free t3 tags

As a hypothy­roid patient, think you are fine drin­king that purely fine mine­ral water from a plas­tic bottle? Think that fluo­ride and chlo­rine are the only subs­tan­ces we need to worry about when it comes to our thy­roid health?? Think again.

Thy­roid patient Amy McMu­llen, who has con­tri­bu­ted before on STTM’s blog as a GUEST POSTER (Con­fes­sions of a Under­co­ver Thy­roid Advo­cate) and has a pas­sion about human rights, has writ­ten another impor­tant article below which should be of keen inte­rest to all of you.

BPA — A POWERFUL ENDOCRINE DISRUPTER THAT AFFECTS YOUR THYROID

Perhaps you have read recently about how the che­mi­cal Bisphe­nol A (BPA) is found to be pre­va­lent in our food and water. As a hypothy­roid patient, I was sur­pri­sed to see that not all artic­les about this harm­ful subs­tance ade­qua­tely desc­ribe the con­nec­tion bet­ween thy­roid func­tion and BPA. This is an over­sight that should be addres­sed since hypothy­roi­dism is esti­ma­ted to affect over ten million peo­ple in the US and this num­ber is gro­wing. It makes per­fect sense to look to envi­ron­men­tal toxins as a likely cul­prit in this serious health epidemic.

BPA is a synthe­tic estro­gen and an endoc­rine dis­rup­ter that cau­ses mul­ti­ple health pro­blems. There are over 200 stu­dies lin­king it to breast can­cer, obe­sity, atten­tion defi­cit disor­der, early puberty in girls, geni­tal abnor­ma­li­ties in boys and girls alike, polycys­tic ovary disease and infer­ti­lity in women and pros­tate can­cer in men. Stu­dies indi­cate that up to 92% of Ame­ri­cans have BPA in their urine. Also BPA doesn’t leave the body quickly; fas­ting adults still had BPA levels in their bodies after 24 hours.

BPA comes from many plas­tic sour­ces. It’s used as a har­de­ner in plas­tic manu­fac­tu­ring. Many tin cans have plas­tic linings that con­tain BPA inc­lu­ding soup and toma­toes, and it’s also in plas­tic water bott­les, some infant for­mu­las and can­ned jui­ces. BPA is also found in PVC water supply piping.

How does BPA relate to thy­roid disease? Accor­ding to a seve­ral good stu­dies, BPA is a thy­roid recep­tor anta­go­nist. This means that BPA will inter­fere with the bin­ding of the thy­roid hor­mone T3 with cell recep­tor sites. This will cause hypothy­roi­dism, not only with peo­ple with under-functioning thy­roids but also for those who are currently taking medi­ca­tions for hypothy­roi­dism or even those who have nor­mally func­tio­ning thy­roids. BPA was found to accu­mu­late in many organs when injec­ted into rats inc­lu­ding the lung, kid­neys, thy­roid, sto­mach, heart, spleen, tes­tes, liver, and brain. In this way, BPA has the poten­tial to inter­fere with thy­roid hor­mo­nes in each organ that has accu­mu­la­ted the subs­tance. A study also indi­ca­tes that the levels of BPA that are con­si­de­red safe (upper limit of emis­sion is set to 2.5 ppm [µg/liter], which is more than 90 µM) are high enough to inhi­bit thy­roid hor­mone recep­tors. Yet another study shows that BPA appears to accu­mu­late in rat fetu­ses in sig­ni­fi­cantly high levels and dis­rupts thy­roid func­tion in baby rats.

There’s also evi­dence that BPA may influence the meta­bo­lism of endo­ge­nous ste­roids, which may be a fac­tor in adre­nal fati­gue and its treat­ment, as well as and its treat­ment, as well as dysau­to­no­mia stem­ming from adre­nal pro­blems. Many with hypothy­roi­dism also suf­fer from co-morbid adre­nal fati­gue and BPA may be a con­tri­bu­ting fac­tor in this.

What this means for ever­yone, but espe­cially for thy­roid patients, is every effort should be made to remove BPA from food and water sup­plies. For those who are not able to get pro­perly opti­mi­zed on their thy­roid meds or who are fin­ding they are suf­fe­ring from hypothy­roid symp­toms des­pite nor­mal levels of TSH, free T3 and free T4, con­si­der BPA as a pos­si­ble source of the problem.

Steps you can take to mini­mize you expo­sure include:

• Avoid all can­ned foods with plas­tic liners and avoid bott­led water. Buy your can­ned toma­toes in glass jars, not metal cans or stick to using fresh ingre­dients. Most other can­ned foods use BPA as well, espe­cially green beans (Here is a list of BPA-free can­ned foods).
• Drink water out of glass or stain­less steel con­tai­ners (and make sure there’s no plas­tic liner or lids that have BPA) or BPA-free plas­tic. Low den­sity pol­yethy­lene bike bott­les con­tain BPA.
• Do not mic­ro­wave foods in plas­tics or use plas­tic wraps when mic­ro­wa­ving. Avoid poly­car­bo­nate (“PC” or #7 and #3) plas­tic food con­tai­ners altogether.
• Since most muni­ci­pal water piping is PVC and some hou­ses have it as water supply lines, con­si­der ins­ta­lling a reverse osmo­sis sys­tem for your drin­king water. This will also remove fluo­ride and chlo­rine (other thy­roid dis­rup­ters) and many other harm­ful subs­tan­ces from drin­king water.

Most impor­tantly we need to make our voi­ces heard that BPA is not an accep­ta­ble subs­tance and that its use in our food and water supply must cease. Recently Sena­tor Feins­tein intro­du­ced a ban on BPA to the Food Safety Moder­ni­za­tion Act but this was modi­fied to remove the ban due to pres­sure by industry groups. Sena­tor Feins­tein still has an effort under­way to ban BPA from child drink bott­les and toys and seve­ral sta­tes have enac­ted such bans but this does not go far enough.

Con­tact your repre­sen­ta­ti­ves today and let them know that a natio­nal ban on BPA must be enac­ted. If they don’t lis­ten then I sug­gest you make your­self heard at the ballot box this November.

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

• Have you cut down on your expo­sure to Fluo­ride? Buy non-fluoridated tooth­paste as a first step.
• Cut down on more che­mi­cals by using baking soda under your arms rather than commercially-made unde­rarm deo­do­rants. Note that the baking soda may at first cause red­ness, but it will go away within days and is a great way to kill odors.
• Have a poun­ding hear­trate that you can’t explain? You may be making too much RT3.
• Check out typi­cal Ques­tions and Ans­wers about thy­roid treat­ment and rela­ted issues.
• Want to write a GUEST BLOG POST on STTM? Go here.

(4 – 30: Paula has infor­med me that you can down­load Dr. Myhill’s com­plete web­site to your com­pu­ter via this zip file: www.drmyhill.co.uk.zip — Win­dows Live )

Today, it has been announ­ced by the GMC (Gene­ral Medi­cal Coun­cil) of the UK that Dr. Sarah Myhill is now strait­jac­ke­ted. She is for­bid­den to presc­ribe medi­ca­tions, is bound by other medi­cal prac­tice res­tric­tions (see the details on the Sup­port Dr. Myhill Face­book page), and most egre­giously, has been orde­red to remove parts of her web­site (thanks to Lethal Lee for poin­ting this out), some of which you will not see two weeks after I have pos­ted this.

Why remove parts of her web­site? Because by daring to edu­cate the public, espe­cially if that edu­ca­tion goes against “stan­dard medi­cal prac­tice”, it seems to be dee­med “harm­ful”. In other words, you as a patient are not allo­wed to dis­co­ver, or are too “vul­ne­ra­ble to get it,  that there just might be a TOTALLY dif­fe­rent story to the medi­cal prac­tice you are sub­jec­ted to.

For exam­ple, here is part of a page on Dr. Myhill’s web­site which is com­ple­tely correct, infor­ma­tive, and wise, and I want to see her words stay sharp and vie­wa­ble, espe­cially for thy­roid patients. It fits our expe­rience. The page is tit­led “Test results and what they mean”. If you want to be infor­med, read all the below.

http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Category:Test_results_and_what_they_mean

Only too often peo­ple come to me with tests results which have not been pro­perly inter­pre­ted. The rea­sons why this hap­pens are as follows:

• Test results are flag­ged up and con­si­de­red to be abnor­mal if they are outside the refe­rence range, but one’s indi­vi­dual nor­mal range is not the same as the popu­la­tion refe­rence range. This is a par­ti­cu­lar pro­blem in the inter­pre­ta­tion of thy­roid tests.
• Refe­rence ran­ges for tests change. Refe­rence ran­ges are based on ran­dom bloods from the popu­la­tion. The trou­ble is anyone follo­wing a Wes­tern lifestyle is not evo­lu­tio­na­rily correct and many not nor­mal! So labs change their refe­rence ran­ges to adjust for this. So, for exam­ple, the nor­mal range of a gamma GT used to be up to 36, it is now up to 70. This enzyme is indu­ced by alcohol and presc­rip­tion drugs and because so many peo­ple drink alcohol it is con­si­de­red nor­mal to run a high gamma GT! The lab I use has a nor­mal refe­rence range for thy­roid hor­mone T4 of 12-22pmol/l but some labs give ran­ges of 5.6-17pmol/l!
• Tests are often incom­plete. So someone with a thy­roid sti­mu­la­ting hor­mone (TSH) within refe­rence range will be told they have no thy­roid pro­blem, when in fact one also needs a free T4 and a free T3 together with a cli­ni­cal his­tory to assess if there is a thy­roid problem.
• Drug com­pa­nies influence nor­mal ran­ges. The nor­mal range for cho­les­te­rol has come down stea­dily since sta­tins have been such big money ear­ners for Big Pharma.
• Inco­rrect break­down of test results. Many peo­ple are presc­ri­bed sta­tins on the basis of a sin­gle cho­les­te­rol level. This is faulty for many reas ons — firstly one needs a break­down of good (HDL) and bad (LDL) cho­les­te­rol to get the ratio. If the ratio is not favou­ra­ble then this is likely to be a symp­tom of arte­rial disease. Cho­les­te­rol lowe­ring drugs are often irre­le­vant. See Cho­les­te­rol —  the com­mon cau­ses of rai­sed levels
• Results close to the limits of nor­mal may be abnor­mal for that per­son. For exam­ple, a high nor­mal bili­ru­bin may mean Gilbert’s syn­drome — this means someone is a poor deto­xi­fier. A high mean cor­pus­cu­lar volume (MCV) could point to hypothy­roi­dism, B12 or folic acid deficiency.
• Nor­mal tests do not mean no patho­logy. A nor­mal ECG at rest does not mean there is no heart disease, yet many peo­ple are told this is the case.
• Tests may ask the wrong ques­tion. So many peo­ple come to me with severe fati­gue syn­dro­mes having been told nothing is wrong because all the tests are nor­mal! But ask the right ques­tion and do Mitochon­drial Func­tion Pro­file and you find gross abnor­ma­li­ties with res­pect to energy supply at the cellu­lar level.
• Tests for poi­so­nings are par­ti­cu­larly mis­lea­ding. For years doc­tors have pro­mo­ted levels of cho­li­nes­te­rase as a good test for orga­nophosphate poi­so­ning. It is a rot­ten test and mis­ses the majo­rity of cases! Much bet­ter would be Fat biopsy for pes­ti­ci­des or Vola­tile Orga­nic Compounds

GOOD FOR YOU, Dr. Sarah Myhill!

I and many other thy­roid patients, strug­gling to fight the inane thy­roid treat­ment pro­to­cols, have a strong fee­ling that though this pro­gres­sive doc­tor may be res­tric­ted as a phy­si­cian, we’re going to hear a lot more good infor­ma­tion from the cou­ra­geous and wise Sarah Myhill.

I’ve been dis­trac­ted the past week, having to do exten­sive research and tra­ve­ling to find the per­fect “new used car”.

Then I caught a cold from hell – rare for me.  I was taking zinc and Vit. C. But a good friend remin­ded me about Vit. D and it’s immune enhan­cing effect. OMG, I for­got about it!  So later last night, I took what I thought was 12,000 IU on the first night of being sic­ker than a dog.  They say to take 1000 mg per 10 lbs of weight. Tur­ned out the gel caps were not 1000 IU each, as I thought, but 2000 IU each. So I ended up taking 22,000 IU.  lol. But the long and short of it is this: though I woke up this mor­ning quite tired and weak, I’ve slowly got­ten bet­ter all day!! My con­ges­tion has hugely impro­ved.  Read this: http://pandemicsurvivor.wordpress.com/2009/11/28/eliminate-the-common-cold/

Love your green pow­der drink? Just a word of cau­tion: much of what is in many of those pow­de­red greens are goi­tro­gens, which inhi­bit thy­roid pro­duc­tion, such as wheat grass, bar­ley grass, broc­coli, spi­nach,  cab­bage, maca and spi­nach, plus much more. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use the green pow­der. You’ll just have to be sure to use it in mode­ra­tion, and not con­sume too many other goi­tro­gen foods each and every day. Or, raise your thy­roid meds.

Dr. Peter Gott can give even bet­ter infor­ma­tion to rea­ders. I noti­ced that a column on the Tulsa web­site by Peter Gott, MD of the News­pa­per Enter­prise Asso­cia­tion  could have given dif­fe­rent infor­ma­tion to a dis­tres­sed rea­der who couldn’t find Armour anywhere.  He recom­men­ded to this rea­der, who already sta­ted that Synth­roid is not a well-handled treat­ment, to see if her phy­si­cian could “alter the Synth­roid dosage to find a level”  that could be tole­ra­ted.  Actually, there are far bet­ter options during this bac­kor­de­red time, which I have com­pi­led here, and inc­lu­des Erfa’s Thy­roid and more.

Natu­reth­roid is appea­ring in phar­ma­cies! Yup, patients are repor­ting it! No, it’s not all phar­ma­cies. But you might want to call and see if YOUR local phar­macy has it. Other­wise, it’s coming.  For options during the current natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid shor­ta­ges, go here. To see why we are where we are today, read this.

Is there research to prove having a free T3 in the upper quar­ter of the range when on desic­ca­ted thy­roid?? A gal emai­led me, wan­ting stu­dies to show her doc. But unfor­tu­na­tely, the ans­wer appears to be no. Ins­tead, this is what patients all over thy­roid groups dis­co­ve­red from their lab results when they were fee­ling fabu­lous again with no lin­ge­ring symp­toms.  So we simply spread the word. Patient expe­rien­ces DO count for something.  P.S. Here’s an ongoing list of research that DOES prove some things patients KNOW first hand.  And by the way, when you have a high free T3 and con­ti­nuing symp­toms, time to do labs for ferri­tin and adre­nal fati­gue.

By using a code, you can save on labs from Healthchec­kUSA. I was infor­med from Healthchec­kUSA that many patients were for­get­ting to men­tion the dis­count code. So look again, and be sure and use it from the Recom­men­ded Lab­work page.

Janie on radio shows, and a great guest for the upco­ming Talkshoe Thy­roid Patient Com­mu­nity Call. Can’t say much more, because it’s in the works. Watch for announ­ce­ments soon.

A new way to be infor­med of these thy­roid posts. The for­mer Noti­fi­xious noti­fi­ca­tions went out of busi­ness. But we have a new and GOOD one, refe­rring to the noti­fi­ca­tion as a new­let­ter, and you can sign up free and with no strings attached.  See on left below on the links.   Also, there are many more impor­tant posts right below this.

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.

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.