• Doctors
• desiccated thyroid
• endocrinology

I once crac­ked open an egg to find it had TWO shells.  And that oddity is equi­va­lent to fin­ding an Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist who sup­ports the use of natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid. 

Voila!! ~~ you can lis­ten and talk to an Endo who does just that on this Thurs­day evening’s popu­lar THYROID PATIENT COMMUNITY CALL on TalkShoe. 

His name is Dr. Gary Pep­per, Board Cer­ti­fied by the Ame­ri­can Boards of Inter­nal Medi­cine, and Endoc­ri­no­logy and Meta­bo­lism and editor-in-chief of metabolism.com.  Besi­des ser­ving many years in dis­tin­guished lea­dership posi­tions, he was selec­ted as one of the top 100 phy­si­cians in New York City by New York Maga­zine and is also a fea­tu­red expert with CNBC and ivi­llage on topics of dia­be­tes and endoc­ri­no­logy. He sta­tes:  Almost daily I reread the words of Sir William Osler: “It’s often more impor­tant to know what sort of per­son this disease has than to know what disease the per­son has.”

i.e. this is one of a rare but gro­wing breed of doc­tors who sup­ports what we as thy­roid patients already know – that desic­ca­ted thy­roid is a five-star hypothy­roid treat­ment and T4-only is about as effec­tive as a dough­nut diet for most. And lo and behold,  Dr. Pep­per is an Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist! Of course, I can give no gua­ran­tees how he is as a doc­tor in his own office, but I do appre­ciate his unders­tan­ding that T4-only treat­ment may not be the best way to treat hypo.

Join us this Thurs­day eve­ning, 6 pm Paci­fic, 7 pm Moun­tain, 8 pm Cen­tral and 9 pm Eas­tern by clic­king on the first link above tit­led Thy­roid Patient Com­mu­nity Call.  When on that page, you’ll also see the exact day and time left before the call. You’ll be able to lis­ten to the call right on your com­pu­ter, or you can dial in and lis­ten on your phone. There is also an option to talk one-on-one live with Dr. Pep­per and Janie.

And remem­ber: neither I or Dr. Pep­per can offer per­so­nal medi­cal advice or pro­vide indi­vi­dual spe­ci­fic coun­se­ling. Those are bet­ween you and your per­so­nal phy­si­cian.

***P.S.  Phar­ma­Ti­mes this month repor­ted that this quarter’s sales of  Synth­roid (levothy­ro­xine) were up 3.7% to $134 million by Abbott Labs. Sad for most of those patients. If you know of someone who has been put on a T4 med, send them here: www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/t4-only-meds-dont-work or to the audio page here: www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/audio-shorts (third one down).

*Want to be infor­med of these ‘fringe web­site’ blog posts?  Curious what’s on radi­cal Janie’s mind? Just use the Noti­fi­ca­tions on the left below the links.

* The extre­mely hip and sophis­ti­ca­ted STTM t-shirts are half price! I love sales!

* Pre­fer STTM in book form with more detail? You can read about it here.

*Need options for thy­roid treat­ment during the current shor­ta­ges due to demand being grea­ter than supply? Go 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. 

Funny how things work.

I had been won­de­ring what the heck was going on with thy­roid patients in the UK after the Royal College of Phy­si­cians (RCP) came out with their dim-witted, cuckoo’s– nest February 6^th gui­de­line sta­ting that 1) thy­ro­xine was the only medi­ca­tion nee­ded for hypothy­roi­dism, 2) “natu­ral” medi­ca­tions were dan­ge­rous and 3) the only labs nee­ded are the TSH and T4. 

Equally a part of this B-grade horror movie is the three-stooges stand taken by the Bri­tish Thy­roid Asso­cia­tion (BTA).

And UK-TPA thy­roid patient advo­cate Sheila Tur­ner began to go through her own hell when her Armour was taken away, which you can read about in the February 20^th blog post here.

And sud­denly, I get an email from Sheila, infor­ming me that the RCP is as stu­pid as they were three months ago. 

Sheila sta­tes: This is abso­lu­tely unbe­lie­va­ble that out of the hun­dreds of refe­ren­ces we sent to the Royal College of Phy­si­cians to show their gui­de­line to be fla­wed, they have taken no account of one sin­gle one of them. They are publishing their pre­vious gui­dance without one since change. The world has gone mad.

Dear Sheila,

Further to my email of 6 April, the com­ments and mate­rials recei­ved by the College have been revie­wed. This posi­tion sta­te­ment or gui­dance (not a gui­de­line) was pro­du­ced on behalf of the Royal College of Phy­si­cians, in par­ti­cu­lar its Patient and Carer Net­work and the Joint Spe­cialty Com­mit­tee for Endoc­ri­no­logy and Dia­be­tes; the Asso­cia­tion for Cli­ni­cal Bioche­mistry; the Society for Endoc­ri­no­logy; the Bri­tish Thy­roid Asso­cia­tion; the Bri­tish Thy­roid Foun­da­tion Patient Sup­port Group and the Bri­tish Society of Pae­dia­tric Endoc­ri­no­logy and Dia­be­tes and is endor­sed by The Royal College of Gene­ral Practitioners.

The Pre­si­dent has asked me to let you know that this review has not resul­ted in any chan­ges to that sta­te­ment.  It should be noted that it is about the treat­ment of pri­mary hypothy­roi­dism and does not prec­lude other treat­ments for excep­tio­nal cases by spe­cia­list endoc­ri­no­lo­gists who can make clear to patients any asso­cia­ted risks.

Refe­ren­ces sup­por­ting the sta­te­ment are lis­ted below.

Yours sin­ce­rely,

Catha­rine Perry
Administrator

•   Diag­no­sis and treat­ment of pri­mary hypothy­roi­dism. BMJ 2009;338:b725
•   Vaidya B, Pearce S. A Cli­ni­cal Review of the mana­ge­ment of hypothy­roi­dism in adults. BMJ 2008;337:a801. This con­tains refe­ren­ces for 35 artic­les and sta­tes that Armour thy­roid is of no pro­ved addi­tio­nal bene­fit to levothy­ro­xine.
• The Lan­cet Volume 363, Issue 9411, Pages 793 — 803, 6 March 2004.  This covers the his­tory, epi­de­mio­logy, pathophy­sio­logy, and cli­ni­cal diag­no­sis and mana­ge­ment of hypothy­roi­dism and is writ­ten by Caro­line GP Roberts and Paul Laden­son of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity School of Medi­cine, Bal­ti­more, USA.  This review, which refe­ren­ces 164 cli­ni­cal artic­les, sta­tes that the treat­ment of choice for hypothy­roi­dism is levothy­ro­xine sodium (thy­ro­xine) and does not refer to Armour thy­roid.
•  Baloch Z, Cara­yon P, Conte-Devolx B, et al. Labo­ra­tory medi­cine prac­tice gui­de­li­nes. Labo­ra­tory sup­port for the diag­no­sis and moni­to­ring of thy­roid disease.Thyroid 2003;13:3 – 126.
•  Asso­cia­tion of Cli­ni­cal Bioche­mists BTA, Bri­tish Thy­roid Foun­da­tion. UK Gui­de­li­nes for the use of thy­roid func­tion tests. http://acb.org.uk/docs/tftguidelinefinal.pdf
•  Surks MI. Ortiz E, Daniels GH, et al. Subc­li­ni­cal thy­roid disease: scien­ti­fic review and gui­de­li­nes for diag­no­sis and mana­ge­ment. 2004;291:228 – 238.

And as your peruse the six refe­ren­ces above which they use to defend their tunnel-visioned, moro­nic posi­tion, you rea­lize that YOU, YOUR WORDS, AND YOUR POSITIVE-OUTCOME EXPERIENCE ON DESICCATED THYROID IS ABOUT AS IMPORTANT TO MOST PHYSICIANS & ORGANIZATIONS IN THE UK AS IS DIRT ON THE BOTTOM OF A RUSTED BUCKET IN THE MIDDLE OF A EMPTY FIELD IN NOWHERE. Yup.

Or as Harold Ship­man sta­ted about the RCP’s gui­de­li­nes: What a bri­lliant wheeze.

*See below on the poten­tial impor­tance of potas­sium in your health and well-being. And on the May 7^th post about the party being over with Forest Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, com­ments con­ti­nue to come in about expe­rien­ces with the “new” Armour. Have you read the STTM book? Patients are sta­ting they like it even bet­ter than this HUGE web­site. lol.

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

And again, on the heels of my post below about Sheila Tur­ner of the UK’s TPA (be sure and read it – good com­ments, too) comes a blog post by Dr. Richard B. Gut­ler of Cali­for­nia, an Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist (why are we not sur­pri­sed).  And his message?

1) That the NHS is correct to ban Armour

2) That Armour is a “second drug” that cau­ses harm.

3) That it’s only “fringe” patients who don’t do well on T4

4) That none of the above patients are hypothyroid

5) That they don’t feel well on T4 because of other reasons

6) The­rapy is not nee­ded if the TSH is below 10

You know what patients have a fan­tasy about, Dr. Gut­ler?? That folks like YOU become hypothy­roid and are put on T4. You’ll then have to eat dirt as you see your blood pres­sure rising, or your cho­les­te­rol doing the same, or depres­sion and fati­gue set­ting in, or your adre­nals over­wor­king, or weight gain and a host of other con­ti­nuing symp­toms of hypothy­roid while on T4. OH WAIT. Those are all due to something else. Gee, let’s put you on anti-depressants, sta­tins, blood pres­sure meds, pain meds, anti-anxiety meds since those “other” rea­sons never seem to be fixed.  OH WAIT. They DO get fixed when these same patients are switched to Armour or any other desic­ca­ted thy­roid, and have addres­sed their low cor­ti­sol or low ferri­tin thanks to years of undiag­no­sis or under­treat­ment with T4.

SHAME ON YOU.

p.s. It’s because of opi­nions like yours that the Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness book has been sent to patients in over 16 coun­tries, so far. Peo­ple want to find out the TRUTH.

Update: you can read Sheila’s and UK-TPA’s res­ponse here: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/uk-tpas-response-to-the-rcp/

See more from Sheila that gives UK patients hope: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/relationship-between-the-RCP-and-MHRA/

Want to be noti­fied of my blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Use the Noti­fi­ca­tion method to be infor­med. Look on the bot­tom left of the links where you can sign up. )

(Want to be noti­fied of my blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Use Noti­fi­xious to be infor­med. Look on the bot­tom left of the links where you can sign up. )

Recently, after we watched a semi-scary movie about being suc­ke­red, a friend brought up my blog post of last July where I desc­ri­bed a terrifyingly-real horror movie. 

The plot: stun­ningly con­vince hun­dreds of millions of indi­vi­duals world­wide that what is obvious, isn’t. i.e. it’s all in your head, you are ade­qua­tely trea­ted on Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, Nor­ton, et al,  and not only that, we’ll ban­daid your con­ti­nuing pro­blems with more medi­ca­tions.

A second plot: also com­ple­tely hood­wink those with top notch higher medi­cal edu­ca­tions and expe­rience by chur­ning out the the exact same poppy­cock, and reward their stu­pi­dity with gifts.

The cen­tral villian: Big Pharma, follo­wed by the doc­tors who bought the lie

Exactly a year ago this month, Science Daily came out with an article, citing two York Uni­ver­sity researchers who esti­ma­ted that the U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry spends almost twice as much on pro­mo­tion as it does on research and deve­lop­ment, con­trary to the industry’s claim. In other words, the researchers esti­ma­ted that $57.5 billion in US dollars was spent on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­mo­tion in 2004 – the year they were stud­ying. Yes, I said BILLION.

Brea­king that down, Big Pharma spent appro­xi­ma­tely $61,000 per phy­si­cian in pro­mo­tion of their pro­ducts.  And they conc­lu­ded that both figu­res were UNDE­Res­ti­ma­tes.  In other words, they conc­lu­ded that the US phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry is marketing-driven rather than “life-saving”.

And adding fuel to the fire: most doc­tors believe every thrust of that mar­ke­ting. I recently par­ti­ci­pa­ted in com­ments with other won­der­ful patients in res­ponse to a DO/Endocrinologist, Dr. Tho­mas Repas, who has clearly bought the Big Pharma mar­ke­ting when it comes to levothy­ro­xine. You can read his posts and our com­ments here, here, and here.   Dr. Repas is exactly the kind of doc­tor who has  sta­rred in our horror movie, and the kind of doc­tor that patients have lamen­ted about for years.  Read the  Give Me a Break list of com­ments made by doc­tors, as well as further com­ments on the January 1^st blog.

But Dr. Repas is in good com­pany. Doc­tors have belie­ved the Big Pharma lie about T4-only medi­ca­tions, and against desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Armour, Natu­reth­roid, etc. for 50 years.  In the patient-to-patient  Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness book, you can read about the first table­ting of Synth­roid in 1955 and the stra­te­gic and suc­cess­ful pro­mo­tion of T4-only, in spite of the fact that T4 was known to be uns­ta­ble for decades.

And today, more than 50 years later, very few of us have been untouched by the Big Pharma push for levothy­ro­xine T4-only treat­ment.  My own mother was suc­ke­red, and I was suc­ke­red.  And until patients star­ted to make a huge push for desic­ca­ted thy­roid treat­ment the last few years, nearly every sin­gle doc­tor around the world had been suckered.

We still have a way to go. But we’ll get there, bit by bit.