desiccated thyroid tags

Thy­roid tid­bit #1 COCONUT OIL: Thy­roid patients con­ti­nue to report that the daily use of Coco­nut Oil (extra vir­gin is good) cau­sed an inc­rease in meta­bo­lism and even weight loss in  somewho wan­ted the lat­ter. How much daily? It varies from 2 – 4 T. but be care­ful, as too much can cause diarrhea. 

Thy­roid tid­bit #2 GRASS FED DESICCATED THYROID: Are you worried what the pigs were eating before the thy­roids became desic­ca­ted?? If so, try Dr. Lowe’s Thyro-Gold, which is actually from cow who are pasture-fed. Then report back to STTM on the Con­tact Me page and tell us how it works for you as a treat­ment, or not work. I will com­pile infor­ma­tion and report it here.

Thy­roid tid­bit #3 ALZHEIMERS DISEASE: Impro­ving your thy­roid func­tion just may les­sen your chance of get­ting demen­tia. But research has also found a Lep­tin con­nec­tion: http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20091215/more-leptin-may-mean-less-alzheimers

Thy­roid tid­bit #4: ASHWAGANDHA: If you have slug­gish adre­nals and are on cor­ti­sol, adding the herb Ash­wa­gandha can be an exce­llent and natu­ral addi­tio­nal sup­port for your adre­nals. Even without adre­nal fati­gue, it’s also good in the face of excess emo­tio­nal stress, and is an anti-inflammatory.

Thy­roid tid­bit #5 REVERSE T3 – IS YOURS TOO HIGH? The body natu­rally con­verts T4 to RT3 as a way to clear out excess T4. But you can also make too much when your ferri­tin is too low, your adre­nals are stres­sed, B12 is low, in the pre­sence of dia­be­tes, and other chro­nic issues. High levels of RT3 can cause a poun­ding hear­trate, con­ti­nued hypo, and just a fee­ling that you aren’t fee­ling great yet. To learn more, go here.

Thy­roid tid­bit #6 BI-POLAR: Have you been diag­no­sed with bi-polar disease? If so, you might want to do the right tests for hypothy­roi­dism, since there can be a strong con­nec­tion bet­ween the two, and you can either be undiag­no­sed thanks to the wrong test, or under­trea­ted thanks to Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin or other T4-only medi­ca­tions. Read more here plus more detail in the STTM book.

Thy­roid tid­bit #7 GREEN POWDER and CHOCOLATE: Don’t like green veg­gies but want to be healthy? Look into the dif­fe­rent varie­ties of “Green Pow­der” that you can stir into your favo­rite juice or water. Read the labels, tho, and avoid those with soy. Like cho­co­late?? They now make CHOCOLATE FLAVORED GREEN SUPERGREEN POWDERS and I am a huge fan. Just goo­gle what is all in caps before this.

Thy­roid tid­bit #8 YOUR GRANDMA: Thy­roid func­tion will natu­rally go down­ward in the elderly.That’s why grandma starts wea­ring that pur­ple swea­ter in weather you are swea­ting in.  But put­ting those over 65 on T4-only thy­ro­xine is not the ans­wer, as a recent study sho­wed.  That’s why YOU AND I are lucky to be on desic­ca­ted thy­roid with its direct T3, or even those of you who are on T3 only.

Thy­roid tid­bit #9 EGGS ARE A BIT SCARY RIGHT NOW: Not neces­sa­rily for thy­roid folks only, but you should be aware that with the recent recall of huge amounts of eggs in the US, there are reports of a four-fold inc­rease in Sal­mo­ne­lla Ente­ri­ti­dis infec­tions since May 2010 because of eggs and health offi­cials fear the worst may be yet to come. Why? Because the same eggs have been used in other pro­ducts. Scroll down this page to see list of reca­lled eggs. P.S. if you get sal­mo­ne­lla and are on cor­ti­sol for adre­nal fati­gue, you should dis­cuss with your doc­tor about using OTC cor­ti­sol cream, since you may not be able to hold down the pills. 1/4 tsp equals 10 mg cortisol.

Thy­roid tid­bit #10 FLU SHOTS vs. VITAMIN D: Just when you are making pro­gress trea­ting your hypothy­roi­dism and/or adre­nal fati­gue comes the sea­son for the flu. And if you goo­gle the same same title of this tid­bit, you’ll see nume­rous artic­les about the effi­cacy of taking Vit. D rather than the flu shots.  How much? Gene­ral recom­men­da­tion are 1000 IU’s daily at the mini­mum. Others point to more. Do your research.

Tonight was a beau­ti­ful night to do my aero­bic wal­king. It had pou­red this after­noon for 30 minu­tes, so the early eve­ning air was slightly cool and very clean.

And on the last leg of my jour­ney, I stop­ped and said to Car­lin as she was wal­king out of her front door “Where you have been lately? I haven’t seen you out wal­king with your husband.”

Car­lin and her hus­band Clint are pro­bably in their late 70’s – both vibrant indi­vi­duals and fre­quent wal­kers in the same area.

“Well”, she said wist­fully as she glan­ced down the street I had just wal­ked, “I have to go in Mon­day for a Pacemaker.”

Turns out she has fibri­lla­tions and other heart issues, and even wal­king from her bedroom to her living room can exhaust her.  I told her how well my mother-in-law has done with her pace­ma­ker. She told me she’d be in the hos­pi­tal for at least 3 – 4 days for the sur­gery and observation.

And as we were chat­ting over the low white fence, I couldn’t help but notice the scar on her neck – the same scar my own mother had from the remo­val of her thy­roid years ago.  And the rest of Carlin’s story, and the rea­lity of her story, made me want to punch the nea­rest elec­tri­cal pole in disgust.

Carlin’s thy­roid was remo­ved over 40 years ago.  She remem­bers being on “2 grains of something” – clearly it was desic­ca­ted thy­roid. And she says she felt really good. But she wasn’t on it long, as her doc­tor remo­ved it and put her levothy­ro­xine over 30 years ago. You know, that “new and modern” T4-only CRAP which doc­tors fell for like the blind follo­wing the blind begin­ning in the 1960’s until today. (The story behind the intro­duc­tion of T4 onto patients in the early 1960’s is in Chap­ter One of the STTM book)

So I knew. Her heart trou­bles could be one of the many side effects of the infe­rior treat­ment of T4-only medi­ca­tions (which also inc­lude Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, Oroxine…all of them). My own mother suf­fe­red the same fate while on Synth­roid her entire life. And patients chat about this all the time on thy­roid groups – heart issues while on T4.

I star­ted pro­bing. She has had issues with high blood pres­sure. Another typi­cal side effect of the crap T4-only medi­ca­tion, and which is remo­ved with desic­ca­ted thy­roid. She has had issues with depres­sion – another typi­cal side effect of the crap T4-only medi­ca­tion, and which is remo­ved with desic­ca­ted thy­roid. She tal­ked bit­terly about the slew of medi­ca­tions she’s had to be on for years to coun­ter all her pro­blems, and which had given her bad side effects.

And the next worse thing she told me? She had acid reflux so bad a few years ago that they did sur­gery on her sto­mach. She had sur­gery for a con­di­tion which is VERY com­mon with thy­roid patients who are on T4 meds – low sto­mach acid from a lower meta­bo­lism, which cau­ses acid reflux. i.e. a symp­tom of con­ti­nued hypothy­roi­dism which is CORRECTED when on desic­ca­ted thyroid.

It was hard to con­tain myself. Here was this vibrant, life-loving, inte­lli­gent woman who has been on T4-only for over 30 years and has endu­red health pro­blems, sur­ge­ries, side effects from all sorts of money-grubbing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pills, and now, has to go in Mon­day for a pace­ma­ker. And in all pro­ba­bi­lity, most of what she has gone though could have been pre­ven­ted if some doc­tor had been WISE enough to keep this woman on desic­ca­ted thyroid.

I am livid and sick to my stomach.

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

• Are you che­wing up your Armour or Natu­reth­roid? It will make the treat­ment far bet­ter, as it will release the desic­ca­ted thy­roid from the excess cellu­lose.  If you are on com­poun­ded, you need to tell the phar­ma­cist to stop using cellu­lose as a filler. On Erfa? You can do it sublingually.
• If you are rea­ding this right on STTM’s blog, and would like to be noti­fied of each blog post, just sign up to the left and under the links.
• Have you done labs and found your­self with high RT3? Get off Sele­nium for the time being, as it can help con­vert T4 to the RT3 along with the other rea­sons you make too much.
• Want to spread the word about far bet­ter treat­ment? T-shirts and bum­per stic­kers are here.

I recei­ved in an email from Sue in Australia.

Sue’s son has com­plex dif­fi­cul­ties with a diag­no­sis of sar­coi­do­sis, an inflam­ma­tion disease that can occur throughout your body. From the disease, says Sue, he was fairly ema­cia­ted, which is com­mon with Sar­coi­do­sis (ema­cia­ted means he was basi­cally “skin and bones”).

He was also born without a thy­roid. So he’s been on com­poun­ded natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid–the way thy­roid is made in Aus­tra­lia – and of course, the filler has been cellulose.

When she read from STTM (see here) about the pro­blems with cellu­lose and the way it binds the desic­ca­ted thy­roid – making the com­poun­ded thy­roid less effec­tive – she approached a bio­me­di­cal doc­tor to have the filler chan­ged to aci­dophi­llus as sug­ges­ted. He ins­tead sug­ges­ted gly­cine pow­der. Gly­cine is a non-essential amino acid and neu­ro­trans­mit­ter which helps with diges­tion, cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem health, besi­des create muscle tis­sue and con­vert glu­cose into energy.

And, says Sue, “the imme­diate reac­tion was start­ling as my son who had been suf­fe­ring from ema­cia­tion for years with a diag­no­sis of sar­coi­do­sis put on over a kilo in much nee­ded weight in the space of little more than a week.” In fact, she now won­ders if much of his pro­blems has been rela­ted to his lack of thy­roid, and the cellu­lose filler making the medi­ca­tion less effec­tive, all along!

Says Sue, “His case is a com­plex one, having been born without a thy­roid gland, but the remo­val of cellu­lose ( or the addi­tion of gly­cine or both) have cer­tainly heral­ded some exci­ting changes”.

She also added, “There must be more to this than meets the eye. I did have to reduce his thy­roid extract dose as I’m assu­ming that the bin­ding effect of the cellu­lose meant he was on a higher dose than neces­sary to get a rea­so­na­ble result and/or perhaps gly­cine enhan­ces absorb­tion. I’m sorry there are still quite a few ques­tions to be ans­we­red and the results of a  blood test in a few weeks time will be inte­res­ting. I’ll keep you updated.”

Bot­tom line: adding cellu­lose as a filler with desic­ca­ted thy­roid has been a disas­ter, as patients dis­co­ve­red after both Armour by Forest Labs and Natu­reth­roid by RLC Labs were refor­mu­la­ted in 2009 and early 2010, respectively.

If you are on either Armour or Natu­reth­roid, make sure you CHEW THE TABLETS UP tho­roughly to release the desic­ca­ted thy­roid from the bin­ding cellu­lose. You can also choose to use a mor­tar and pestle to pul­ve­rize the tablets, and add a touch of honey or sugar, which helps with digestion.

If you are on com­poun­ded desic­ca­ted thy­roid, ask the phar­ma­cist to change the filler to aci­dophi­lus. Or ask about Gly­cine (or L-Glycine) to see if it is good for your par­ti­cu­lar situation.

All good alter­na­ti­ves for thy­roid treat­ment are found here.

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

Thank you!! A hearty thank you goes to those who have con­tri­bu­ted to the hos­ting fees for STTM – a patient-to-patient edu­ca­tio­nal site! I can’t do it alone, so you are VERY appre­cia­ted. And if you would like to con­tri­bute to the hos­ting fees (which I do not get: the host ser­ver does), go here.  Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness is YOUR site.

The large size STTM t-shirts are now gone. If you can wear an X-large or XX-large and want to spread the word to others, go here. And the bum­per stic­kers REALLY catch atten­tion!! I am stop­ped in par­king lots because of mine. YOU could change someone’s life!

Vita­min and mine­ral defi­cien­cies:  It’s com­mon for thy­roid patients to be low in iron/ferritin, Vit. D, mag­ne­sium, potas­sium and more. Have you chec­ked your levels lately?

I always know that when I get an email from Dr. John C. Lowe, it’s going to con­tain exce­llent infor­ma­tion. And he didn’t let me down.

Dr. Lowe is Editor-in-Chief of Thy­roid Science, an “open-access jour­nal for truth in thy­roid science and and thy­roid cli­ni­cal prac­tice”.  And in the recent issue, there is a remar­ka­ble and pre­cise TSH (Thy­roid Sti­mu­la­ting Hor­mone) hypothe­sis by none other than a bri­lliant UK  elec­tri­cal and elec­tro­nics engi­neer, Mr. Peter War­mingham.  In fact, his hypothe­sis about the TSH lab result when trea­ting one’s hypothy­roi­dism exactly corres­ponds to the suc­cess­ful expe­rience of thy­roid patients all over the world.

To quote Dr. Lowe in his intro­duc­tion about Warmingham’s paper (FYI: “exo­ge­nous” refers to the thy­roid hor­mone you give your­self;  “endo­ge­nous” refers to what hap­pens natu­rally in your body):

Mr. Warmingham’s hypothe­sis is straight­for­ward: When a hypothy­roid patient (whose cir­cu­la­ting pool of thy­roid hor­mone is too low) begins taking exo­ge­nous thy­roid hor­mone, a nega­tive feed­back sys­tem redu­ces the pitui­tary gland’s out­put of TSH. This dec­rea­ses the thy­roid gland’s out­put of endo­ge­nous thy­roid hor­mone, and des­pite the patient’s exo­ge­nous thy­roid hormone’s con­tri­bu­tion to his or her total cir­cu­la­ting thy­roid pool, that pool does not inc­rease — not until the TSH is sup­pres­sed and the thy­roid gland is con­tri­bu­ting no more thy­roid hor­mone to the total cir­cu­la­ting pool. At that point, adding more exo­ge­nous thy­roid hor­mone will finally inc­rease the cir­cu­la­ting pool of thy­roid hor­mone. The inc­rease must occur for thy­roid hor­mone the­rapy to be effec­tive. The patient’s sup­pres­sed TSH, then, does not indi­cate that the patient is over-treated with thy­roid hor­mone; ins­tead, it indi­ca­tes that the patient’s low total thy­roid hor­mone pool will finally rise to poten­tially ade­quate levels.

In other words, when your doc­tor says no to an inc­rease in your desic­ca­ted thy­roid simply because your TSH lab result is, or would become, below the so-called nor­mal range (and in the pre­sence of con­ti­nuing symp­toms or a low tem­pe­ra­ture), he will usually end up kee­ping you hypothy­roid! i.e. making an ink spot on a piece of paper more impor­tant than cli­ni­cal pre­sen­ta­tion is just one rea­son why the current thy­roid patient revo­lu­tion repre­sen­ted by Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness exists!

You can read Warmington’s entire paper here on Dr. Lowe’s site. For further infor­ma­tion on the fallacy of the TSH lab test, go here or read Chap­ter 4, aka Thy­roid Sti­mu­la­ting Hooey, in your copy of the STTM book for more detail.

P.S. Dr. Lowe is pro­bably right on when he says he expects cri­ti­cism to flow for the fact that War­ming­ton is not an Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist and “how in the world can any­body but an Endo make a logi­cal hypothe­sis about the TSH lab test”. Read more on Lowe’s thoughts about this here.   But enligh­te­ned thy­roid patients around the world are collec­ti­vely shou­ting “GOD BLESS AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER!”

I had a fun inter­view by the viva­cious and inte­res­ting Jimmy Moore of the Livin’ La Vida Low Carb Show. If you haven’t yet heard it, you can lis­ten to Jimmy and I by clic­king right here.

Jimmy Moore is a living suc­cess story about the bene­fits of a low carb diet – losing 180+ pounds in 2004 and regai­ning his health and vita­lity.  As I do about far bet­ter thy­roid treatment,  Jimmy has been on a one-man mis­sion to tell the whole world what livin’ la vida low-carb can do for them.

Eating low carb can be a very impor­tant stra­tegy for those with hypothy­roi­dism, espe­cially while on desic­ca­ted thy­roid and see­king to reverse the damage of being on T4 meds like Synth­roid, et al.

And for those of you with adre­nal fati­gue, follo­wing Jimmy’s low carb life style can be very bene­fi­cial when you need to be on cor­ti­sol, which can cause weight gain for some, but is an impor­tant treat­ment for your low cor­ti­sol situation.

Have a great day!