Chuck’s Story

To prove this can hap­pen to a male as much as a female, this is Chuck’s story about gai­ning and gai­ning on Synth­roid,  and losing over 100 lbs without die­ting when he got on a treat­ment with T3.

In 1994,  I was in top shape and loo­king at get­ting into the US mili­tary to be a pilot. I had taken nume­rous mili­tary phy­si­cals, inc­lu­ding flight phy­si­cals at Homes­tead Air Force Base and Patrick Air Force Base. I was clea­red 1A to fly (train in) mili­tary airc­raft with a clean bill of health.

In April of 1994 I was scuba diving off Miami Beach, and ended up with a pres­sure injury to my inner ear. So, to reduce inflam­ma­tion, I was presc­ri­bed PREDNISONE by a doc­tor. (Pred­ni­sone is an anti inflam­ma­tory ste­roid that repli­ca­tes CORTISOL from the adre­nal gland.)

From the very DAY my presc­rip­tion ran out, I star­ted having pro­blems. It star­ted with some flu like symp­toms that las­ted a day or so. Then my health went rapidly downhill. Overwhel­ming fati­gue was the worst, and I gai­ned weight like crazy, from 208 to 350 pounds. Terri­ble insom­nia, chro­nic pain, chro­nic fatigue.

My father is an MD (radio­lo­gist), my uncle is an MD (ENT),  my mom is a nurse and my two aunts are nur­ses. And no one had ANY idea what was wrong. (Must be that I was a fat and lazy bum and I ate too much!) Well, wrong.

Finally  a doc­tor said to me  “I think its a longshot, but I’m gonna test your thy­roid!” TSH came back…27!

So, you gues­sed it:  got on the Synth­roid, lost a little weight, about thirty pounds. Went to doc­tors year after year (FOR TEN YEARS) weighing 320 pounds and them all giving me Synth­roid, inc­lu­ding the head of Endoc­ri­no­logy at Mt Sinai Hos­pi­tal. He said “YOU need to lose weight!” as he han­ded me another presc­rip­tion for Synthroid.

Well, things got worse and even though I was on 200 mcg of Synth­roid daily, got my TSH tested.…41.9! WHAT? 41.9? On Synth­roid? Is that a world record?

Well, my dad was watching Dr Andrew Weil on TV one night and Dr Weil men­tio­ned that some thy­roid patients do well on a drug called THYROLAR with T4 AND T3.  Orde­red it (cause no phar­macy carries it) took it and felt bet­ter RIGHT AWAY. Then found a doc­tor who presc­ri­bed com­poun­ded bio-identical thy­roid and this stuff totally ROCKS. It chan­ged my life and it’s WAY bet­ter than Thy­ro­lar, or Armour thy­roid which I took briefly.

So I have gone from 350 pounds to 215 pounds thank­fully to thy­roid medi­ca­tion with T3! Which by the way, is not help­ful in trea­ting hypothy­roi­dism accor­ding to the Jour­nal of Ame­ri­can Medi­cine and the New Engalnd Jour­nal of Medi­cine. (Did the makers of Synth­roid fund the research on T3 and skew the results? I think so!)

I still have some issue with my adre­nal gland as my cor­ti­sol level is abnor­mally high at night, can’t sleep, still loo­king for help with that. This web­site is the only place that addres­sed this issue of how bad thy­roid treat­ment is in the medi­cal pro­fes­sion today. Thank god for it!!!