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Well, here we go again.

As this first week of Oprah’s “Best Life Week” series ends, we all know that Oprah has announced she is going on a weight loss and exercise plan once again (hamster wheel turning, turning…).   Oh…and did I mention that she said her hypothyroid was cured?

(Wait. Do I hear a collective and worldwide SIGHHHHHHH among thyroid patients??)

Thyroid patient Mary Shomon now shares my own long-held concerns in an excellent summary pertaining to Oprah’s thyroid and weight saga.  Oprah has been remarkably uninformative about her diagnosis and details, and leads those uninformed to believe they can stop taking their medication and be cured.  And Oprah appears to have ignored a slew of emails over the years from all camps of thyroid advocacy!

Just as bad is a visit in the pages of O Magazine. On page 151 of the January issue, and right next to the article about Oprah’s weight gain, is a side article titled The Truth About the Thyroid.  And the longest paragraph is about the use of the TSH lab test and its so-called normal range–one of the worst tests ever created to diagnose and treat hypothyroidism. Additionally, the article ends with the mention of a prescription of synthetic thyroxine–a medication which leaves nearly everyone with lingering hypothyroid symptoms.

But the disappointment in Oprah has to go farther than a general call to be educated about thyroid disease. There is a need to be specifically educated about the scandal of thyroxine treatment, about the fallacy of the TSH lab test which leaves patients undiagnosed for years or undertreated when on meds, about the rampant problem with adrenal fatigue in thyroid patients on thyroxine or those left undiagnosed (and where Oprah may be headed), and about a far better treatment with desiccated thyroid like Armour, and optimizing other areas, including ferritin, B12, and our overall health.

Let’s not give up.

Success is like lottery tickets: you have to make several attempts before that magic one makes it. Eventually, your email can be the one that finally stops her hamster wheel of “eat less, be hungry, exercise more, it’s not my thyroid” mentality.  Tell Oprah about your success, others success, the patient-to-patient site www.stopthethyroidmadness, and more.  And don’t hesitate to share your email below.

With recent news of Oprah’s continuous weight gain (currently partially due to her failure to properly treat her hypothyroidism and probably Hashimotos (see post below this), it can make us all shudder as we deal with the holidays and all that great food!

I admit it: At Christmastime, I LOVE the easy Gingerbread Boy Cookies recipe I used when the boys were little, the Microwave Fudge recipe to die for, my world famous Chocolate Chip Meringue Cookies which I color red and green, my mother’s wonderful Pralines which I occasionally try to make myself,  and Grandma’s Fruit Cake–yeah an actual fruit cake I LOVE, which I order EVERY SINGLE YEAR at this time.

And it’s hard not to gain weight! Is that you, too?? So let’s go over 6 HOLIDAY FACTS about thyroid treatment with desiccated thyroid:

1) Armour, Naturethyroid, Westhroid, or any other desiccated thyroid medication is not meant to be a Christmas weight loss pill. Desiccated thyroid medications consist of thyroid hormones: T4, T3, T2, T1 and calcitonin. They simply give you back what your own thyroid is not giving you…the same five hormones which give you back a stronger immune system, a normal body temperature & improved metabolism, better energy, healthier hair and skin, less aches & pains, emotional happiness, better lipid profiles like cholesterol, stronger bones…and on and on.  But even with all that benefit, and even though it does improve your metabolism, desiccated thyroid is not meant to be a weight loss pill.

2) Armour et. al. can only do its holiday job if you have strong adrenals or adequate cortisol treatment. Because cortisol is needed for thyroid hormones to move from your blood to your cells, you can only benefit optimally from desiccated thyroid during the holidays if you are lucky enough to have strong adrenals, or if you are giving yourself back the cortisol you need based on stable temps, blood pressure, and removal of most low cortisol symptoms.  So don’t forget that cortisol right now, and definitely consider adding a stress dose of cortisol if things get rough with the in-laws. (See Chapter 6 in the STTM book for even more details about stable temps, blood pressure, and stress dosing)

3) Don’t drink that Armour down with Egg Nog! Calcium is a known binder of thyroid hormones in your stomach, keeping you from benefiting from some of those health-giving thyroid hormones.  So if you swallow your desiccated thyroid, get the water.  Or even better, do it sublingually.

4) Don’t expect Armour to keep you from looking like Santa Claus: you still gotta exercise & watch what you eat! It’s true: the optimal use of desiccated thyroid does raise your metabolism and eats those extra calories up like PacMan.  But if you’re like me, you can still have a tendency to put on those love handle butter pounds if you eat your fill of holiday foods.  ho ho ho. To curtail the gain, add exercise to your holiday regime, or increase what you already do. I try to aerobically walk a LOT during the holidays. And when I’ve eaten a Christmas stocking full of goodies, my next meal will be nothing but high protein, like  turkey, cheeses and nuts. Or, you can also balance your intake by choosing one meal a day to be low glycemic to somewhat balance out the high glycemics you know you are going to eat later. For example, I make my breakfasts only eggs and nitrate-free bacon, or plain yogurt with berries, nuts, and Stevia.

5) Building a holiday snowman outside?  Consider an extra 1/4 grain of Armour. It’s a fact that prolonged exposure to cold increases your demand for energy, which in turn can increase your demand for more thyroid hormones. As a result, many patients find that adding an extra 1/4 grain of desiccated thyroid to one’s daily amount helps meet the demands of Frosty the Snowman or that holiday sprinkling of lights all over your house in the cold air.  Talk to your doctor.

6) Give a gift of the STTM book to a loved one. There are other good thyroid books on the market, but unlike all of them, this is the bible of patient experience on successful thyroid treatment. You’ll find volumes of information that patients all around the world have learned. A true patient-to-patient guide to feeling wonderful again.  Go here to order.  And the publishing company is extending the time you can order a book to be sent DIRECTLY to your loved one.

SECOND UPDATE as of Dec. 10th: WHOOPI GOLDBERG has it RIGHT! Today on The View, she stated that Oprah needs to take her thyroid problem SERIOUSLY!! Contact the View about STTM and the seriously correct treatment here.

UPDATE as of Dec. 10: Gail King, Oprah’s best friend, was on the Good Morning America show this morning talking about Oprah’s weight gain and thyroid problem. She also talked about how depressed she looked.  Oprah, a huge and growing body of thyroid patients are all around the world, waiting to tell you what the answer is.  Listen to us.  We have been emailing you for years, and you’re going to see more of those emails. Contact Good Morning America here. (Then contact Oprah below)

Just on the stands, Oprah’s January issue of “O” magazine has an eye-opener: Oprah Winfrey admits that she’s now back up to 200 lbs, a condition that puts her at higher risk of several chronic conditions, including diabetes and heart disease.  She states “When it comes to maintaining my health I didn’t just fall off the wagon. I let the wagon fall on me.”

But what Oprah, a wonderful talk show host and chairman of  Harpo, Inc, doesn’t seem to get is that the “wagon” is probably a “poorly treated” hypothyroid condition, which causes a lower metabolism and easy weight gain.  She even admits in the article that she deals with an out-of-balance thyroid condition which has made her develop a “fear of working out.”

A fear of working out?? Oprah, do you get exhausted from working out? Because there is NOTHING to fear with working out if you are optimally treated with natural desiccated thyroid in the presence of strong adrenals or adequate treatment.

Are you on desiccated thyroid, Oprah?? Are you dosing high enough to remove all symptoms?? Have you learned what patients have learned? And what condition are your adrenals in, Oprah?? Because it’s all too common for thyroid patients to have developed adrenal fatigue from being poorly treated for so long.

And Oprah, when you state that you don’t need to be thin, but do want to be “strong, healthy and fit”…the way to do that is optimally treat your thyroid! We are a large and growing body of patients worldwide who have done just that, and now live “strong, healthy and fit”.

IT IS TIME FOR JANIE TO BE ON YOUR SHOW, OPRAH. (Thyroid patients even have a book you can recommend to others.)

Because in all due respect to your personal trainer Bob Greene and Dr. Mehmet Oz…you have YET gotten someone on your show who can give you GOLD about the right thyroid treatment.  Call me, Oprah.  Email me, Oprah.  I am waiting to tell you how to stop your yo-yo weight problems and fear of working out!  We and I have a LOT to tell you, Oprah, to stop your own personal thyroid madness. Contact Oprah here.

Send a message to Oprah’s best friend, Gayle King, here.  Tell her about desiccated thyroid and YOUR story. Send Gayle to this website so she can understand all this.

I often wonder how many celebrities MUST have hypothyroidism, yet we don’t know it. Tonite, I just found out that Jillian Michaels, the tough and muscular fitness buff on the TV show Biggest Loser, has hypothyroidism.

And you’re left to wonder: is she, and are others, on Armour, Naturethroid, Westhroid?? Have they found out about the superior treatment of desiccated thyroid over a T4-only treatment with Synthroid, Levoxyl, et al?

Other celebrities with hypo include Kim Alexis, Linda Ronstadt, Kim Cattrall, Kelly Osbourne, Oprah Winfrey and others. We can only hope that one day, someone will figure out that desiccated thyroid is a superior treatment, and help us spread the word. So far, Oprah has let us down. Maybe…maybe…someone with the ability to spread the word will step up to the plate.

p.s. Prefer a book to a website? STTM is now in book form, with even more information than you can find on this site, and waiting to be in your hands.

Have you ever had someone say something in JUST a way that it hits you between the eyes?? That’s what Diane did to me. She’s a thyroid and adrenal patient, and we were discussing the way a huge medical website still gives out backwards and harmful thyroid treatment information, telling patients to “raise their Synthroid” to counter their continuing hypothyroid symptoms (which doesn’t work), or pronouncing that because their TSH is “normal”, those symptoms are not related to hypothyroid (they are.) This huge website has kept patients sick for YEARS, and is one of the main reasons I created STTM!

And Diane said to me “Somehow the true message needs to get into the main stream.”

Boink! That just hit me squarely between the eyes! Sure, I’ve been saying the same in a different way for years–that our message needs to get out. But when Diane mentioned the “mainstream”, it hit me.

Here we are, victims of a medical scandal which has been going on for 50 years, and which has effected HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS all that time. Some of those victims are dead; and many more are still alive, with new victims happening DAILY. Yet, the “mainstream media” has never taken the time or interest to report on this. HUHHH??

Wikipedia defines the mainstream media as the section of the media specifically envisioned and designed to reach a very large audience, and that might include television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Yet, what do you see on any of those mediums? You see the regurgitation of the old-boy, Pollyanna methods of hypothyroid diagnosis and treatment–the use of the TSH and total T4, plus T4-only meds like Synthroid, Levoxyl, Levothyroxine, et al. And if there is mention of desiccated thyroid, it’s bare. YAWN.

Some pundants feel that there is a form of literary censorship going on in the main media…i.e. if it’s not sensational, forget it. Others will cite bias and manipulation by those that report, especially in the political arena.

But what I lean to believe is that there’s a monkey-see, monkey-do mentality in the media. Namely, the mainstream media lazily conforms itself to the loudest, longest or most financially-influential voice. And who’s had that voice in the thyroid treatment arena?? The money-grubbing pharmaceuticals, who thrust billions of dollars into medical schools, besides their bright-eyed reps, to eventually convince every doctor since the early 1960’s that the lousy T4-only medications (Synthroid, Levoxyl, et al), and the dubious TSH lab tests, are from God Almighty.

So, that lie keeps being repeated, ad nauseum, and the TRUTH, which comes from everyday patients all around the world, gets ignored by the mainstream media. Thus, millions out there still sit, miserable or compromised in their day-to-day lives, and on a myriad of other pills to counter the lingering symptoms…because their main contact with the world–the mainstream media–is deaf and dumb–and they have not yet found Stop the Thyroid Madness, and may not for years!

So….what can YOU do?? Contact the mainstream media. SCREAM at the mainstream media. DOG the mainstream media. I have worked hard to put YOUR truth up here and in the book. You can help by spreading that word, one by one, like the Lilliputians who moved the giant.

*To contact ABC, go here.
*To contact MSNBC, go here or email Health@MSNBC.com
*To contact CBS, go here. Use the drop down menu to click on a news program
*To contact Fox News, go here.
*To contact CNN, go here.
*The top 20 Women’s magazines are here.

Want to add more emails or website URL’s for contact? Just add a comment to this post below.

**Patients are reporting that the STTM book is even better than the website! Yeehaw! To order your copy, go to the publishing website here. There are also options to order one for your doctor, and one for Oprah!