depression tags

It’s been about a year since Armour desic­ca­ted thy­roid, a very popu­lar presc­rip­tion natu­ral thy­roid pro­duct on the mar­ket for deca­des, was refor­mu­la­ted. Forest Labs sta­ted there were two chan­ges: the rai­sing of cellu­lose, and the lowe­ring of sucrose.

Why did they do this? It could be strongly rela­ted to the fact that in late 2007 through 2008, patients who used the 3 grain tablets repor­ted they were sud­denly and enti­rely inef­fec­tive. So, many of us sur­mise that Forest was attemp­ting to “improve” (cough) their product.

Says one of those patients:  I had switched to the 3 grain tablet months before to save money and I used my pill cut­ter to cut it in half.  Then around Novem­ber, my work pants were get­ting tight and I would come home tired, achy and weak. It didn’t take me long to figure out that Armour in the 3 grain was now like a sugar pill!

In the mean­time, Forest brought out the newly for­mu­la­ted Armour, & patients who finished their old batch star­ted the new batch. And since then, it appears a large body of patients have run as fast as they could to Natu­reth­roid, or com­poun­ded, or T4/T3 or Erfa. The rea­son: a return of for­mer hypo symp­toms on the “new” Armour.

I have com­ple­ted an infor­mal sur­vey with 24 indi­vi­duals res­pon­ding, and asked the follo­wing ques­tions. After each ques­tion, I give a sum­mary of the answers.

1. How long of doing well occu­rred on the newly refor­mu­la­ted Armour before you star­ted to notice that you weren’t doing well?

Most ans­wers are in the area of 2 – 3 months, with three saying a month, one 4 months, and three sta­ting a few weeks. And com­pa­ring this to com­ments we’ve been seeing for the past year on patient groups, it’s com­mon to feel good at first, but to crash within that 2 – 3 months.

2. What clued you in that you weren’t doing well on the new Armour?

The ans­wers are all over the map: fati­gue and exhaus­tion, hair loss, brain fog, weight gain, slee­ping pro­blems, cons­ti­pa­tion, achi­ness, depres­sion, hor­mo­nal pro­blems, moo­di­ness, dry skin/elbows/thumbs and crac­king skin, fla­king fin­ger­nails, heart irre­gu­la­rity, for­get­ful­ness. Five report skin brea­kouts simi­lar to poi­son ivy.  Fati­gue and hair loss were the most com­mon answers.

3. Did you try rai­sing it? What were the results?

The majo­rity tried rai­sing it, and results were: no results; barely made any dif­fe­rence: more energy but skin was a mess. The majo­rity said nothing hap­pe­ned. Two dou­bled it with no sig­ni­fi­cant results.  Two deve­lo­ped fast heart rate with no impro­ve­ments elsewhere. One had to lower it because of a very low TSH. One sta­ted she rai­sed it to get her labs back up to where they were before…with little impro­ve­ments.  And one said it made her too hot to con­ti­nue rai­sing it.

4. Did you try adding T3 to it? What were the results?

All said no. One said she tes­ted here RT3 ratio and it was 11, which is bad.  One sta­ted she asked her doc­tor for T3; he said no. I’d sure like to find someone who did add T3 who could tell us the results.

5. Did you do anything else to try and make the refor­mu­la­ted Armour work, and did it help?

All repor­ted nothing hel­ped enough.  Many sta­ted their doc­tors tes­ted for other pro­blems, ran­ging from heavy metals, low iodine, B12 – the lat­ter hel­ped one gal’s tin­gling. One sta­ted her doc put her on Apro­to­col for the diges­tive tract which hel­ped the cons­ti­pa­tion but nothing else chan­ged. One added com­poun­ded desic­ca­ted thy­roid to her Armour — it didn’t help. One gal tried Thyro-care, which hel­ped. But she and two others report get­ting a poison-ivy like skin rash on the new Armour.

Currently, we see newly diag­no­sed patients put on the new Armour, and vete­rans can’t help but won­der what will hap­pen to them.

***********************

On my April 17^th blog post, read 10 rea­sons thy­roid patients are still frus­tra­ted, angry and sick. That is follo­wed by the April 19^th blog post Should thy­roid patients avoid self-treatment at all costs, with an inte­res­ting and strong Guest Post by Sheila Tur­ner of TPA-UK and a good follo­wup to the for­mer 10 rea­sons post.

***********************

If you appre­ciate the infor­ma­tion you receive from this patient-to-patient web­site, please con­si­der making a dona­tion to sup­port the hos­ting costs for this Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness web­site. The icon is on the lower right.

(Mon­day April 5^th Postsc­ript to my blog post below: One of the patients inter­vie­wed by this repor­ter sta­tes the follo­wing: The report left the impres­sion that we (desic­ca­ted thy­roid users) are a teeny little group on the frin­ges of medi­cine, rather than a ground swell of well researched patients trying to improve our health (and every aspect of our lives) with ratio­nal, com­mon sense alter­na­ti­ves. We are still voi­ces crying in the wil­der­ness, and igno­red by the mains­tream medi­cal pro­fes­sio­nals. C’est la vie.)

Finally.

After years of near-complete silence by the mass media about the pro­found 60-year medi­cal scan­dal of T4-only treat­ment like Synth­roid, as well as lives chan­ged due to natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid, we have some pro­gress.

A few weeks ago, I was con­tac­ted by health repor­ter Pau­line Dakin of CBC (Cana­dian Broad­cas­ting Cor­po­ra­tion) Radio. She was pre­pa­ring a report on thy­roid treat­ment and desic­ca­ted thy­roid, asking for names of Cana­dian patients and doc­tors who might speak of their own expe­rien­ces. Among others, I got her in touch with Cana­dian thy­roid patient The­resa Roberts, who has remin­ded me of this report.

And, Pau­line Dakin’s report on desic­ca­ted thy­roid will be pre­sen­ted TODAY, Eas­ter Sun­day, on CBC Radio One on “The World This Wee­kend” at 6:00 pm Eas­tern Time (5 pm Cen­tral, 4 pm Moun­tain and 3 pm Paci­fic). It’s a com­prehen­sive 1/2 hour news pro­gram that airs natio­nally on wee­kend eve­nings and takes an in-depth look at current issues.

And even if you aren’t in Canada, you can lis­ten to this pro­gram on CBC Radio One live at http://www.cbc.ca/worldthisweekend/ , or you can down­load the pod­cast (which may require free subscription).

HIGH FIVE to Pau­line Dakin and the Cana­dian Broad­cas­ting Corporation.

The 60-year use of T4-only medi­ca­tions like Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin and other brands has NOT wor­ked for hun­dreds of millions world­wide, resul­ting in each patient’s amount and degree of lin­ge­ring symp­toms of hypothy­roi­dism as well as the added misery of adre­nal fatigue.

We have also been ban­dai­ded with anti-depressants, sta­tins, pain meds, high blood pres­sure meds and more, all the while being told by our clue­less doc­tors that we are schi­zoph­re­ni­cally ’”nor­mal” because the also-lousy TSH test says so.

Or, like my own mother, we have been sub­jec­ted to Elec­tric Shock The­rapy because of depres­sion cau­sed by T4 meds and their ina­de­quate treat­ment.  You can read about my mother here.

Stop the Thy­roid Madness™!

P.S. Sign up for the “news­let­ter noti­fi­ca­tion” of this blog – see right below the links to the left. Or you can use your RSS feed page.

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!!

**********************************************

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.

***************************************

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).

Seve­ral years ago, a large per­cen­tage of thy­roid patients on yahoo groups like NTH were figu­ring out that they had adre­nal fati­gue, aka low cor­ti­sol, from years of adre­nals wor­king over­time due to the ina­de­quate TSH lab test, or being on the lousy T4-only medi­ca­tions like Synth­roid, Levoxyl, levothy­ro­xine, Eltro­xin, etc.

Not only does low cor­ti­sol keep desic­ca­ted thy­roid from wor­king well, it also cau­ses all sorts of angst with para­noia, depres­sion, anxiety, easy anger, sen­si­ti­vity to light and/or sounds, rec­lu­si­ve­ness, sleep issues and more.

First, patients dis­co­ve­red the impor­tance of using the 24 hour adre­nal saliva test rather than blood or urine. When low cor­ti­sol was con­fir­med, the treat­ment was using cor­ti­sol, aka hydro­cor­ti­sone, to give them­sel­ves back what their adre­nals were not, to allow thy­roid hor­mo­nes to reach the cells, and to give the poo­ped out adre­nals a rest.

And suc­cess was achie­ved! When all other issues were dis­co­ve­red and trea­ted, patients were finally able to heal their adre­nals with cor­ti­sol use, wean off, and be suc­cess­ful in their con­ti­nued treat­ment with desic­ca­ted thy­roid! That suc­cess con­ti­nues today!

Yet in spite of clear suc­cess in the treat­ment of low cor­ti­sol with sup­ple­men­tal cor­ti­sol in the correct amount for each indi­vi­dual (which can range from 15 to 40 mg gene­rally – men often need the higher end), as well as exce­llent books on the sub­ject by Wil­son, Peat­field, Jef­fries and the STTM book, patients like RD below still encoun­ter doc­tors who fill their minds with all sorts of fear and warnings:

I bought your book and later on I dis­co­ve­red your web­site which are both great. They are a superb source of infor­ma­tion and sup­port for thy­roid and adre­nal fati­gue suf­fe­rers. Thank you so much!

Per­so­nally I got adre­nal fati­gue by a sus­tai­ned lack of sleep for seve­ral years (crying babies).  I found a doc­tor who presc­ri­bed Hydro­cor­ti­sone (17.5 mg/day, 5 – 5-5 – 2.5), Flu­dro­cor­ti­sone, DHEA and Tes­tos­te­rone. Symp­toms disap­pea­red in about 2 weeks.

A first attempt to wean off after 6 months made some serious symp­toms reap­pear very quickly, so I retur­ned to the ori­gi­nal dose.

It is very stress­ful that many esta­blished doc­tors (our family doc­tor, and my wife’s thyroid-endocrinologist) are sca­ring me like hell that I am taking HC. They are saying I am des­tro­ying my body and I will never suc­ceed in wea­ning off HC.

My wife is a T4-only thyroid-patient with low-cortisol symp­toms. She also has been sca­red about des­si­ca­ted thy­roid and HC. Rea­ding your book I was howe­ver con­vin­ced she could bene­fit a lot from a bet­ter treatment…

Keep up the good work, as patients we are really left alone in the dark by our doctors…

And unfor­tu­na­tely, it’s true. Thy­roid and adre­nal patients are left in the dark by many doc­tors about a variety of issues rela­ted to bet­ter thy­roid treat­ment, adre­nal issues, low ferri­tin, and more.  So here’s where you can read more, and in turn, take this impor­tant infor­ma­tion into your doc­tors offices:

• All about the pro­blem of adre­nal fatigue
• How to treat
• Symp­toms of having an adre­nal problem
• The STTM book, which not only has more detail, but can be taken right into the doctor’s office
• Talk to other patients, inc­lu­ding a group tar­ge­ted for adre­nal fatigue

*********************************************************

If you mis­sed the exce­llent Part 2 with researcher Dr. John C. Lowe last Thurs­day eve­nings, you can lis­ten to the recor­ding, as well as sign up to be a Follo­wer of the Thy­roid Patient Com­mu­nity Call, here.

The follo­wing guest blog post is writ­ten by Amy McMu­llen, who had undiag­no­sed & symp­to­ma­tic hypothy­roi­dism for 20 years due to the sole use of the TSH, resul­ting in mul­ti­ple health problems. She is now trea­ting per the gui­de­li­nes on STTM inc­lu­ding T3 for thy­roid hor­mone resis­tance, adre­nal sup­port, and desic­ca­ted thyroid.

I found her story below as an under­co­ver advo­cate fas­ci­na­ting,  and think Amy is caring and com­mit­ted,  in spite of severe res­tric­tions! Bless you, Amy.

I spend an inor­di­nate amount of time these days con­tri­bu­ting to a well-known online thy­roid disor­ders forum I’ll call “Thy­roid Health Forum” (not its real name).

It’s a tricky forum with dra­co­nian rules: they don’t allow you to post any links to resour­ces, talk about where you get your online labs done, inc­lude quo­tes from stu­dies, or post any names of thy­roid advo­ca­tes. You can’t use a user­name you’ve used on any other forums and you can’t men­tion using their per­so­nal mes­sa­ging system.

I’ve recei­ved a few “infrac­tions” from the ever-vigilant board “admi­nis­tra­tors” and “mode­ra­tors” (never could color inside the lines, I guess) and have been war­ned to never, under any cir­cums­tan­ces, use the words “Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness” or any refe­ren­ces to this web­site or book in my posts.

At more than one point I was ready to walk away and just give up on it.  How can you share your expe­rien­ces when there were so many rules that see­med desig­ned to inhi­bit a free flow of infor­ma­tion, to the point of not being allo­wed to men­tion the title of a good book by name or type in the word Google?

But I would read the follo­wing posts sub­mit­ted by des­pe­rate peo­ple and this would keep me coming back to try, somehow, to help:

• “Hi, my doc­tor says my labs are all nor­mal but I’ve got so many symp­toms, I can hardly function…”
• “My doc­tor says that free T3 and free T4 tes­ting is not use­ful, that my TSH is nor­mal and that unless my TSH is high he won’t order any anti­body tests…”
• “My doc­tor says that my TSH is too low and wants me to cut back on my thy­roid hor­mo­nes, but I know I will start fee­ling bad if I do this… Help!”
• “I am taking Synth­roid but I feel terri­ble and my hair is falling out and now my doc wants me to take an antidepressant…”

You see, I was in this very same boat for far too many years. About 20 years back I star­ted noti­cing symp­toms:  fati­gue, depres­sion, mens­trual irre­gu­la­ri­ties, and dizzy spells. I went to see my doc who did the usual TSH test and when it came back “nor­mal”, presc­ri­bed anti­de­pres­sants. The anti­de­pres­sants did help, but my mens­trual pro­blems inten­si­fied and other symp­toms inc­rea­sed until I finally under­went a hys­te­rec­tomy for dys­func­tio­nal ute­rine blee­ding. Shortly the­reaf­ter, I collap­sed with heart irre­gu­la­ri­ties and auto­no­mic ner­vous sys­tem dys­func­tion in the fall of 2006.

I went to over 10 dif­fe­rent spe­cia­lists spen­ding thou­sands of dollars for medi­cal bills with no real ans­wers – just a lot of shrug­ged shoul­ders and a fibrom­yal­gia diagnosis.

It wasn’t until my mother was hos­pi­ta­li­zed and rou­tine blood tes­ting came back with a TSH of over 6 that I loo­ked again at my own thy­roid. My TSH was never above 3. I had one free T4 test done follo­wing my ini­tial collapse but, again, all tests were flag­ged “nor­mal” and thy­roid was pas­sed over once again.

But a search about TSH lab ran­ges led me to Mary Shomon’s About.com artic­les, and while she see­med to be stuck on the idea that 3 was an accep­ta­ble num­ber for the top of range for TSH, based enti­rely on the Ame­ri­can Asso­cia­tion of Cli­ni­cal Endoc­ri­no­lo­gists recom­men­da­tions, I finally found the Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness site and lear­ned otherwise.

It was here that I lear­ned about other tes­ting like free T3, free T4, thy­roid anti­bo­dies, vita­min and ferri­tin levels and, very impor­tantly, that the TSH should be the LAST test done for diag­no­sing hypothy­roi­dism ins­tead of the ONLY test. I finally caught on to how the medi­cal esta­blish­ment has fai­led mise­rably to ade­qua­tely diag­nose and treat hypothy­roi­dism. I felt both inc­re­dibly empo­we­red and very, very angry.

I quickly del­ved into the thy­roid forums to share what I’d lear­ned and to learn from others. The first forum I found was the afo­re­men­tio­ned  “Thy­roid Health Forum”, and since this is one of the best-known, it is where many of the new­bies, like me, find them­sel­ves. There were both natu­ral and synthe­tic hor­mone pro­po­nents on the board and the advice ran­ged from very good to quite bad. I soon found there were bet­ter forums like Realthy­roidhelp and the natu­ral thy­roid hor­mone Yahoo groups that had really smart peo­ple who were happy to share resour­ces and infor­ma­tion that was truly use­ful. I spent a lot of time on these and lear­ned a great deal.

But for some rea­son I couldn’t seem to leave the “Thy­roid Health Forum”. The peo­ple who stum­bled on there see­med so lost and I felt com­pe­lled to impart what I had lear­ned to them. I would offer alter­na­ti­ves to the synthe­tics and explain why natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid (NDT) was a supe­rior treat­ment option and, more impor­tantly, that they did have an option for their treat­ment, des­pite what their doc­tor told them. I’d relay what I had lear­ned from other boards about access to NDT during the shortages.

When I figu­red out I had adre­nal fati­gue and later thy­roid hor­mone resis­tance as a result of being undiag­no­sed for so long, I star­ted rela­ying infor­ma­tion about these issues to the many who were having dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting opti­mi­zed on their hor­mone repla­ce­ment the­rapy. I found it to be both rewar­ding and enor­mously edu­ca­ting for myself as I would spend time researching ques­tions that were asked about sup­ple­ments, lab tests, and stu­dies. I was not allo­wed to post links so had to sum­ma­rize things I had lear­ned and this taught me even more. The main mes­sa­ges I pushed were (and are):  get the right labs done, learn how to inter­pret them correctly, be your own advo­cate, know your treat­ment options, and don’t impli­citly trust doctors.

I will con­ti­nue to con­tri­bute what I’ve lear­ned to the “Thy­roid Health Forum”. So far I’ve mana­ged to fly under the radar and play, howe­ver grud­gingly, by their rules. I figure if I can get just one or two peo­ple to ques­tion the pre­sent thy­roid cli­ni­cal gui­de­li­nes, as writ­ten by our friends at big pharma, I’ll be more than satis­fied. I actually believe that by get­ting good infor­ma­tion out there to as many suf­fe­rers as pos­si­ble, we may create a grounds­well of peo­ple who will no lon­ger accept being dis­mis­sed as depres­sed com­plai­ners by their health­care pro­vi­ders. And this is one more way we can help enact real change to the currently abys­mal medi­cal prac­tice of thy­roid diag­no­sis and treat­ment. Well worth it in my book!

*******************************

Latest news from RLC: Ship­ments of Natu­reth­roid are begin­ning Mon­day, January 4^th and the first two weeks with bac­kor­ders going out ASAP.  Medco should have some by the end of January. Their Patient Infor­ma­tion Line: Naturethroid/Westhroid: 877 – 600-4752

Thy­roid  patient guest posts can be read about here: /writing-a-guest-blog-post-on-sttm/

Want to honor someone who has hel­ped you?? See the blog post below and thank someone.

NOTE: if you were recei­ving email noti­fi­ca­tions about these posts,  the com­pany doing them is out of busi­ness. Ins­tead, use an RSS Feed.