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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.

The topic of iodine sup­ple­men­ta­tion for your ove­rall health has been gro­wing the past few years among patients, espe­cially in light that many of us may be low in iodine, or just the fact that iodine has anti-cancer qua­li­ties. I became inte­res­ted in the topic after rea­ding Dr. David Derry’s book Breast Can­cer and Iodine. I’ve also seen the tes­ti­mony of seve­ral women with Fibrocys­tic Breast Disease who saw it disap­pear once they star­ted iodine sup­ple­men­ta­tion. Impressive!

And since thy­roid hor­mo­nes are pri­ma­rily com­po­sed of iodine, thy­roid patients are lis­te­ning to and ques­tio­ning the use of iodine sup­ple­men­ta­tion. Yahoo Groups has an exce­llent iodine group now led by Stepha­nie, where you can ask ques­tions and decide for your­self. Also, if you goo­gle “iodine”, you’ll find much to read.

But thy­roid patient Mike Law­son came up with some very inte­res­ting facts this week about iodine in desic­ca­ted thy­roid – just one more rea­son to con­si­der using Armour, Natu­reth­roid, Westh­roid or other desic­ca­ted thy­roid pro­ducts! He figu­red out the below:

T3 = C15H12I3NO4 = molar mass of 650.9776
T4 = C15H11I4NO4 = molar mass of 776.87

So, each grain of Armour has 30.20325 mcg iodine. In other words, each
grain of Armour has 1/5 the RDA of iodine (150 mcg).

Very inte­res­ting facts, Mike! Sure, some thy­roid patients feel they need more than what desic­ca­ted thy­roid offers. But it’s a good start when so many indi­vi­duals feel their own iodine levels are too low, and need help, espe­cially those who have had to deal with thy­roid or breast can­cer, or have a family his­tory of it.

I recei­ved a reply to a post below that I was una­ble to approve because it men­tio­ned someone by name. And the reply was not par­ti­cu­larly friendly, and defi­ni­tely not accu­rate. lol. But the reply brought up some good issues, which I have no pro­blem addres­sing.

Namely, can I agree that there are some peo­ple who do well on T4-only treat­ment such as Synth­roid or Levoxyl?? I can…sorta. I have a friend whose hus­band is one of those see­mingly lucky indi­vi­duals on T4, with no thy­roid, who leads a fairly active and happy life. Con­si­de­ring how lousy I did, he ama­zes me. But I did notice something else about him: he has high and rising cho­les­te­rol and is on sta­tins. That’s a clas­sic symp­tom of a poor treat­ment and con­ti­nuing hypothy­roid, even if he does have much bet­ter energy that I ever did.

And by obser­ving him, and kno­wing a few others who sub­jec­ti­vely feel they do well on T4, I came to the follo­wing conc­lu­sion: though some may do bet­ter than others on T4, I have yet to find anyone on T4 who doesn’t have some kind of side-effect of a poor treat­ment, whether they are trea­ting it with sta­tins, trea­ting it with anti­de­pres­sants, or not trea­ting it at all & den­ying it. Sure, some may do bet­ter than others, but the proof is in the pud­ding if you look deep enough. And, at the very least, I’m just plain sus­pi­cious that ANYONE on T4, even doing sub­jec­ti­vely well, is going to have symp­toms of a poor treat­ment creep up on them as they age. The body was not desig­ned to live on con­ver­sion alone.

Can I agree that some peo­ple just can­NOT tole­rate desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Armour and need to be on T4? Ini­tially, that may be. The gal that wrote me sta­ted she felt a lot bet­ter on T4, and that no mat­ter what she did, she couldn’t tole­rate Armour. I believe her. If Armour was that mise­ra­ble, she should be on T4 for the time being, or even bet­ter, a synthe­tic T4/T3 com­bi­na­tion. But I also believe that even if she feels she did everything to a “t” and still couldn’t tole­rate it, there was more for her to learn that she didn’t get the first time around when it came to her adre­nal fati­gue treat­ment. I see it too many times. And perhaps, over time, it will become more clear.

Do some pro­po­nents of desic­ca­ted thy­roid go over­board in their fer­vor? I don’t doubt it one bit. We’re human. And we hope you are for­gi­ving. But once you get past howe­ver you view are com­mu­ni­ca­tion short­co­ming, do know that our fer­vor is based on the fact that a huge volume of indi­vi­duals are having lives chan­ged due to desic­ca­ted thy­roid (and/or treat­ment of low ferri­tin, and/or treat­ment of adre­nal fati­gue). And it’s too wides­pread and glo­bal not to have fer­vor, besi­des com­mon sense that a treat­ment that gives us back what our own thy­roids would be giving us is just plain remarkable.

So, do know that if you are on T4, and feel well, I’m behind you. It’s your life, not mine, and I believe you. But neither can I stop my belief and too many obser­va­tions that if you are truly hypothy­roid and need treat­ment, desic­ca­ted thy­roid is a supe­rior choice, now or later, whether you are lucky enough to have esca­ped adre­nal fati­gue, or whether you have a cha­llen­ging case of adre­nal fati­gue that can be ade­qua­tely treated!

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!