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• Related conditions due to hypo

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. 

One of many dis­co­ve­ries made by thy­roid patients is that “nor­mal” lab results don’t tell the whole story. And thy­roid and adre­nal patient advo­cate Vale­rie Tay­lor sure found out the hard way while dea­ling with wor­se­ning muscle spasms and weakness.

“I have been to at least 6 doc­tors over the past seven years and read thou­sands of web­si­tes, hun­ting for the cause of my severe muscle spasms”, explains Vale­rie. “They all ruled out potas­sium, a poten­tially likely cause,  because my serum lab result, 4.2, was right smack in the middle of the nor­mal range.”

So Vale­rie was for­ced to live with her wor­se­ning muscle issues– spasms, weak­ness and pain – because all labs were nor­mal and those that weren’t, didn’t per­tain.  Even her insulin-dependent Type 2 Dia­be­tes was well-controlled. And she knew it was all threa­te­ning to put her out of work as a pet groo­mer.  It was bleak.

But a sur­pri­sing change was to come.

“About 2 months ago,” says Vale­rie, “someone on one of my groups men­tio­ned potas­sium hel­ping with fluid reten­tion – the lat­ter I’ve had for the last 15 years and took  Dya­zide, a potas­sium spa­ring diu­re­tic.”

She also lear­ned about get­ting an RBC (red blood cell) potas­sium lab as it shows what’s inside the cells rather than in serum (as usual labs show).  And the results? It came back LOW.

Vale­rie has since wor­ked her way up to 2850 mg. Potas­sium in a combo of chlo­ride and gluconate…and below, in her own words, are the results:

• No more muscle spasms and the weak­ness and pain is lea­ving more daily!
• My IBS sud­denly STOPPED!
• My insu­lin needs are HALF what they were before this sup­ple­ment, and blood pres­sure & pulse are both down.
• ALL fluid reten­tion is gone! I drop­ped 18 pounds the first month in just fluid weight.

Vale­rie is currently wai­ting for lab results to see if she needs to adjust further.

She conc­lu­des: I have since lear­ned that being hypothy­roid cau­ses potas­sium los­ses, as does ANY ste­roid which I had been on for neces­sary adre­nal sup­port. Dia­be­tes with a low carb diet also pre­dis­po­ses us to lose intra­ce­llu­lar potas­sium into the serum which is pro­bably why my serum labs loo­ked nor­mal in the face of extreme shor­tage. I hope many will see this and at the very least get RBC potas­sium labs done and if you have high BP or fluid reten­tion, reach for potas­sium before a diuretic!

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Even without being ins­pi­red by Valerie’s dis­co­very, there is good research out there for eating potas­sium rich foods, or like Vale­rie, using sup­ple­men­ta­tion if your levels are low.  The LA Times repor­ted a study which sta­ted that con­su­ming twice as much potas­sium as sodium might halve your risk of dying from car­dio­vas­cu­lar disease,  sta­ted by epi­de­mio­lo­gist Paul Whel­ton, pre­si­dent and chief exe­cu­tive of the Loyola Uni­ver­sity Health Sys­tem in Chi­cago and one of the authors of the study.

Here’s a list of potas­sium rich foods: http://www.hoptechno.com/bookfoodsourceK.htm

Here’s a list of symp­toms of low potas­sium: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/signs-and-symptoms-of-low-potassium.html

And remem­ber: ask your doc­tor to do an Red Blood Cell Potas­sium lab rather than simply serum. And don’t go as high as Vale­rie with sup­ple­men­ta­tion unless you have proof of low potassium.

P.S. Mag­ne­sium helps pump sodium out of your cells, and potas­sium into the cells – a good rea­son to get mag­ne­sium tes­ted as well. 

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

*What is your expe­rience with the newly for­mu­la­ted Armour? Found a way to get around the pro­blems? Express your opi­nion in the May 7^th blog post!

As Susan Boyle of the UK had a dream which came true, I too wish from the dee­pest place in my heart that some­day soon, SOMEONE from the mass media will FINALLY get smart and do a wide-reaching story for the hun­dreds of millions who are still on T4 meds like Syth­roid, Levoxyl, Levothy­ro­xine, Eltro­xin, Oroxine…and who have depres­sion or a myriad of other lin­ge­ring symp­toms of a sucky, laugha­ble and sha­me­ful treat­ment.  This video ins­pi­res me today just as it did a few weeks ago.  Enjoy and dream with me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzS0wgwyW4&annotation_id=annotation_179773&feature=iv

Janie

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

*See below on how being on T4 meds can affect your liver. And below that – why I’m han­ding my pro­mise ring back to Forest Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

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.