Hypothyroidism: Is It Possible or Probable? Part 1

So, you think you have hypothyroidism? You feel sluggish, you can't drop that body fat, your joints ache, your hair is thinning and you're depressed and anxious. You almost hope that you have a thyroid problem so you can get a quick fix.

You cruise by your trusted doctor to see what s/he thinks...could it "possibly" be hypothyroidism? A better question would be is it "probable" that you have hypothyroidism.

Before hearing the verdict, it is best to know how your doctor thinks so you know how to interpret their interpretation of their physical, history and lab testing.

Doctors think in terms of possibilities and probabilities and they get their numbers to make certain calls from research articles (and their own experience). If an article claims that 80% of the subjects demonstrated X if Y happened, that gives doctors a pretty good sign to tell someone that it is probable that X is there because Y happened (as long it was a well performed study, with a significant amount of participants, variables controlled, replicated several times in other research studies and the authors had no financial gain to have an outcome one way or the other...so see if a drug company is paying for the study or not).

If the study had less than 50% of the participants demonstrating X if Y happened, then the doctor will say that there is a possibility that you have X because Y happened.

So how good are doctors at statistics? The studies done on how good a doctor is at understanding the statistics of a research paper shows that they score very, very poor. But aren't research papers the very place where doctors learn when to make a correct diagnosis?

Oops.

While the general public might not know this, drug companies certainly do. They have been known to stop research that does not have favorable outcomes for them, as well as play games with the numbers to make it look better than it really is. Do you think the doctor would read the 20 pages of statistical data or the 2 paragraph conclusion at the end that has whatever the author wants to pull out of the numbers as s/he wants? This is called trolling, since the author goes trolling through the numbers to pick out what they want.

So how can you and your doctor do better than just guessing? By collecting and comparing all the pertinent information and making a good clinical judgment. This means not just running labs and relying on them as the end all be all. Doctors should get a full history, perform a full exam, and then order test to help fill in the blanks. You should be documenting changes that you noticed before, during and after treatment to relay back to the doctor.

This way any judgments that are going to be made on possibilities and/or probabilities will be compared to other pertinent findings, making them more accurate.

In Part 2 of Hypothyroidism: Is It Possible or Probable, I will clear this up a little better.

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