Being Jewish, dietary law, and using Armour

The follo­wing is writ­ten by thy­roid patient and advo­cate Chris­tina, who wan­ted to help those who are con­cer­ned about Armour being pork.

In April 2006, I star­ted calling the wide variety of Jewish syna­go­gues and Cha­bads here in Ber­ke­ley, Cali­for­nia to ask about kee­ping Kosher and nee­ding to take Armour natu­ral desic­ca­ted thyroid.

In the Refor­med deno­mi­na­tion, there is no pro­blem with eating pork as they aren’t requi­red to keep Kosher (observe ancient die­tary laws). The Con­ser­va­tive deno­mi­na­tions said there wouldn’t likely be a pro­blem — “par­ti­cu­larly if Armour is nee­ded to “save a life/mind.”

The very best help I got on the sub­ject was from Ortho­dox Rabbi Sil­ver­man. He sta­ted that if indeed Armour is uni­que and requi­red to save a life or mind (and it is defi­ni­tely a uni­que medi­ca­tion that works!), he could see two ways that it would be fine to take Armour. First, it must be swa­llo­wed and not taken sublin­gually. This way it doesn’t vio­late the Die­tary Laws. Second, if it is neces­sary for saving a life/mind, this always takes pre­ce­dence. He sug­ges­ted to talk this over with your own rab­bi­ni­cal autho­ri­ties, but he said he’d be happy to talk with any Jewish peo­ple who are con­cer­ned about this.

Then the good rabbi bles­sed all of our efforts to help people.

This dis­cus­sion doesn’t cover peo­ple who are vege­ta­rian although I think that if Kosher Die­tary Law can be accom­mo­da­ted, that vege­ta­rians might have some basis to recon­si­der taking Armour.

Also, this doesn’t address allergy to pork. IMHO, aller­gies are rela­ted to chro­nic hypoa­dre­nal issues as well as leaky gut which has a num­ber of pro­po­sed etio­lo­gi­cal fac­tors. My guess is if your adre­nals are well sup­por­ted, a trial of Armour is worth a try, regardless.

So now we have a good ans­wer from the Ortho­dox rabbi that swa­llo­wing Armour cir­cum­vents Die­tary Law (he used words like Haruchuch [or halachah] and Kash­rut if that helps anyone…)

Hope this helps. Shalom!!

Chris­tina

**To read about being a Vege­ta­rian or Vegan and thy­roid treat­ment, go here.

**To order a bovine over-the-counter desic­ca­ted thy­roid, go here. They are far wea­ker than Armour and other presc­rip­tion meds, and one bottle may be dif­fe­rent in potency from another, but might do in a pinch if you take enough.

Want to order your own lab­work?? STTM has crea­ted the right ones just for you to dis­cuss with your doc­tor. Go here: https://sttm.mymedlab.com/