains of something” – clearly it was desic­ca­ted thy­roid. And she says she felt really good. But she wasn’t on it long, as her doc­tor remo­ved it and put her levothy­ro­xine over 30 years ago. You know, that “new and modern” T4-only CRAP which doc­tors fell for like the blind follo­wing the blind begin­ning in the 1960’s until today. (The story behind the intro­duc­tion of T4 onto patients in the early 1960’s is in Chap­ter One of the STTM book)

So I knew. Her heart trou­bles could be one of the many side effects of the infe­rior treat­ment of T4-only medi­ca­tions (which also inc­lude Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, Oroxine…all of them). My own mother suf­fe­red the same fate while on Synth­roid her entire life. And patients chat about this all the time on thy­roid groups – heart issues while on T4.

I star­ted pro­bing. She has had issues with high blood pres­sure. Another typi­cal side effect of the crap T4-only medi­ca­tion, and which is remo­ved with desic­ca­ted thy­roid. She has had issues with depres­sion – another typi­cal side effect of the crap T4-only medi­ca­tion, and which is remo­ved with desic­ca­ted thy­roid. She tal­ked bit­terly about the slew of medi­ca­tions she’s had to be on for years to coun­ter all her pro­blems, and which had given her bad side effects.

And the next worse thing she told me? She had acid reflux so bad a few years ago that they did sur­gery on her sto­mach. She had sur­gery for a con­di­tion which is VERY com­mon with thy­roid patients who are on T4 meds – low sto­mach acid from a lower meta­bo­lism, which cau­ses acid reflux. i.e. a symp­tom of con­ti­nued hypothy­roi­dism which is CORRECTED when on desic­ca­ted thyroid.

It was hard to con­tain myself. Here was this vibrant, life-loving, inte­lli­gent woman who has been on T4-only for over 30 years and has endu­red health pro­blems, sur­ge­ries, side effects from all sorts of money-grubbing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pills, and now, has to go in Mon­day for a pace­ma­ker. And in all pro­ba­bi­lity, most of what she has gone though could have been pre­ven­ted if some doc­tor had been WISE enough to keep this woman on desic­ca­ted thyroid.

I am livid and sick to my stomach.

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• Are you che­wing up your Armour or Natu­reth­roid? It will make the treat­ment far bet­ter, as it will release the desic­ca­ted thy­roid from the excess cellu­lose.  If you are on com­poun­ded, you need to tell the phar­ma­cist to stop using cellu­lose as a filler. On Erfa? You can do it sublingually.
• If you are rea­ding this right on STTM’s blog, and would like to be noti­fied of each blog post, just sign up to the left and under the links.
• Have you done labs and found your­self with high RT3? Get off Sele­nium for the time being, as it can help con­vert T4 to the RT3 along with the other rea­sons you make too much.
• Want to spread the word about far bet­ter treat­ment? T-shirts and bum­per stic­kers are here.

I recei­ved in an email from Sue in Australia.

Sue’s son has com­plex dif­fi­cul­ties with a diag­no­sis of sar­coi­do­sis, an inflam­ma­tion disease that can occur throughout your body. From the disease, says Sue, he was fairly ema­cia­ted, which is com­mon with Sar­coi­do­sis (ema­cia­ted means he was basi­cally “skin and bones”).

He was also born without a thy­roid. So he’s been on com­poun­ded natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid–the way thy­roid is made in Aus­tra­lia – and of course, the filler has been cellulose.

When she read from STTM (see here) about the pro­blems with cellu­lose and the way it binds the desic­ca­ted thy­roid – making the com­poun­ded thy­roid less effec­tive – she approached a bio­me­di­cal doc­tor to have the filler chan­ged to aci­dophi­llus as sug­ges­ted. He ins­tead sug­ges­ted gly­cine pow­der. Gly­cine is a non-essential amino acid and neu­ro­trans­mit­ter which helps with diges­tion, cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem health, besi­des create muscle tis­sue and con­vert glu­cose into energy.

And, says Sue, “the imme­diate reac­tion was start­ling as my son who had been suf­fe­ring from ema­cia­tion for years with a diag­no­sis of sar­coi­do­sis put on over a kilo in much nee­ded weight in the space of little more than a week.” In fact, she now won­ders if much of his pro­blems has been rela­ted to his lack of thy­roid, and the cellu­lose filler making the medi­ca­tion less effec­tive, all along!

Says Sue, “His case is a com­plex one, having been born without a thy­roid gland, but the remo­val of cellu­lose ( or the addi­tion of gly­cine or both) have cer­tainly heral­ded some exci­ting changes”.

She also added, “There must be more to this than meets the eye. I did have to reduce his thy­roid extract dose as I’m assu­ming that the bin­ding effect of the cellu­lose meant he was on a higher dose than neces­sary to get a rea­so­na­ble result and/or perhaps gly­cine enhan­ces absorb­tion. I’m sorry there are still quite a few ques­tions to be ans­we­red and the results of a  blood test in a few weeks time will be inte­res­ting. I’ll keep you updated.”

Bot­tom line: adding cellu­lose as a filler with desic­ca­ted thy­roid has been a disas­ter, as patients dis­co­ve­red after both Armour by Forest Labs and Natu­reth­roid by RLC Labs were refor­mu­la­ted in 2009 and early 2010, respectively.

If you are on either Armour or Natu­reth­roid, make sure you CHEW THE TABLETS UP tho­roughly to release the desic­ca­ted thy­roid from the bin­ding cellu­lose. You can also choose to use a mor­tar and pestle to pul­ve­rize the tablets, and add a touch of honey or sugar, which helps with digestion.

If you are on com­poun­ded desic­ca­ted thy­roid, ask the phar­ma­cist to change the filler to aci­dophi­lus. Or ask about Gly­cine (or L-Glycine) to see if it is good for your par­ti­cu­lar situation.

All good alter­na­ti­ves for thy­roid treat­ment are found here.

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Thank you!! A hearty thank you goes to those who have con­tri­bu­ted to the hos­ting fees for STTM – a patient-to-patient edu­ca­tio­nal site! I can’t do it alone, so you are VERY appre­cia­ted. And if you would like to con­tri­bute to the hos­ting fees (which I do not get: the host ser­ver does), go here.  Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness is YOUR site.

The large size STTM t-shirts are now gone. If you can wear an X-large or XX-large and want to spread the word to others, go here. And the bum­per stic­kers REALLY catch atten­tion!! I am stop­ped in par­king lots because of mine. YOU could change someone’s life!

Vita­min and mine­ral defi­cien­cies:  It’s com­mon for thy­roid patients to be low in iron/ferritin, Vit. D, mag­ne­sium, potas­sium and more. Have you chec­ked your levels lately?

I have lived in the Uni­ted Sta­tes my entire life.

And there are other coun­tries I have felt were simi­lar to my own as far as being modern, forward-thinking, and inte­lli­gent. The Uni­ted King­dom is one.

But there is one area in the UK that is as close to the Dark Ages as it gets: the treat­ment of all forms and degrees of hypothyroidism.

Because of the Bri­tish Thy­roid Asso­cia­tion (BTA) and the Royal College of Phy­si­cians (RCP) ‘gui­dance’ on the Diag­no­sis and Mana­ge­ment of Pri­mary Hypothy­roi­dism, most UK doc­tors refuse to presc­ribe any form of  T3, whether adding synthe­tic T3 to one’s T4, or using natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid, either because they have fallen in line like ducks in a row, or they fear for their job.

Why? Because “overwhel­ming evi­dence sup­ports the use of Thy­ro­xine (T4) alone in the treat­ment of hypothy­roi­dism, and we do not recom­mend the presc­ri­bing of addi­tio­nal Triio­dothy­ro­nine (T3) in any pre­sently avai­la­ble for­mu­la­tion, inc­lu­ding natu­ral thy­roid extract, as it is incon­sis­tent with nor­mal phy­sio­logy, has not been scien­ti­fi­cally pro­ven to be of any bene­fit to patients, and may be harmful”.

Any­body puking yet??

And, says thy­roid patient advo­cate Sheila Tur­ner of TPA-UK, “never has the RCP, BTA  pro­du­ced any of the ‘overwhel­ming evi­dence’ they claim as sup­por­ting the use of T4-only, even though they have been asked to do so on nume­rous occa­sions. Overwhel­ming evi­dence sup­ports the use of synthe­tic T4/T3 and natu­ral thy­roid extract.”

And don’t think it won’t hap­pen where YOU live. Stu­pi­dity can abound.

What to do about it?? Ans­wer a short ques­tion­naire, crea­ted by Sheila and TPA-UK, which is for those with symp­toms of hypothy­roi­dism when trea­ted with T4-only, who then tried a T3 thy­roid hor­mone pro­duct with suc­cess. “The results of this ques­tion­naire will ena­ble us to create the first ‘World-wide Regis­ter of Coun­te­re­xam­ples to Levothy­ro­xine (T4) — only the­rapy’”, unders­co­res Sheila. “The objec­tive is to draw atten­tion to the dire need for an urgent re-examination of the exis­ting pro­to­col for the diag­no­sis and mana­ge­ment of the symp­toms of hypothyroidism.”

Don’t wait until stu­pi­dity and narrow-mindedness comes to where you live, as it also has in the country of Colum­bia, where Cyno­mel (T3) was reti­red more than 10 years now.  Give this a voice NOW to head it off at the pass.

P.S. While you are at it, sign up with Dr. Skinner’s World Thy­roid Regis­ter.

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The STTM patient-to-patient web­site needs your help! I had to move the web­site to a far lar­ger ser­ver in order to handle the immense amount of visits this site gets. And a lar­ger ser­ver means higher yearly costs to host it. I can’t do it alone, as my money tree was killed by pine beet­les and my hus­band won’t tell me what his Swiss Bank Account num­ber is. So your dona­tions can help keep Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness up and run­ning for your­self and other patients just like you! If you appre­ciate STTM, please go here to make a dona­tion to the hos­ting fees. I do not get it! The hos­ting com­pany does.

The large size STTM t-shirts are now gone. If you can wear an X-large or XX-large and want to spread the word to others, go here. And the bum­per stic­kers REALLY catch atten­tion!! I am stop­ped in par­king lots because of mine. YOU could change someone’s life!

The Con­tact Me page on STTM hasn’t been wor­king for weeks. And I didn’t know it.  But it’s fixed now.  Remem­ber: it’s not to ask ques­tions about your per­so­nal treat­ment. Those need to go here.

The STTM book helps in your doctor’s office. Have brain fog? Many patients are telling me they take the book right in the office, book­mar­ked. I can’t pro­mise how your doc­tor will res­pond, but it’s been posi­tive for most when a book is refe­rred to right in front of the doc. I hope it helps you, too.  P.S. Only books orde­red directly from the publishing com­pany get a book­mark of upda­ted info. That’s also true if you have a book sent to a rela­tive or friend.