cholesterol tags

The recent press release by the UK’s Royal College of Phy­si­cians about the new gui­de­li­nes on the diag­no­sis and mana­ge­ment of pri­mary hypothy­roi­dism hit the web with a resoun­ding, stiff-necked thud.

And I have writ­ten about it in the news media here:  http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Royal-College-of-Physi-by-Janie-Bowthorpe-090210 – 698.html

p.s.  In the 1600’s, Gali­leo was the first most pro­li­fic voice to proc­laim that the earth revol­ved around the sun (Armour), in con­trast to the firmly held posi­tion that the sun revol­ved around the earth (Thy­ro­xine).  He was denoun­ced as being dan­ge­rous and here­ti­cal. But over time, the truth won out.

Are you from the UK? Tell us what you think.

With recent news of Oprah’s con­ti­nuous weight gain (currently par­tially due to her fai­lure to pro­perly treat her hypothy­roi­dism and pro­bably Hashi­mo­tos (see post below this), it can make us all shud­der as we deal with the holi­days and all that great food!

I admit it: At Christ­mas­time, I LOVE the easy Gin­ger­bread Boy Coo­kies recipe I used when the boys were little, the Mic­ro­wave Fudge recipe to die for, my world famous Cho­co­late Chip Merin­gue Coo­kies which I color red and green, my mother’s won­der­ful Pra­li­nes which I occa­sio­nally try to make myself,  and Grandma’s Fruit Cake–yeah an actual fruit cake I LOVE, which I order EVERY SINGLE YEAR at this time.

And it’s hard not to gain weight! Is that you, too?? So let’s go over 6 HOLIDAY FACTS about thy­roid treat­ment with desic­ca­ted thyroid:

1) Armour, Natu­rethy­roid, Westh­roid, or any other desic­ca­ted thy­roid medi­ca­tion is not meant to be a Christ­mas weight loss pill. Desic­ca­ted thy­roid medi­ca­tions con­sist of thy­roid hor­mo­nes: T4, T3, T2, T1 and cal­ci­to­nin. They simply give you back what your own thy­roid is not giving you…the same five hor­mo­nes which give you back a stron­ger immune sys­tem, a nor­mal body tem­pe­ra­ture & impro­ved meta­bo­lism, bet­ter energy, healthier hair and skin, less aches & pains, emo­tio­nal hap­pi­ness, bet­ter lipid pro­fi­les like cho­les­te­rol, stron­ger bones…and on and on.  But even with all that bene­fit, and even though it does improve your meta­bo­lism, desic­ca­ted thy­roid is not meant to be a weight loss pill.

2) Armour et. al. can only do its holi­day job if you have strong adre­nals or ade­quate cor­ti­sol treat­ment. Because cor­ti­sol is nee­ded for thy­roid hor­mo­nes to move from your blood to your cells, you can only bene­fit opti­mally from desic­ca­ted thy­roid during the holi­days if you are lucky enough to have strong adre­nals, or if you are giving your­self back the cor­ti­sol you need based on sta­ble temps, blood pres­sure, and remo­val of most low cor­ti­sol symp­toms.  So don’t for­get that cor­ti­sol right now, and defi­ni­tely con­si­der adding a stress dose of cor­ti­sol if things get rough with the in-laws. (See Chap­ter 6 in the STTM book for even more details about sta­ble temps, blood pres­sure, and stress dosing)

3) Don’t drink that Armour down with Egg Nog! Cal­cium is a known bin­der of thy­roid hor­mo­nes in your sto­mach, kee­ping you from bene­fi­ting from some of those health-giving thy­roid hor­mo­nes.  So if you swa­llow your desic­ca­ted thy­roid, get the water.  Or even bet­ter, do it sublin­gually.

4) Don’t expect Armour to keep you from loo­king like Santa Claus: you still gotta exer­cise & watch what you eat! It’s true: the opti­mal use of desic­ca­ted thy­roid does raise your meta­bo­lism and eats those extra calo­ries up like Pac­Man.  But if you’re like me, you can still have a ten­dency to put on those love handle but­ter pounds if you eat your fill of holi­day foods.  ho ho ho. To cur­tail the gain, add exer­cise to your holi­day regime, or inc­rease what you already do. I try to aero­bi­cally walk a LOT during the holi­days. And when I’ve eaten a Christ­mas stoc­king full of goo­dies, my next meal will be nothing but high pro­tein, like  tur­key, chee­ses and nuts. Or, you can also balance your intake by choo­sing one meal a day to be low gly­ce­mic to somewhat balance out the high gly­ce­mics you know you are going to eat later. For exam­ple, I make my break­fasts only eggs and nitrate-free bacon, or plain yogurt with berries, nuts, and Stevia.

5) Buil­ding a holi­day snow­man outside?  Con­si­der an extra 1/4 grain of Armour. It’s a fact that pro­lon­ged expo­sure to cold inc­rea­ses your demand for energy, which in turn can inc­rease your demand for more thy­roid hor­mo­nes. As a result, many patients find that adding an extra 1/4 grain of desic­ca­ted thy­roid to one’s daily amount helps meet the demands of Frosty the Snow­man or that holi­day sprin­kling of lights all over your house in the cold air.  Talk to your doctor.

6) Give a gift of the STTM book to a loved one. There are other good thy­roid books on the mar­ket, but unlike all of them, this is the bible of patient expe­rience on suc­cess­ful thy­roid treat­ment. You’ll find volu­mes of infor­ma­tion that patients all around the world have lear­ned. A true patient-to-patient guide to fee­ling won­der­ful again.  Go here to order.  And the publishing com­pany is exten­ding the time you can order a book to be sent DIRECTLY to your loved one.

I was infor­med today that a very popu­lar and well-liked doc­tor in Texas, who treats many hypothy­roid patients, was dis­ci­pli­ned recently.  And for what?  Under the column tit­led NONTHERAPEUTIC PRESCRIBING, it sta­tes:  The action was based on Dr. Lau­nius’ presc­ri­bing Adi­pex, Adde­ral and Armour Thy­roid to patients when such medi­ca­tions were not indi­ca­ted. www.tmb.state.tx.us/news/press/2008/101608a.php

Adi­pex and Adde­rol are both cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem sti­mu­lants, and I can’t com­ment one way or the other. But the men­tion of Armour thy­roid as “not indi­ca­ted” is poten­tially worri­some, espe­cially with simi­lar dis­ci­pli­nary actions brought upon well-liked and wise doc­tors like Peat­field and Skin­ner of the UK, Derry of Canada, and  Sprin­ger in the US – all who dared to make obvious symp­toms more impor­tant than ink spots on a piece of paper.

Take Kymm, a 45 year old woman.  She has mani­fes­ted hypothy­roid symp­toms for 15 years since the birth of her daugh­ter.  Yet during those entire 15 years, her TSH lab result has been com­ple­tely “normal”…i.e. hypothy­roi­dism has never been “indi­ca­ted” based on the typi­cal and wides­pread gold stan­dard of diag­no­sis: the TSH.  But she has never, ever been nor­mal with 15 years of easy weight gain, chro­nic depres­sion, thin­ning hair, rising cho­les­te­rol, and other clear hypothy­roid symp­toms. And she has in fact star­ted on Armour…and is soaring.

Kymm is not an oddity.  Thy­roid patients on inter­net groups report going years with a nor­mal TSH, no diag­no­sis, yet clear symp­toms which are igno­red by their TSH-obsessed doc­tors.   So their doc­tors may have avoi­ded dis­ci­pli­nary action, but did they truly prac­tise the art and science of healing??

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!

Hardly a per­son hasn’t heard Aesop’s fable of the tor­toise and the all-too-confident hare, run­ning their I’ll-prove-to-you-who’s-boss race. The hare was FAST and cer­tain to win the run. But the ever-so-committed tor­toise, even if slow, slo­wer and slo­west…was steady…and won the race.

Until recently, I thought our thrust and deter­mi­na­tion to change the Big Pharma, zombie-doctoring medi­cal sys­tem in the treat­ment of hypothy­roid would be like the hare. We’d get the atten­tion of the mass media through our great deter­mi­na­tion, shout the mes­sage of a FAR bet­ter thy­roid treat­ment, and create huge change.

But I think I was wrong. Change has occu­rred, but we have been doing it like the tortoise…slow and steady.

Slowly but stea­dily, we are seeing more and more doc­tors star­ting to “get it”, even if they still have a way to go. Slowly but stea­dily, folks are fin­ding out why they have less sta­mina than others, or depres­sion, or rising cho­les­te­rol, or fibrom­yal­gia, or thin­ning hair in the face of the dog­ged “nor­mal” diagnosis…all due to an ina­de­quate medi­ca­tion called T4, aka Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, et. al. and a lousy lab called the TSH.

Slowly but stea­dily, folks are fin­ding out about desic­ca­ted thy­roid to treat their hypothy­roid, and cor­ti­sol to treat their adre­nal fatigue.

Even the STTM book has been like the tor­toise. Lite­rary agents didn’t get it, nor did huge publishing com­pa­nies. I finally stop­ped coun­ting, but I bet I had over 200 rejec­tions. They all thought it was simply “another” thy­roid book. So the frui­tion of the STTM book came out of true sweat and tears, and a lot of cuss words as I squir­med through my frus­tra­tions. Yet, the STTM book – a PATIENT-TO-PATIENT book of which I was only the mes­sen­ger, is not only a steady seller like the tor­toise was steady, but sales keep gro­wing every month, reviews are exce­llent, and lives ARE chan­ging. How can you cri­ti­cize a mes­sage, whether the STTM site or the book, that is based on the posi­tive and cri­ti­cal expe­rience of thou­sands of patients around the world!!

Change IS hap­pe­ning! Like the tor­toise, we’re win­ning the race and crea­ting change, bit by bit, whether it’s via STTM, various inter­net thy­roid groups, other good books, or just word of mouth. We’re all a part of it. But we can’t be com­pla­cent, because it’s truly obvious by blogs and web­si­tes I read that there’s still a huge body of hypothy­roid patients still suf­fe­ring on T4 who need to find out what WE have found out. But it will hap­pen, bit by bit.