doctor tags

Oh boy! You are invi­ted to a Thy­roid Patient Com­mu­nity Call on your com­pu­ter which will be held each and every Fri­day night for an hour with myself, Janie, as host.  We had the first one last Fri­day and it was fun and infor­ma­tive. No, I didn’t announce it here because I wan­ted to work on any bugs in the sys­tem as we lear­ned to use it.

Here’s a chance to ask ques­tions about shor­ta­ges of desic­ca­ted thy­roid, options to talk to your doc­tor about to treat your hypothy­roi­dism during this shor­tage period, how to find a good doc­tor, and more.

Times are 7 pm Paci­fic, 8 pm Moun­tain, 9 pm Cen­tral and 10 pm Eas­tern. Just go here: http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=62603&cmd=tc

You can make two choi­ces: just lis­ten to the Audio of the pod­cast talk show, or call in. Phone num­ber will be right on the bot­tom.  You can regis­ter with Talk Shoe and pick a user name, or come in as a Guest.

You’ll also note a chat box.  The handy and beau­ti­ful gals Darla and Diane will usually be there to guide you. If you want to line up to talk in the queue, you’ll be asked the topic of your con­ver­sa­tion in the chat box.  As you wait for me to get to you, you’ll be able to hear the talk through your phone, and will need to MUTE your com­pu­ter sound.

You’ll be seeing guests join us, as well, so watch for each Com­mu­nity Call announ­ce­ment on the above link. And even without a sche­du­led guest, you just never know who is going to pop in and chat.

Come join us! And remem­ber: we are all just patients chat­ting with patients. This is not to replace the rela­tionship with your doc­tor in your treat­ment or for treat­ment advice. Stick with your doc­tor for that.

*Want to be infor­med of these blog posts? Curious what’s on Janie’s mind? Just use the Noti­fi­ca­tions on the left below the links. 

* STTM t-shirts are half price! I love sales!

Unfor­tu­na­tely, patients who want to switch to desic­ca­ted thy­roid from T4-only meds like Synth­roid et al, or those already on desic­ca­ted thy­roid who want to fill their next presc­rip­tion, are going to find it dif­fi­cult. There are wides­pread shor­ta­ges in desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Armour, Natu­reth­roid and Westh­roid. (see my posts below).

But there’s good news, and it comes in the form of “Thy­roid”  by Erfa.

Erfa’s “Thy­roid”  is an exce­llent natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid pro­duct accor­ding to the expe­rience of patients who use it. It contains:

• Dried Thy­roid
• Mag­ne­sium Stearate
• Corns­tarch
• Talc
• Sugar

**Note the “sugar”. Patients also report they are able to do this brand of medi­ca­tion sublin­gually! That is good news.

The Erfa web­site sta­tes you can obtain their desic­ca­ted thy­roid medi­ca­tion outside of Canada via a spe­cial access pro­gram and follow their steps:

For patients outside Canada and the US:

For patients in the US:

1. get a valid presc­rip­tion of Thy­roid from your local doc­tor
2. your doc­tor has to fill FDA form 1572 (e-mail us a request at info@ERFA.net
3. Fax or e-mail us the docu­ments at 1 – 514-931‑7330 or info@ERFA.net

Thank you Erfa from Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness and thy­roid patients all over the world who KNOW what a supe­rior treat­ment desic­ca­ted thy­roid really is!

Word has tric­kled down to me from a few patients and emails that even Natu­reth­roid is get­ting har­der to come by at phar­ma­cies because of the extreme demand on RLC Labs.

No, they are not cea­sing to make desic­ca­ted thy­roid. They just weren’t pre­pa­red for the high demand due to the refor­mu­la­tion of Armour and pro­blems it cau­sed.  And they aren’t kee­ping up and won’t for seve­ral months.

So, if you can’t last with your current presc­rip­tion for seve­ral months, you will pro­bably need to talk to your doc about get­ting a gene­ric ver­sion by Major Phar­macy, or get some over-the-counter like Nutri­Meds, or even the “Hypo Sup­port For­mula” made by RLC Labs, but expect to take much more of either.  Many patients are also men­tio­ning Thyroid-S by Grea­ter Pharma as a bac­kup until RLC catches up.  But it’s by mail order and will take a few weeks to arrive.  Goo­gle any of the above. Finally, you can move a slight step back­wards and talk to your doc about doing synthe­tic T4 and synthe­tic T3.  It’s not going to be quite a good as being on desic­ca­ted thy­roid, but it’s cer­tainly bet­ter than being on T4 alone, don’t you agree?? Keep con­nec­ted to your doc.  And hang in there. This will pass.

Janie

P.S. I’ll be adding more infor­ma­tion to this post tomo­rrow. Check back.

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

Below is the actual release by RLC Labs:

For any patients expe­rien­cing dif­fi­cul­ties in attai­ning either Nature-ThroidTM or Westh­roidTM through their phar­macy, RLC Labs, Inc, asks these indi­vi­duals to have their phar­macy con­tact us directly at 877 – 797-7997 to place an order, or have their phar­macy request a drop-shipment through their who­le­sale supplier.

RLC Labs’ pro­ducts are only avai­la­ble through who­le­sa­lers, phar­ma­cies and or their doc­tors; thus all con­fir­ma­tions and/or trac­king infor­ma­tion will only be avai­la­ble through the who­le­sa­ler, phar­macy, or doctor’s office that pla­ced the order.

RLC Labs is expe­rien­cing a subs­tan­tial inc­rease in orders for Nature-ThroidTM and Westh­roidTM. The recent unex­pec­ted influx has inun­da­ted our cus­to­mer ser­vice and ship­ping depart­ments, thus cau­sing delays and deple­ting our current stock. We are wor­king around the clock to ful­fill all current orders; howe­ver, we can­not gua­ran­tee that
any future orders will be ful­fi­lled until our stock is replenished.

RLC Labs will con­ti­nue to accept orders from our cus­to­mers, howe­ver as of Fri­day August 14^th, we are bac­kor­de­red on all strengths of Nature-ThroidTM and Westh­roidTM. Ship­ment is expec­ted to resume within 90 days.

We regret to inform you of this situa­tion; howe­ver, we can assure you that we are wor­king dili­gently to reple­nish our stock and will resume ship­ping as soon as pos­si­ble. Please accept our sin­ce­rest apo­logy for any inconvenience.

We do unders­tand how much of an impact this has as most of us emplo­yed @ RLC Labs, are hypothy­roid and take our own pro­duct. Thus, we know and unders­tand how impor­tant it is to get pro­duct back into the mar­ket place. We are gra­te­ful for your con­ti­nued patience, patro­nage and support!

Feel free to con­tact our cus­to­mer ser­vice depart­ment with any ques­tions con­cer­ning this mat­ter @ 877 – 797-7997.

Thank you from all of us @ RLC Labs, Inc.

I recently dis­co­ve­red a very humo­rous and appropo medi­cal blog on the net, writ­ten by a Uni­ted King­dom Gene­ral Prac­ti­tio­ner who wisely stays incog­nito. His blog is called The Job­bing Doctor.

And his most recent and humo­rously bri­lliant post is tit­led Hairy legs are bet­ter than blood tests! He desc­ri­bes his occa­sio­nal con­fu­sion when blood tests don’t agree with the patients symptoms.

Says the UK doc: “The text­books teach that the level of cir­cu­la­ting thy­roid hor­mo­nes (which are called T3 and T4) are inver­sely rela­ted to the Thy­roid Sti­mu­la­ting Hor­mone (TSH). If your T3 and T4 are low, your TSH will be high: this sug­gests an unde­rac­tive thy­roid gland. If the T3 and T4 are high and the TSH is low, then you have an ove­rac­tive thy­roid gland. That’s easy, huh!”

But his con­fu­sion sprang forth when a patient’s labs sho­wed “a highish TSH, T4, and a nor­mal T3.” Yet appa­rently her symp­toms didn’t imply there was any pro­blem, so he chose to do nothing as far as chan­ging her treatment.

A month later at her next appoint­ment, this patient expres­sed her appro­val that he didn’t change anything…because her leg hair and eye­brows were coming back.

And his conc­lu­sion?  “Pah! Who needs blood tests!” 

Job­bing Doc­tor, you are dis­co­ve­ring what thy­roid patients have been lear­ning over and over for years: it’s SYMPTOMS (or lack up) which need to pull the cart, NOT lab­work. Sure, we love our lab­work. They can give clues to areas where our bodies are screa­ming for help.  But they defi­ni­tely do NOT tell the whole story.

Look at the igno­ra­mus TSH lab test. Count­less patients have wal­ked into their doc­tors offi­ces with clear and obvious hypothy­roid symp­toms – and des­pe­rate for a diag­no­sis – yet the ink spot on the office piece of paper called the TSH lab result proc­laims they are “nor­mal”. And that dubious “nor­mal” diag­no­sis can go on for years before it rises high enough to reveal what was already there by SYMPTOMS.

Or, while on thy­roid medi­ca­tion, patients will have a lame­brain “nor­mal” TSH lab result, yet will con­ti­nue to have their own brand and degree of con­ti­nuing hypothy­roid symp­toms which the clue­less doc­tor dis­mis­ses as an hys­te­ric female inter­pre­ta­tion, motherhood, stress, a need for psycho­lo­gi­cal help.…or just “something else”. Uh huh.

In fact, Job­ber Doc­tor, patients have lear­ned that when they are opti­mal (on desic­ca­ted thy­roid), along with opti­mal ferri­tin and cor­ti­sol), they will gene­rally have a free T3 in the upper part of the range, and a SUPPRESSED TSH, with no symp­toms of hyperthy­roi­dism.  That is gene­ral, and there can be some excep­tions, but ove­rall, it has spo­ken volu­mes to patients on how ina­de­quate thy­roid lab tests can be.  i.e. being in the “nor­mal” range — anywhere in the nor­mal range – can be mean squat.

Thanks for a great post,  UK Job­ber Doc. And P.S.  Desic­ca­ted thy­roid is an even bet­ter treat­ment than thy­ro­xine.

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

I’ve been noti­cing seve­ral artic­les coming out the past week about a strong asso­cia­tion bet­ween hypothy­roi­dism and a twice the risk of liver disease and liver can­cer, espe­cially in fema­les. And then it daw­ned on me: another strong rea­son to play bas­ket­ball with your trash­can using your lousy Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Levoth­ro­xine or Eltro­xin bott­les while being repla­ced with desic­ca­ted thy­roid.

In other words, con­ti­nued hypothy­roi­dism (being on the lousy T4 meds) and undiag­no­sed hypothy­roi­dism (because of the ina­de­quacy of the TSH lab test) can poten­tially pro­mote the deve­lop­ment of nonal­coho­lic stea­tohe­pa­ti­tis, a more severe Fatty Liver disease. The next pro­gres­sion is liver can­cer, aka hepa­to­ce­llu­lar car­ci­noma (HCC).

Even worse, the study revea­led that women who had been hypothy­roid for more than 10 years had a three­fold higher risk of liver can­cer com­pa­red to women without a his­tory of thy­roid disor­ders. This will make you pause when you con­si­der how many reports there are of patients having hypothy­roid symp­toms for YEARS with a nor­mal TSH…and a clue­less, TSH-worshipping doctor.

And if rea­ding this bores you, unders­tand that your liver is a HIGHLY impor­tant gland that you can’t live without. It plays a key role in deto­xif­ying the toxins you ingest and breath in daily (inc­lu­ding smo­king), besi­des being a major fat bur­ner.  Make the liver disea­sed, and you become a bree­ding ground for toxins, the rise of other diseases…then death.

The solu­tion? Run from TSH-kissing doc­tors, get on desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Natu­reth­roid et. al.  and avoid the most com­mon mis­ta­kes of dosing while cea­sing to smoke, cur­tai­ling the alcohol, and eating healthy (except for the daily dose of cho­co­late I gotta have. haha).

P.S. The ori­gi­nal report came out in the May jour­nal issue of Hepa­to­logy (published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the Ame­ri­can Asso­cia­tion for the Study of Liver Disea­ses).  Simi­lar results were also repor­ted in the Jour­nal of Gas­troen­te­ro­logy and Hepa­to­logy 2005.

Want to be infor­med about my blog posts? Curious what I’m ran­ting about? Just use the Noti­fi­ca­tions on the left at the bot­tom of the links. 

See below about my disap­point­ment in Forest Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.