Gail’s Thyroid Tips
NOTE: I am
not a doctor or medical professional, nor do I play one on TV (ha ha). The
following information is the story of how I came to achieve wellness, and the
information I found during that process. No warranty is expressed or implied
(ha ha again).
NOTE: If you think you might use the information contained in the various links I’ve listed here, go to the link and print out the article immediately. Some of these sources archive their articles over time and you cannot access the links again. This is especially true of the New England Journal of Medicine articles. I have printouts of all these articles. If an article has been archived so you cannot get it, post me at wurmwife@bellsouth.net and I can scan my copy for you.
NOTE: If you
click on a link which begins with "www" rather than "http"
and it doesn’t work, just add the "http://" in front of the address
in your browser window. Some software requires that.
NOTE: If you want to do your own searches but don’t know where to begin, try going to www.yahoo.com. At the top of the page is a "search" window. Just type in words relevant to your search. Don’t use commas, quotation marks, or the word "and." Here is an example: Ward Dean thyroid. Try putting the most unusual words first; we seem to get better results that way.
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Hi again!
This info is on
many levels; there is basic info many of you will already know but I include it
because many of you are newly diagnosed and just learning about this disease.
Other info is so scientific you need a medical dictionary! In addition, I
started compiling this info after being contacted by Americans, but now have
requests from as far away as Australia. I do not know the international policy
of Great Smokies Diagnostic Laboratory!
I also recommend that you subscribe to Mary Shomon's newsletter (www.thyroid.about.com) so you can keep up to date on all the latest thyroid news from a reputable source (rather than some of the hearsay that goes around the forum; all sorts of unfounded rumors abound in the forum, in addition to the wonderful support and helpful hints offered).
THYROID MEDICATIONS and HORMONES:
OK, for
starters, here is some basic background information about the function of the
thyroid gland. This info is vital to understanding why synthroid doesn’t
provide full relief from your symptoms and why natural desiccated thyroid is a
superior medication for most people. It is true that not all women are alike
and therefore what we do with one will not necessarily have the same effect on
another. However, my research has shown that at least 80% of people feel best
on a natural desiccated thyroid product (such as Armour or Westhroid) than on
the incomplete synthetic products (synthroid, levoxyl, unithroid, cytomel,
thyrolar etc). Why? Because the healthy thyroid gland does not produce merely
T4 and T3. It also produces reverse T3, 3 kinds of T2, T1, T0, and calcitonin.
What is
calcitonin, you ask? Well, this is the hormone (produced by the parathyroid
gland) which removes calcium from your blood and deposits it into your bones.
You know how there’s the big worry about osteoporosis when you are on thyroid
replacement therapy? That’s probably because 95% of people today are given
synthetic hormone which does not contain calcitonin. The desiccated thyroid
products do have it. This is just one more reason to take Armour or Westhroid
or some other natural thyroid product. The calcitonin helps counter the
bone-destroying effects of thyroid hormones.
Don’t EVER
forget that people with normal thyroid glands have the full spectrum (including
T3) of thyroid hormones coursing through their blood streams all day long every
day! So they are at just as much risk for osteoporosis as a woman on natural
thyroid supplement! A doctor who leaves you hypothyroid in order to
"protect your bones" is a doctor to fire. The best thing you can do
for your bones is to exercise; light resistance training (weights) will
increase your bone mass very significantly (you don’t even have to use heavy
weights). How well does it work? Studies with the elderly in nursing homes
using just 5-pound weights a few minutes daily increased bone mass so well the
test group got fewer than half as many fractures as those who did not exercise
with weights. And not only that, it builds muscle which will raise your
metabolic rate and make you lose weight more quickly and easily.
Whenever anyone
tries to tell you "natural thyroid is dangerous because it has T3,"
you tell them "Hurry! Run to the hospital and get your thyroid gland
yanked out QUICK!!! It’s pumping T3 into your bloodstream NIGHT AND
DAY!!!!!!" Did you know those studies that say oral thyroid causes
osteoporosis were all done on SYNTHROID, not desiccated thyroid
(Armour)????!!!! And these studies showed that the connection existed only in
post-menopausal women. Meanwhile a whole slew of studies were done that showed
no connection between oral thyroid and osteoporosis, not even in
post-menopausal women. In other words, there is no proof either way and the
doctors need to start doing their homework and actually REALIZE this instead of
listening to the slick marketing techniques practiced by the makers of
synthroid. Millions of women in this country are being forced to take synthroid
to protect their bones from Armour---not because of scientific research proving
osteoporosis but because the makers of synthroid said so.
Now, back to the
various other thyroid hormones…
As you know, the
thyroid hormones consist of a tyrosine molecule with iodine molecules stuck to
it. If 4 iodines are stuck on, you have T4. 3 iodines gives you T3. Reverse T3
is created with 3 iodines stuck in different positions. T2 has 2 iodines; there
are 3 types of T2 all depending on where the iodines are stuck. Etc.
The hypothalamus
gland takes note of how much thyroid hormone there is in the bloodstream and if
the amount is too low, it releases a hormone called TRH. This is Thyrotropin
Releasing Hormone. It goes to the pituitary gland and stimulates it to release
TSH. This is Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, and it goes to the thyroid gland to
tell it to make some more thyroid hormone. So the thyroid gland takes in the
amino acid tyrosine and the mineral iodine and then combines the two, creating
the thyroid hormone. There is T0 and T1 (0.5%), T2 (4.5%), T3 (15%), and T4
(80%) (These percentages are approximate; I have found different numbers from
different sources). Each of these hormones is stored in the thyroid gland and
also released into the bloodstream. No one knows what T0 and T1 are for. T4 is
very stable and courses through the bloodstream, ready to be taken up by a
needy tissue for conversion to T3 and T2. What your gland does is to make a
little bit of T2 and T3 and release them to the body for instant usage. Then
your gland also produces a stockpile of T4 which it releases to travel around
in your blood, ready for any needy cell to convert over into useable T3 (and
T2). To convert T4 into T3 (and T3 into T2), your tissues use an enzyme,
deiodinase, to knock one of the iodine molecules off. Well, some of your
tissues require a supply of T2 in order to make this enzyme (while other
tissues are able to make deiodinase without T2). Now, there are also several
different deiodinase enzymes and they knock different iodines off. This means
you will sometimes get reverse T3 instead of T3. And this is how your body creates
the 3 different types of T2.
http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~hkaslow/Teach/Handouts/Thyroid-2000.pdf This is a scientific treatise about how thyroid hormone is made, the different deiodinase enzymes that are necessary to convert the various hormones, and what happens next.
Synthroid
(levoxyl, unithroid, and all other levothyroxine products) consist only of T4.
The theory is that since T4 is barely active metabolically, when you take it
you won’t notice any metabolic effect on your body (heart palpitations, etc).
But then it will start to break down into T3, reverse T3, (which go down to the
T2s, etc) and your body will use these hormones. Well, that’s the THEORY.
OK, why doesn’t synthroid make us feel great then? Well, because some cells in our bodies need the T3 that is made by the thyroid gland directly. They cannot convert T4 into T3; they must have T3 directly from the bloodstream. About 75% of the T3 your body uses is converted by your tissues from T4. But at least 25% of the T3 your body needs comes directly from the thyroid gland. Your different tissues throughout your body use T3 at different rates. And some of the tissues, such as your brain, require serum T3 for good function. These tissues are not adept at converting T4 into T3. Because people with healthy thyroid glands receive at least 25% of their T3 directly from the thyroid gland, hypothyroid patients should also receive direct T3, either from their glands or from their medication. NO ONE SHOULD BE EXPECTED TO GET ALL OF HER T3 FROM T4 CONVERSION. IT SIMPLY IS NOT ENOUGH. And other cells must have T2. So you see, you just don’t get the same effect from synthroid. Your body demands all 9 of the thyroid hormones that a healthy thyroid gland makes. Desiccated thyroid products come closest to providing the exact hormones your body would make if it could. http://freespace.virgin.net/smokey.quartz/gaby.html
NOTE: Forest
Pharmaceuticals does not "add" calcitonin, T0, T1, or T2 to their
product. These hormones are present already because of what Armour is. Armour
is desiccated pig thyroid. The thyroid gland is removed from a pig, dried, and
then ground to powder. The glands from many pigs are mixed together until
testing shows that the T3 to T4 ratio is exactly 1:4.22 (there is 1 mg of T3
for every 4.22 mg of T4). Then binders and fillers are added to produce
tablets. So every hormone present in the live gland is also present in the
tablet. However, since medical professionals currently believe that only T4 and
T3 are active hormones, Forest does not measure or even acknowledge the
presence of calcitonin, T0, T1, or T2 in their product. They only measure and guarantee
the amount of T3 and T4 in each tablet.
Here is a scientific study proving the body needs T3; notice the last sentence of the "conclusions" section clearly states that this study shows your body needs the T3 DIRECTLY SECRETED by the thyroid gland (not the T3 made from T4 conversion). http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/340/6/424?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Prange%2C+A&author2=Bunevicius%2C+R&titleabstract=triiodothyronine&fulltext=neuropsychological&searchid=QID_NOT_SET&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=&fdate=1/1/1975&tdate=5/31/2001&journalcode=nejm
OK, now here is some scientific proof that T2 is not some inactive substance ignored by the tissues. You’ve heard that I’m sure. I just got a comprehensive thyroid labwork done and it talked about the T4 levels, the reverse T3, the active T3, and then mentioned T2 as "an inactive byproduct." WRONG! This study is contained in the below link and it is very technical. Several hours with a medical dictionary unlocked the mysteries. Here’s what it basically says, in layman’s terms:
--T3 is taken up
by the cells and used for protein synthesis. Protein synthesis means the actual
building of cells (to replace dead cells, fix damaged cells, and make new
cells). So you see, T3 is needed to maintain the tissues of our body.
--T2 is taken up
by the cells and acts directly on the mitochondria. The T2 is used to produce
ATP. ATP is the fuel for our cells; it is the energy our cells use to function.
So you see, T2 is absolutely vital for the cells to function. Yes, it is true
that a healthy thyroid gland does not make very much T2. But certain cells in
the body depend on it.
http://physiology.cup.cam.ac.uk/JPhysiol/1997/505p2/7060/7060
This would explain why so much of your overall body pain goes away when you take Armour and are thus getting plenty of T2; without T2 your cells are starving for ATP. I experienced this firsthand myself; when I switched to Armour most of my pain was relieved. I immediately told my hypothyroid sister who has been on 100 mcg synthroid plus 100 mcg of cytomel daily and still hurting all over (100 mcg cytomel is FOUR TIMES the normal daily dose!). She lowered the two synthetic hormones to 75 mcg each and added in a grain of Armour; her body aching improved tremendously within 2 weeks. Even though this provided her with LESS oral T3 intake than she had before, nearly all of her fibromyalgia disappeared! She was left only with some foot and leg pain on one side, but the rest of her body was completely better. We all know that Dr. John Lowe has recommended using T3 to cure those pains (fibromyalgia) and he is right. (http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa042799.htm). The T3 is VITAL. However, I offer up my sister as proof that it is more than just T3 we need to use. I have no proof of this, but I believe that it is the T2 (and perhaps the T1---no one has figured out what it does yet) in Armour which produces the kinds of results she had.
I myself was on
only synthroid last year, but at Christmas I took some of my sister’s cytomel.
There was a minor improvement in my fibromyalgia but I still hurt all over.
However, when I switched to Armour in January, my pain went away almost
instantly (all except my feet, which were cured by supporting my adrenals) even
though I was getting less oral T3 from the Armour than I had taken over
Christmas with cytomel. Dr. Lowe states that it can take months or even years
to undo the fibromyalgia using T3, but he feels it is the cure. I plan to write
him a letter and tell him the story of my sister and me and also include the
research on T2 which I have found. My sister and I had lived with our pain for
years, and for both of us, it was alleviated in less than a month using natural
thyroid. T3 breaks down into T2, but the body cannot perform that
transformation without deiodinase. I have found research suggesting that cells
need some T2 directly from the thyroid gland in order to make deiodinase at
all. I wonder if Dr. Lowe’s treatment with oral T3 takes so long because the
cells have such trouble converting the T3 into T2. I have no proof of any of
this, but I think it warrants research. And if you are a thyroid patient with
aches and pains, it’s worth trying natural thyroid to see if it will go away.
Here is another
article proving that T2 is a metabolically active hormone:
http://journals.endocrinology.org/joe/149/joe1490319.htm
And another! http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8921356&dopt=Abstract
T2 is so
metabolically active, as a matter of fact, that it is used by bodybuilders to
lose fat and buff up:
http://www.t-mag.com/html/body_119dawg.html
http://www.vitaplus.ws/newt2120cap.html
This is actually
quite exciting news for us thyroid patients. First of all, this could explain
why many hypothyroid women struggle to lose weight: they are on synthroid so
their bodies are deprived of T2. And if you read these articles, you’ll see
that oral T2 does not make you hyPERthyroid. This suggests that an overweight
thyroid patient on a TSH-suppressive dose of oral thyroid hormone might be able
to use oral T2 as a weight-loss aid. I just began taking T2 last week; my “T2
Weightloss Journal” is below so you can follow along with my progress.
NOTE: If you
wish to do your own search for info on T2, you must type
"diiodothyronine" into the search engine; you don’t get results if
you put in "T2." To purchase
T2, put “BioTech T2” into your search engine; there are many places to buy this
product and lots of different prices so you’ll want to shop around.
This does not
mean that the body does not need T4!! I cannot find the reference right now but
we also have research showing that certain cells must have serum T4 to convert
to T3; these cells cannot use serum T3. Well, the same is true for all 9
thyroid hormones; almost every one of these hormones is required by a
particular type of cell. This is why you cannot take just synthroid and be
fully healthy.
While I believe
that natural desiccated thyroid is the best medication to take, each of us has
different amounts of semi-permanent damage to our bodies from years of
untreated hypothyroidism or years of synthroid. If you are making too much
reverse T3 out of the oral T4 in your Armour, your doctor will have to add in a
dose of Cytomel to the natural hormone (take BOTH). I have also found in myself
and other women that T4 levels may not be quite high enough when using Armour
(or other natural products) alone. No one is sure exactly why yet. Some
theorize that T4 isn’t absorbed through the gut well. Others theorize that pigs
make more T3 than humans do so that natural products aren’t quite the right
proportion. Others think that it is so easy for the body to convert the T4 in
natural products that the result is high serum T3 and low serum T4 levels.
Whatever the reason it happens, probably the best solution is to take mostly
Armour and then add a very small dose of synthetic T4 to it. So if you are
taking 100 mcg of synthroid daily, perhaps you should switch to 2 grains of
Armour and 50 mcg Synthroid. Perhaps you’ll need 2.5 grains Armour and 25 mcg
synthroid. Or maybe YOUR body will need only 1.5 Armour and 75 mcg synthroid.
Mine needs 3 grains of Armour and 25 mcg of synthroid. Everyone will need a
different amount depending upon how long she had untreated hypothyroidism and
how resistant her cells have become to T3, etc. The dose will vary between
individuals, but this is probably the best combination of medications for most
of us and is the most likely to make us feel good (and ideally, you won’t be
given Synthroid at all; they’ll give you Unithroid instead since synthroid is
so unstable. I am using the term "synthroid" to refer to any pure
levothyroxine product). There is nothing wrong with combining the different
thyroid medications and a really good doctor will do this if it is necessary to
optimize your health. In addition, your doctor should be willing to try
different brand names because of the different binders and fillers used.
Naturethroid, for example, is natural desiccated thyroid made with different
binders to be gentle on your stomach. It is made by Western Research Labs.
And it is
important for the doctor to allow you to take ENOUGH hormone (haven’t we all
heard that before?!). I had a doctor finally switch me to Armour but he
wouldn’t let me take more than 2 grains because his boss had decided that no
one should take more than 2 grains. Never mind that I was half dead and barely
functioning (I was fine as long as I just stayed in my house and didn’t do
anything except cook a bit and fold the laundry). Just 3 months ago he told me
"I will not give you more than 2 grains of Armour. You have an
incurable disease so you will always feel bad. You’ll never feel really healthy
again." Well, I changed doctors to a man who said for me to increase my
medication at the rate of ½ grain per week up to 4 grains. I stopped at 3
grains because I felt great at that level. So much for feeling bad forever! If
you have thyroid disease, you just don’t have to feel bad. Period. What you
need is a doctor who is willing to treat you as an individual and figure out what
replacement therapy works on YOU.
Your doctor may
tell you that he cannot give you Armour or any other medication containing T3
because it is "dangerous." But T3 is natural and your body must have
it in order to live. Without it you DIE. Your doctor has it in HIS body!
However, when taken orally it does enter the bloodstream quickly. The solution
is simple; patients using Armour (or other T3 medications) simply split their
dosage up and take a little bit throughout the day. How can you tell if you are
taking too much T3 at once? Your heart-rate will increase and you may start to
sweat. So just break up the dosage and don’t take it all at once. If this means
having to break your pill, get a pill-splitter from Wal-Mart and break it!
The only people
who need to be concerned about taking oral T3 are cardiac patients. Does this
mean they should be deprived of T3 just because they have cardiac issues? No!
They need it just as much—if not more than—the rest of us. They just have to
take it in very small doses throughout the day and should be carefully
monitored.
The fact is that
a thyroid deficiency CAUSES cardiac problems. Hypothyroidism will give you
heart disease. So if you already have a heart problem, you sure aren’t going to
get any better if you leave the thyroid only partially treated! You will only
get worse. My aunt who is 84 years old has been on synthroid for 30 years (she
had her gland removed in the 50s). She’s had heart disease so bad she’s had
quadruple bypass surgery 4 times already. Well, she just started showing the
signs of Alzheimer’s, and Alzheimer’s is related to low T3. Her doctor just
switched her to 3 grains of Armour and she is doing great. As a cardiac
patient, it’s a miracle she was able to get the Armour. Thank the Lord she has
a reasonable doctor.
OK, what will
happen to you if you are currently taking pure T4 (synthroid, levoxyl,
unithroid) and do not get switched over to a natural thyroid medication? Well,
your body will suffer. Left completely untreated, hypothyroidism will kill you.
And if you treat it "halfway" (meaning that you take only T4 and do
not take natural hormone), your tissues develop T4 resistance, which means that
they lose the ability to convert the T4 into T3. Also, cell receptor sites shut
down and cease to function, which can leave you semi-permanently damaged. The
longer you leave it untreated, the harder it is to respond to the medication
when you do get it. You will spend the remainder of your life in a state of
cellular hypothyroidism, regardless of how high your blood serum levels are.
Thus you will be at risk for all long-term effects of hypothyroidism (Chronic
fatigue, fibromyalgia, high blood pressure, diabetes, emphysema, arthritis,
sleep apnea, speech impairment, depression, weight problems, ME, carpal tunnel
syndrome, high cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, etc). Your body will
continue to be in a constant state of partial hypothyroidism; some of your
tissues will be just fine because they are capable of using the Synthroid, but
the rest of your body will always be "hungry" for T3 and will be
chronically sick without it. This can be true even if you are feeling pretty
good on your synthroid; even if you feel no physical pain, there are tissues in
your body which are still deprived of the hormones they need.
And any patient
who still has hypothyroid symptoms while on hormone replacement therapy is at
risk for two major catastrophes:
a)she may permanently lose the use of her cell receptor sites
b)she will be at risk for all the long-term effects of low thyroid (high blood
pressure, diabetes, emphysema, arthritis, depression, weight problems, ME,
carpal tunnel syndrome, high cholesterol, heart disease, cancer, etc).
Overweight
thyroid patients will also need more thyroid hormone (just as a 140-pound woman
needs more than a 90-pound woman). They have a lot more cells in their bodies
and will therefore require their serum levels to be closer to the higher end of
the normal range. Low serum levels will only serve to create a low metabolic
rate which means they will only get fatter. More supplementation should be
given, raising serum levels and increasing metabolic rate. The patient will
then be able to lose the excess weight and will require a lower dose of thyroid
hormone in the future to maintain good health. Does this mean that switching to
Armour is going to result in an instant weight loss? No. Thyroid hormone does
control your metabolism; without thyroid, you have no metabolism and you will
gain weight. But once you have good high serum levels of T3 and T4, you are now
on a level playing field again, and the equivalent to all the others out there
who don't have thyroid disease. This means you have to exercise and eat
properly for good health and weight, just like everyone else.
Is your doctor a
Synthroid Nazi? If I get a urinary tract infection and the doctor gives me
amoxicillin and the infection persists, does the doctor just keep handing me
amoxicillin and tell me to learn to live with it? No! He changes medications
until he finds one that kills the infection. I recognize that a hormonal
imbalance is different from an infection; I understand the differences quite
clearly. But when you consider that there are over a dozen medications for
thyroid disease, why should a patient be forced to use only synthroid if it is
not making her better? Synthroid lowers TSH very well, but that does not mean
your tissues and cells can use it. As a matter of fact, our research has shown
that T2 is necessary for the creation of certain deiodinases and you just don’t
get T2 from Synthroid. No wonder your serum T4 levels go so high! The synthroid
just goes into your bloodstream and circulates 'round and 'round, lowering your
TSH and shutting down your own thyroid gland, but depriving your cells of hormone
since they cannot use T4 as easily as they use T3 and T2. Did you know that T4
is what lowers TSH when it enters the pituitary? This is why synthroid is so
effective at lowering TSH. But a low TSH doesn’t mean the patient is healthy.
If a person eats rocks and they lower her TSH, does that mean that her
hypothyroidism is controlled? Health comes only when the cells and tissues of
the body are getting T3 and T2. And most doctors measure only TSH. Sometimes
they’ll go ahead and measure free T4 as well, but they rarely measure T3. You
know, if I eat potatoes, there will be potatoes in my stomach. Well, if I eat
T4 tablets every day, there will be T4 in my blood! How about we see if it’s
actually being used and converted to T3????? But it took me almost a year to
convince someone to measure my T3 levels; prior to that I’d had only TSH tests
and free T4 tests.
And while we're
on the subject of lab tests, I would like to emphasize that lab tests should be
only secondary to clinical presentation (symptoms). Why? Well, there are
several reasons. We'll start with the TSH test. This is not a measure of the
function of the thyroid gland. TSH is produced by the pituitary. Using the TSH
to diagnose poor thyroid function is a reverse approach. TSH can be elevated
even if the thyroid gland is fine. For example, if you have a pituitary tumor,
your TSH will be very high even if your thyroid gland is functional. In
addition, TSH can be low even if you have thyroid disease. Dr. Barry
Durrant-Peatfield discusses this effect; if your body is deficient in thyroid
hormone, every cell in the body is affected---including the cells of the
pituitary gland. Yes, even these cells cannot function well without thyroid
hormone. So if your body is very hypothyroid, your TSH may actually be very low
(and thus your doctor may refuse to treat your condition). In other words,
there is absolutely no correlation at all between TSH and thyroid symptoms. And
yet the TSH test is used almost exclusively to diagnose and treat this disease.
Though there is much literature by thousands of doctors discussing the
uselessness of the TSH test on patients taking oral thyroid hormone, almost
every doctor out there continues to base our dosages on our TSH. Oral hormone
can circulate in the blood, lowering TSH even if it is not used by the tissues.
So the doctor measures your TSH, sees a 0.4, and declares you to be
hypERthyroid even if your skin is scaly, you're depressed and in brain fog, and
you're getting fatter by the minute. Once you are on oral thyroid hormone of
any kind, the TSH test is nearly worthless and does not need to be performed.
Another little
note about the TSH test: you know how the doctor will yank your medication when
your TSH is too low even if you still are hypo? And you say "why?"
and he says "because you are starting to become hyperthyroid." He is
basing this solely on your TSH, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the
actual use of thyroid hormone by the tissues, and you may very well be full of
hyPO symptoms from head to toe. But he is all up in arms over your low TSH and
wants it to move up to a nice "normal" level of at least 1 rather
than a 0.3 so you won't be hypERthyroid. I take this opportunity to remind
everyone out there that this is 100% NUTS. Doctors and patients alike MUST remember
that millions of women are given TSH-suppressive doses of thyroid hormone every
single day in order to stop thyroid cancer. Are you familiar with this
situation? If you have thyroid cancer, a treatment option can include high
doses of oral thyroid in order to lower your TSH to 0; this stops the function
of the thyroid gland, which stops the growth of the cancer. Read up on this
treatment and you will find that these patients--with those 0 TSH levels due to
oral thyroid hormone--are perfectly normal and not hyPERthyroid at all! And the
doctors all think this is a fine treatment---and yet they will refuse to give a
Hashimoto's hypo patient enough hormone to make her healthy if her TSH goes
below 1, no matter how awful her hypo symptoms are.
What about other
blood work? These tests are useful but should not be used alone to titrate your
medication. Again, symptoms are the most important factor. When lab work is
ordered, both free T3 and free T4 tests should be done, together, every time.
Free T4 alone is not good enough; you need a free T3 test to see if you are
converting the T4. And do not be in a huge rush to get these blood tests.
Natural thyroid doses are adjusted upward every few weeks until symptoms are
alleviated. If you are taking 2 grains (120 mg) or less and feel good, you
really don’t need any more labwork. If you are on 2 grains and still have mild
symptoms, get a free T3 and free T4 test to see if the T4 is too low. If it is,
add a small amount of unithroid and see if the last of your symptoms go away.
If they do not, you can increase your Armour as well (and also check your
adrenals; this topic is discussed in detail below).
If you are on 2
grains and have severe symptoms, you should keep increasing your Armour (as
well as assessing your adrenals, discussed in detail below). Your body may very
well have cellular resistance. Gradually increase to 3 grains and see if your
symptoms are alleviated. You may need 4 grains if you have extensive tissue
damage. When should you get labwork? Go ahead and get a blood draw around 3
grains if you still have mild symptoms, to see if you should add a touch of
Unithroid. But do not be surprised if your labwork is not in "normal"
ranges. And do not be alarmed if it isn't. Why? Because if you have been hypo
for many years and have a lot of tissue damage, you are no longer normal and
you will not be healthy when you are in the normal range. My T3 levels, for
example, are above the top of the normal range. But I am not even remotely
hypERthyroid. I haven't the slightest symptom, in any form. Actually, I feel
wonderful and if I take any lower dose, I become hypo again. My doctor says
that my cells have a lot of resistance due to 5 years of untreated thyroid
disease. We hope they recover in time, but for now I am not "normal"
and do not fit on the reference range anywhere. This may very well be true for
you too, so do not be surprised if your labwork does not fit on the
"normal" range. The important thing to judge is how you feel. If you
are not hyPER and all your hypO symptoms have been alleviated, you're probably
on just the right dose, regardless of what your bloodwork says.
So please, do
not depend on lab work to adjust your dosages! Too many doctors are already
doing exactly that; we don't need the patients to start doing it as well! Go by
your symptoms and find a doctor who will also do so. Forget about the TSH test;
you won't need it anymore. Use the free T3 and free T4 tests only to determine
if you need to add in some Unithroid. Beyond that, don't bother getting blood
tests unless you start to feel bad again. Use the blood work solely to see if
it is your T3 that is low or if it is your T4, so you know which medication to
add or adjust. This is how my doctor is taking care of me and I am comfortable
with this approach based on my research into thyroid disease.
Back to the
medications…. If your doctor absolutely REFUSES to let you have anything but
Synthroid, go to this link about Synthroid and the FDA.
http://thyroid.about.com/blsynthroid.htm
Read through
each of the links about Synthroid and print them out for your doctor. BE SURE to include the actual letter from
the FDA to Knoll Pharmaceuticals which denies them "Generally Recognized
as Safe and Effective" status. And if that doesn’t work, fire your doctor
and get a new one. If your mechanic won’t fix your car properly and keeps
charging you for bad work, you go to a new mechanic. Well, your body is more
important than your car, so fire your doctor if he won’t fix you! You can feel
good again! There are over a dozen different thyroid preparations on the market
so there is no reason for your doctor to force you to use a medication that
isn’t working on you.
Most of you are well aware of this: Synthroid is now in big trouble. Synthroid is prescribed to about 60% of thyroid patients and has been in use for almost 40 years. Knoll Pharmaceuticals was allowed to bypass the FDA drug approval process by grandfathering it in with Armour even though the two products are totally different (Armour got in because natural desiccated thyroid has been used successfully for more than a century). Well, since then synthroid has had so many potency and stability problems that it has been recalled numerous times. So in 1997, the FDA announced that all sodium levothyroxine products would have to submit New Drug Applications by August 2000! This is an unusual step, but it was taken due to the problems with Synthroid. Knoll Pharmaceuticals responded by protesting and delaying. They delayed as long as possible and did manage to get the FDA to extend the deadline to August 2001. Meanwhile, Jerome Stevens Labs submitted their application by Aug 2000 and their product Unithroid was given FDA approval. Unithroid is now the reference drug for all sodium levothyroxine products.
But Knoll continued to whine and delay. They insisted that there was no reason for THEM to submit this NDA. To drum up support for their cause, they began sending letters to doctors and pharmacists all over the country. In this letter, Knoll actually claims that they successfully petitioned the FDA for "Generally Recognized as Safe and Effective" status! This is a blatant lie; the FDA did NOT grant such status to Synthroid and is still requiring a New Drug Application. The FDA rebutted with a scathing letter which denied all of Knoll’s requests and clarifies that Synthroid does NOT have "generally recognized as safe and effective" status. http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa050301a.htm
On 25 May, King received FDA approval for their levothyroxine product Levoxyl. http://thyroid.about.com/library/weekly/aa052501a.htm
QUESTIONS EVERY DOCTOR SHOULD ASK HIMSELF:
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Now let’s move
on to the adrenal issue. This is vitally important to thyroid patients for 2
big reasons.
First of all, the
job of the adrenal gland is to produce adrenal hormones. One of these hormones
is cortisol. This is the hormone your body demands when it is faced with any
kind of stress. Stress does not just mean having your dog die or flunking a
test. Stress is as simple as going outside on a hot (or cold) day, or eating
lunch. Menstruation is a stress to the body. The adrenal gland reacts the same
way when you eat lunch as when your dog dies. It’s all the same to your
adrenals.
Another thing produced by the adrenals is DHEA. DHEA is a hormone precursor; in a healthy body it is converted into the sex hormones (testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, etc). DHEA is absolutely vital to our health. Here is a very brief link about DHEA (this isn’t my best one since it talks only about sexual and mental health, but it’s something! I’ll get the others set up later). DHEA is important to prevent Alzheimer’s, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, skin problems, and about a million other things. Testosterone, as you may know, is what gives us our sex drive. Men have tons more testosterone than women (which is the main reason why their minds always seem to be in the gutter!). Where does testosterone come from? It is made by the body from DHEA. DHEA is made by the adrenals and is turned into all the sex hormones (estrogen, progesterone, etc). So, are you suffering from no sex drive? You probably have low testosterone which means you probably have low DHEA and why would you have low DHEA? If your adrenals aren’t working well. If you are a lactating hypothyroid woman (but aren’t pregnant or nursing a baby), you probably need DHEA because DHEA turns into testosterone. If you have had your prolactin measured and the test came back normal but you lactate anyway, you may very well be deficient in testosterone. In order to not lactate, the ratio between testosterone and prolactin must be correct. If you have "normal" prolactin but very low testosterone, it is just like having high prolactin. http://www.wholehealthmd.com/print/view/1,1560,AR_955,00.html
Decreased
libido, galactorrhea, obesity, increase in abdominal fat, pubic hair loss,
decreased muscle mass and strength, clitoral atrophy, increased risk of breast
cancer, lack of motivation, premature ovarian failure, osteoporosis, decreased
memory, increased risk of Alzheimer’s, increased risk of diabetes, decreased
feeling of well-being, depression, and fatigue are more symptoms of low
testosterone. Read through these links and see if you recognize yourself there.
http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/jun7/davis/davis.html
http://www.stenlake.com.au/showdocument.asp?DocumentID=152
In this article, a chemist has found that testosterone can protect against
Lupus.
Here is another article
with some really great information about testosterone. Take note of where the author says that both
free and bound testosterone are the components of total serum testosterone
(TST). Free testosterone is what your
body can use. Bound testosterone cannot
be used until it is unbound. So you
see, your TST might be a nice healthy number, and yet you may have all the
signs of low testosterone because all of your testosterone is bound. What binds it? Sex Hormone Binding Globulin (SHBG). If you have too much SHBG, it can bind up all your sex hormones
so you cannot use them.
http://www.digitalnaturopath.com/treat/T12321.html
Another
possibility is that you are making DHEA but that your body simply isn’t
converting it into the various sex hormones.
Here is an
article on galactorrhea (chronic lactation): http://www.uspharmacist.com/NewLook/DisplayArticle.cfm?item_num=141
http://www.nal.usda.gov/ttic/tektran/data/000009/42/0000094260.html This study may be of little interest to you unless you are lactating for no reason (or if you are a dairy farmer!). This is a study done on cows showing that changes in their deiodinase activity plays a role in their lactation. My husband found this study as he researched lactation because the one thyroid problem I have that has not gone away is lactation. I weaned my last baby in Nov ’98 and STILL lactate! Hasn’t ever stopped in all that time (but I least I feel great!). So we’re still researching this one. If it turns out that changes in your deiodinase activity affects lactation that sure would explain what’s going on in a lot of us hypo women!
And here is a natural remedy to stop lactation. http://www.herb.co.za/herbal/sage.htm
You can get DHEA in the vitamin section of nearly any store (Wal-Mart has it). Notice in the link above that it took up to 4 months for the patients to see results (http://www.wholehealthmd.com/print/view/1,1560,AR_955,00.html). Also, you do not want to take too much. My doctor has me take 25 mg daily Monday through Friday with a break on the weekends (the dose for men is 50 mg daily). If you start taking DHEA and notice that you are getting acne like a teenager, you don’t need that much. Quit taking it altogether until the acne clears up and then you can try taking a half-dose 3 days/week instead. If the acne comes back, your DHEA levels are probably just fine. I’m not getting any acne at all on my dose, but I am not surprised considering that I had a lab test showing that my adrenals don’t work (and by the way, if DHEA gives you acne, that does not mean your cortisol levels are OK).
Here is another article that concerns osteoporosis, but on page 4 you will see a discussion of DHEA and the role it plays in bone density. http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/fulltext/osteo2-1.html
Now, the first
reason why hypothyroid women should be concerned about their adrenals is that
the adrenal gland is highly dependent upon thyroid hormone. It cannot function
properly if you become hypothyroid. I have a study (I’ve got to find it again)
which shows that almost 100% of women with thyroid disease are deficient in
DHEA. Yep, that’s right! If you’ve got thyroid disease, you are probably facing
an adrenal insufficiency. This is especially true if you were hypothyroid for a
long time and denied treatment (I was denied treatment for more than 5 years).
Also, if you spend years on incomplete thyroid therapy (such as the synthetic
thyroid hormones), you are more likely to have weak adrenals. The adrenals just
can’t do their job if they’re getting only T4.
And the thyroid gland cannot do its job without the adrenals. I have a great article discussing this: Peatfield_Suggest.htm (if you print nothing else, print this article). The amazing Dr. Barry Durrant-Peatfield of Great Britain has found repeatedly that if a woman on thyroid therapy continues to exhibit symptoms, if he treats her adrenals, her symptoms go away. Without the adrenal hormones, the body cannot use the thyroid hormones. Treatment of the adrenals results in the thyroid hormone finally making it into the cells and tissues. This usually results in the patient being able to lower her thyroid medication. In addition, over time the adrenal support will help heal the damaged cell receptor sites so that thyroid hormone can pass into the cell to the mitochondria again. In other words, proper adrenal support means the difference between a life of good health and a life full of nagging, miserable, painful hypo symptoms.
Now, this is a
really radical and unusual approach to thyroid disease! But it shouldn’t be!
Notice I said that he treats the adrenals of his patients. What a concept; did
you know that actually, all hypothyroid women are supposed to have their
adrenals tested BEFORE getting any kind of thyroid hormone? Yep! If you read
the inserts which accompany thyroid medications, you will find that the
contra-indication for the use of thyroid hormone is "uncorrected adrenal
insufficiency." And you do NOT know if a patient has adrenal insufficiency
if you do not test for it. Here are the links to the cytomel and synthroid
inserts, but you will find this to be true on the insert of EVERY thyroid
medication.
http://www.rxmed.com/monographs/cytomel.html
http://www.druginfonet.com/synthrod.htm
This should make
you pretty mad. Why? Because if your adrenals have become weakened by your
thyroid disease and aren’t functioning well, when you are put on thyroid
hormone it can cause an adrenal crisis. If the situation is very bad, it can
KILL you. That’s right---death. But are the doctors testing our adrenals ahead
of time? No, they are not, even though it clearly states that they must do so
in the Physicians Desk Reference. Every doctor who prescribes thyroid hormone
without testing the patient’s adrenals first is putting the patient’s life at
risk (in other words, almost every doctor on this planet).
Here is an article by a doctor discussing the treatment of hypothyroidism. On page 4, you will see a section entitled "Special Cases: Recent Heart Attacks and Weak Adrenal Function." The paragraph about the adrenals describes me perfectly! That is me all over and a lot of women I know. Go to the very next section on page 5 entitled "Problems in Converting T4 to the T3 Hormone." Reading that paragraph you will see that cortisol is necessary for the body to convert T4 into T3. Thus we must have our adrenals working in order to utilize the oral thyroid hormone we take. http://www.healthy.net/asp/templates/article.asp?PageType=Article&ID=528
So you see, if
the body has poor thyroid function, poor adrenal function will result. And then
the doctor will start to give you thyroid hormone but you won’t feel better
because your body simply can’t use the thyroid without cortisol. You must
address adrenal function. And you are supposed to address it FIRST. Yet I was
on synthroid for a whole year before I got my first adrenal test. And the only
reason I got the test then was because my husband went to my doctor and
demanded it, not because the doctor thought of it himself. Meanwhile, by that
time my adrenals were so weakened and non-functional that I was near
death---all because no doctor had bothered to check them before giving me
synthroid. Then the pure T4 weakened my adrenals even further so they shut down
almost completely; it nearly killed me.
Are you a woman
who is hypothyroid and yet any tiny amount of oral hormone gives you
hyPERthyroid symptoms? When I read these articles about adrenal function and
how oral thyroid taken by a hypoadrenal person can cause hyPERthyroid symptoms,
I have to wonder if perhaps you need an adrenal test.
Read these next
two articles and take especial note of "Table 1" in each of these
articles. Notice the list of symptoms hypoadrenal people experience. See how
they sound almost exactly like hypothyroid symptoms? Makes you wonder which
came first, low adrenal or low thyroid…. Chicken and the egg. And you must fix
both to be healthy.
http://www.advancedhealing.com/articles/articlestress-001.htm
The first
article, just above Table 1, points out that you must check adrenals before
giving thyroid hormone. He also points out that none of the doctors in this
world are doing so even though it is clearly stated in the Physician’s Desk
Reference. He even quotes the Physician’s Desk Reference.
This next article also discusses adrenal insufficiency. The big thing that stands out to me in this article is where the writer mentions that body temperature may be below normal. That’s true for hypothyroid patients also. Have you read articles in which the Barnes method is discussed and the writer often says it can take up to a year after thyroid hormone is begun for the patient’s body temperature to come up to normal? Well, I suspect that’s because the patient’s adrenals have not been addressed! If you address both the adrenals and the thyroid together, the patient will feel much better much sooner. Without cortisol, she cannot use thyroid hormone properly and without thyroid she will not make cortisol. Neither the thyroid nor the adrenal can correct without the other. You must treat both together! http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section2/chapter9/9b.htm
And here is an interview with the Drs. Shames, who specialize in thyroid disorders and the adrenal connection. In this interview you will note that they say you can actually diagnose adrenal weakness by default if your thyroid patient experiences a WORSENING of symptoms when she is given thyroid hormone. Now, I greatly admire the Drs. Shames and if I lived in Boca-Raton FL I’d choose them to treat my disease. But what angers me about this interview is how they completely ignore the adrenal issue until AFTER they treat a patient for her thyroid. They say "oh, if you are on thyroid drugs and still don’t feel well, maybe it’s your adrenals." This is WRONG! The adrenals are supposed to be treated FIRST. Go back and read those thyroid drug inserts; they clearly state that doctors must not prescribe thyroid meds if there is adrenal insufficiency. And yet the doctors---even the great Drs. Shames---keep giving us thyroid meds and waiting until we collapse before checking adrenals (if they bother to check them at all). This bit of malpractice on the part of doctors can KILL you. http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa052801a.htm
So, what
is an adrenal test? WATCH OUT! My husband found all this wonderful information
about adrenal function and how you must address this issue in thyroid patients,
but we had a hard time convincing the doctors to do so. I was sent to an
endocrinologist because all the GPs who had seen me couldn’t figure out why I
still wasn’t feeling well even with a low TSH. They decided there must be
further endocrine imbalances (adrenals are part of the endocrine system) and a
specialist was needed. So I went to the local Endo and got her to admit that
there is an adrenal-thyroid connection, but she refused to run tests. I went
back to the GP and told him what had happened. I was so upset that he
immediately ordered an 8 AM serum cortisol test. See, the way that cortisol
works is your levels are much higher in the morning and they fall throughout
the day. In addition, cortisol is not stored anywhere; the body makes it as it
needs it. So I got an 8 AM cortisol test and I had 6.7 with the normal range
being 6.2 to 29. In spite of this very low number, the doctor said "Well,
it’s normal" and sent me home. And a morning serum cortisol is the only
test most doctors will run.
I changed doctors and got myself put on Armour. I immediately began to feel better but still had many unresolved symptoms because this man was afraid to give me enough medication! (it has T3 in it, after all, so must be bad…..). So I changed to a Top Doc (http://www.thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/bldoc1.htm I drive 2 hours to get to his office and then 2 hours back) and he just about died when he saw my cortisol test! He said that clearly I was in bad shape since I was at the very bottom of normal range and the levels only fall off from there. He likes to see your morning number between 12 and 15 for optimum health.
So he ran an
all-day adrenal test on me. THIS IS VITAL!!!! Even if your insurance won’t pay
for it, get this test! What you do is spit in test-tubes at 8 AM, noon, 4 PM,
and midnight. I got the test and it showed that I was still starting off in the
low normal range at 8 AM, but it was better than it had been back on synthroid.
Armour is not only better for your body but also better for your adrenals; my 8
AM cortisol level had come up to 11 after 2 months on Armour. But it also
showed that I was even farther down in the normal range at noon, was below
normal by 4 PM, and had no adrenal function at all by midnight. So you see, had
my new doctor given me only an 8 AM cortisol test like the last guy did, it
would have showed that I was just fine, and yet the all day test proved
conclusively that I was close to death by the end of the day, every day. One of
the symptoms I had at this time which hadn’t improved from the Armour was
aching feet and breathing problems while sleeping (I would either snore or have
sleep apnea or chokes where I would stop breathing completely). However, the
same day that the doctor started me on oral cortisol, my feet quit hurting, I
had enormous energy, and all my sleep problems disappeared. I feel more rested
and energetic than I have felt in years! It totally alleviated every single
remaining "thyroid" symptom I was dealing with. While Armour did
great things for me and nearly restored me to normal (on synthroid, I was
actually dying; my new doctor told me it is just a miracle I did not actually
DIE at some point over the last few years while my health was so mismanaged),
the oral cortisol turned back the clock 10 years. I went from feeling like a
decrepit 90-yr-old to a 25-yr-old (and I’m 34, by the way). Go back and read
again the "Table 1" on those adrenal links I listed above. Those
symptoms, especially the aching and pain, are always written off as hypothyroid
symptoms and fibromyalgia. But if your adrenals are weak, then even T3 isn’t
going to cure all your ills. You must begin taking cortisol and then you will
feel like new. I want to reiterate how much my adrenal function improved after
a couple months on Armour. On synthroid my 8 AM cortisol level was only 6.7.
After 2 months on a too-low dose of Armour, my 8 AM level moved up to 11. I
would argue that the adrenals need more than just synthroid to function well;
these glands probably require either T2 or T3 or both for good function.
You can get this all day adrenal test for only $106 dollars from the Great Smokies Diagnostic Laboratory (www.gsdl.com). They are in North Carolina but they will overnight mail to you a special test kit (at their expense) and give you a prepaid mailer to overnight it back to them. The phone number of Great Smokies is 800-522-4762 and they are worth every penny because very few labs do this test at all. They take insurance payments, or you can pay up front and file the insurance yourself, which costs less. Your doctor has to order the test, but all he has to do is call that toll-free number and they will set up an account with his medical license to authorize your lab work. (and in the meantime, you may want to peruse their website to see what all you can learn from them too!)
Some of you have
told me that you had an ACTH test, which is supposed to tell you if your
adrenals are working properly. And the doctor told you that your test was
normal so you don’t need adrenal support. Well, an ACTH test is similar to a
TSH test; ACTH is the hormone which tells the adrenals to get busy and make
cortisol. So if your ACTH is elevated, then your adrenals aren’t working,
right?
I had an ACTH
test too, when I first told a doctor that I had concerns about my adrenal
function. My results were perfectly normal so he decided that I did not have
adrenal problems. I changed doctors not long after that and was given the
all-day cortisol test. This test showed that I had almost no adrenal function
by evening and that by midnight, my adrenals were nearly completely shut down.
So as you can see, that ACTH test was worthless.
There is another type of "all day" adrenal test your doctor may offer you. This is a test in which you collect all of your urine in the same jug for a full 24 hours. This test is pretty worthless too; don’t get excited if your doctor orders it. The type of day-long cortisol test that you must request is an exam that takes individual measurements of your cortisol levels at least 4 times throughout the day. This test is usually referred to as an "Adrenocortex Stress Profile." For further information on the types of tests which are good and those which are worthless, go back to the interview with the Drs. Shames. http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa052801a.htm
I offer this to you as further emphasis on the importance of having an ALL DAY cortisol stress index to determine if your adrenals really are ok. My 8 AM cortisol test was fine. My ACTH test was fine. And yet the all day cortisol test showed adrenal shut-down by evening, which nearly killed me. Every night in my sleep I wasn’t breathing much of the time. Go back to that article by Dr. Durrant-Peatfield; he has an explanation for this. Peatfield_Suggest.htm It is because your thyroid disease has weakened your entire body so much (since every cell you have depends on thyroid hormone) that even your poor little pituitary gland can no longer produce ACTH in proper amounts to stimulate your adrenals. So the ACTH test is worthless; if the number is low the doctor will believe your adrenals are fine (just like a low TSH means you must have lots of thyroid hormone in your body, right?). When really that low ACTH may mean your body is so weakened by thyroid disease that your pituitary is unable to do its job either. Keep this in mind; Dr. Durrant-Peatfield also points out that this very same thing can be true about low TSH. If you are hypo from head to toe and your TSH isn’t real high, your doctor will usually send you home. But if you are really low in thyroid, your pituitary may be so weakened by that fact that it can’t even produce TSH.
Another point
I’d like to make: if your all day adrenal test comes back showing that you are
somewhere in the normal range all day, even at midnight, but the numbers are
rock-bottom, that’s not good enough. My doctor wasn’t satisfied even with that
11 I had at 8 AM. He wants your 8 AM level between 12 and 15 for optimum
health. That’s right at mid-range and this is where you will feel best. Too
much is not good for you but too little is bad also. You need to be right in
the middle throughout the day for the best health. So if you are scraping along
the bottom of the reference range all day long, it’s no wonder you aren’t
feeling good. Your doctor should not look at this and say "OK, it’s still
in normal range so go home and take some Prozac." He should say "No
wonder you feel dragged out and exhausted and achy. You are barely scraping
along with hardly any cortisol at all! Clearly you will feel better if you had
a little more."
Several women
have posted me and said that their adrenal tests showed yo-yo levels, with a
high at 4 PM or something wacky like that. Today I got a note from a lady
who just got her Great Smokies saliva results, and she too had that same
phenomenon. Here are her test results, with the reference range in
parenthesis:
DHEA at 8
AM: 1.3 (.75-2.5)
Cortisol:
8
AM: 28.6 (5-23)
12
noon: 2.39 (1.8-11)
4
PM: 6.22 (1-6.5)
12
midnight: 0.56 (.8-4.7)
As you can
see, her cortisol was very high at 8 AM and 4 PM but much too low at noon and
nearly non-existent at midnight. Included with her results is a
"Conclusions" paragraph from the laboratory. It says:
"A
pattern showing both elevated and decreased cortisol levels in the presence of normal
DHEA is clinically significant. The presence of cortisol fluctuations suggests
an underlying hypofunction that is interrupted by episodic hyperfunction. This
may be seen in adrenal fatigue with hyper-reactivity, such as physiological or
psychological stress induction of cortisol in an otherwise hypofunction state.
DHEA within the refernce range suggests there is no evidence of zona
reticularis hypofunction at this time. In this pattern there is increased
probability of poorly regulated blood glucose, presenting as hypo or
hyperglycemia. This pattern represents a degree of adrenal hypofunction and has
been noted in fatigue disorders, physiological or psychological stress and
hypertension."
I
asked her when she took her thyroid medication. She took the morning dose
at 7:30 and the second half of her Armour in the afternoon. This could
very well be the "physiological stress induction of cortisol!"
This woman has the classic clinical symptoms of adrenal hypofunction, including
a worsening of her thyroid symptoms 2-3 days after she increases her Armour
dosage.
I
include this for the people who have posted me saying that they, too, have
yo-yo cortisol levels which are high at the wrong times or go up and down
throughout the day. The Great Smokies Lab states this IS significant and
seen in adrenal fatigue. If your doctor refuses to address this, perhaps
you need a different doctor.
Now, here is the second huge reason why adrenal function is so important to thyroid patients. The first reason was that hypothyroid people are usually hypoadrenal. The second reason is that every time you switch thyroid medications or change your dose, you are stressing your body (the same as going outside on a hot day stresses your body too). I have found—and so have many other women—that every time I had my dosage changed or my medication switched, I’d go on a "crash." I’d feel ok the first day or 2 but then my symptoms would come back even worse than before. I’d be a wreck for 3-5 days and then slowly I’d improve and end up feeling better than I had felt before the change. I always thought this crash must be because my thyroid gland was putting out some amount of hormone and the increase in my oral dose caused my TSH to go down so my thyroid gland shut down too, and then it recovered after a few days. But I kept researching and found out that actually, it is because my adrenals were in such horrible shape from spending 5 years with untreated thyroid disease. My adrenals simply couldn’t handle the stress of changing medications. This is exactly the problem described in those links I listed above Dean_Adrenal.htm and http://www.healthy.net/asp/templates/article.asp?PageType=Article&ID=528). And this is true for almost everyone with thyroid disease; they always feel bad when changing thyroid meds because of the stress to their adrenals. By the way, I have a theory that this is why so many women will say "Oh I tried _____ medication and it just didn’t work for me." And actually, the change in thyroid medication might have been a good idea but the adrenal crash made the patient believe that she was much worse off with this different medication. Re-read that interview with the Drs. Shames. They say exactly the same thing.
Why don't you
get a big adrenal crash on synthroid like you might get when you try Armour?
Because synthroid is pure T4 and so metabolically inactive that it barely moves
through your system and does nothing to you. Armour on the other hand,
increases metabolic activity so effectively that the adrenals can't handle the
sudden return to health so they crash. Knoll Pharmaceuticals would have you
believe that this proves Synthroid is better than Armour. In actual fact, the
adrenals crash because Armour is so much better than synthroid! Synthroid
limits the body and keeps the metabolism sluggish and barely functioning (which
means no adrenal stress). Armour, on the other hand, gives back to you the nice
healthy metabolism you had before your thyroid gland got sick, and it does so
quickly and effectively. But if you were hypothyroid for quite a while without
getting treatment or if you spent a long time on just synthroid, your adrenals
will be weaker. The sudden return of your normal metabolism when you start
Armour sends these weak adrenals into a crash. This is why Armour must be given
to a patient in a small initial dose (1/2 grain) which is then increased little
by little (1/4 grain every 2 weeks); this dosage schedule is printed on the
Armour package insert. Armour is much better for your adrenals and they will
begin to heal when you switch from synthroid. But this takes time, which is why
you should increase the Armour slowly. If you take more Armour too quickly,
your adrenals may crash and you will feel much worse for several days or even a
couple weeks. And if your adrenals fall off too seriously, you could end up in
the hospital. [NOTE: women who have strong adrenal function will be able to
increase their Armour doses more quickly than indicated on the package insert.]
So you see, the
reason you feel worse when you start Armour is because it is better for you
than synthroid, not worse for you! But there is an easy solution to the adrenal
weakness that every doctor should be giving his patients: oral adrenal support.
Used in conjunction with Armour, the patient will feel much better much sooner.
And her Armour doses can be increased at a faster pace so she will not have to
lie around the house being hypo on a half-grain for 2 weeks. The oral adrenal
support allows the patient's adrenal glands to heal while supporting the other
systems in her body so she can safely take her thyroid medication and restore a
healthy metabolism.
So, what do you
do about weak adrenals? Well, my doctor cured mine by putting me on a
physiologic dose of daily cortisol and DHEA. I took 25 mg DHEA daily 5
days/week, and 20 mg cortisol daily, which is the amount your body should make
on its own. Cortisol is not stored anywhere; your body makes it as it needs it.
Some people make too much and it just runs around their bloodstream, which is
bad for them and leads to heart disease. But if you are making too little, it
is just as bad for you and will lead to early death. So you take 20 mg daily (5
mg at each meal and 5 mg at bedtime). My doctor had me on oral cortisol for 3
months so that my own adrenal glands could take a nice big rest and recover
from the terrible stress they’ve been under all these years. It worked. I
began taking these doses as soon as I got home from his office so I ingested 15
mg before bedtime that first day. That night, for the first time in years, I
could breathe normally while I slept; I had been suffering from sleep apnea and
had also developed "chokes"---each night when I first fell asleep, my
saliva would run down and fill my windpipe and I’d wake up drowning on my own
spit, coughing and sputtering for 10-15 minutes before my windpipe would fully
clear, gasping for air the entire time. The Cortef cured this problem on the
first day! My constant foot pain was gone in 2 days. About a month
later, I forgot to take my suppertime and bedtime cortef doses; that night I
choked again for the first time since I started Cortef. I made sure not
to forget my doses anymore! After 3 months, I quit taking the Cortef
completely and am feeling great. My adrenals rested and healed and are
doing the job on their own again. No chokes, no foot pain, no symptoms at
all. I'm healthy as a horse again.
If you start to
come down with a cold or flu, you take more. I found that out; the nurse forgot
to give me the cortisol instruction sheet (which describes how you take more in
those instances), so between appts I got a bad cold and all my
"thyroid" symptoms came back! That happened right on top of my
menstrual cycle too. Suddenly my feet hurt so bad I couldn’t even walk when I
first got up in the morning. My body ached, I was snoring and constipated, etc.
I thought maybe the body demands more thyroid during menstruation and illness, so
I started taking 3.5 grains each day but it didn’t help. When I went back to my
Top Doc the following week, he explained to me that the body demands more
CORTISOL during illness and menstruation due to the stress on the body. He felt
real bad he no one had given me the handout describing how you should take more
during colds….. You need more when sick because illness is a stress; people
with normal adrenals always make more cortisol when sick. And by the way, the
immune system cannot work properly without cortisol. This explains why a major
symptom of hypothyroidism is frequent colds and sinus problems. Because
hypothyroid women are hypoadrenal and their bodies can’t fight disease without
cortisol. The body demands twice as much cortisol when sick as when healthy; if
you have weak adrenals, they just can’t handle the workload. This is why your
illnesses drag on and you feel like you are in a hypothyroid fog.
Oral cortisol is
a prescription medication. In addition, it can cause constant hunger and rapid
weight gain. It can also reduce the secretion of melatonin. I experienced some
of these side effects; while on Cortef I was very eager for my dinner and also
stayed up late every night. But does this mean that we should all avoid taking
any oral cortisol? No. If your adrenals are very weak, you will not be getting
enough cortisol, and you must have cortisol for life. To counter the side
effects of Cortef, I took 3 mg melatonin every night 1 hour before bedtime and
it worked. You can buy melatonin in any vitamin store.
But there are
other alternatives to oral cortisol. Here are a few links describing things you
can eat and things you can do to help bolster your adrenals naturally. I
recommend you start doing these things immediately but if your body pain is
severe or the slightest stress sends you on a hypothyroid crash, you most
likely are going to need cortisol tablets to optimize your health.
http://health4her.com/library/concerns/adrenal_conditions.cfm
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/HerbalDoc/licorice.html
http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section2/chapter9/9b.htm
These links are
about the herb maca, which is also supposed to boost your adrenal function and
prevent sugar cravings. I have corresponded with women who are using it and say
it is great. One woman told me it cured her chocolate cravings! Now that
I've completed my 3 months on cortef, I am taking maca too and am feeling
wonderful.
http://www.nzhealth.net.nz/products/macca.html
http://www.alternativemedicine.com/digest/issue38/38100.shtml
http://www.imperialgoldmaca.com/maca.htm
One of the
ladies on the forum was asking people for help with her strange skin conditions
and was wondering if anyone else had similar problems with their thyroid
disease. She described peeling skin and "acne" that didn’t really act
like proper acne.
I had some
"acne" that didn’t behave so I posted her asking if she had any of
these other symptoms that I too, had. For example, I had a discoloration of my
skin in some patches on my lower back and below my breasts. I also noticed that
even though I never had foot odor in the past (even when I didn’t wear socks),
my feet had begun to reek! I’d buy new shoes and they’d stink anyway after just
1-2 wearings. Also, my breath was starting to smell some and I was always
careful to make sure I applied plenty of deodorant each day. I also noticed
peeling skin on my scalp. The "acne" was located primarily along my
hairline but sometimes popped up elsewhere.
And since I have
thyroid disease, I figured all this stuff was related to my thyroid---especially
since the symptoms actually improved some when I first started thyroid
medication. But it never seemed to go away completely….
Well, my Top Doc
is much more holistically oriented. I went to him to get more Armour, but he
did much more for me than that. One thing he does when he gets new patients is
to have them fill out a very long questionnaire discussing just about every
aspect of your body and health---dozens of things you’d never think of. He
recognizes that if your thyroid it out of whack, your whole system can go
haywire and you’ll develop other imbalances that need correction even after you
get the thyroid disease and adrenals under control.
I filled out the
questionnaire and it led us to concerns about the bowel and yeast. So he
ordered a stool analysis for me and it turned up a pathogenic level of yeast in
my bowels! I was placed on a 30-day course of Nizoral tablets. This is the same
drug you’ll see ads for on TV for dandruff shampoo. I’d never heard of it
before I was taking the oral version….
Anyway the first
two days I noticed no change. But then the next 3 days my lower back was just
aching horribly and my guts hurt. I figured this was probably the yeast dying
off, and so I waited through it. Sure enough, from that point on, things were
great. My scalp healed up and is smooth and clear as a baby’s. My
"acne" is totally gone which is very nice. I must emphasize that the
"acne" really wasn’t like acne at all. It was more like painful red
bumps that I thought were pimples but they held mostly blood instead of pus.
Anyway, they disappeared. And my body is fresh as a daisy! I don’t have to wear
deodorant if I don’t want to; there is no odor at all. My feet are nice and
fresh, my skin soft and supple and pretty. When I get up in the morning, my breath
is just as fresh as it was the night before.
So I wanted to
mention this to you as well just in case you had experienced the same types of
symptoms. Another symptom that goes right along with this is itching. Yeast
infections are usually accompanied by itching. I know my scalp definitely
itched and I seemed to be scratching my whole body a lot more.
So where does
this problem come from? Since my symptoms actually had gotten better when I
first started thyroid meds, I figured it was all thyroid related. But now that
I’ve had a stool analysis, I know it was a yeast infection. I think this is
probably because a thyroid deficiency allows yeast to overgrow and take over
your system. Your immune system can’t work properly if there is no thyroid
hormone. And 60% of your immune system is located in your digestive tract. So
the yeast gets out of control and takes over. When you start thyroid hormone
orally, the immune system gets a boost and can start fighting back and getting
the yeast under control. It might win all by itself, but in my case, it was so
far out of control that I had to take an oral fungicide to complete the cure
(probably from years of untreated hypothyroidism).
There is one doctor I know of who believes that Hashimoto’s is actually caused by yeast imbalance. www.health-science.com/thyroid.html He claims to have cured Hashimoto’s patients and weaned them off their thyroid medications by bolstering their immune systems. I’m not sure I agree with him, but he says that a yeast overgrowth results in the immune system producing antibodies against the yeast, and these antibodies also happen to attack the thyroid gland. So he thinks if you kill off the yeast you’ll make fewer antibodies and can actually halt the progress of Hashi’s. And if you stop it soon enough (before the gland is badly damaged) you can quit taking oral thyroid. Again, I am not sure I agree with him, but he claims to have cured many patients so maybe he has hit the nail on the head. If he is right that yeast or Epstein-Barr is causing the autoimmune response, then if you got rid of those infections your body would make fewer antibodies and thus you’d have less damage to your thyroid gland. Perhaps you’d be able to go off your thyroid medication if your gland wasn’t too damaged. I just don’t know. He seems to think so and he claims to have cured Hashimoto’s patients.
Regardless, it
is common for women with thyroid disease to have yeast imbalances. The question
is whether the yeast caused the thyroid disease or whether the thyroid disease
resulted in poor immune function that allowed a yeast overgrowth to occur. I
don’t know! I honestly don’t know if there is a connection between the two.
What I DO know is that when I got tested for yeast and it came back with
pathogenic levels, I also got a Hashimoto’s test at the same time. I had
enormously high levels of both kinds of Hashi’s antibodies (my doctor said they
are the highest he has ever seen). He said that the Hashi’s antibodies
themselves can interfere with the body’s use of oral thyroid hormone.
We are going to
get another Hashi’s test now that I have killed off the yeast. I am very curious
to see if the Hashi’s antibodies levels go down too. Should be VERY
interesting, don’t you think? If they do, it won’t PROVE anything but it should
raise some eyebrows and warrant investigation. Maybe other Hashi’s patients
should check for yeast infections too.
How is this
yeast overgrowth diagnosed? I had the Comprehensive Digestive Stool Analysis
and Parasitology done by Great Smokies Laboratory. This is the same lab located
in North Carolina that does the day-long adrenal test; they do labwork that
other labs do not do (they also do a really excellent Thyroid Profile which
includes TSH, free T4, free T3, reverse T3, the ratio of reverse T3 to T3, the
T4-T3 ratio, and both kinds of antibodies). You don’t have to be near NC; you
just Airborne Express your lab samples to them (they pay the shipping). My
doctor ordered this labwork, gave me the test kit, and Airborne picked it up
from my house. How does it work? You have to poop into a tray and then use
their little kit to scoop up a sample of your poop and put it in the bottle
(the kit is so well-made that you don’t have to touch the poop at all; a
scooper is built-in to the lid of the sample jar so you just scoop the poop and
screw on the lid). You do this on 3 different days, call AirEx, and then wait
for the results. Yeah, it sounds gross but it was SO informative and improved
my quality of life astronomically. It was so worth it. If you are suffering
from any of these symptoms and suspect you may have a yeast infection, I highly
recommend you have this done. In addition, be sure to take
"pro-biotics." What are these? These are the good flora
you are supposed to have in a healthy digestive tract. Acidophilus is
one. However, there are many others and you should take these as you kill
off the yeast, to fill in the gap. Yeast can overgrow when the good flora
is too low. When you kill the yeast, you must fill back in with good
flora to prevent some other pathogen from overgrowing and taking over.
Here are some
links about yeast. Go to yahoo and put
"systemic yeast treatment" in the search engine; you will be amazed
at what you find.
http://pages.prodigy.net/angelkay/DISCOVERING%20WELLNESS/candida.htm
An excellent site to help you see if you have a yeast infection too.
Brain
fog, fatigue and aching can be caused by yeast too! http://www.sgreen.com/05.htm
More
yeast symptoms: http://www.fitnessculture.com/disease/skin/balatis.htm
The
GERD-yeast connection http://www.rumormillnews.net/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=4933
Types
of yeast infections http://members.aol.com/caloradpoe/yeast.html
http://www.tjpc.com/home.htm for yeast tips
http://www.bodyecologydiet.com/
http://www.candida-society.org.uk/
http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/Garden/4183/gima.html
http://www.campuslife.utoronto.ca/services/sec/alter.html
http://www.letsliveonline.com/articlesTemp.asp?dept=4&articleID=2037
This
is a link about CFS and fibro and the link between them http://www.foogod.com/~torquill/immune.html
A
book that sounds interesting http://www.alternativemedicine.com/digest/issue33/33082.shtml
http://colonhealth.net/health_products/aquaflora.html
http://www.vitaminusa.com/yeasnonil.html
Here
is an amateur site put together by some woman who has been fighting vaginal
yeast infections. Perhaps her info will help you. http://www.msu.edu/user/eisthen/yeast/
And the very best thing you can do for your health is to start taking a good quality multi-vitamin tablet daily. The body requires selenium and other vitamins and minerals to use thyroid hormone. http://www.equinevetnet.com/nutrition/Topics/selproteins.html And it requires all the vitamins and minerals for overall good health. If you want to get the very most out of your life, include a good multi vitamin/mineral in your daily diet. In addition, I recommend you start taking amino acid and enzyme supplements as well. A very good product (which I take) that contains nearly every vitamin, mineral, amino acid, lipid, cell salt, phytonutrient, antioxidant, and enzyme you need is Wellness Source Multis, available from HealthWatchers/Puritan’s Pride. You can order by phone at 1-800-321-6917. This "multi" may cost a little more than Centrum or One-A-Day but it also contains 5 times more necessary nutrients! It is worth it (and it’s often on sale too, so stock up when the price is right). Feed it to everyone else in your family too.
Here are some
other links which we found very informative as we began our search for
knowledge about thyroid disease. Be sure you go over all the symptoms of
thyroid disease; this is important to identify problems caused by
hypothyroidism that your doctor may treating as a separate problem---when
really all you need is the proper adjustment of your thyroid medications.
This link is
just superb in every fashion: http://www.healthy.net/asp/templates/article.asp?PageType=Article&ID=528
If your doctor is
determined to decide your health based on your TSH tests rather than your
clinical symptoms, here is a link which may help. This shows that endocrine
activity is NOT steady; it is pulsate. So the results you get can vary just
simply depending upon the time of day the blood was drawn! This study is also
useful when your doctor insists to you that you must have only oral T4 to avoid
"spikes" that you get with natural thyroid. As you can see in this
study, those spikes are NATURAL. Your doctor spends all day long having his
thyroid hormones spike.… Perhaps HE’D like to try existing only on oral T4…. http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/basics/control.html
Antidepressants are
often prescribed to thyroid patients. Of course, we don’t get depressed due to
a deficiency of drugs in our bloodstream, but the doctors don’t mind handing
out Prozac by the handful anyway! Here are two very significant scientific
studies on the topic.
This first study is one I mentioned before; they discovered that giving people T3 along with their oral T4 alleviated their depression and improved neuropsychological function. http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/340/6/424?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Prange%2C+A&author2=Bunevicius%2C+R&titleabstract=triiodothyronine&fulltext=neuropsychological&searchid=QID_NOT_SET&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=&fdate=1/1/1975&tdate=5/31/2001&journalcode=nejm
Here is a study
proving that certain anti-depressants actually lower your T3 and T4 levels: ht NEJM_perkypills.htm
This study
claims that patients with hypothyroidism and depression may need synthroid and
antidepressants (too bad these guys didn’t read the first study, eh? All the patients
need is T3, not synthroid and Prozac!). However, the study goes on to state
that patients given the antidepressant Zoloft had lower levels of both T3 and
T4 in their bloodstreams, plus an elevated TSH. In other words, the
anti-depressant made the hypothyroidism WORSE. And of course, this is only
going to make the depression worse too, as well as bring on other hypothyroid
problems. Read to the end of the article where Pfizer points out that other
anti-depressants have similar effects. The solution to your depression is to
get some T3 into your system.
If your thyroid
disease is being treated but you are still suffering from depression or
moodiness, it is quite likely that you need more T3. All of us are different
and what works for one won’t necessarily work for the others, but studies have
shown that T3 is crucial to your mood. In my own experience with thyroid
disease, depression was not a factor at all UNTIL I was on such a high dose of
synthroid that my TSH went nearly to zero (which of course, completely shut
down my thyroid gland and deprived me of everything except the oral T4 I took).
Once my body was deprived of T3, I became depressed. I was a wreck, crying and
miserable and barely functioning. We visited my family for Christmas and I took
25 mcg/day of my sister's cytomel (no, I didn’t have permission from my
doctor!). My depression was cured instantly---literally overnight. I went to
bed crying and woke up smiling. I took the cytomel the whole time I was
there and was very happy! But after Christmas I was back on the other side of
the country and had just synthroid again. The depression returned immediately.
The day I switched to Armour---even though I started out with ½ grain---my
depression was completely alleviated. I haven’t had any problems with
depression since I changed to Armour.
And if you are
on antidepressants already, read again that second study I listed above. The
antidepressant may very well be making your thyroid disease and depression
WORSE.
Finally, there
is some research about anti-depressants that you might find a little too scary
to read. In the July 2001 issue of Discover Magazine, doctors admit that
drugs such as Prozac actually change the physical structure of your
brain. These drugs cause permanent changes--yes, even one dose. To
read the full article you will have to get the magazine, but here is the first
part of it: http://www.discover.com/july_01/gthere.html?article=featsurprise.html
http://www.health-science.com/thyroid_problems.html
This article mentions a scientific study that proves 3,5 T2 stimulates the
production of 5’ deiodinase. Go to page 4 of this article where they mention
the action of T2. Now, one thing they get wrong is where they say that
"the only active hormone is T3." Not true! Your cells will use T4 but
they don’t like to do so; they have little affinity for T4. They prefer T3. And
T2, as I mentioned near the start of this treatise, is highly active
metabolically; it is responsible for the production of ATP in the cells. I
think this article was written before the research on T2... Anyway, go to the
bibliography of this article and look at #2. This is the study discussing how
T2 stimulates the production of 5’ deiodinase. Please remember that there are
different deiodinase enzymes and they each have different actions. We have been
searching for the study referenced in this bibliography but haven’t found it
yet.
http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~hkaslow/Teach/Handouts/Thyroid-2000.pdf
This is a very scientific treatise about thyroid hormone. On page 2 you’ll see
a diagram showing which deiodinase enzymes break down T4 into T3 and reverse
T3. You’ll notice that the deiodinase which turns T4 into T3 is the same
deiodinase that is produced using T2. This shows that we must have T2 in order
to produce the deiodinase which turns T4 into active T3. Hmmm…. Sounds like
we’d better start taking Armour so we can get that T2, so we can use our T4!
Mary Shomon’s
Thyroid Drug Database: Learn the basics about the different types of thyroid
medication. http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/drugs/bl-drugs.htm
Thyroid Disease
Widespread, 13 Million At Risk--A major study found that 13 million Americans
may be unaware of and undiagnosed for their thyroid conditions and that more
widespread thyroid testing is needed in order to avoid the health effects-
including high cholesterol-of even slighly elevated TSH levels. http://thyroid.about.com/library/weekly/aa022800a.htm
Dangers of Soy
Products for Thyroid Patients--Soy may be a wonder food to some, but it can be
a danger to thyroid patients. Find out about the risk that soy products have
for adults with thyroid disease, and infants on soy formulas, including how
much soy is safe to eat. http://thyroid.about.com/library/weekly/aa083099.htm
Here’s one about soy; when fed lots of soy, these rats had lower T3 levels and
higher reverse T3 levels. http://www.elis.sk/endo/endo498.htm#anchor31610
http://journals.endocrinology.org/joe/163/joe163r005.htm
In the "Introduction" portion of this article you will see that
thyroid hormone transport into cells is inhibited by a lot of things, including
tryptophan. Do you take tryptophan to help you sleep or lose weight? Read this
study to see what all you might want to avoid. Here is more by Dr. Ritchie. http://www.dundee.ac.uk/anatphys/Ritchie/jim1.htm
This is an article by
Dr. Ward Dean. He’s really good. http://www.smart-drugs.net/ias-thyroid.htm
Go to www.vrp.com, www.healthcentral.com and www.smart-drugs.net for a lot of
excellent health information. Dr. Ward Dean contributes to these sites
regularly; you can read more of his excellent articles on both sites. He writes
about thyroid disease all the time; I recommend visiting both of these sites
and scanning all of his articles for thyroid info and treatment.
www.morehead.org/wellconnected/doc38.html
This article is very informative in many ways about thyroid disease, what drugs
may cause your body to be unable to use thyroid hormone, the effect on
children, and a host of other things. The one area in which I totally disagree
with this author is on page 17 where he discusses levothyroxine as "the
treatment of choice" for hypothyroidism. He’s a synthroid-pusher! I have
included his article, however, so you can read the great information in the
first half, and also to be unbiased (yeah right, like I’m not pushing natural
thyroid).
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/340/6/424?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Prange%2C+A&author2=Bunevicius%2C+R&titleabstract=triiodothyronine&fulltext=neuropsychological&searchid=QID_NOT_SET&stored_search=&FIRSTINDEX=&fdate=1/1/1975&tdate=5/31/2001&journalcode=nejm
this is the scientific study I mentioned above showing that the body needs the
T3 DIRECTLY SECRETED by the thyroid gland.
www.mercola.com/article/hypothyroid/treatment.htm
Sign up for this guy’s newsletter; he’s very good with more than just the
thyroid. My sister gets his free e-letter and it is great! www.mercola.com/article/hypothyroid/diagnosis_comp.htm
http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa081999.htm
Planning to have children? Here’s a study which shows you’ll want to get your
thyroid in order first. What infuriates me about this is that I had abnormal
TSH tests (a full point above the reference range) and tried to get treatment,
but was denied it. I had 2 more kids after that and was severely hypothyroid
both while pregnant and nursing those children but was denied treatment because
"it’s NORMAL for a pregnant/nursing woman to be hypothyroid! There’s
nothing wrong with you!" Fortunately, they are both very intelligent (ages
3 and 4 now) as are my 6 and 8 year olds. But maybe they’d be Einsteins if I
had gotten treatment while pregnant and nursing them?
http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa072500a.htm?terms=i
This is a Mary Shomon interview. I recommend going to http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/cs/expertinterviews/index.htm
and reading all the interviews she has done. They are very informative.
Here is an
interesting link, if you can’t get natural thyroid from your doctor (the upper
right corner says you can order it without a prescription). I won’t tell you to
order your own medicines; that is your call. But my sister purchases her
thyroid meds in Mexico without a prescription and I’ve done it myself. http://www.smart-drugs.net/Inserts/insert-thyroid.htm
www.drmirkin.com/morehealth/g171.htm
Depressed and can’t seem to get over it? You need T3!
www.alternativemedicine.com/digest/issue14/14053R00.shtml
This oughta make you mad.
www.bruha.com/fluoride/html/pfpc__2.html
Here is a discussion of the dangers of fluoride and how it affects your
thyroid. Item #4 is especially interesting.
http://www.dr-bob.org/tips This is
essentially a "chat page" for doctors; they discuss their treatment
protocols with one another. We have found this to be a really useful page for
leading us to new things to try.
http://www.healthboards.com/thyroid-disorders
Want more support? We have also read a lot of great information on this message
board; this is where we first heard that T2 was active so we were able to find
the scientific research proving it.
http://www.ithyroid.com This is a site
about how to correct your thyroid disease nutritionally.
http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic280.htm
Here’s what happens if you don’t treat your thyroid disease.
Got Bipolar
Disorder? I don’t but we ran across this link one day so I’ll include it here
for anyone to whom it applies: http://people.ne.mediaone.net/pmbrig/BP_pharm.html
A word about T3
and thyroid hormone in general. The body will DIE without this hormone. This is
not merely a quality of life issue. We’re talking about life and death. If you
have high free T4 levels and low free T3 levels, you are not healthy. If you
have been taking thyroid medication for years and still feel awful, you are not
just miserable---you are dying. The cells in your body are being deprived of a
hormone they need and they will die without it. You must get your medication
changed! Don’t put up with it any longer! If your doctor brushes you off and
tells you that "all thyroid patients feel bad because their disease is
incurable," he’s WRONG! I was, literally, at death’s door and now I feel
WONDERFUL again.
But to get
myself feeling this way I didn’t put up with the doctors. I went through TEN
doctors before finding someone who would listen to me and take care of me. Oh,
doctor #8 listened to my complaints and felt very sorry for me and how I felt,
but all he did was to offer me Prozac and insist that since I had
"normal" bloodwork (high T4 and low T3, but still within normal
ranges so who cares?), I must have some other disease rather than
hypothyroidism. He concluded my thyroid was managed fine and we should look for
lupus or arthritis etc. And you know, as nice of a man as he was and as much as
he cared about me, I left him. I was not getting the problem addressed so I
left. Dr. #9 gave me Armour, but not enough, so I left him too.
I cannot stress
enough the importance of changing doctors. I know all about the financial concerns
and the fact that your insurance will pay only for this or that. The same is
true for me. The doctor I see now is not in my insurance plan but I have my
health back and no longer sit at death’s door. I think that’s worth the money I
pay out of pocket.
Obviously, you
are thinking the same thing I was thinking when I started going outside my
insurance plan. "How do I find a good doctor without driving hither and
yon, paying all these fees and then finding out that the guy’s no good
anyway?" This is exactly what I was wondering. So how did I find Dr.
Perfect on the first venture outside my insurance? Well, I started by phoning
the doctors in my insurance plan and asking which ones used Armour or some
other natural hormone. If the nurse was reluctant to say or blew me off, I told
her flat-out "Listen, I need a doctor who knows all about Armour because I
have used synthroid, it doesn’t work on me, and my doctor says I HAVE to use
Armour! He just wants a second opinion on how to adjust the dose. If this doctor
does not use Armour, then he will not be qualified to adjust my dosages and it
will be a waste of both his and my time to set up an appt with him." This
statement usually resulted in the nurse going straight to the doctor and asking
him if he would use Armour.
When I didn’t find a doctor inside my insurance (yeah, all the ones in my plan use synthroid….), I checked Mary Shomon’s Top Doc list (http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/bldoc1.htm) to see if there was anyone on it from this town. There wasn’t. So I began calling all the doctors in my town and asking them if they use Armour. This is a small town and they all use synthroid too. So then I moved on to the Top Doc list, knowing I was going to have to drive a ways for treatment. Now, you may be interested to know that one of the doctors on the Top Doc list is actually in my insurance plan, but I did not choose him! Why? Because his nurse said on the phone that he uses synthroid and cytomel together and does not like Armour and will not use it or prescribe it for me. He refuses to have anything to do with it; he is devoted to synthroid and cytomel. Well, I knew he couldn’t help me then. I had already found all the research about T2 and decided that it was important to my health. And I knew it was making me feel better than I ever felt on Synthroid. I did not want to give up my Armour just to go see a man in my insurance plan. Also, my sister was taking huge amounts of levoxyl and cytomel and was not much better off than me. As a matter of fact, once I got onto Armour, I was doing better than she was, even though I was taking only a small dose and needed more.
So I skipped
over that doctor and read up about all the other Top Docs in this section of
the country. I looked specifically for doctors who were listed as using Armour.
I found several, actually. How did I choose? Well, Dr. Dean was closest (130
miles away) and also was listed as preferring to use natural remedies before
resorting to drugs. His listing also stated that he searches for the cause of
your symptoms so he can eliminate the problem rather than just treating the
symptoms. This really sounded good to me. I noticed that a lot of Top Docs are
listed as "going by the book with tests" or "ordering lots of
tests" and I’m not so sure that’s the answer. I had had tons of tests and
was still not cured. I wanted a doctor who would acknowledge that I still had
physical symptoms even though my TSH had come down to only 0.3 and my T4 and T3
were "normal." So I read these listings looking for a doctor who
"prescribes Armour" and "relies on symptoms" rather than
tests. Then I called Dr. Dean’s office and asked flat-out if he relies on TSH
or if he is interested in a patient’s clinical health. She said he is very
interested in your symptoms and actually has you fill out a long questionnaire
to take a measure of your clinical health.
Another very
good thing to search for when seeking a new doctor is someone who is listed as
practicing "complementary," "alternative,"
"integrative," or "holistic" medicine. These are the
doctors most likely to prescribe natural thyroid and who will treat your
adrenal imbalances as well. These are the types of doctors who are most likely
to try to make your body balanced and optimized throughout rather than just
ANYWHERE in some reference range on a lab test. I spent a year dying on
synthroid because my TSH, T4, and T3 were all "in the range." Never
mind that the T4 was all the way at the top of normal while the T3 was all the
way at the very bottom of the range and I was a walking textbook of hypothyroid
symptoms (a typical profile for someone who is not converting T4 into T3).
Those numbers fit some profile from some lab so that is all that mattered. Once
I found a more holistic doctor, I got my health repaired. He had a lot to say
to me, as a matter of fact, about how too many doctors will treat problems only
when the numbers are below or above the lab range. He said that he isn’t happy
to see my cortisol levels at the bottom end of normal. He knows people feel
best when the cortisol levels are right in the middle of the range all day
long.
My doctor, in
case any of you are interested, is Dr. Charles Dean of Oglethorpe GA. He is on
the Top Doc list if you live anywhere near here and would like to see him. The
person who sent in that listing messed up the area code; his phone number is
actually (478)472-2550. He’s wonderful. He started out in pharmacy school back
when they taught herbal medicine, so he is thoroughly grounded in natural
remedies. Then the drug revolution came along so he is thoroughly grounded in
that area as well. And then he became a doctor so he knows all about that too.
He’s really good! If you don’t live near him and are looking for a doctor,
maybe my experience will help you too. Find someone who prescribes Armour and
is listed as going by symptoms as opposed to testing. In addition, you
might try calling Dr. Dean's office to ask if he knows of a good doctor in your
area. I can't promise that he will, but he was able to recommend a doctor
to one of the women who posted me asking for help.
By the way, I
recently had a comprehensive thyroid work-up and the results would give most
doctors a heart attack. My TSH was 0, my T4 was mid-range, and my T3 was off
the top of the range, well above "normal." The antibody levels were
sky-high on both types (Dr. Dean said he has never seen levels that high in
anyone). Most doctors would freak out at those high T3 levels and immediately
take away my medication. Not Dr. Dean. He instead said "your T4 level
could be a little higher and while this T3 level is high, you show no signs at
all of hyPERthyroid symptoms. I believe you have a lot of cellular resistance
and also these high antibody levels are interfering with the use of your
hormone. Your T3 is high because your body is having trouble using it in the
tissues so it is staying in your blood. With your T4 only at mid-range, we have
the option of increasing your dosage further if you still have any hypo
symptoms at all, as long as you show no signs of hyPER symptoms." Can you
believe it? Dr. Dean is a dream come true and I feel wonderful!
A tip for
interacting with doctors and getting them to listen to you:
One way I help
get good results is this: as the doctor begins his examination, I make comments
about how "I’m really looking forward to some solutions with you. My last
doctor is a really great guy, but he didn’t test my adrenals even though I have
the classic signs of adrenal dysfunction. And as you know, hypothyroidism
regularly leads to hypoadrenalism. I wish to have an all-day adrenal test
because of course, as you well know, cortisol levels are highest in the morning
so an 8 AM test won’t show if my adrenals are working properly at the end of
the day."
When you talk to
him, make comments about what you know but say it like "of course he
knows" this and that. I get much better results when I say "and as
you well know, thyroid disease leads to adrenal dysfunction" instead of saying
"I read that thyroid disease leads to adrenal dysfunction." See the
difference? The first sentence tells him that of course you’re positive he
already knows everything. The second sentence implies that you have read
something that you think he doesn’t know. He won’t want to hear that! The last
thing a doctor wants to hear is that the patient knows more than he does.
This technique
works! You just keep telling him everything you have learned (that he may very
well not know) but you give him credit for knowing all this. And he’ll love it!
Yeah, there’ll be some doctors this won’t work on, but most of them lap it up
and will run all the tests you want if you use this diplomacy. Build him up;
make him feel good. He’ll work better for you if you do.
Of course, the
best doctor is like my Doctor #9. I would take him reams of articles and
studies I’d gotten off the ‘net and he would eagerly xerox them. Every time I
saw him, the first thing he’d ask is how I feel and the second was "do you
have any more research for me today?" He said that he wanted to learn as
much as possible and didn’t have as much time as he’d like, so he was glad I
shared my research with him. You may wonder why I didn’t stay with Dr. #9.
Actually, I recommended him for Top Doc status and he is on Mary Shomon’s list.
He is wonderful. But right after I sent in his name, his commander (he’s
military) slammed him for switching me to Armour. On Synthroid, my T4 was
jammed high against the very top of the reference range and my T3 was at the
very bottom (the lowest number you can have and still be "normal").
And my TSH was only 0.3. So obviously I was cured, right? All the bloodwork was
"normal," after all. So Dr. #9 got in trouble for switching me to an
"antiquated" drug (Armour) and taking me off of the Gold Standard
Synthroid…. You aren’t supposed to change meds if the patient is
"cured!" He was forbidden to treat me anymore no matter how he argued
with his commander; at my next appt with him, he just gave me a referral slip
and said I had to go get treatment from an endocrinologist from now on instead
of him. It was horrible. I was devastated because I had found this wonderful
WONDERFUL man (in my insurance too!) and now he couldn’t take care of me
anymore. But I had no choice. I moved on and found Dr. Dean. And Dr. Dean is
the man who diagnosed my hypoadrenalism.
Thyroid disease
has been grossly complicated through the use of pure levothyroxine products and
also the use of TSH tests. I was forced to spend 5 years hypothyroid because of
that lousy TSH test; even though I had a TSH a full point above the normal
range in Jan ‘95 and exhibited gross clinical symptoms, I was denied treatment
until Jan ‘00 when my TSH was 8. And I’m not alone; millions of others have
also been denied treatment with a high TSH even though they have every symptom
in the book. And after 5 years of being denied treatment, my body has been
permanently damaged. Not only are my cell receptor sites so messed up I have to
take extra-high levels of thyroid hormone in order to function, my adrenals
have been damaged so I may have to take Cortef for the rest of my life. The
really sad thing is that I’m not unusual in this respect. http://thyroid.about.com/health/thyroid/library/weekly/aa012301a.htm
To finalize, I
want to emphasize that I’m not a thyroid expert nor am I in the medical
profession. I’m just a thyroid patient who had to do her own research to save
her own life. In addition, I haven’t had thyroid cancer. And my Hashi’s has
been atrophic thyroid disease. This means that my thyroid gland has atrophied;
it has shrunken and disappeared. I never had glandular swelling or nodes like
the majority of Hashi’s patients have had. And I haven’t gotten hyPER on my
medications---no palpitations, sweating, anxiety, etc. So I haven’t experienced
many of the problems that other women have dealt with.
But I have had
fibromyalgia, CFS, depression, skin cancer, dry skin, hair loss, menstrual
complications, libido issues, and a host of other symptoms common to all of us,
no matter what form our disease takes. I’ve done a lot of research to figure
out a solution and I feel WONDERFUL. And I have found information that is being
ignored by nearly every doctor out there: the metabolic effect of T2 is not
even recognized by any doctors (not even my wonderful Dr. Dean) because the
research is so new. And for some reason I can’t comprehend, nearly every doctor
on the planet is ignoring the adrenal function of their thyroid patients. The
physician’s desk reference clearly states that patients must have their
adrenals tested PRIOR to thyroid treatment, but the doctors aren’t doing it.
So, while I know
nothing about thyroid cancer, goiter, and glandular nodes, I do hope I can help
as many as possible with this vital information that should be applicable to
every thyroid patient regardless of how she came into her disease. I’m no
expert and am not seeking any glory or recognition. I just want everyone to
feel better!
Hope this helps!
Gail
Thyroid Avenger
"Man cannot live on T4 alone."
PS Here is a
doctor a friend recommended I pass along to anyone living in the New York area.
She says he won’t even CONSIDER using synthroid! And he has an office in Dallas
Texas as well, so if you are in the Dallas area, you can get his brand of
treatment through his office there.
Fred Pescatore,
M.D.
144 East 44th
Street
New York, NY
10017
Phone:
212-490-3800
FAX:
212-490-6657
Here is the
letter I wrote to Oprah Winfrey, so you’ll know more about me---my illness and
the treatment I received.
Hello Ms.
Winfrey!
I want to tell
you my story.
I am a highly
intelligent woman (real modest too!) who spent my youth coasting through
school, taking all the top honors classes but never having to study to make my
straight A+ grades. I graduated at the top of my class with twice as many
honors credits as any of my peers. I had participated in so many
extracurricular activities that I earned four separate letter jackets! My
bedroom was filled with my trophies and awards.
On 2 separate
full academic scholarships, I headed off to college where I majored in math. It
was just as easy as high school; I rarely had to study to earn top grades even
though I also worked part time. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and was active in
numerous clubs and social service groups throughout my college years.
I married an Air
Force officer and happily moved across the country with him. I worked part time
and served on the board of our Officers’ Wives Club; as a matter of fact, I
held THREE board positions and wrote 2 different articles (on 2 different topics)
for our monthly magazine (as well as being the asst. editor). My life was rich
and full and I never felt too busy or overwhelmed. It was easy.
I was thrilled
to learn of my first pregnancy in 1992. I continued to work out at the gym
throughout my pregnancy and actually completed more than 100 miles during my
last trimester, earning a Century Club T-shirt from the Wives’ club. But I also
developed carpal tunnel syndrome and an awful ache in my knees.....
I had a
beautiful baby boy and when he was nearly a year old, I became pregnant again.
I didn’t have the same energy I had before; I was tired more often and never
made it to the gym even though my husband was happy to stay home with our son
so I could work out. The OB told me I was tired because I was pregnant again
"too soon." That sounded like bull to me, but I believed him anyway;
he’s a professional, right? In Sep 94, I had another beautiful baby boy.
But I just
didn’t feel good at all. By Jan 95 I was in the doctor’s office wondering why
my hair was falling out, my skin was so dry it was cracking and bleeding, I was
so tired all the time, and I was gaining weight even though I ate sensibly and
was nursing my 4-month-old baby. My sister has thyroid disease and those are
classic symptoms, so I asked my doctor for a thyroid test.
My bloodwork
came back abnormal, indicating that I did indeed have thyroid disease; the TSH
was well above the normal reference range and the T3 uptake index was too low.
But my doctor brushed it off, saying "Oh, you just had a baby so this is
irrelevant. It’ll pass." He assured me that there was nothing to worry
about and then told me I shouldn’t have babies less than 3 years apart because
my body was still "tired" from being pregnant with my first child.
I went home and
dealt with it. I got pregnant again in Oct 95. During this pregnancy, my knees
hurt so badly I could hardly walk. I developed such severe pain in my feet that
I saw a podiatrist twice for treatment. My carpal tunnel was coming back. My
skin was dry and scaly, cracked and bleeding. My hair became coarse, brittle
and began to fall out. My body temperature was always well below 98 and
sometimes even below 97 degrees, even in the middle of a hot summer’s day. My
memory started to suffer, which was crushing to a person who had always had the
sharpest mind in the class. I had intermittent ear pain, tinnitus and numb
arms. My eyes became so sensitive to light that I had to wear sunglasses even
on a cloudy day. My face became puffy. I began to get mildly depressed, feeling
worthless. Although I am a stay-home mom who adores children and think mine are
the greatest in the world, I began to lose interest in playing with them,
instead spending hours sitting at my computer staring mindlessly at a solitaire
game.
I had my baby in
July 96, nursed him, and gained 20 pounds while nursing him (DURING my
pregnancies, I would gain only 17-22 pounds and would lose all of it by my
6-week postpartum checkup. Yet while nursing the babies, I’d gain 10-20 pounds
even though I ate less than ever). My other debilitating symptoms didn’t go
away after having the baby, either. I became pregnant with our last child in
June 97. During this pregnancy I developed such severe anemia the doctor
wondered how I could even be alive! I also had higher blood pressure, and yet I
had always had lower-than-normal blood pressure my whole life. My cholesterol
also went way up. In addition, I still had all those other awful symptoms that
I had during the previous pregnancy.
I had this last
baby in February 98. I weaned her in November 98. In the past, every time I’d
wean a baby my milk would dry up completely within 2 weeks. But this time, I
weaned her and my milk did not dry up. As a matter of fact, I am still
lactating today, nearly 3 years after weaning my last baby! It has never dried
up in all that time—never.
I also developed
borderline hypoglycemia; if I got hungry but didn’t eat immediately, I’d soon
be so nauseated I’d have to lie down and try desperately not to throw up. Often
I would dry-heave.
So, between 1995
and 1999, I gained nearly 80 pounds even though I was eating less than ever
before. And I felt horrible. But I did not think it was my thyroid since more
than once, my doctor had told me my thyroid was fine.
However, by the
fall of ‘99 I was so miserable I thought I was dying. I had never had a
menstrual cramp or heavy period in my life but suddenly I was menstruating so
severely that it was out of control. 2 super-plus tampons and a maxipad per
HOUR still didn’t control my bleeding; it streamed unabated down my legs. I was
cramping so severely I couldn’t get out of bed—I’d never had a menstrual cramp
before and this was far worse than labor! My hair fell out so much I had to
sweep the bathroom floor every morning after brushing it. In the shower, I lost
so much hair that I had to clean out the drain 2-3 times per shower to keep the
water going down.
I was sleeping
constantly. I’d get up at 7:30 AM and make lunches for my 2 oldest to take to
school with their dad and then collapse on the sofa. I’d sleep all morning
while the two little kids played around me. They’d beg for lunch around 11 AM
so I’d drag myself from the sofa to feed them. Then I’d collapse again and
sleep until 3:30 PM when I had to go pick the older boys up from school (I
actually set an alarm clock for 3:30 to make sure I’d wake up in time; more
than once the school called at 4 PM, wondering where I was). As soon as we got
back home, I’d collapse again until 5 when my husband got home. At that time,
I’d get up to start dinner while he’d oversee homework. We’d eat, put the kids
to bed, and then I’d sit like a zombie on the sofa folding laundry before
collapsing back into bed by 10.
My skin was
awful. It was thickened and scaly, coarse, cracked and bleeding. I developed
what I thought was dandruff but no medicated shampoos helped. Upon closer
inspection, I realized that it was not dandruff. It was dry skin on my head! It
got so dry, thickened, and scaly that my scalp began cracking open and coming
off in big chunks, leaving bloody holes all over my head. My husband told me I
had begun to snore loudly. My memory was shot; I felt brain-dead and stupid. My
eyes were super-sensitive to the light. My entire body, from head to toe, ached
severely. It was like every cell in my body was in constant pain; it hurt just
to exist, let alone move. My right arm was so painful (whenever it wasn’t numb)
that I could barely use it.
I went to the
doctor Jan 2000 for my annual gyn and requested a thyroid check again. Now my
TSH was 8.0, well above normal and indicative of thyroid disease. We had moved
by this time and my new doctor immediately began me on 75 mcg of synthroid.
When I showed him my bloodwork from 1995, he was horrified that I hadn’t
received treatment. He said I had suffered horribly—and gained 80 pounds—for 5
years needlessly. Meanwhile, he did another blood test to see if I had thyroid
antibodies in my bloodstream. I did, so I had Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid
disease, in which my own immune system is destroying my thyroid gland. There is
no cure.
My husband
immediately began intensive research on the Internet to learn all he could
about the disease. He read everything: medical journals, research studies,
thyroid forums, alternative medicine websites—you name it. Meanwhile, my
reaction to the synthroid was to give me severe constipation, destroy my
libido, and make my hair fall out even more. My January menstruation hadn’t
been quite as bad as in 1999 (I had begun taking vitamin B complex and it
helped), but when I started the synthroid my February menstruation was even
worse.
By late March
00, my TSH had gone down to 1.8. My skin and scalp had improved some, and my
hair was falling out at the rate of only one drainful per shower (instead of
2-3 drainfuls per shower). But I was still tired and still lactating. The
doctor suggested we wait a bit to see what would happen.
By June 00 my
TSH was down to 0.7. My skin had improved with the high humidity of the San
Antonio summer (even before treatment, it always got better in the summertime).
My menstrual cycle was under good control, but I was still lactating and still
tired constantly. Meanwhile, my husband had read that a healthy thyroid gland
produces 9 different thyroid hormones (T0, T1, 3 kinds of T2, 2 types of T3,
and T4). 80% of what your gland makes is T4, which is a stable compound that
your cells convert into useable T3 as needed. However, 15% of the T3 your body
needs comes directly from the thyroid gland. Some of your cells demand serum T3
straight from the thyroid; they cannot convert T4 into T3. Well, my gland
didn’t work. And Synthroid contains only T4! I told my doctor that perhaps I
needed to have my T3 measured, that maybe I didn’t have enough since synthroid
wasn’t providing any. And maybe my cells weren’t converting the synthroid into
T3; this could easily explain my unresolved symptoms.
Unfortunately,
doctors are taught very little about thyroid disease in medical school. They
are just told "give a TSH test and if it is over 5.0, give the patient a
synthroid tablet to take daily." So when I suggested that my doctor
measure my T3 levels, he said "Oh, they should be fine because synthroid
IS T3." Well, he was wrong. It’s pure 100% T4.
He recommended I
go to an endocrinologist to figure out why I was lactating (my prolactin levels
were normal). But we moved in July 2000 so I couldn’t get in to see an Endo
beforehand.
We arrived here
in Georgia in late July. We found a house and got settled in, but I went way
downhill during the month of August. My hair was coming out by huge handfuls;
back to 2 drainfuls per shower. I could not stay awake; I’d barely get the kids
to school and then sleep until noon. My skin was horribly dry in spite of the
high humidity. The "dandruff" came back—with huge bloody holes in my
head again where chunks of dry skin were coming off. My husband said I began to
exhibit sleep apnea; he spent several nights lying awake listening to my
breathing so he could shake me every time my breathing stopped. And I got a
urinary tract infection (common for thyroid patients).
On 31 August 00
I went to my new doctor to tell him that my last doctor in Texas had
recommended I see an endocrinologist. He quickly wrote out a referral and was
about to send me home when I showed him my scalp and the big bloody holes in my
head where the skin was coming off. That so horrified him he wrote out a new
prescription for synthroid, for 100 mcg/day.
Well, a couple
days later I noticed a strange mole on my shoulder. I went to the doctor to
check it, and happened to get my appt with a different man from the one I saw
the week before. He suspected skin cancer and gave me a dermatology referral.
While he was examining me, I told him about my thyroid condition. He too did
not know about T3 and T4, and all the other things we had read in our research.
I told him I really wondered why no one had ever measured my T3 levels to
determine if my body was converting my synthroid into useable form. So he
looked up some stuff in one of his textbooks, realized I had a good point, and
ordered full lab tests.
On 6 Sept those
lab samples were drawn. My TSH was 2.6. My T4 levels were at a good amount, but
my T3 levels were so low they were borderline. However, since they were still
just barely within the "normal" range stated by the lab, my doctor
said they were just fine. This blood profile, by the way, is classic for
patients who take synthroid. The synthroid quickly lowers their TSH and raises
their serum T4 levels, but their T3 levels are very low for 2 reasons:
1)their bodies
are being deprived of the T3 which is normally excreted by the healthy thyroid
gland
2)many of their
cells are unable to convert the synthroid into T3.
By October, I had seen the dermatologist and he confirmed I had a skin cancer on my shoulder (basal cell carcinoma). He removed it, and shortly after that I found some research which showed that benign and malignant tumors result from untreated hypothyroidism (http://www.healthy.net/asp/templates/article.asp?PageType=Article&ID=528 page 3 under the heading "Medical History"). Gee thanks. So I spend 5 years with untreated hypothyroidism and now I’m dealing with skin cancer.
In October, I
wasn’t sleeping as much and my skin wasn’t cracked open quite as much. My hair
was falling out a little less; I had to clean the shower drain only once per
shower instead of twice. However, I started hurting severely all over my entire
body. Every cell just ached horribly; it was excruciatingly painful just to
EXIST, let alone move. And I began to develop some new symptoms I had never had
before. My tongue became thickened and unwieldy; it was hard to control. I
couldn’t form the words I had in my head and I was biting my tongue and cheeks
a lot. I would think one word and say something else. I also developed bad
"brain fog;" my head was cloudy and I just simply couldn’t think
straight anymore.
By November, we
did another blood draw and my TSH was down to 0.3. My husband had done further
research and found a scientific study in a medical journal in which they gave
some patients just synthroid while others were given synthroid plus oral T3.
The patients on oral T3 felt better, did better on tests, and had less
depression. The conclusion of the study was that it is clear the body needs the
T3 which is produced directly by the thyroid gland so patients who had
non-functioning glands and are taking only oral T4 are not getting what they
need; they need oral T3 in addition to the oral T4 to make up for the T3 they
are not getting from their glands.
But the doctor
had given me an endocrinology referral so I simply bided my time until my appt
on 7 Dec. We were sure that I’d finally get the care I needed; this
endocrinologist I was to see was a woman so she’d understand a woman’s body
well (and thyroid disease is far more common to women than men).
I went to my
Endo appt with great anticipation. I walked in with my skin so thick and scaly
I looked like an alligator. It was cracked open and bleeding; I left blood
smears on the paperwork and the exam table. My scalp was coarse and scaly too.
My hair was falling out everywhere. I hurt so bad from head to toe that I could
barely walk. My tongue was thick and unresponsive. I was exhausted, couldn’t think
straight and was having difficulty forming words. I was so brain-dead I stared
blankly at the wall and tried to remember why I was there. I had gained another
5 pounds since August so now my weight was 222. I was depressed and moody and
felt like I wanted to just DIE.
She checked my
reflexes and they were non-existent. But that was it. She looked no further at
me at all; she ignored my skin and scalp and aching joints. Instead, she looked
in my records and saw my old lab report from Sept (a 3-month-old report) and
said "Oh, a TSH of 2.6. Well then you are fine." I said I sure didn’t
FEEL fine. I told her I was still lactating and had been for 2 solid years and
she said "oh well these things take time." I showed her my bleeding
dry skin and she said "but it is cold outside so that is normal!"
even though HER skin wasn’t thick and scaly and bleeding..... I told her I had
gained 20 pounds all year long while taking synthroid and she said "oh
well." She then informed me that she didn’t need to see me again in person
for 6 months. She said that I could get another TSH test in Jan 01 and have it
faxed to her office, and that from now on there would be no reason for us to
see one another; she would simply call me if she thought I needed anything.
Then she wrote "Diagnosis: Hashimoto’s" on my chart and charged my
insurance company $225 for it! Good grief; I already knew I had Hashimoto’s a
year ago!
I was so upset I
went back to my Primary provider the next day and complained. He immediately
agreed to check my adrenals, but he too, could not see past my
"normal" thyroid labwork. But at least he could see that I was
clearly a very sick woman. So he did a thorough exam of me from head to toe and
concluded that he should check for rheumatoid arthritis to explain the pain,
and lupus to explain my skin problems. I told him how frustrated I was and he
offered me Prozac….
I told him to go
ahead and draw his blood but that the tests were going to come back completely
normal. I told him that I needed T3 but he said he wanted to check for other
problems first. I also refused to take his Prozac. I went home miserable.
For Christmas we
went to Texas to visit my family. But my knees were so painful I couldn’t climb
the stairs in my mom’s or my sister’s homes. My dear sister ran up the stairs
for me whenever I needed anything. I felt awful and helpless. I was so
depressed that I spent one whole day crying nonstop.
By Jan 01, I was
really depressed and frustrated. My hair was coming out 2 drainsful per shower.
I ached severely all over. I was exhausted—I’d sleep all day if you let me. I
had terrible difficulty thinking and speaking. My skin was still cracked and
bleeding from dryness. The "dandruff" was getting even worse. And now
something new: I was starting to get really cold all the time. I was badly
constipated. Then the menstrual irregularities began to return and I got
another urinary tract infection. I called the doctor to see what his blood
tests would say and he confirmed what I already knew: I did not have lupus or
arthritis. He had read all the research I left with him and said "I think
you need T3 but I must check with my peers before writing the
prescription." I also asked about my adrenal tests and he said that an 8
AM serum cortisol showed 6.7, with anything between 6.2 and 29 being
"normal." For some reason, this extremely low number did not trouble
him at all.
So I waited
while he called his peers. The next morning he called me back and said "I
think T4 is the answer; we’re going to leave you on synthroid." I was so upset
I began to cry. He said that he wasn’t convinced that I did not have something
else wrong with me besides thyroid disease. The more I spoke with him, the more
I realized that his boss had forbidden him to give me anything except
synthroid. He wanted to, but had been forbidden to do so.
On 17 January, I
saw a new doctor. I described my symptoms and his first words were "You
need T3." He immediately switched me off of synthroid (pure T4) onto
Armour natural thyroid. Armour contains T0, T1, T2, T3, and T4 in the
proportions which the healthy thyroid gland produces them. I was thrilled; it
was so obvious that synthroid did not work for me and yet I had spent a year
suffering while the doctors forced me to take it. If I get a urinary tract
infection and the doctor gives me a medicine which does not cure it, does he
just make me keep taking it? No, he switches me to a different medication.
Well, I have thyroid disease and I spent a year taking a medication which
clearly did not make me better (the more I took, the worse symptoms I got). But
no one would let me take a different thyroid preparation even though there are
at least a dozen to choose from. Doctors are programmed to give patients only
synthroid no matter how poorly they respond to it.
So I began to take
Armour in a very small dose (1/2 grain) because my new doctor had never put
anyone on Armour before and did not know how much I would need. His plan was to
build me up slowly until my symptoms were fully alleviated. He assured me that
it was not OK for me to be so miserable and that he was going to heal me. I was
so happy! When I started taking Armour, I immediately felt so much better; the
depression cleared up by the second day! (the study we found showed that
patients given oral T3 quit having depression; the brain is dependent upon
serum T3; it cannot convert T4 into T3). The doctor continued to increase my
dosage slightly, looking for the right amount for me.
When I reached
1.5 grains, I crashed bad. I spent 2 whole days in bed sleeping nonstop (fortunately
that was a weekend so my husband was home to care for the children) and I
didn’t eat ANYTHING for 5 days. I could barely move. I was a wreck. My body
hurt from head to toe and I was weak as a newborn kitten. I was so depressed
and apathetic I wanted to die. My poor husband had to force-feed me my thyroid
medications. I called the doctor’s office and begged for help but all I was
offered was Prozac! That made me pretty mad; I wasn’t feeling horrible due to a
deficiency of Prozac in my bloodstream, but that’s the only help I was offered
(Just think what would have happened had I taken the Prozac; my T3 and T4
levels would have dropped even further because anti-depressants lower your
thyroid levels). And yet, as bad as I felt, I still felt better on the Armour
than I did on synthroid, believe it or not!
By mid-February
‘01 I started on 2 grains of Armour. The crash wasn’t as bad this time, but it
was there. I recovered and felt better than I had felt in 6 years---and WAY
better than I ever felt on synthroid. My skin was nearly normal; it was thin
and pliable instead of thickened and scaly and cracked. Still a little dry
though. Most of the body aches were finally alleviated, but my feet were still
very painful, especially in the morning or after I had sat for a while. I was
still having some breathing problems at night too. I was so much better; I had
a few mild symptoms but mostly I felt normal much of the time. Then my
menstrual cycle came and I spent the whole time sleeping and depressed with
cramps. Once it was over, I was better again. I felt like I was sitting on top
of a razor-thin wall. On one side of the wall was good health and the other was
the Pit of Despair and uncontrolled hypothyroidism. I was balancing on the top
with mild symptoms and the slightest thing would push me off into the Pit. My
menstrual cycle was one thing that knocked me off the wall. I felt that another
half-grain would push me over onto the side with Good Health where I could live
happily and be safely away from that horrible Pit.
I went back to
this wonderful new doctor in mid-March expecting to be given another
half-grain/day so I could finally get rid of the last of my symptoms.
Unfortunately, he could no longer help me. He had gotten in very bad trouble
with his boss for switching me from synthroid to Armour! Apparently, because I
had "normal" bloodwork and very low TSH while on synthroid, the boss
decided I was cured and no longer needed further care. Never mind the fact that
I my brain had ceased functioning, I slept all day, I was going bald, and I had
severe fibromyalgia making my existence one massive painful experience. On
synthroid my T4 had been sky-high (but still just within the normal range) and
my T3 rock-bottom (right at the bottom number of the "normal" range).
And my TSH was low. So obviously there was nothing wrong with me that a little
Prozac wouldn’t fix, right?
My new doctor
was clearly upset that he had been forced to quit treating me and I was
devastated. What was I to do now? I left his office in tears and cried for the
next 2 hours. Here I had found this wonderful doctor who was going to cure me
and now I was being shoved out of his office and forced to start all over from
scratch again. It’s only my LIFE at stake here, but who cares? What does it
matter that under-treated hypothyroidism will kill you? Just learn to deal with
it, Gail. Have some Prozac.
Well, the
experience threw me right into the pit of despair again. My symptoms came back
full blown. I ached all over, my hair fell out more, I was depressed, my skin
dried up and fell off---overnight I developed severe symptoms from head to toe.
I spent about 4 days totally miserable and barely able to function.
Once I recovered
from this latest blow, I got on the phone and called every doctor and endocrinologist
within my health care plan---even the ones located over 6 hours away. None of
them used anything except synthroid and you can bet I wasn’t going back to
THAT! Even just 2 grains of Armour had me feeling better than synthroid ever
did. That’s when I realized that I was going to start paying for my own medical
care. I visited Mary Shomon’s Top Doc list and found the nearest doctor who
prescribes Armour. His practice is 130 miles away, but I made an appointment. I
was still too unwell to drive there by myself, so my husband took a day off
from work, loaded up the kids, and drove for me.
This latest
doctor didn’t hesitate to increase my Armour. He said that I was probably
either making too much reverse T3 or had cellular resistance which was causing
me to need more oral hormone; this is caused by years of untreated
hypothyroidism. He told me to start taking another half-grain per day for a
week and if I still didn’t feel well, to go ahead and increase the dosage again
at my discretion at a rate of a half-grain per week, up to 4 grains. He warned
me to watch for heart palpitations and anxiety, signs that I was taking too
much. But otherwise, he said to monitor how I felt and take what made me feel
good. He pointed out that thousands of people die each year from ibuprofen, but
no one has died from taking Armour. And yet doctors hand out Motrin by the
truckload and refuse to prescribe Armour. Makes no sense. Especially since a
few days of hypERthyroidism won’t hurt you and is easily cured by decreasing
your dosage. It says so right there on the insert of all thyroid medications.
Meanwhile he was
going through my labwork from my previous doctors and found the 8 AM serum
cortisol test I’d been given in mid-December. The 6.7 disturbed him very much.
He immediately ordered a day-long adrenal test and explained to me that
cortisol levels start out at their highest in the morning and drop off
throughout the day because your glands rest at night. His concern was that I
might be doing all right in the morning when my glands were rested, but that I
might have poor function by the end of the day.
I did a saliva
test which measured my cortisol levels at 8 AM, noon, 4 PM, and midnight. The
Armour had done a lot to improve my health and it showed in my adrenal test.
After 2 months on Armour, the 8 AM cortisol level had come up to 11, which was
an improvement but my new doctor looks for 12-15 to optimize your health. So it
was still lower than it should be. The noon level was even worse, way down at
the bottom of the reference range. My 4 PM level was well below the reference
range, which showed that my adrenals were really struggling. And by midnight,
my body had ceased making any cortisol at all, so I wasn’t even on the chart.
This underscores
the importance of day-long adrenal tests. Any other doctor would have looked at
that 8 AM level of 11 and told me I was perfectly OK….. Clearly I was not.
The doctor
started me on a physiologic dose of 20 mg daily. I took 5 mg at each meal and 5
at bedtime. I began taking these doses as soon as I got home from his office.
That night, for the first time in years, I could breathe normally while I
slept. The next day I woke up with no pain in my feet! I hadn’t been pain-free
in many years. Over the next few days, the very last of my "thyroid" symptoms
disappeared. My husband did more research and found articles describing
hypoadrenal symptoms. Funnily enough, they turned out to be very similar to
hypothyroid symptoms…. And the two conditions go together; most hypothyroid
women are also hypoadrenal. You have to
treat both to recover your health. So maybe that one doctor was right in a way;
I did have something else wrong besides thyroid disease.
It is now May
2001 and I feel WONDERFUL. Not only have all my symptoms disappeared but I have
the energy and enthusiasm of a child. While the Armour made me feel much better
(especially when I was finally permitted to increase my dosage), the cortisol
really did the trick. On 3 grains of Armour, I thought I had gotten back to my
normal self; I felt so much better than I had felt in years and I was no longer
depressed. But once I started the cortisol, I found out what life is really
supposed to feel like again! Now that I feel so great, I remember that this is
the way I always felt when I was in college. Best of all, it has made me back
into a real mother again. Since I started the cortisol, I am once again
reveling in my wonderful children and able to play and frolic with
them---instead of just barely making it through each day with only enough
energy to cook and fold laundry.
That is my story
and I think it raises important questions. First of all, why was I not given
treatment beginning in 1995? The bloodwork clearly showed I had abnormal
thyroid conditions. My TSH was a full point above the reference range and my T3
uptake index was well below the reference range. Not only that, but my sister
was a hypothyroid patient, and family history of thyroid disease is a
well-known risk factor. However in our research we have learned that many
doctors regard hypothyroidism during a pregnancy or nursing to be
"transient" and not warranting treatment. Well how do they KNOW it is
transient? How many months or years or decades must a woman wait before they
decide it isn’t going to go away? And look at what happens to her during that
time; she is gaining weight and her cholesterol levels are skyrocketing (so she
is building up her arteries nicely), plus she is working on hypoglycemia
(untreated hypothyroidism results in diabetes and heart disease, among other
nasty things). In addition, our research has shown us that women who develop
postpartum hypothyroidism are much more likely to develop the lifelong
autoimmune disease than women who do not develop postpartum hypothyroidism. So
obviously, the fact that I clearly had the postpartum disease indicates that my
doctors should have been checking my thyroid levels and looking for antibodies
every few months, especially when I was pregnant and nursing my next two babies
over the next 5 years. But they didn’t. Instead, my symptoms were blamed on my
pregnancies; aren’t all pregnant/nursing mothers depressed and aching all over
and hair falling out and skin cracked and bleeding and so exhausted they can
barely walk? Uh, yeah, right.
I believe ALL
pregnant and nursing women should be screened for thyroid disease. Why? Because
I just read research in which they showed babies nursed by hypothyroid mothers
suffer from hypothyroidism in the first few months. Why? Because the only
hormone a nursing mother passes to her baby in her breast milk is the thyroid
hormone (which is why so many women become hypothyroid while nursing). A baby
who isn’t getting enough will be small and sleep too much, plus has a lower IQ
(this is from a double-blind study in which they tested the IQs of 5-6-yr-olds they
had followed since birth, and the thyroid condition of the mothers). Well, I am
mad. My last baby was born weighing 9#3oz and yet never grew much, so by the
time she was 4-6 months old, people in the grocery store were asking me if she
was a preemie. She also would often sleep up to 17 hours straight. And I was so
sick with hypothyroid symptoms during those months I nursed her..... In
addition, my first baby’s eyes were so sensitive to sunlight that we could
hardly take him outside. This light sensitivity is a hypothyroid symptom.... I
am very angry! What kind of long-term damage has been done to my children by
the doctor’s failure to treat my condition?
So the doctors
clearly have no idea which hypothyroidism is "transient" and which is
going to stay with you for life. My doctor who brushed me off in Jan 95 should
have checked my blood for Hashimoto’s. Not only do women with postpartum
thyroid disease often go on to develop permanent autoimmune hypothyroidism, but
their babies may be permanently damaged by their deficiency. In addition, once
a patient begins to exhibit clinical signs of hypothyroidism, her body has
already been damaged in a fashion that could be permanent. She MUST receive
treatment immediately.
Another question
this raises is the training of our doctors in thyroid disease. They are taught
that the TSH test should be used alone. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work.
Synthroid (the most commonly prescribed thyroid preparation--95% of patients
take it) will lower TSH rapidly even if the body does not convert the synthroid
into T3. So the patient has tons of synthroid (T4) coursing through her
bloodstream and thus has a healthy low TSH level—and is dying from
hypothyroidism because her body is unable to use her medication. Doctors should
be measuring patients’ T3 levels too. And let’s not forget the adrenal factor,
which, unfortunately, all the doctors are! The Physicians Desk Reference
clearly states that patients exhibiting hypothyroid symptoms should have their
adrenal function checked BEFORE the doctor administers thyroid hormone, or she
could go into an adrenal crisis (which is what happened to me in Dec ’00 and
Feb ‘01, and it nearly killed me). And yet there’s hardly a doctor on this
planet who does so. Not only does this leave the patient feeling miserable, but
it endangers her life and sets her up for an early death. Gee thanks.
Another thing:
we found a scientific study which shows that people also need the T2 that a healthy
thyroid gland produces! This study showed that some cells use T2 to produce the
enzyme which converts T4 into a useable form. So if you give a patient only T4,
not all of her cells will be able to use it. Sure, SOME of her cells will be ok
and will convert that T4 over, but she must have T2 for total health. Also, T2
is used by the cell mitochondria to produce ATP, the fuel for cells.
Another problem
we thyroid patients are having: doctors rely too much on the labwork. Doctors
have been treating thyroid disease for more than 100 years. Before we had
labwork, they would examine the patient and her symptoms and then give her
desiccated thyroid tablets , increasing the dosage until she felt good (by the
way, Armour thyroid is desiccated thyroid). However, with the advent of these
thyroid lab tests, doctors are ignoring a patient’s symptoms and looking only
at her labwork. I hold up that endocrinologist I saw last Dec as a prime
example of this: she ignored my horrific symptoms, looked at an out-of-date lab
test, proclaimed it "normal" and told me not to come back for 6
months. When I pointed out to her that the labwork was old, she said "Ok,
have them draw another and fax it to me but I don’t need to see you; we’ll just
handle your case over the phone." In other words, she had no interest in
my symptoms or how I felt. She was interested only in my labwork.
I have had 6
different doctors look only at my labs and ignore my symptoms. Or they try to
blame my symptoms on lupus or arthritis or anything else they can dream up even
though every one of my problems is clearly a thyroid deficiency—all because my
TSH test came back in "normal" ranges. Several have refused to do T3
tests so how they heck do they know if my body is using the medication at the
cellular level? They don’t! I was also told that I will ALWAYS feel yucky
because I have an incurable disease so I need to just live with it. Well, guess
what? I changed doctors and found someone who would switch me over to Armour
(which contains ALL the hormones my gland would make if it could). And you know
what? I no longer have all those horrific problems that the other doctors said
I would just have to learn to live with.
Another problem
that we seem to have is those "normal" ranges. First of all, the TSH
"normal" range is typically 0.5 to 5. For many doctors, once they get
you into that range they quit treating you no matter how awful your symptoms
are. Well, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists recently
announced that they think a TSH above 3 is a matter of concern. Think of all
those poor women who’ve had a TSH of 3.5 or 4 and been sent home as
hypochondriacs during the last 30 years….
The second thing
to consider about these "normal" ranges is that what feels good for
Janey may feel awful to Susie. These doctors are working from the standpoint
that once your blood test comes back showing that your TSH, T3, and T4 numbers
are falling anywhere within the reference range, you are ok. Well guess what?
Perhaps Janey feels really good when her T3 levels are at 1.98, but Susie feels
as though she is dying. Susie needs her personal T3 levels to be at 2.9 before
she is healthy and functioning normally. Those reference ranges should not be
used as a treatment protocol! They are there simply to give the doctor a rough
idea of why you might not be feeling well. If you feel horrible and are
depressed and your brain is in a fog and your tongue isn’t working and your T3
levels are right at the very bottom level of the reference range, the doctor
should NOT look at the lab test and say "Oh gee Susie, that is still
within the normal parameters so go home and deal with it---have some
Prozac." No, he should look at that lab test and say "gee whiz Susie!
No wonder you feel so bad! Your T3 levels are at the rock bottom edge of our
reference range! Obviously you need more T3 and would probably do much better
if YOUR T3 levels were higher."
You see, those
reference ranges don’t mean that an individual will feel wonderful any time her
bloodwork shows that she is anywhere within that range. Those reference ranges
mean that some people have good health at the lower end of the range while
others have good health at the higher end of the range and so typically your
average person is going to fall somewhere in between these two numbers. Once
the doctor draws the blood he must then go on to judge that patient as an
individual; if she is somewhere within that range it doesn’t mean she is cured.
It just means that she is getting closer to the serum level which will make her
feel her best.
There is also a
belief among today’s doctors that a person with thyroid disease is meant to
always have unalleviated symptoms of her disease. Doctors did not use to
believe that. 50 years ago when they gave patients desiccated thyroid, doses
based solely on how the patient felt, doctors were so happy to see the patients
feeling good again with all their symptoms cleared up (I own some medical
textbooks from back then and that is what they say in the sections on thyroid
disease). But today, doctors ignore the patients’ symptoms and rely strictly on
bloodwork. They quit helping the patient as soon as her bloodwork falls
somewhere in the "normal" range no matter how bad she feels.
In addition,
today’s crop of doctors has been told to treat patients only with Synthroid
rather than with natural thyroid. For 30 years now, patients have been taking
pure T4, their bodies deprived of the other 8 thyroid hormones a healthy gland
makes. These people then go on to live with hypothyroid symptoms for the rest
of their lives because they are lacking in T0, T1, T2, and T3. So it has become
a part of our medical lore that "thyroid patients never feel good!"
When really it does not have to be that way. I am proof; I am now taking a
preparation which contains all 9 thyroid hormones my body would make if it
could, and my symptoms are gone! Am I unusual? No, before the invention and
marketing of Synthroid, all women were given those 9 hormones and they felt
great.
Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome and Fibromyalgia are two diseases which are new. Funnily enough, they
came onto the scene right after Synthroid and the TSH test went into widespread
use. Most people with fibromyalgia and CFS have hypothyroidism. Joint aches and
fatigue are two of the most common hypothyroid symptoms. A few doctors are now
examining this situation and have CURED their patients’ fibromyalgia and CFS by
administering T3. Don’t forget that since the invention of the TSH test,
doctors are giving the patients just enough medication to lower TSH to less
than 5, leaving them undertreated. And remember, T3 is not present in
Synthroid.... The combination of these two truths is what has created the
diseases fibromyalgia and CFS.
Your show
reaches so many people. Hypothyroidism is a deadly disease. It will kill you. It
must be treated. Yet millions of women are undiagnosed. Millions of others have
been brushed off, the way I was in 1995 just because I’d had a baby. Millions
of others have had TSH tests showing a 3.5 or 4 or 4.5 and were sent home with
the words "Oh, that’s normal so there’s nothing wrong with you."
Millions of others are taking synthroid and are being put on anti-depressants
because their bodies are deprived of T3, even though scientific research has
shown that T3 will cure their depression. And millions of others are living
half-lives; they are being treated for their hypothyroidism but they are being
given just barely enough medication to keep them alive—but not enough to
alleviate their symptoms. What’s wrong with that, you ask? This is not just a quality
of life issue. It’s not just about wishing your hair would quit falling out.
Hypothyroidism results in heart disease, diabetes, Carpal tunnel syndrome,
tendonitis, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, PMS, infertility,
dangerously high cholesterol, severe depression (including suicidal thoughts),
obesity, heart failure, stroke, and death. So you see, this is a life-or-death
matter. Patients who are being treated for thyroid disease but who still have
symptoms are UNDERtreated. Their cholesterol levels are still building up,
their blood is clotting too easily, their pancreases do not work properly, etc.
You see, it’s not just about whether my hair and skin looks good. Undertreated
hypothyroidism is ravaging my insides too. My organs and glands—every cell in
my body—are crying out for the correct hormones and proper levels. I am at risk
for an early death.
And it’s
criminal. It doesn’t have to be this way. The doctors of the past didn’t treat
their patients like this! There is no reason at all not to give me the proper
levels of thyroid hormones. If I still have symptoms, change my medication
until we get it right! But that’s not what’s happening in our medical system
today. No, our doctors are just reading a lab test, ignoring physical symptoms
and relying strictly on a single blood test (TSH) which several doctors are now
suggesting has no basis at all in clinical reality. My endocrinologist is the
poster child for this one, folks! She even said she’d treat me over the phone
based on whatever lab results got faxed over to her!
So, should we
just be left half-alive, our bodies slowly dying from thyroid deficiency,
leaving us with diabetes and heart disease? Or should our doctors look past the
bloodwork and recognize that we are all individuals? We each have a thyroid
level which is right for us personally, and what is right for me is not
necessarily what is right for you.
And that goes
for medication too. When synthroid doesn’t work, perhaps the doctor should quit
blaming the patient and instead change her medication! What a concept.
Oprah, I think
you should do a show on this topic. You could save millions of lives.
Thanks for your
time.
Gail
Wurmstein
PS All of those
symptoms I described to you that I have experienced over the years are classic
hypothyroid symptoms, including the anemia.... I didn’t know that at the time,
but have learned about it since then in my research over the last year.