endocrinologist tags

There’s an over-the-counter weight loss drug called Alli made by the huge phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Gla­xoS­mith­Kline. You can see it on the shel­ves of most any Wal Mart or local drug store.  It’s also called Orlis­tat which is mar­ke­ted under the trade name of Xeni­cal by the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal Roche.

It’s pro­mo­ted as safe, and it works by limi­ting the absorp­tion of fats from what you eat, which in turn redu­ces your intake of calo­ries.  (What has always tur­ned me off about Alli or Orlis­tat is that is crea­tes oily and loose stools. Bleck. )

Meds­cape just today repor­ted about an FDA war­ning: the Use of orlis­tat may dec­rease L-thy­ro­xine (T4) absorp­tion and lead to hypothy­roi­dism. Cli­ni­cians are advi­sed to admi­nis­ter levothy­ro­xine and orlis­tat at least 4 hours apart…

Oh jolly. So now we have the FDA giving a war­ning about Alli cau­sing pro­blems with “thy­ro­xine” use,  yet it’s the VERY “thy­ro­xine” use that cau­ses a cer­tain large per­cen­tage of those using Alli to need to use it in the first place. You can see that rea­lity in the ques­tions about the hypo pro­blem on the Alli forum.  i.e They are all on thyroxine!

Hit­ting my head against the wall.

P.S. Repor­ted in Endoc­rine Today and from just a month ago, and article tit­led Hypothy­roid patients requi­red inc­rea­sed levothy­ro­xine during preg­nancy.  Zom­bie Endoc­ri­no­lo­gists. Zom­bies. That’s like having an article tit­led Sick patients need more blood-letting. i.e LEVOTHYROXINE SUCKS AND SHOULD BE IN THE PAST just as much as blood-letting.  WAKE UP ENDOCRINOLOGISTS!! WAKE UP!!

*Check out patient res­ponse to the newly for­mu­la­ted Armour below, and add your own comments.

Ever heard of Henry R. Harrower?

He came to the US from England in 1903 at age 20, and with great for­ti­tude and drive, became an MD and Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist. He had influence in the crea­tion of today’s  pro­fes­sio­nal Endoc­rine Society.   He also belie­ved (to the cons­ter­na­tion of many of his collea­gues) in the use of organs to treat con­di­tions, such as Armour desic­ca­ted thyroid.

And in 1931, he made the follo­wing inc­re­di­ble statement:

“A good labo­ra­tory report is cold com­fort to a patient whose symp­toms remain unchan­ged, and the doc­tor can repeat such reports until he is blue in the face, but they will not help his patient much if unac­com­pa­nied by con­tro­lled symp­toms and chan­ged feelings.”

He also stated:

“Are not the fee­lings of the patients often as cli­ni­cally valua­ble as the other fin­dings? In no case can we wholly dis­count them.”

BRILLIANT!!  BRAVO!! “Cold com­fort” couldn’t desc­ribe our reac­tion bet­ter when a slew of your modern collea­gues have habi­tually dis­coun­ted thy­roid patient symp­toms for deca­des in favor of ink spots on a piece of paper called “lab results” with dubious “nor­mal ran­ges”. And we give the same “Bravo” to a gro­wing body of doc­tors who are making a cou­ra­geous change in their rela­tionship with patients the last few years by LISTENING to the patient first and foremost.

p.s. Thanks to Stepha­nie Buist, wor­king to become a natu­ro­path, who pos­ted the first quote above to the Face­book of a mutual friend of ours. You can read more about Harro­wer here.

How do you feel about what Dr. Harro­wer said over 100 years ago? How would you rate the Endoc­ri­no­lo­gists you’ve seen the past few deca­des as com­pa­red to Harro­wer? Have you had no more than “cold comfort”?

Now being announ­ced on the Forest Pharm hot­line at 866 – 927-3260, the follo­wing strengths of Armour are now com­ple­tely avai­la­ble again:

1) 15 mg. (1/4 grain)
2) 30 mg. (1/2 grain)
3) 60 mg. (one grain)
4) 120 mg. (2 grains)
5) 180 mg. (3 grains)
6) 240 mg. (4 grains)
7) 300 mg. (5 grains)

Yes­si­ree, the above repre­sent the dif­fe­rent size and strength tablets of natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid via the Armour brand, most of which had been una­vai­la­ble for quite awhile. The 90 mgs is still on backorder.

Rejoice!

P.S. And we thank RLC Labs for their con­ti­nued avai­la­bi­lity of Natu­reth­roid and Westh­roid, plus Sri­pra­sit Pharma Co., Ltd. in Thai­land for their Thyroid-S.   Because no mat­ter how hard any phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pany, Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist, cer­tain hos­pi­tals,  or group of phy­si­cians (see below) tries to sing the prai­ses of T4 treat­ment with Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Levothy­ro­xine, Eltro­xin, Nor­ton for thy­roid disor­ders or hypothyroid.…WE KNOW BETTER.

(Want to be noti­fied of my blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Use the Noti­fi­ca­tion method to be infor­med. Look on the bot­tom left of the links where you can sign up. )

And right on the heels of my post below, I want to inform ever­yone of a REAL LIFE HORROR STORY that is hap­pe­ning to Sheila Tur­ner of the UK right now. Sheila is a thy­roid patient advo­cate who crea­ted the UK Thy­roid Patient Advo­cacy web­site here.

Sheila will tell anyone who asks that she was very ill while taking levothy­ro­xine (125 mcgs) only the­rapy, being wrac­ked with back pain so severe she was una­ble to get out of her armchair, bed or car after sitting/laying down for a while.  She also suf­fe­red from debi­li­ta­ting ‘brain fog’ and short term memory, along with the usual lin­ge­ring hypothy­roid symp­toms while on thyroxine.

Sheila sta­tes: I couldn’t tole­rate levothy­ro­xine alone because it was found I was not con­ver­ting this mainly inac­tive hor­mone to the active hor­mone T3.  As my musc­les and tis­sues were not get­ting the T3 requi­red, my musc­les in my back were going into spasm, cau­sing the severe pain.

She then saw a pri­vate hor­mone spe­cia­list who star­ted her on natu­ral thy­roid extract (Armour Thy­roid, USP) and she regai­ned her full health! It was so pro­found that she star­ted the TPA-UK in 2004 to cam­paign for a bet­ter diag­nos­tic and treat­ment pro­to­col within the Natio­nal Health Sys­tem (NHS). (UK has socia­li­zed medicine.)

Fast foward to 2009.  As I wrote about below in my Feb. 14^th blog post,  the UK Royal College of Phy­si­cians along with seve­ral sup­por­ting orga­ni­za­tions recently brought out their pathe­tic and narrrow-minded new gui­de­li­nes on the diag­no­sing and treat­ment of pri­mary hypothy­roi­dism.  And lo and behold, Sheila, along with about 15 other patients on Armour via the same medi­cal con­sul­tant,  have had their Armour removed.

Says Sheila:  He and every NHS endoc­ri­no­lo­gist has been sent a let­ter from the Pre­si­dent of the Royal College of Phy­si­cians, telling them they should use thy­ro­xine ONLY as a treat­ment for pri­mary hypothy­roi­dism and that they should not recom­mend or presc­ribe Armour Thy­roid and that only acc­re­di­ted endoc­ri­no­lo­gists should ever recom­mend T3 as this was rarely indicated.

Sheila has been for­ced to return to the synthe­tic treat­ment of levothy­ro­xine (100 mcgs) and to it has been added 20 mcg liothy­ro­nine (T3) split twice a day. But there’s no gua­ran­tee she will be able to stay on the T3. Addi­tio­nally, don’t be foo­led into thin­king that a combo of synthe­tic T4 and synthe­tic T3 is as good as Armour. Patients all around the world who have tried it, then switched to Armour, report far bet­ter results with the latter.

Says Sheila in a com­ple­tely shoc­ked state:  I can­not believe this is hap­pe­ning — I tried to ques­tion him as to the rea­son all the NHS endoc­ri­no­lo­gists didn’t demand the BTA pro­duce MEDICAL EVIDENCE to show that hypothy­roid suf­fe­rers ONLY ever nee­ded T4 — he said he knew they should have pro­du­ced evi­dence, but it seems because it has come from the RCP, his and every­body else’s’ hands were tied — they have to be seen to be doing what they are told. I got the dis­tinct impres­sion that if any­body roc­ked the boat, they would be next doc­tor arraig­ned before the GMC.

Making this real life horror story even more shoc­king, her medi­cal con­sul­tant explai­ned that the only way to find the truth as to whether Armour was a bet­ter medi­ca­tion or not was through cli­ni­cal trials using Armour ver­sus levothy­ro­xine.  (i.e. patient expe­rience all over the world revea­ling it works isn’t enough evi­dence. Give me a break). But when she pres­sed him into star­ting this, he said they would need the bac­king of their thy­roid asso­cia­tion — yes, the Bri­tish Thy­roid Asso­cia­tion (BTA), the very group that has said that a TSH of 10 is bor­der­line hypo. (See my Nov. 7^th post)

Sheila con­ti­nues: I told him they would never agree to this, and he agreed also. I told him that we did NOT NEED the Bri­tish Thy­roid Asso­cia­tion to get ethi­cal appro­val — and surely he could get a group of like-minded prac­ti­tio­ners around him and do this them­sel­ves — but it would cost a great deal of money — and, again, if you are a mem­ber of BTA (and I believe most endoc­ri­no­lo­gists are) then they daren’t do a thing without their approval.

At the moment, Sheila will tell you with sad­ness and shock that it all seems rather surreal at the moment. She is sca­red for every suf­fe­rer of this disease to be for­ced into taking only one thy­roid hor­mone — a synthe­tic sto­rage hor­mone. She is  sca­red for her­self, too.

Sheila expounds: I just sin­ce­rely hope that I can cope with the change-over to synthe­tics and that Armour has made my body strong enough to do this. I will make abso­lu­tely sure that my adre­nals can cope with this. I feel SO VERY sorry for all of those suf­fe­rers who are being left in the care of a head in the sand endo­prat , who will refuse to even give them the correct thy­roid hor­mone their body needs.  Once again — THE NHS IS KILLING US!

This is pro­foundly sic­ke­ning and shocking.

If you are so moved,  send this blog post (www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/blog) to anyone and ever­yone.  Send it to your news­pa­per, your radio,  talk shows, your friends, rela­ti­ves, anywhere.   This should NOT go unheard of by others. We need to tell the world about this tra­vesty.  Speak your mind about this by adding a comment.

Update: you can read Sheila’s and UK-TPA’s res­ponse here: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/uk-tpas-response-to-the-rcp/

More from Sheila that gives UK patients hope: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/relationship-between-the-RCP-and-MHRA/

Want to be noti­fied of my blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Use the Noti­fi­ca­tion method to be infor­med. Look on the bot­tom left of the links where you can sign up. )

(Want to be noti­fied of my blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Use Noti­fi­xious to be infor­med. Look on the bot­tom left of the links where you can sign up. )

Recently, after we watched a semi-scary movie about being suc­ke­red, a friend brought up my blog post of last July where I desc­ri­bed a terrifyingly-real horror movie.

The plot: stun­ningly con­vince hun­dreds of millions of indi­vi­duals world­wide that what is obvious, isn’t. i.e. it’s all in your head, you are ade­qua­tely trea­ted on Synth­roid, Levoxyl, Eltro­xin, Nor­ton, et al,  and not only that, we’ll ban­daid your con­ti­nuing pro­blems with more medi­ca­tions.

A second plot: also com­ple­tely hood­wink those with top notch higher medi­cal edu­ca­tions and expe­rience by chur­ning out the the exact same poppy­cock, and reward their stu­pi­dity with gifts.

The cen­tral villian: Big Pharma, follo­wed by the doc­tors who bought the lie

Exactly a year ago this month, Science Daily came out with an article, citing two York Uni­ver­sity researchers who esti­ma­ted that the U.S. phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry spends almost twice as much on pro­mo­tion as it does on research and deve­lop­ment, con­trary to the industry’s claim. In other words, the researchers esti­ma­ted that $57.5 billion in US dollars was spent on phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal pro­mo­tion in 2004 – the year they were stud­ying. Yes, I said BILLION.

Brea­king that down, Big Pharma spent appro­xi­ma­tely $61,000 per phy­si­cian in pro­mo­tion of their pro­ducts.  And they conc­lu­ded that both figu­res were UNDE­Res­ti­ma­tes.  In other words, they conc­lu­ded that the US phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal industry is marketing-driven rather than “life-saving”.

And adding fuel to the fire: most doc­tors believe every thrust of that mar­ke­ting. I recently par­ti­ci­pa­ted in com­ments with other won­der­ful patients in res­ponse to a DO/Endocrinologist, Dr. Tho­mas Repas, who has clearly bought the Big Pharma mar­ke­ting when it comes to levothy­ro­xine. You can read his posts and our com­ments here, here, and here.   Dr. Repas is exactly the kind of doc­tor who has  sta­rred in our horror movie, and the kind of doc­tor that patients have lamen­ted about for years.  Read the  Give Me a Break list of com­ments made by doc­tors, as well as further com­ments on the January 1^st blog.

But Dr. Repas is in good com­pany. Doc­tors have belie­ved the Big Pharma lie about T4-only medi­ca­tions, and against desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Armour, Natu­reth­roid, etc. for 50 years.  In the patient-to-patient  Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness book, you can read about the first table­ting of Synth­roid in 1955 and the stra­te­gic and suc­cess­ful pro­mo­tion of T4-only, in spite of the fact that T4 was known to be uns­ta­ble for decades.

And today, more than 50 years later, very few of us have been untouched by the Big Pharma push for levothy­ro­xine T4-only treat­ment.  My own mother was suc­ke­red, and I was suc­ke­red.  And until patients star­ted to make a huge push for desic­ca­ted thy­roid treat­ment the last few years, nearly every sin­gle doc­tor around the world had been suckered.

We still have a way to go. But we’ll get there, bit by bit.