cholesterol tags

(4 – 30: Paula has infor­med me that you can down­load Dr. Myhill’s com­plete web­site to your com­pu­ter via this zip file: www.drmyhill.co.uk.zip — Win­dows Live )

Today, it has been announ­ced by the GMC (Gene­ral Medi­cal Coun­cil) of the UK that Dr. Sarah Myhill is now strait­jac­ke­ted. She is for­bid­den to presc­ribe medi­ca­tions, is bound by other medi­cal prac­tice res­tric­tions (see the details on the Sup­port Dr. Myhill Face­book page), and most egre­giously, has been orde­red to remove parts of her web­site (thanks to Lethal Lee for poin­ting this out), some of which you will not see two weeks after I have pos­ted this.

Why remove parts of her web­site? Because by daring to edu­cate the public, espe­cially if that edu­ca­tion goes against “stan­dard medi­cal prac­tice”, it seems to be dee­med “harm­ful”. In other words, you as a patient are not allo­wed to dis­co­ver, or are too “vul­ne­ra­ble to get it,  that there just might be a TOTALLY dif­fe­rent story to the medi­cal prac­tice you are sub­jec­ted to.

For exam­ple, here is part of a page on Dr. Myhill’s web­site which is com­ple­tely correct, infor­ma­tive, and wise, and I want to see her words stay sharp and vie­wa­ble, espe­cially for thy­roid patients. It fits our expe­rience. The page is tit­led “Test results and what they mean”. If you want to be infor­med, read all the below.

http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Category:Test_results_and_what_they_mean

Only too often peo­ple come to me with tests results which have not been pro­perly inter­pre­ted. The rea­sons why this hap­pens are as follows:

• Test results are flag­ged up and con­si­de­red to be abnor­mal if they are outside the refe­rence range, but one’s indi­vi­dual nor­mal range is not the same as the popu­la­tion refe­rence range. This is a par­ti­cu­lar pro­blem in the inter­pre­ta­tion of thy­roid tests.
• Refe­rence ran­ges for tests change. Refe­rence ran­ges are based on ran­dom bloods from the popu­la­tion. The trou­ble is anyone follo­wing a Wes­tern lifestyle is not evo­lu­tio­na­rily correct and many not nor­mal! So labs change their refe­rence ran­ges to adjust for this. So, for exam­ple, the nor­mal range of a gamma GT used to be up to 36, it is now up to 70. This enzyme is indu­ced by alcohol and presc­rip­tion drugs and because so many peo­ple drink alcohol it is con­si­de­red nor­mal to run a high gamma GT! The lab I use has a nor­mal refe­rence range for thy­roid hor­mone T4 of 12-22pmol/l but some labs give ran­ges of 5.6-17pmol/l!
• Tests are often incom­plete. So someone with a thy­roid sti­mu­la­ting hor­mone (TSH) within refe­rence range will be told they have no thy­roid pro­blem, when in fact one also needs a free T4 and a free T3 together with a cli­ni­cal his­tory to assess if there is a thy­roid problem.
• Drug com­pa­nies influence nor­mal ran­ges. The nor­mal range for cho­les­te­rol has come down stea­dily since sta­tins have been such big money ear­ners for Big Pharma.
• Inco­rrect break­down of test results. Many peo­ple are presc­ri­bed sta­tins on the basis of a sin­gle cho­les­te­rol level. This is faulty for many reas ons — firstly one needs a break­down of good (HDL) and bad (LDL) cho­les­te­rol to get the ratio. If the ratio is not favou­ra­ble then this is likely to be a symp­tom of arte­rial disease. Cho­les­te­rol lowe­ring drugs are often irre­le­vant. See Cho­les­te­rol —  the com­mon cau­ses of rai­sed levels
• Results close to the limits of nor­mal may be abnor­mal for that per­son. For exam­ple, a high nor­mal bili­ru­bin may mean Gilbert’s syn­drome — this means someone is a poor deto­xi­fier. A high mean cor­pus­cu­lar volume (MCV) could point to hypothy­roi­dism, B12 or folic acid deficiency.
• Nor­mal tests do not mean no patho­logy. A nor­mal ECG at rest does not mean there is no heart disease, yet many peo­ple are told this is the case.
• Tests may ask the wrong ques­tion. So many peo­ple come to me with severe fati­gue syn­dro­mes having been told nothing is wrong because all the tests are nor­mal! But ask the right ques­tion and do Mitochon­drial Func­tion Pro­file and you find gross abnor­ma­li­ties with res­pect to energy supply at the cellu­lar level.
• Tests for poi­so­nings are par­ti­cu­larly mis­lea­ding. For years doc­tors have pro­mo­ted levels of cho­li­nes­te­rase as a good test for orga­nophosphate poi­so­ning. It is a rot­ten test and mis­ses the majo­rity of cases! Much bet­ter would be Fat biopsy for pes­ti­ci­des or Vola­tile Orga­nic Compounds

GOOD FOR YOU, Dr. Sarah Myhill!

I and many other thy­roid patients, strug­gling to fight the inane thy­roid treat­ment pro­to­cols, have a strong fee­ling that though this pro­gres­sive doc­tor may be res­tric­ted as a phy­si­cian, we’re going to hear a lot more good infor­ma­tion from the cou­ra­geous and wise Sarah Myhill.

Yup, we’re all hea­ding in the same direc­tion — being just a tad older every sin­gle year and get­ting that first mai­ling from AARP.  Yup.

And get­ting older inc­rea­ses the inci­dence of thy­roid disease.

Even worse, those who acquire it at an older age are pro­bably going to go through the same bunk and bull those youn­ger have gone through – having depres­sion, rising cho­les­te­rol, osteo­po­ro­sis or oste­pe­nia, weight gain, easy fati­gue, couch potato syn­drome, dry skin and hair, plus more––all clas­sic symp­toms of undiag­no­sed or under­trea­ted hypothyroidism.

But older folks are told it’s all just part of aging so here’s your latest tablet for your handy-dandy Wal Mart pill box.

I recently found a great blog by Pam whose Feb. 23^rd, 2010 post is tit­led Older Women and Low Thy­roid. She tur­ned 65 in 2009 (and she looks a lot youn­ger) and wri­tes how she found her­self with hypothy­roid at a later age as well.  And Pam is WAY ahead of the game in her know­ledge. She unders­tands that most older folks are put on Synth­roid (which can be a lousy way to treat hypothy­roi­dism for many), that get­ting older means con­ver­sion from T4 to T3 can be more dif­fi­cult,  that being on desic­ca­ted thy­roid or T3-only just might be the bet­ter treat­ment, and you can get adre­nal fati­gue at an older age as well (thanks to poor treat­ment with T4, the TSH lab test, or being under­do­sed even on desic­ca­ted thyroid).

You can read Pam’s post here, as well as about the phone call from her friend who is 50 lbs over­weight, has brain fog, is out of work, has no energy…and voila – is on Synth­roid so it can’t POSSIBLY be her thy­roid. Sad. In fact, what has hap­pe­ned to Pam’s friend is what I keep sta­ting to those who feel they are just doing peachy on T4: watch out, because as you age, the truth about T4 will reveal itself!

Pam, I love your blog posts, and I’m going to hope to see more of those in the “vene­ra­ble age range” be just as wise as you are!!

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FDA HAS MADE A STATEMENT ABOUT NATURAL DESICCATED THYROID: Just before I was going to plop into my bed for the eve­ning, I chec­ked my noti­fi­ca­tions to dis­co­ver that right on the FDA web­site and their 2010 Drug Shor­ta­ges page (3^rd column up from bot­tom), it sta­tes: Forest reports manu­fac­tu­ring issues invol­ving the raw mate­rial and RLC reports inc­rea­sed demand. FDA has not orde­red Forest or RLC to remove these thy­roid (desic­ca­ted) tablets from the mar­ket. BINGO. I’ve been wai­ting for this for months, because though web­si­tes and groups were for­med last year as if we nee­ded to “res­cue” desic­ca­ted thy­roid from being ban­ned, I couldn’t join the fear­ful rally of a few because my gut was telling me something quite dif­fe­rent.  And a few others, I dis­co­ve­red, had the same fee­ling.  And hoo­ray! Our guts were right on!

Does this mean the FDA “gets it” about desic­ca­ted thy­roid? Maybe, or maybe not. Yes, their timing WAS awful last year with Time Caps Labs, right when we were star­ting a shor­tage. And there does appear to be some kind of future requi­re­ment “pro­ving” the safety and effi­cacy of dess. thy­roid – two things we ALREADY KNOW from 110 years of safe and effec­tive use. Duhhh on the FDA. But it’s FAR more hope­ful now, and rea­lis­tic, and will hope­fully pro­mote more rea­so­na­ble thin­king from now on.

Onward and upward, folks.

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Natu­reth­roid is coming back in phar­ma­cies all over the US! See the blog post below or here for infor­ma­tion about  the “new” Naturethroid.

(If you are rea­ding this via the News­let­ter email noti­fi­ca­tion, just click on the title of this blog post to come directly to the site where you can Comment).

I think back about my mother.

At age twenty-one in 1939, she had most of her thy­roid remo­ved due to Gra­ves disease and hyperthy­roi­dism. Because a small part remai­ned, hyper set in once again by 1960 com­plete with bug­ged eyes. So Radioac­tive Iodine I-131 was the next step to once-and-for-all annihi­late the thy­roid.  Not long after, as her thy­roid hor­mone levels fell, she was one of the early vic­tims of the “new and modern” T4-only medi­ca­tion called Synthroid.

And all hell broke loose. Depres­sion enve­lo­ped her every­day life — one of her worst lin­ge­ring symp­toms of hypothy­roi­dism due to the shoddy treat­ment of a T4-only med as well as the TSH lab test.  I remem­ber her moods, her fre­quent anger and lack of patience, and her cons­tant coun­se­ling appointments.

By 1963, and right before Pre­si­dent Ken­nedy was shot, she sub­mit­ted her­self to Elec­tric Shock Treat­ment in a futile effort to con­trol her depres­sion.  What a crock.  She was never again the bright and quick-witted woman I remem­be­red as a youn­ger child. Her brain was fried and she had a new dull flat reac­tion to life. And for the rest of her life, she lived on her antidepressant/anti-anxiety med Ela­vil and had daily cons­tant naps, weight gain, rising cho­les­te­rol, dry hair, heart sur­gery, stiff joints, brain fog and ina­bi­lity to stand on her feet long – her own mani­fes­ta­tion of lin­ge­ring symp­toms while on the lousy thyroxine.

And she did the T4-horror show…all…by…herself. No inter­net,  no patient groups and forums, no Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness web­site, blog or book,  no good doc, no thy­roid Face­book or Twit­ter groups, no other good thy­roid books or web­si­tes. Nada. I came along as a Thy­roid Patient Acti­vist too late for my mother, who died in 2003.

It makes me shud­der thin­king of that lonely hell. But then again, it’s not just in the far past: it hap­pe­ned to her only daugh­ter, me, for nearly 20 years. Com­plete lonely hell of my own with intense and disa­bling Dysau­to­no­mia indu­ced by my con­ti­nued hypo state while on Synth­roid and later Levoxyl.

And today, because the mass media or any media per­so­na­lity refu­ses to speak the truth of the 55 year scan­dal of T4-only meds like Synth­roid, Levoxyl, levothy­ro­xine, Eltro­xin, Oro­xine, or the cuckoo’s nest of the TSH lab test and range, HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of indi­vi­duals still suf­fer. How stu­pid can they get.  This is a scan­dal that has effec­ted a huge mass of indi­vi­duals glo­bally, past and pre­sent,  inc­lu­ding those today who STILL lin­ger with undiag­no­sed hypothy­roi­dism thanks to the worth­less TSH lab test or lin­ge­ring hypo on the lousy T4-only medi­ca­tions. And all the above when we, as patients, have lear­ned a far bet­ter way to treat our thy­roid problems

Did you have rela­ti­ves like my own Mom (who died in 2003) who lived the T4-only scan­dal alone?  Use the Com­ment form to tell us about them.  Have YOU suf­fe­red from a T4 med? Report it to the FDA here.

Also below, read about Jane Pau­ley and the health issues that make you won­der, since they can all be con­nec­ted to a thy­roid pro­blem, either undiag­no­sed or untrea­ted.  Below that, you’ll see posts about Oprah, Reverse T3, the pro­blem of cellu­lose in our meds, the desic­ca­ted thy­roid shor­ta­ges, and more.

*HO HO HO! Have a STTM book sent to someone  you care about as a CHRISTMAS or HOLIDAY pre­sent. A card will be inc­lu­ded, and the book will be in an enve­lope with a red bow!! Save money the more you buy!

I have been dri­ving all day, brin­ging my hus­band back home after serious hand sur­gery yes­ter­day. And while I was away from the com­pu­ter, I recei­ved the below via the Con­tact Me form of STTM, writ­ten by Mary Budin­ger for the Ari­zona Net News jour­nal, Sep­tem­ber 16, 2009:

Dr. Mark Starr’s office team wan­ted to send over a por­tion of an article just writ­ten for an Ari­zona health maga­zine:

Desic­ca­ted thy­roid from pigs is a bio-identical, com­plete hor­mone pre­pa­ra­tion, con­tai­ning the entire spec­trum of thy­roid hor­mo­nes inc­lu­ding T4, T3, T2, and T1 that are in the human thy­roid gland.

Current FDA appro­ved thy­roid medi­ca­tions inc­lude Synth­roid, Unith­roid, Levoxyl, and Levothy­ro­xine (all only con­tain T4), and Cyto­mel (only T3). These hor­mo­nes are synthe­tic and con­tain only a por­tion of the thyroid’s hormones.

Dr. Mark Starr of Phoe­nix, Ari­zona, said patients have called him, fran­tic that desic­ca­ted thy­roid is una­vai­la­ble. “It is so key to my prac­tice, I have enough for my patients. So far, it appears that when supply catches up with demand in a few months, the shor­tage will be over.”

Dr. Starr is the author of “Hypothyroidism-Type 2.” He said synthe­tic thy­roid acts ener­ge­ti­cally dif­fe­rently in the body. “All living things have a right spin, and synthe­tic medi­ca­tions have a left spin. The desic­ca­ted thy­roid is bet­ter tolerated.”

Dr. Broda Bar­nes did a study that revea­led a rela­tive into­le­rance to a synthe­tic thy­roid pro­duct con­tai­ning T3 and T4 (Thy­ro­lar). One-fifth of the patients who had done well on desic­ca­ted thy­roid deve­lo­ped rapid heart beats and pal­pi­ta­tions when switched to Thy­ro­lar. Dr. Bar­nes also did a major research study on desic­ca­ted thy­roid that invol­ved thou­sands of patients over 30 years; it sho­wed a 94 per­cent reduc­tion in the num­ber of expec­ted heart attacks. This study is the sub­ject of the 1976 book “Sol­ved: The Riddle of Heart Attacks.”

Lipi­tor is the best selling drug in the world. But for the first half of the 20^th cen­tury, desic­ca­ted thy­roid was the stan­dard treat­ment for high cho­les­te­rol. Ele­va­ted cho­les­te­rol and trigly­ce­ri­des are one of the myriad symp­toms of hypothy­roi­dism. Dr. Bar­nes’ book inc­lu­ded a chap­ter entit­led “The Demise of the Cho­les­te­rol Theory.” Desic­ca­ted thy­roid nor­ma­li­zed cho­les­te­rol and trigly­ce­ri­des in 95% of the patients Dr. Bar­nes trea­ted. The 5% who had per­sis­tently ele­va­ted levels had no inc­rea­sed inci­dence of heart attacks. Desic­ca­ted thy­roid the­rapy also resol­ved a long list of other hypothy­roid symp­toms such as fati­gue, cold into­le­rance, joint and muscle pain, dry skin, ina­bi­lity to lose weight, hea­daches, and mens­trual pro­blems. One of the most impor­tant bene­fits that Dr. Bar­nes demons­tra­ted in stu­dies on both ani­mals and his patients was that desic­ca­ted thy­roid inc­rea­ses immu­nity and allows the body to fight off infec­tions. As we come into swine flu sea­son, this is par­ti­cu­larly important.”

Dr. Starr, I love the way you put it: “All living things have a right spin, and synthe­tic medi­ca­tions have a left spin. The desic­ca­ted thy­roid is bet­ter tole­ra­ted.” And that’s exactly why the web­site Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness exists – patients all over the world have found out what a far bet­ter “right spin” treat­ment desic­ca­ted thy­roid has been for them!  So we pre­sent this infor­ma­tion, hoping that more and more patients can learn from the paths wal­ked before them, and take this right into their doc­tors offices.

And about Thy­ro­lar, which is a com­bi­na­tion of synthe­tic T4 and synthe­tic T3:  we’re glad it exists. But…there have been nume­rous patients over the years who tried the com­bi­na­tion of synthe­tic t3/ synthe­tic T4, and who then switched to desic­ca­ted thy­roid. And they iden­ti­cally report on the NTH thy­roid group that they got far bet­ter results from desic­ca­ted thy­roid. That is power­ful information.

And yes, Dr. Starr, we are loo­king for­ward for supply to catch up, because natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid is a godsend.

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Join the Thy­roid Patient Com­mu­nity Call on Talk Shoe this Fri­day. UPDATE: the Pre­si­dent of Hook’s Apothe­cary, a com­poun­ding phar­macy that ser­ves Illi­nois and Indiana, will be in the chat to talk about com­poun­ding desic­ca­ted thyroid.

Also check out the post below con­cer­ning pos­si­ble hints that we are clo­ser to seeing more desic­ca­ted thy­roid on our shel­ves?

Just when you think we’re full of great infor­ma­tion for bet­ter thy­roid care, there’s still more to learn and find out.  Below is infor­ma­tion that you might find inte­res­ting on STTM.

ADRENALS: For those who dis­co­ve­red via the 24 adre­nal saliva test that they nee­ded cor­ti­sol sup­port, we have come to rea­lize that some can’t do the ram­ping up sche­dule from a small amount to a lar­ger amount without having pro­blems from the feed­back loop.

Ins­tead, many simply need to “start” on the higher amount, which would range from 20 – 30 mg. You can read about that on the How to Treat page, and you’ll note that not one mor­ning amount goes higher than 10 mgs.  With the excep­tion of men, higher than 10 mg seems to sup­press the ACTH and adre­nals too much.

A NEW LOOK: To make the STTM home page more unders­tan­da­ble to new­co­mers, the home page has bro­ken down the infor­ma­tion bet­ter into sepa­rate pages, and also has a new inte­res­ting way of using it.

LISTEN TO THIS INFORMATION: STTM has short audio clips you can lis­ten to, or send someone else to, to help unders­tand what this is all about.

STORIES OF OTHERS: Indi­vi­dual real-life sto­ries con­ti­nue to come in, pro­ving over and over that this revo­lu­tion for far bet­ter care really does work.

FEEDBACK and MORE FEEDBACK: I get emails daily about lives chan­ged thanks to this patient revo­lu­tion. It’s won­der­ful to see peo­ple fin­ding out WHY they have depres­sion, less sta­mina than others, rising cho­les­te­rol and blood pres­sure, hair loss plus other lin­ge­ring symp­toms of  hypothy­roi­dism left untrea­ted because of the lousy TSH, or under­trea­ted because of the equally-lousy T4-only treat­ment like Synth­roid. I can’t begin to post them all, but STTM does con­tain a sam­pling of this feed­back.

DESICCATED THYROID BRANDS: Wow, the list is gro­wing for desic­ca­ted thy­roid brands around the world! We now have lis­tings for Den­mark, Ger­many, Italy and New Zea­land, as well as more detai­led infor­ma­tion on com­poun­ded thy­roid in Aus­tra­lia. Thanks to all who contributed.

KEEPING UP WITH ADDITIONS TO STTM: In case you didn’t know, there’s a page meant to inform you of what’s added to STTM. I may neglect to list a few addi­tions occa­sio­nally, but think I’m pretty close to get­ting most of them up there.

MEDICAL RESEARCH TO PROVE WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW: Did you know that STTM has a page which com­pi­les research and stu­dies which prove what we as patients already know? It’s not loa­ded with research yet, but it’s gro­wing. And if you have found more to con­tri­bute to that page, use the Con­tact Me form.

SITE MAP: And bot­tom line, you can always go to the Site Map, or review the infor­ma­tion more com­pactly in the book, which patients are taking into their doc­tors offices.

*Want to be infor­med of these blog posts? Curious what’s on Janie’s mind? Use the Noti­fi­ca­tions on the left at the bot­tom of the links.

*Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness T-shirts are now 50% off! I like sales, don’t you? And by wea­ring these shirts, you’ll never know what seed you put in the mind of someone wal­king past you who’s still on Synth­roid or any other T4 meds, and doesn’t know WHY they have depres­sion, rising cho­les­te­rol, easy weight gain, the need for naps, etc. You”ll also find humo­rous bum­per stic­kers which defi­ni­tely spread the word.