• Doctors

Sing with me:

A-B-C-D-E-F-GGGGG
The TSH and symptoms do NOT AGREE
Q-R-S
T-U-V
How long will it take doctors to SEE
Now we’ve said our ABC’s
How many doctors do we have to FLEE???

Yup, sometimes even something as simple as a reworked nursery rhyme song says it all. Because as long as doctors look at the TSH as a reliable marker of thyroid function, patients continue to suffer. Why? Because the TSH lab is FLAWED, and the proof is in the pudding.

I work with numerous thyroid patients, both here and other sites, as do several other thyroid patient advocates who run the forums here. And I can’t begin to count the OVERWHELMING number of patients who come to us in desperation because they have a “normal” TSH, yet screaming hypothyroid symptoms, and a doctor who refuses to treat them because he has the myopic view that the TSH is a reliable window into the function of the thyroid.

The TSH is a reliable window into the function of the thyroid as much as a stomach ache is a reliable indication that it’s about to rain.

No one said it more aptly that Dr. David Derry in an interview by Mary Shoman: “Why are we following a test which has no correlation with clinical presentation? The thyroidologists by consensus have decided that this test is the most useful for following treatment when in fact it is unrelated to how the patient feels. The consequences of this have been horrendous. Six years after their consensus decision Chronic fatigue and Fibromyalgia appeared. These are both hypothyroid conditions. But because their TSH was normal they have not been treated. The TSH needs to be scrapped and medical students taught again how to clinically recognize low thyroid conditions.”

It’s called clinical evidence by the recognition of symptoms, not clinical evidence because of ink marks on a piece of paper!!

No wonder thyroid patients have lost so much respect for doctors! Most doctors have become akin to pilotless aircrafts operated by the mindless remote control of their medical school training and the pharmaceutical reps who tinker with their engines.

I have now heard the words of two different doctors in two different countries state the same thought: they remember the 70′s with sadness.

It was the 70′s when the TSH lab first came out–Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. It was hailed as a sensitive measure to determine either thyroid over-activity (hyper) and thyroid under-activity (hypo). Before that test was established, doctors made a diagnosis by symptoms alone. So now, doctors had a modern and sensitive test to accurately determine a thyroid problem.

Bull.

Doctor #1 stated that he was at first dubious, but decided to fall right in with the excitement of other physicians about this new test. He used the TSH test. But, over just a few years, it became clear to him that even when the TSH test was NOT showing the patient to be hypothyroid (i.e. their number was in range), the SYMPTOMS of these very patients WERE showing hypothyroid. He was not amused.

And Doctor #2 had a memory of the 70′s as the decade of the synthetics. Wistfully, he remembers not understanding why it was created when desiccated thyroid was doing the job so well. He watched desiccated thyroid treatment “just fade away”, and the synthetic T4′s take over.

And we, too, are wistful. Why, oh why wasn’t there a doctor out there who questioned this new TSH test? Why wasn’t there a doctor out there who questioned the use of synthetic T4-only treatments? Why did doctors become so dull-brained…….soaking up all that information as if it was the holy grail, and failing to ask questions when patients came in REEKING of symptoms in spite of a “normal” TSH, or in spite of being on T4 medications?

It is the MILLIONS of us who have suffered who also look at the 70′s and subsequent years with sadness.

P.S. Below this entry is a previous post titled HAHAHA. I hope everyone has read the comments.

Hopefully, those of you who read this Blog have also read the page titled GIVE ME A BREAK, because I just added #37 of another HILARIOUSLY RIDICULOUS comment made by a medical-school-trained doctor!! hahahahaha. Though we can laugh, it’s also SO SAD!!!!!! No wonder we have had to figure things out for ourselves! GIVE ME A BREAK!

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/give-me-a-break

It’s pure and unadulterated CRAZY MAKING. You are on T4-only meds like Synthroid or Levoxyl. You have problem after problem after problem. You go to the doctor who runs the TSH, and he states emphatically “You are normal”.

“I am normal?? Then WHY do I feel like CRAP??”

The above is exactly and precisely what happened to me for more than 17 years while on Synthroid and later Levoxyl. I suffered immensely when I would do anything physical–pounding heartrate, feeling hot, excruciating insomnia, and fatigue SO profound that I thought I would DIE from it. And……I was always told I was “normal”, I was “adequately treated” and that there was no explanation for my symptoms.

Or take the scenario of a gal who recently contacted me in the deepest state of frustration. She had started on Armour over a month ago, has very suppressed adrenals which she is attempting to correct with adrenal support, yet she is flipflopping between hypo and hyper (a sign that she’s not on enough adrenal support, and/or her antibodies still have control). She is also suffering at night with “shaking severe heart palpitations”.

Yet, when she goes to the doctor, he states “your pulse is normal” and he dismisses her concerns and symptoms. And she states “If I go to the emergency room, they will run a TSH and say I am normal which is what they have done for years. I just cannot make myself go back there. I would rather just die than tell me I am normal. I am scared and do not know where to go or what to do.”

Unfortunately, there is hardly a thyroid patient around who doesn’t COMPLETELY understand the above feelings stated by this patient.

It is profoundly and sadly remarkable that the very professionals we seek out to help us, end up keeping us sick because they make ink spots on a piece of paper more important than symptoms…or they fail to listen to and reasonably consider that something else needs treatment–in her case, her adrenals!! We have not been “normal”!! Another good reason this site exists: because doctors fail us over and over, and we, as patients have had to figure it out ourselves, and pass it along. And thankfully, there can be a growing doctors out there who will LISTEN to us!

This morning, I received an email from a friend with a link to a Medscape article by A.P. Weetman , titled “Whose Thyroid Hormone Replacement is it Anyway?” Professor Weetman is the Dean of the School of Medicine, University of Sheffield in the UK.

And as I started the read, my internal warning bells sounded immediately with the second sentence: “We have robust assays to diagnose the condition and an effective replacement in the form of synthetic thyroxine.”

OK, this is going to be an article full of delusional hot air, I concluded. But I was wrong. The information in this article proceeded to turn into nothing less than condescending and arrogant medical bullcrap. In other words, it not only stunk, it REEKED.

Granted, the article starts off well-informed about the brilliant 4-point petition being lodged by patients in the UK: 1) Over-reliance on thyroid blood tests and a total lack of reliance on signs, symptoms, history of the patient and a clinical appraisal.

2)The emotional abuse and blatant disregard by the majority of general practitioners and endocrinologists over the suffering experienced by untreated/incorrectly treated thyroid patients and their lack of compassion over the fate of these patients.

3) Stubbornness of general practitioners and endocrinologists to treat patients suffering from hypothyroidism with a level of medication that returns the patient to optimum health. In addition the unwillingness to prescribe alternate thyroid treatment for patients on individual grounds… such as Armour thyroid.

4) The ongoing reluctance to encourage debate or further research on hypothyroidism.’

It continues with awareness of Broda Barnes and Durrant-Peatfield, and mentions that “access to information by patients has increased vastly due to the Internet.”

But once the article moves beyond the above, it takes a steep downward dive into condescending pig slop. Why do some patients feel so dissatisfied with and so mistrustful of standard medical advice, it asks? Because we have “functional somatoform disorders” (i.e. DSM-IV code number 300.81). In other words, we are mentally ill, folks. We are totally and completely delusional and the symptoms we have ALL experienced, either from being untreated, or while on T4-only medications, are all in our heads.

And it’s all part of what is known as the “healthism phenomenon”–the latter which it described into ad nauseum detail, and is followed by an ignorant analysis of the TSH.

The article then concludes that physicians, especially Endocrinologists, need to avoid “thyroid hormone treatment of euthyroid individuals”, and continue with “replacement with synthetic thyroxine as the standard, rather than Armour thyroid extract.”

Cough.

Let me explain what this site is about. It is a compilation of the experience of thousands upon thousands of thyroid patients who HAD ALL THE DELUSIONAL, SOMATIC SYMPTOMS that Weetman claims we experienced, BUT who had those same DELUSIONAL, SOMATIC SYMPTOMS totally erased when we switched to Armour and ignored the TSH. Hmmm. Anyone laughing yet?

Because though this patronizing article is frighteningly narrow minded and downright stupid, and though we all know there are Endocrinologists who do and will take the same stance, this mental posture only serves to reveal the high-minded, cowardly failure to really LISTEN to patients. And that, my friends, is why you can only LAUGH at articles like this.

Because thankfully, there IS a growing body of courageous and inwardly secure physicians and medical professionals who treat the PATIENT, not ink marks on a piece of paper. They have no need to see patients as psychiatric half-wits in order to exalt their position.

And the bottom line is this: WE know the difference. WE have lived it. WE are patients who have figured it out ON OUR OWN, and it’s time for doctors who take this stance and any like-minded colleagues to have the courage to consider that patients JUST MAY HAVE WISDOM about their own bodies that your lab tests, your medical school education, and your dogmatic pontifications do not.

STOP the thyroid madness!!