Patients tags

The follo­wing com­ment by RLC Labs, a phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal which has made desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Natu­reth­roid since the 1930’s, was sent in a let­ter to a phar­macy. You may find it inte­res­ting as com­pa­red to pro­blems so many have repor­ted with Forest Labs and the newly for­mu­la­ted Armour:

We have never had any man­da­tory or volun­tary recall of any of our thy­roid medi­ca­tions due to incon­sis­tency in dosa­ges. Our for­mu­la­tion and pre­pa­ra­tion is able to sta­bi­lize the T3 and T4 hor­mo­nes through its entire expiry period (3 years from manu­fac­tu­ring) pro­vi­ding addi­tio­nal assu­rance to both phy­si­cian and patient alike in qua­lity and con­sis­tency of our strengths.

Kudos for RLC Labs and Natu­reth­roid! Patients whose lives have chan­ged ten-fold thanks to desic­ca­ted thy­roid need a good pro­duct. (And we’re going to hope down the line that “someone” will create desic­ca­ted thy­roid in a sublin­gual form.)

P.S. If you don’t know what has hap­pe­ned to Armour and patient expe­rien­ces with it, scroll down.

*Want to be infor­med of these blog posts? Curious what’s on Janie’s mind? Just use the Noti­fi­ca­tions to the left and below the links.

*SALE! Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness T-shirts are now 50% off just because I like sales. A great way to spread the word about our patient revo­lu­tion for the supe­rio­rity of desic­ca­ted thy­roid over T4-only meds. You’ll also see funny bum­per stic­kers. Also…when you order the STTM book and request it,  you get a Cal­vin peeing on.…(you’ll see) bum­per stic­ker for FREE, and it’s a hoot.

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.

*Want to be infor­med of my blog posts? Curious what’s on my mind? Just use the Noti­fi­ca­tions to the bot­tom left of the links.

I’ve been sit­ting back silently, rea­ding all the bac­klash that star­ted with Newsweek’s Best Life or Risky Advice May 30^th article, a cri­ti­cal analy­sis of Oprah’s mul­ti­ple pro­gram topics of Wish Away Can­cer! Get A Lunch­time Face-Lift! Era­di­cate Autism! Turn Back The Clock! Thin Your Thighs! Cure Meno­pause! Har­ness Posi­tive Energy! Erase Wrin­kles! Banish Obe­sity! Live Your Best Life Ever!

And gran­ted, some of the cri­ti­cism seems jus­ti­fied.

Even thy­roid patients win­ced and squir­med when Oprah sta­ted that a month long Hawaiian vaca­tion and eating fresh foods with soy milk were a great way to treat her thy­roid con­di­tion.  Uh huh.   Patients equally gag­ged at her sup­port of Dr. Chris­tiane North­rup who made the the nutty insen­si­tive com­ment that our thy­roid pro­blems were due to an “energy bloc­kage in the throat region, the result of a life­time of ‘swa­llo­wing’ words one is aching to say.”

But the ensuing array of blog posts and artic­les follo­wing in the foots­teps of the News­week cri­ti­cism of Oprah has pre­sen­ted quite an irony for thy­roid patients whose lives have been chan­ged thanks to natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid. Adjec­ti­ves and/or desc­rip­tions of Oprah in these blogs and artic­les have included:

* dan­ge­rous

* pedd­ling alter­na­tive treat­ments that are ineffective

* fai­ling to pre­sent scien­ti­fic evidence

* fai­ling to lis­ten to bona fide, medi­cal school trai­ned,  medi­cal professionals

* being too gulli­ble about the so-called wis­dom and know­ledge of cer­tain patients (ala Suzanne Somers)

* fai­ling to give more atten­tion to science-based, sta­tus quo, mains­tream medicine

Any of the above sound fami­liar? Yup, it sure does.

How many times have thy­roid patients been told that desic­ca­ted thy­roid like Armour or Natu­reth­roid was dan­ge­rous, or rai­sing it by symp­toms rather than the TSH was dan­ge­rous. Or it’s dan­ge­rous to use because you’ll get heart pro­blems and oste­ro­po­ro­sis. Yet thy­roid patients on desic­ca­ted thy­roid have their lives CHANGED, with stron­ger hearts and inc­rea­sed bone density.

How many patients have had their doc­tors tell them that desic­ca­ted was inef­fec­tive as an alter­na­tive out-dated pro­duct, yet these same patients star­ted to LIVE again with relief from old symp­toms from this inef­fec­tive “alter­na­tive” medi­ca­tion that grandma once used.

How many artic­les by medi­cal pro­fes­sio­nals are there who claim that there’s no scien­ti­fic evi­dence to prove that desic­ca­ted thy­roid is effec­tive, in spite of CLEAR obser­va­tion and reports of a huge and gro­wing body of thy­roid patients and cer­tain doc­tors around the world about relief from depres­sion, lowe­red cho­les­te­rol, bet­ter blood pres­sure, weight main­te­nance, hair regrowth, bet­ter sta­mina, less sick­ness and a myriad of other improvements!

How many bona fide, medi­cal school trai­ned,  medi­cal pro­fes­sio­nals told us ad nau­seum that our symp­toms were not thy­roid rela­ted (when they were), that we are “nor­mal” because the TSH lab test says so (when we were far from it), that desic­ca­ted thy­roid is out­da­ted, unre­lia­ble, inef­fec­tive, and a ten ton load of other ridi­cu­lous com­ments from bona fide, medi­cal school trai­ned,  medi­cal professionals.

How many doc­tors have told patients that they should NOT lis­ten to other patients on the inter­net or Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness because patients can’t pos­sibly have any wis­dom or know what they are tal­king about. Yet, lo and behold, it’s been patients and what they have lear­ned who have star­ted a wide-reaching revo­lu­tion for bet­ter thy­roid treat­ment that works, and a gro­wing body of doc­tors are listening!

And how many times has science-based, sta­tus quo, mains­tream medi­cine com­ple­tely rui­ned the lives of thy­roid patients because many doc­tors are too lazy to dare ques­tion or think outside the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, medi­cal school box.

Yup, Oprah has made some blun­ders, gaf­fes and mis­judg­ments as out­li­ned in the News­week article.  She has gushed too quickly when North­rup opens her mouth or Oz walks in with his sur­gi­cal garb.  But isn’t it a bit iro­nic that some of the cri­ti­cism by others towards Oprah are the same blun­ders, gaf­fes and mis­judg­ments which most any thy­roid patient has heard about their use of desic­ca­ted thy­roid, and which has all been COMPLETELY wrong.

Bot­tom line, for every mis­take and mis­judg­ment Oprah has made – and CLEARLY she has done so in her unders­tan­ding of thy­roid treat­ment — she just might be ope­ning the doors to medi­cal truth, somewhere, somehow, bet­ween it all.

Janie

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 6^th 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 20^th 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.

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

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

With the recent blog post by health wri­ter Mary Sho­mon con­cer­ning Dr. Sid­ney Wolfe’s new 4-year term with the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Mana­ge­ment Advi­sory Com­mit­tee, there has been much brooha and fear-mongering on thy­roid patient groups.

Why? Well look at it this way. This is a man of sta­ture. He is an MD, an Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Medi­cine, the direc­tor of Public Citizen’s health research group which pro­mo­tes drug safety and public health, and edi­tor of the news­let­ter Worst Pills, Best Pills, and since August of  ’08, a mem­ber of the Drug Safety Com­mit­tee.  He also has a resume a mile long.

Yet in spite of his see­mingly caring acti­vism for our health and well-being, and his immense expe­rience and edu­ca­tion, he is clearly and com­ple­tely off-base about Armour and other desic­ca­ted thy­roid presc­rip­tion drugs.

For exam­ple, as as edi­tor of the Worst Pills, Best Pills news­let­ter,  Wolfe dec­la­red Armour desic­ca­ted thy­roid as a “Do Not Use” pro­duct because it is not ade­qua­tely gua­ran­teed to pro­vide appro­priate blood levels of thy­roid hor­mone and relia­ble alter­na­ti­ves are avai­la­ble”. (Gee, funny how our expe­rien­ces are com­ple­tely other­wise.…)

Then in the May 2003 issue (of which you have to have a paid presc­rip­tion to read), he wrote an article tit­led  “Do Not Use! Natu­ral or Desic­ca­ted Thy­roid (ARMOUR THYROID) For Thy­roid Hor­mone Repla­ce­ment The­rapy.” In that article, the clue­less Wolfe sta­ted that he sup­por­ted The Ame­ri­can Thy­roid Association’s sta­te­ment “There is no evi­dence that desic­ca­ted thy­roid, a bio­lo­gi­cal pre­pa­ra­tion, has any advan­tage over synthe­tic thy­ro­xine.” (I guess millions of us and our impro­ved hear­trate, sta­mina, cho­les­te­rol, depres­sion and more…aren’t evi­dence?)

He then pro­po­ses that Armour is mostly presc­ri­bed for weight loss, is a niche mar­ket for the unsc­ru­pu­lous, and conc­lu­des with “if you are offe­red natu­ral thy­roid hor­mone repla­ce­ment treat­ment for any rea­son, this is a red flag and you should get a second opi­nion.” In a let­ter to con­su­mers, Wolfe and Public Citi­zen state that that T3 is only nee­ded from con­ver­sion and is pre­dic­tably found from con­ver­sion, that the T2 and T1 also found in desic­ca­ted thy­roid has essen­tially no acti­vity, that desic­ca­ted thy­roid is an unpre­dic­ta­ble mix­ture, that is has no pre­dic­ta­ble bio­lo­gi­cal acti­vity…plus so many more com­plete and total inac­cu­ra­cies based on “inte­llec­tual head chat­ter” not on obser­va­tion and experience.

Thud.

Mary Sho­mon, in 2003, did a bang-up job trying to com­mu­ni­cate with Wolfe, Worst Pills, Best Pills, and Public Citi­zen about the inac­cu­ra­cies of their beliefs and statements…basically to no avail. The TRUTH is here, and in more detail in Chap­ters 1 and 2 in the STTM book which are enligh­te­ning those rea­ding it all!

So we are left won­de­ring, six years later, what his four-year appoint­ment to this com­mit­tee will mean. But let’s make a few things quite clear to con­trast some of the fears going on and expres­sed on thy­roid groups:

1) Armour is not being ban­ned.
2) Wolfe is one of a current 9 mem­bers of this com­mit­tee. Wolfe is not “the com­mit­tee”.
3) Wolfe and seven others currently have voting rights. He is the only “Con­su­mer Repre­sen­ta­tive”.
4) There are still six more vacan­cies.
5) The com­mit­tee is NOT the power. They simply make recom­men­da­tions. And his­to­ri­cally, the FDA can be slow to act on their recom­men­da­tions, or doesn’t follow them at all (which is a GOOD thing when it comes to a SAFE and EFFECTIVE medi­ca­tion like desic­ca­ted thyroid).

So what can you do? I cha­llenge you to follow and act on the below, which puts our ener­gies into com­mu­ni­ca­tion, not fee­ding the ego and power of a mis­gui­ded man with our overtly expres­sed fears as if they have actually come to pass :

1) Remem­ber 1 – 5 above. Armour is fully avai­la­ble. Keep the facts straight, and fear-mongering down.

2) STTM has a power­ful and gro­wing page of tes­ti­mo­nies of those who switched to desic­ca­ted thy­roid.  Are you in there? If not, you need to be. This web­site currently has a huge audience. It’s noti­ced by doc­tors all over the world, as is the STTM book, which is YOUR book of YOUR expe­rien­ces,  which is also being orde­red by doc­tors. Use the Con­tact Me form at the bot­tom of that page.

3) Tell your expe­rience with Synth­roid or other thy­ro­xine medi­ca­tions at the follo­wing web­si­tes:  www.rateadrug.com,  www.drugs.com,  www.askapatient.com They don’t inc­lude any of the desic­ca­ted thy­roid meds yet, but you can tell of the nega­tive expe­rien­ces with all the T4-only drugs, inc­lu­ding adre­nal fati­gue if you fell into that, and all your lin­ge­ring thy­roid symp­toms.  The above links will take you to their Synth­roid page – you can search for the other T4 meds.  Remem­ber to men­tion Armour or other desic­ca­ted thy­roid meds and how they have hel­ped you!! Update: thy­roid patient Gina found the drugs.com Armour page: http://www.drugs.com/comments/thyroid-desiccated/armour-thyroid.html

4) Report your T4-only expe­rience to Med­Watch, the FDA’s  pro­gram for repor­ting pro­blems.  You will see an Online Repor­ting Form to down­load. Don’t fail to men­tion which pro­blems were remo­ved or greatly impro­ved when you switched to Armour, or the fact that you now have to deal with adre­nal fati­gue thanks to the ina­de­quacy of T4-only treat­ment. You can also call 1 – 800-FDA-1088, but remem­ber: your call is not to draw atten­tion to Wolfe’s opi­nions! It’s to draw atten­tion to how lousy a treat­ment T4 is as com­pa­red to how much bet­ter Armour has been.

5) Go to my article tit­led Synth­roid Sucks: the Rall­ying Cry of Thy­roid Patients vs. Clue­less Doc­tors and com­ment on this article, inc­lu­ding men­tio­ning what Armour, Natu­reth­roid or other desic­ca­ted thy­roid did for you. Rate it as well. Both keep this article in the media and in the eyes of others.

6) Go to www.medications.com where patients ask ques­tions and YOU can ans­wer, men­tio­ning YOUR expe­rience and how much bet­ter desic­ca­ted thy­roid has been. Clic­king on that will take you to the Synth­roid patient ques­tions. Ans­wer them. Be care­ful with links – they may not catch them at first, but will remove them if they do.  You can men­tion web­site names, tho, like Stop the Thy­roid Madness.

7) Send peo­ple here to follow all these steps. Power is in numbers!

8 ) Use the follo­wing web­site to email or write your sena­tors and repre­sen­ta­ti­ves: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ THEY DO READ THEM. And they will remem­ber this!  Here’s a tem­plate let­ter you can use:  www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/template-letter-to-your-senator-or-representive/

If you have other ideas and pla­ces to write or call, add your com­ment to this post. Remem­ber,  put your power in com­mu­ni­ca­tion! LOTS of communication.

P.S. Did you know that the Ame­ri­can Thy­roid Asso­cia­tion, in coo­pe­ra­tion with the Ame­ri­can Asso­cia­tion of Endoc­ri­no­lo­gists, together sup­port January as “Thy­roid Awa­re­ness Month”…which is sup­por­ted through an unres­tric­ted grant from Abbott Labo­ra­to­ries, the makers of Synth­roid?? Major UGH.