hypothyroid tags

Armour desiccated thyroid by Forest Pharmaceuticals used to be easy to do sublingually, even if the official line was they didn’t make it that way.

And patients liked that sublingual ability with Armour.  It allowed them to work around the problem of swallowing desiccated thyroid several hours from having swallowed iron, estrogen or calcium–all which can bind some of the thyroid hormones in your stomach.

It also helped those with digestive issues, gluten intolerance or Celiac (a common problem for some hypothyroid patients) by bypassing the stomach.

But with the newly formulated Armour in 2009, it became difficult. The pill is harder with less dextrose and more cellulose.  It now fell into the ranks of all other desiccated thyroid pills, including Naturethroid and other good brands, as a more dense tablet.

But no matter what brand you use (especially the growing group of patients who are having their doctors switch them to Naturethroid), below are tips from patients on how to continue doing your desiccated thyroid sublingually. Let your doc know, too.

1) Try adding a touch of the contents of a Pixie Stix under your tongue. It’s flavored sugar in a straw, and the sugar seems to help the tablet dissolve sublingually through tissues under the tongue.

2) If you are using sublingual B12 lonzenges to treat low B12, try adding it under the tongue with your desiccated thyroid. The action of the sublingual lozenge seems to move over to the thyroid tablet.

3) Swish warm water in your mouth before you place the tablet under your tongue.

4) Crunch up the desiccated thyroid tablet before any of the above and before placing it all under your tongue.

Also note that you can swallow your desiccated thyroid. You’ll just have to make sure you don’t also have a stomach full of iron rich foods or calcium, or estrogen. Generally, it’s best to take your tablet 4 hours from any of the former. P.S. See comments below on the newly formulated Armour, and farther down, a post on Naturethroid.

*Have more sublingual ideas or experiences? Share it in the Comments section.

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Funny how things work. I had been wondering what the heck was going on with thyroid patients in the UK after the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) came out with their February 6th guideline stating that 1) thyroxine was the only medication needed for hypothyroidism, 2) “natural” medications were dangerous and 3) the only labs needed are the TSH and T4.

All the above goes totally against the life-changing experience of a growing body of patients.

Equally a part of this B-grade horror movie is the stand taken by the British Thyroid Association (BTA).  Read it. And UK-TPA thyroid patient advocate Sheila Turner began to go through her own hell when her Armour was taken away, which you can read about in the February 20th blog post here.

And suddenly, I get an email from Sheila, informing me that the RCP stand is as bad as it was three months ago for her and other thyroid patients.

Sheila states: This is absolutely unbelievable that out of the hundreds of references we sent to the Royal College of Physicians to show their guideline to be flawed, they have taken no account of one single one of them. They are publishing their previous guidance without one since change. The world has gone mad.

Dear Sheila, Further to my email of 6 April, the comments and materials received by the College have been reviewed. This position statement or guidance (not a guideline) was produced on behalf of the Royal College of Physicians, in particular its Patient and Carer Network and the Joint Specialty Committee for Endocrinology and Diabetes; the Association for Clinical Biochemistry; the Society for Endocrinology; the British Thyroid Association; the British Thyroid Foundation Patient Support Group and the British Society of Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes and is endorsed by The Royal College of General Practitioners. The President has asked me to let you know that this review has not resulted in any changes to that statement.  It should be noted that it is about the treatment of primary hypothyroidism and does not preclude other treatments for exceptional cases by specialist endocrinologists who can make clear to patients any associated risks. References supporting the statement are listed below. Yours sincerely, Catharine Perry Administrator •   Diagnosis and treatment of primary hypothyroidism. BMJ 2009;338:b725 •   Vaidya B, Pearce S. A Clinical Review of the management of hypothyroidism in adults. BMJ 2008;337:a801. This contains references for 35 articles and states that Armour thyroid is of no proved additional benefit to levothyroxine. • The Lancet Volume 363, Issue 9411, Pages 793 – 803, 6 March 2004.  This covers the history, epidemiology, pathophysiology, and clinical diagnosis and management of hypothyroidism and is written by Caroline GP Roberts and Paul Ladenson of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, USA.  This review, which references 164 clinical articles, states that the treatment of choice for hypothyroidism is levothyroxine sodium (thyroxine) and does not refer to Armour thyroid. •  Baloch Z, Carayon P, Conte-Devolx B, et al. Laboratory medicine practice guidelines. Laboratory support for the diagnosis and monitoring of thyroid disease.Thyroid 2003;13:3-126. •  Association of Clinical Biochemists BTA, British Thyroid Foundation. UK Guidelines for the use of thyroid function tests. http://acb.org.uk/docs/tftguidelinefinal.pdf •  Surks MI. Ortiz E, Daniels GH, et al. Subclinical thyroid disease: scientific review and guidelines for diagnosis and management. 2004;291:228-238.

And as your peruse the six references above which they use to defend their tunnel-visioned, moronic position, you realize that you, your words, and your positive-outcome experience on desiccated thyroid, as well as the use of far better labs, is about as important within the UK’s latest medical pronouncement as is dirt on the bottom of a rusted bucket in the middle of an empty field in nowhere. Yup.

Or as Harold Shipman stated about the RCP’s guidelines: What a brilliant wheeze.

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See below on the potential importance of potassium in your health and well-being. And on the May 7th post about the party being over with Forest Pharmaceuticals, comments continue to come in about experiences with the “new” Armour.

STTM’s Armour-vs-other-brands page now has information on desiccated thyroid in Denmark, Germany and Italy: www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/armour-vs-other-brands Thanks go to Julia Hendryx for alerting me about the brand in Denmark!

If I need to add more info or corrections, please use the Contact Me form at the bottom of any page on Stop the Thyroid Madness.

THIS PATIENT REVOLUTION for a better hypothyroid treatment is working! Desiccated thyroid brands which were almost extinct from low use are now seeing a comeback. Another comeback?? PATIENT HEALTH!! T4-only meds do NOT work, unless an elevator which only goes to the 5th floor of a 50 story building….works. My quote; my words.

p.s. See the post below about the importance of your potassium levels, and below that, how being hypothyroid can affect your liver, and my opinion of that fact with T4 meds vs. desiccated thyroid, which one comment disagrees with.  For the May 7th post, comments are still coming in about the “New” Armour. Express yours, and let’s hope that just raising it will do the trick, in spite of the loss of being able to do it sublingually as easy as before–a sad loss.

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One of many discoveries made by thyroid patients is that “normal” lab results don’t tell the whole story. And thyroid and adrenal patient advocate Valerie Taylor sure found out the hard way while dealing with worsening muscle spasms and weakness.

“I have been to at least 6 doctors over the past seven years and read thousands of websites, hunting for the cause of my severe muscle spasms”, explains Valerie. “They all ruled out potassium, a potentially likely cause,  because my serum lab result, 4.2, was right smack in the middle of the normal range.”

So Valerie was forced to live with her worsening muscle issues– spasms, weakness and pain–because all labs were normal and those that weren’t, didn’t pertain.  Even her insulin-dependent Type 2 Diabetes was well-controlled. And she knew it was all threatening to put her out of work as a pet groomer.  It was bleak.

But a surprising change was to come.

“About 2 months ago,” says Valerie, “someone on one of my groups mentioned potassium helping with fluid retention–the latter I’ve had for the last 15 years and took  Dyazide, a potassium sparing diuretic.”

She also learned about getting an RBC (red blood cell) potassium lab as it shows what’s inside the cells rather than in serum (as usual labs show).  And the results? It came back LOW.

Valerie has since worked her way up to 2850 mg. Potassium in a combo of chloride and gluconate…and below, in her own words, are the results:

• No more muscle spasms and the weakness and pain is leaving more daily!
• My IBS suddenly STOPPED!
• My insulin needs are HALF what they were before this supplement, and blood pressure & pulse are both down.
• ALL fluid retention is gone! I dropped 18 pounds the first month in just fluid weight.

Valerie is currently waiting for lab results to see if she needs to adjust further.

She concludes: I have since learned that being hypothyroid causes potassium losses, as does ANY steroid which I had been on for necessary adrenal support. Diabetes with a low carb diet also predisposes us to lose intracellular potassium into the serum which is probably why my serum labs looked normal in the face of extreme shortage. I hope many will see this and at the very least get RBC potassium labs done and if you have high BP or fluid retention, reach for potassium before a diuretic!

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Even without being inspired by Valerie’s discovery, there is good research out there for eating potassium rich foods, or like Valerie, using supplementation if your levels are low.  The LA Times reported a study which stated that consuming twice as much potassium as sodium might halve your risk of dying from cardiovascular disease,  stated by epidemiologist Paul Whelton, president and chief executive of the Loyola University Health System in Chicago and one of the authors of the study.

Here’s a list of potassium rich foods: http://www.hoptechno.com/bookfoodsourceK.htm

Here’s a list of symptoms of low potassium: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/signs-and-symptoms-of-low-potassium.html

And remember: ask your doctor to do an Red Blood Cell Potassium lab rather than simply serum. And don’t go as high as Valerie with supplementation unless you have proof of low potassium.

P.S. Magnesium helps pump sodium out of your cells, and potassium into the cells–a good reason to get magnesium tested as well.

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*What is your experience with the newly formulated Armour? Found a way to get around the problems? Express your opinion in the May 7th blog post!

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.

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See below about my disappointment in Forest Pharmaceuticals.