stop the thyroid madness tags

I always know that when I get an email from Dr. John C. Lowe, it’s going to con­tain exce­llent infor­ma­tion. And he didn’t let me down.

Dr. Lowe is Editor-in-Chief of Thy­roid Science, an “open-access jour­nal for truth in thy­roid science and and thy­roid cli­ni­cal prac­tice”.  And in the recent issue, there is a remar­ka­ble and pre­cise TSH (Thy­roid Sti­mu­la­ting Hor­mone) hypothe­sis by none other than a bri­lliant UK  elec­tri­cal and elec­tro­nics engi­neer, Mr. Peter War­mingham.  In fact, his hypothe­sis about the TSH lab result when trea­ting one’s hypothy­roi­dism exactly corres­ponds to the suc­cess­ful expe­rience of thy­roid patients all over the world.

To quote Dr. Lowe in his intro­duc­tion about Warmingham’s paper (FYI: “exo­ge­nous” refers to the thy­roid hor­mone you give your­self;  “endo­ge­nous” refers to what hap­pens natu­rally in your body):

Mr. Warmingham’s hypothe­sis is straight­for­ward: When a hypothy­roid patient (whose cir­cu­la­ting pool of thy­roid hor­mone is too low) begins taking exo­ge­nous thy­roid hor­mone, a nega­tive feed­back sys­tem redu­ces the pitui­tary gland’s out­put of TSH. This dec­rea­ses the thy­roid gland’s out­put of endo­ge­nous thy­roid hor­mone, and des­pite the patient’s exo­ge­nous thy­roid hormone’s con­tri­bu­tion to his or her total cir­cu­la­ting thy­roid pool, that pool does not inc­rease — not until the TSH is sup­pres­sed and the thy­roid gland is con­tri­bu­ting no more thy­roid hor­mone to the total cir­cu­la­ting pool. At that point, adding more exo­ge­nous thy­roid hor­mone will finally inc­rease the cir­cu­la­ting pool of thy­roid hor­mone. The inc­rease must occur for thy­roid hor­mone the­rapy to be effec­tive. The patient’s sup­pres­sed TSH, then, does not indi­cate that the patient is over-treated with thy­roid hor­mone; ins­tead, it indi­ca­tes that the patient’s low total thy­roid hor­mone pool will finally rise to poten­tially ade­quate levels.

In other words, when your doc­tor says no to an inc­rease in your desic­ca­ted thy­roid simply because your TSH lab result is, or would become, below the so-called nor­mal range (and in the pre­sence of con­ti­nuing symp­toms or a low tem­pe­ra­ture), he will usually end up kee­ping you hypothy­roid! i.e. making an ink spot on a piece of paper more impor­tant than cli­ni­cal pre­sen­ta­tion is just one rea­son why the current thy­roid patient revo­lu­tion repre­sen­ted by Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness exists!

You can read Warmington’s entire paper here on Dr. Lowe’s site. For further infor­ma­tion on the fallacy of the TSH lab test, go here or read Chap­ter 4, aka Thy­roid Sti­mu­la­ting Hooey, in your copy of the STTM book for more detail.

P.S. Dr. Lowe is pro­bably right on when he says he expects cri­ti­cism to flow for the fact that War­ming­ton is not an Endoc­ri­no­lo­gist and “how in the world can any­body but an Endo make a logi­cal hypothe­sis about the TSH lab test”. Read more on Lowe’s thoughts about this here.   But enligh­te­ned thy­roid patients around the world are collec­ti­vely shou­ting “GOD BLESS AN ELECTRICAL ENGINEER!”

They both GET IT.

Jef­frey Dach, MD, who is foun­der of  True­MedMD cli­nic in Holly­wood, Flo­rida, has recently writ­ten just one more bri­lliant article tit­led Why Natu­ral Thy­roid is Bet­ter than Synthe­tic on OpEdNews. And patients can only deri­si­vely agree when Dach says “This non­sense really makes my blood boil and my eyes pop out of head” in res­ponse to artic­les on medi­cal web­si­tes which still pur­port that synthe­tic T4 is a bet­ter treat­ment  than natu­ral desic­ca­ted thyroid.

John O. Wycoff DO gra­ciously had me on his radio pro­gram a week ago, called Health and Well­ness Solu­tions radio, which runs each and every Satur­day mor­ning in Michi­gan or live strea­med. And I couldn’t help but be impres­sed by this warm, friendly, and caring doc­tor who runs the Wycoff Well­ness Cen­ter in East Lan­sing, Michi­gan. He defi­ni­tely see­med to unders­tand the use of desic­ca­ted thy­roid and adre­nals. Michi­gan patients are lucky to have this man.

And frankly, there seems to be a gro­wing body of doc­tors who are GETTING IT, making the large body who still don’t look like medi­cal cave­men and health ostriches.  Natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid is a FAR bet­ter treat­ment, and millions of chan­ged lives prove this over and over.

Both Dach and Wycoff will go down in his­tory as being part of the foun­ding mem­bers of doc­tors who really GOT IT in the first decade of the 21^st cen­tury and have pla­yed a huge role to STOP THE THYROID MADNESS!!

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UPCOMING PROGRAM with Janie: You will be able to lis­ten to me on Jimmy’s Moore’s Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb pro­gram on Thurs­day July 22^nd, 2010 for what Jimmy has dub­bed “The Truth About Thy­roid Week.” As I see it, each time I’m on a variety of radio and inter­net pod­casts like this, it’s going to mean reaching MORE folks about why they have depres­sion, rising cho­les­te­rol or blood pres­sure, fati­gue, hair loss, dry skin or hair, osteo­po­ro­sis and more as a result of either the TSH lab test, or being on T4 meds like Synth­roid!  I’ll announce this clo­ser to the event, as well.

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MORE ABOUT MAGNESIUM: As I wrote about recently here, I found myself very low in my RBC Mag­ne­sium levels – the very bot­tom of the range. I am even lower than a friend who has Celiac disease, which affects diges­tion!!  No won­der I’ve had issues with muscle cramps for so long, as well as what I saw as a wor­se­ning of my MVP (mitral valve pro­lapse).   Since then, I’ve been on Mag­ne­sium Oil and a par­ti­cu­lar brand of buf­fe­red Vit. C which con­tains a good amount of mag­ne­sium. And lo and behold, I have found out that taking mag­ne­sium when you are defi­cient is like drin­king water when you are dying of thirst – your body TAKES IT IN fas­ter than you can give it to your­self.  So it’s impor­tant to take as high a dose as you can take in, and be patient for it all to level out.  And by the way, I’m already noti­cing an impro­ve­ment in my huf­fin’ and puf­fin’ when I go out wal­king.  I do it less!!

(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 am plea­sed to note that Mary Sho­mon of about.com,  who in her blog post on Thurs­day, April 22, 2010, has not only sof­te­ned her wor­ding about self-treatment by hypothy­roid patients, but has also writ­ten expres­si­vely con­cer­ning surroun­ding issues. These are also issues which I pre­sen­ted in two blog posts ear­lier this week con­cer­ning the immense pro­blem with doc­tors as expres­sed by patients, and self-treatment.

Good for Mary!

As wit­nes­sed by Sheila Turner’s exce­llent edi­to­rial towards those who cri­ti­cize self-treatment, as well as angst expres­sed by many patients toward those who cri­ti­cize,  self-treatment is an impor­tant issue and can’t be dilu­ted down as simply “self-destructive” in our current medi­cal climate.

The follo­wing are dif­fe­ren­ces in how this is vie­wed, though, with one com­mon thought:

• Is self-treatment one  of the “most con­tro­ver­sial” issues with thy­roid patients? The ans­wer is “only to those who make it so”. Far more trou­bling to thy­roid patients is a medi­cal esta­blish­ment which worships a medi­ca­tion which has left millions under­trea­ted, and which makes a pitui­tary hor­mone lab called the TSH as if it’s from God Almighty. Equally as trou­bling to patients are doc­tors whom they report as con­des­cen­ding, close-minded, robo­tic, and/or igno­rant about issues that keep thy­roid patients sick – low ferri­tin, adre­nal fati­gue, and more. Self-treatment is only the symp­tom of a much lar­ger, more con­tro­ver­sial problem.
• Does self-treatment have “obvious draw­backs” for thy­roid patients who feel for­ced to do it? The ans­wer is “yes”, but no dif­fe­rent and pro­bably far less than the “obvious draw­backs” patients face with clue­less doc­tors.  The com­ments on my blog posts are bloa­ted with patients who have been left sick, or made sic­ker, by one doc­tor, after another doc­tor, after one more.  It’s not a pretty picture.
• Is there a “risk of under­treat­ment” for thy­roid patients who self-treat? Yes, but pro­bably far less  than the huge num­ber of patients who report being left “under­trea­ted” by doc­tors who are blind to the pro­blems of T4, or doc­tors who remain clue­less about the ina­de­quacy of trea­ting by the TSH.
• Is the “grea­test con­cern” about self-treatment the pro­blem of being “over-medicated”? You betcha. But in the vast majo­rity of these unfor­tu­nate cases with patients who choose to self-treat, the pro­blem is undiag­no­sed or under­trea­ted low cor­ti­sol and/or low ferri­tin, which results in thy­roid hor­mo­nes poo­ling in the blood and crea­ting hyper-like symp­toms.  This is a risk for self-treatment.
• Have “dozens of thy­roid patients” ended up in emer­gency rooms due to over-medication? “Dozens” is spe­cu­la­tion.  It may be more rea­lis­tic to state that “some”, yes, have sta­ted this unfor­tu­nate out­come when they made the choice.  But research and com­ment all over the inter­net shows anyone that hun­dreds of thou­sands of all patients can end up in the emer­gency room due to poor doc­to­ral deci­sions, or bad reac­tions to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal medi­ca­tions which doc­tors love to presc­ribe. Ending up in an emer­gency room is not solely con­nec­ted to self-treatment.
• Do “patients face many major obs­tac­les that pre­vent them from get­ting accu­rate and effec­tive thy­roid diag­no­sis and treat­ment?” Yes! That is where Mary is in agree­ment with me with her six exce­llent  points, inc­lu­ding the tra­gic situa­tion in the UK. And here are 10 rea­sons patients are frus­tra­ted, angry and sick.
• Has one nega­tive jour­nal article about someone who self-treated “resul­ted in desic­ca­ted thy­roid  get­ting grea­ter scru­tiny by the FDA?” The ans­wer can easily be:  no worse than the body of patients who were made fear­ful that the FDA was ban­ning desic­ca­ted thy­roid, and who follo­wed a strong cam­paign to con­tact the FDA about desic­ca­ted thy­roid. I was also per­so­nally told by two phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal repre­sen­ta­ti­ves that this action to con­tact the FDA made the pharms very uncom­for­ta­ble and put too much atten­tion on desic­ca­ted thy­roid. Time will tell, but it’s not help­ful to blame anything.
• Does “acti­vely pro­mo­ting self-medication” with natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid “work against thy­roid patient inte­rests”. The ans­wer to this loa­ded ques­tion resi­des in who you ask. Whether “acti­vely pro­mo­ted” or simply “read about”, there seems to be a body of patients who report that fin­ding out about desic­ca­ted thy­roid, and fee­ling for­ced to self-treat because of not fin­ding any doc­tor to help them, was one of the best deci­sions they ever made.

And to the last com­ment above, and since there have been “impli­ca­tions”, I want to unders­core (and ad nau­seum) that the patient-to-patient Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness was not crea­ted as a self-treatment site, nor does it “acti­vely pro­mote” it.  STTM is a site with a goal to edu­cate patients who can, in turn, take that infor­ma­tion into their doc­tors offi­ces and push for change. And it’s been wor­king, one doc­tor at a time, as wit­nes­sed by patients who report those doc­tors on patient groups, and by emails I get from some of those doctors.

But it’s also clear that those who self-medicate may be using STTM, as well as many other web­si­tes and books out there by doc­tors, advo­ca­tes and non-professionals alike, to help them. So at least there is edu­ca­tion out there to help those who choose this, even if none was crea­ted for that purpose.

Sum­mary

There are impor­tant dif­fe­ren­ces in opi­nion, and much more to the story as I out­li­ned above.

But the bot­tom line is this: for up to 60 years, hun­dreds of millions of thy­roid patients around the world have been sub­jec­ted to

1. a medi­ca­tion called thy­ro­xine which has left a heap of lin­ge­ring hypothy­roid symp­toms,
2. a new debi­li­ta­ting con­di­tion like adre­nal fati­gue,
3. a lab test (TSH) which has dela­yed diag­no­sis for years or kept patients under­trea­ted, and
4. too many doc­tors who aren’t up to speed about most any of this, and have left patients frus­tra­ted, angry and still sick.

And all the above is a far worse sce­na­rio which only pushes some patients to self-treat as a side-effect. But if  you aren’t totally wiped out finan­cially and emo­tio­nally in trying to find an infor­med doc, two sug­ges­tions: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/how-to-find-a-good-doc as well as pos­ting your city/state in the sub­ject line of patient groups here: http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/talk-to-others

P.S. Please note that you will never see this blog, or this web­site, kno­wingly allow non-professional,  nega­tive, nasty, false, abu­sive and/or pro­found slan­der about a collea­gue, as has been done elsewhere.

Ans­wer: Most are duds.

On Mon­day, I had an enjo­ya­ble expe­rience with an excep­tion to the lemon cliche:  I was a guest on Dr. Ste­ven F. Hotze’s radio pro­gram Health and Well­ness Solu­tions, broad­cast live from Hous­ton, Texas.  You can lis­ten to a recor­ding of our con­ver­sa­tion here on the lower right under the hea­ding Dr. Hotze Radio in orange.

The com­mer­cials were like flies, zeroing in often and irri­ta­tingly. But we mana­ged to briefly men­tion both Stop the Thy­roid Mad­ness as well as the Hotze Health & Well­ness Cen­ter.

And two things struck me about our friendly chat: first, Hotze men­tio­ned that he star­ted presc­ri­bing natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid in the 1990’s, far ahead of most doc­tors even today!  If only we knew.  And second, he made a quick men­tion of how disap­poin­ting most doc­tors are for patients, refe­rring to the STTM page called Give Me A Break. If you haven’t seen it, or it’s been awhile, you will find it both hila­rious and com­ple­tely sad.

And it all made me pon­der how in 2010, eight years after I per­so­nally found the life chan­ging desic­ca­ted thy­roid,  there are still so many family prac­ti­tio­ners and Endoc­ri­no­lo­gists kee­ping thy­roid patients sick all over the world, even if they mean well, even if they are good peo­ple, even if they do other diag­no­ses and treat­ments correctly.

So on one hand, it’s rea­lity that pro­gress is slow. But on the other hand, the thy­roid treat­ment wall of igno­rance is slowly tum­bling down about bet­ter thy­roid treat­ment thanks to patients who read about it and carry that infor­ma­tion into their doc­tors offices.

So perhaps over time, the lemons who prac­tice bad thy­roid treat­ment will become less and less pro­mi­nent in the name of enligh­ten­ment, wis­dom and LISTENING to patients.

P.S. And by way, if you are lucky enough to have found one of those docs who presc­ribe desic­ca­ted thy­roid, remem­ber that NO doc­tor is all-knowing. YOU live in your own body, and can have your OWN wis­dom and know­ledge. So expect the rela­tionship be a part­nership. And if you can’t get that part­nership, find a bet­ter doc­tor.

Want to read more about natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid? Go here.   To read my own story, go here.