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My mouth just fell open last night.

Appa­rently, in Decem­ber of 2002, an Aus­tra­lian doc­tor named JP Walsh (Depart­ment of Endoc­ri­no­logy and Dia­be­tes of Sir Char­les Gaird­ner Hos­pi­tal, Ned­lands, Wes­tern Aus­tra­lia), and an Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist to boot, wrote an most inte­res­ting article in the jour­nal Current Opi­nion in Phar­ma­co­logy.

This inc­re­dibly stun­ning article was tit­led Dis­sa­tis­fac­tion with thy­ro­xine the­rapy — could the patients be right?

The abs­tract states:

In some patients with hypothy­roi­dism, symp­toms of ill health per­sist des­pite thy­ro­xine treat­ment. It is unc­lear whether this ari­ses from comor­bi­dity or because stan­dard thy­ro­xine repla­ce­ment is in some way ina­de­quate for some indi­vi­duals. Some patients feel bet­ter if they take a slightly exces­sive dose of thy­ro­xine, but this carries a poten­tial risk of adverse car­diac and ske­le­tal effects. There are con­flic­ting data on whether com­bi­ned thyroxine/triiodothyronine treat­ment is pre­fe­ra­ble to thy­ro­xine alone in dis­sa­tis­fied patients

I am una­ble to read the full article, as it is requi­red that you pay a sum I don’t have. But you defi­ni­tely get the impres­sion that this doc­tor was on the cusp of figu­ring out what we have known solidly all along.  Because Dr. Walsh, the patients WERE right, and still are.  Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, levothy­ro­xine and all other T4-only medi­ca­tions suck, and have suc­ked for a long, long time.  www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/t4-only-meds-dont-work and  www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/long-and-pathetic

I so hope to be able to con­tact Dr. Walsh.  Do you know him?  Because he and I need to have a long talk.

Janie

p.s. Thank you Gerry.

I recei­ved a reply to a post below that I was una­ble to approve because it men­tio­ned someone by name. And the reply was not par­ti­cu­larly friendly, and defi­ni­tely not accu­rate. lol. But the reply brought up some good issues, which I have no pro­blem addres­sing.

Namely, can I agree that there are some peo­ple who do well on T4-only treat­ment such as Synth­roid or Levoxyl?? I can…sorta. I have a friend whose hus­band is one of those see­mingly lucky indi­vi­duals on T4, with no thy­roid, who leads a fairly active and happy life. Con­si­de­ring how lousy I did, he ama­zes me. But I did notice something else about him: he has high and rising cho­les­te­rol and is on sta­tins. That’s a clas­sic symp­tom of a poor treat­ment and con­ti­nuing hypothy­roid, even if he does have much bet­ter energy that I ever did.

And by obser­ving him, and kno­wing a few others who sub­jec­ti­vely feel they do well on T4, I came to the follo­wing conc­lu­sion: though some may do bet­ter than others on T4, I have yet to find anyone on T4 who doesn’t have some kind of side-effect of a poor treat­ment, whether they are trea­ting it with sta­tins, trea­ting it with anti­de­pres­sants, or not trea­ting it at all & den­ying it. Sure, some may do bet­ter than others, but the proof is in the pud­ding if you look deep enough. And, at the very least, I’m just plain sus­pi­cious that ANYONE on T4, even doing sub­jec­ti­vely well, is going to have symp­toms of a poor treat­ment creep up on them as they age. The body was not desig­ned to live on con­ver­sion alone.

Can I agree that some peo­ple just can­NOT tole­rate desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Armour and need to be on T4? Ini­tially, that may be. The gal that wrote me sta­ted she felt a lot bet­ter on T4, and that no mat­ter what she did, she couldn’t tole­rate Armour. I believe her. If Armour was that mise­ra­ble, she should be on T4 for the time being, or even bet­ter, a synthe­tic T4/T3 com­bi­na­tion. But I also believe that even if she feels she did everything to a “t” and still couldn’t tole­rate it, there was more for her to learn that she didn’t get the first time around when it came to her adre­nal fati­gue treat­ment. I see it too many times. And perhaps, over time, it will become more clear.

Do some pro­po­nents of desic­ca­ted thy­roid go over­board in their fer­vor? I don’t doubt it one bit. We’re human. And we hope you are for­gi­ving. But once you get past howe­ver you view are com­mu­ni­ca­tion short­co­ming, do know that our fer­vor is based on the fact that a huge volume of indi­vi­duals are having lives chan­ged due to desic­ca­ted thy­roid (and/or treat­ment of low ferri­tin, and/or treat­ment of adre­nal fati­gue). And it’s too wides­pread and glo­bal not to have fer­vor, besi­des com­mon sense that a treat­ment that gives us back what our own thy­roids would be giving us is just plain remarkable.

So, do know that if you are on T4, and feel well, I’m behind you. It’s your life, not mine, and I believe you. But neither can I stop my belief and too many obser­va­tions that if you are truly hypothy­roid and need treat­ment, desic­ca­ted thy­roid is a supe­rior choice, now or later, whether you are lucky enough to have esca­ped adre­nal fati­gue, or whether you have a cha­llen­ging case of adre­nal fati­gue that can be ade­qua­tely treated!