Remember what your 4th grade teacher told you about assuming things? You make an.... well, you remember.
Many people with hypothyroidism are treated by assuming that their thyroid gland is not working good enough, that is why the are overweight, losing hair, losing their memory, in pain and/or depressed. The solution is to give a little exrta hormone to help out that lazy gland.
Many people with hypothyroidism have that exact problem. Many more do not. Almost all are treated the same.
There are those that have a perfectly good thyroid gland, it's just not being stimulated to release enough hormone.
There are those that are releasing enough thyroid hormone, but the hormone isn't getting used very efficiently.
There are those that don't have enough nutritional substrate to make enough thyroid hormone.
There are those that have some sort of thyroid autoimmune disorder that can be triggered from something in the environment causing problems to the gland.
And then there are those that have a mixture of the above.
The people that are getting the best results aren't assuming, they are getting to the bottom of their problem and taking action.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Hypothyroidism: I Blame It On My Glandular Disorder
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Hypothyroidism: Cause or Effect?
The way health care is set up today, a doctor is of the mindset to find what disease is causing the person to be sick and treat the illness. You target in on the area that explains the problems and treat that. You are no longer Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you are a diabetic, a cancer patient, or a patient with a thyroid disorder.
Alternative practitioners have a slightly different viewpoint. They address the whole person as opposed to parts of the whole. This doctor feels that you can't have a problem in a single area without affecting other areas. They try to treat the person to bring them up to the optimal level of health so that their body can adjust to take care of the problem.
In a person with hypothyroidism, the most popular way to treat the problem is by giving more thyroid hormone. Many people feel better, while some may even get worse.
The flaw in this way of treatment is that it assumes that the problem lies in the thyroid's ability to produce its own thyroid hormone. It ignores the tons of literature that has demonstrated many other causes that has made a person have hypothyroidism. Missing the cause can lead to less than desirable results.
One other point to consider is the hypothryoidism a cause or effect. Most people know that people that have hypothyroidism often times struggle with weight loss. This is usually a sign that helps make the diagnosis. It should also be known that a person that is not active and gains a larger portion of body fat will often times decrease their thyroid production through multiple causes.
What about the cause and effect of taking thyroid hormone medication when your thyroid is functioning as it should? Might this have a negative effect on your thyroid? Might this have a negative effect on other body parts?
There are many that find great relief with medications, and I am not saying to get off them. My point would be to make changes in your life that will help your body help itself. Who knows, you might get to the point that you no longer need medication.
Monday, February 11, 2008
My Armour Thyroid Medication Isn't Working...Try, Try Again?
A question was posted to me if I had ever heard of symptoms of depression getting worse when a trial of Armour Thyroid medication was began. The answer is a resounding YES.
When treating hypothyroid problems, it is very important to make sure to cross all your t's and dot your i's. Before any treatment program is begun, you need to make sure you have measured the appropriate labs and test (meaning thyroid panels and others that indirectly affect the thyroid and thyroid hormone that seem to be playing a role in the case), history and a symptom survey.
If changes in labs and symptoms are favorable, then you are probably on the right trail. If things make no change or get worse, this also tells you valuable information as well.
How about an example:
You come in with normal thyroid labs, low core body temperature, depression, fatigue, unexplained weight gain and chronic pain all over. You begin taking a mix of Armour Thyroid and Synthroid and things get worse.
There are a couple ways of interpreting this pattern:
- It's not a thyroid problem.
- You made need to tweak the amount of thyroid hormone, the % of T3 and the % of T4 in the prescription, and/or change the medication to a different type
- It may not be a problem with lack of thyroid production by your body. It could either be a problem with converting enough thyroid hormone to its useful form, excess thyroid binding structures in your body (binding to already made thyroid hormone, making it useless in the body) or poor binding of thyroid hormone to its receptors.
Going back to a detailed labs, exam, history and presentation, you can piece things together better.
In this example, the normal thyroid panel may lead you to believe that maybe thyroid production is normal. Maybe giving exogenous thyroid hormone isn't the place to start.
A lowered body temperature with depression, fatigue, weight gain and pain still points to a hypothyroid problem, so don't jump ship yet.
This leaves you looking at the third interpretation as your most likely cause. This is where most people are losing their battles. If you fail to look at this as a problem of physiology (how well or poorly your body works) and not just pathology (the body isn't working because of disease), your rate of success will usually be less than optimal.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Beyond Radiation Treatment For Thyroid Cancer.
Radiation treatment for thyroid cancer can leave a person with little to no thyroid hormone production. Living the rest of their life on external intake of synthetic thyroid hormone, natural thyroid hormone or a mix of the 2 is a necessary course of a action.
Thyroid cancer can have the appearance of either hyperthyroid or hypothyroid, depending on the location, extent of damage and type of cancerous cells are present.
While medicine is currently at the state where knowing what type of cancer it is doesn't change the treatment much (cut it out or radiate it), big changes are not too far off.
In Europe there are labs that currently will look at blood and cells in a different manner. They will apply certain medications, vitamins, minerals, etc. to the cancer cell and see how well it destroys the cancer.
What does this mean? Well, we know that grape seed extract and quercetin are both excellent nutrients used for their anti-cancer properties. But what we don't really know is what is a good dose, what will it work well with, and how well will they work...and here is the most important part...for that person!!!
Doctors often treat patients by what has good results in subjects in studies. Studies are great guides, but do not correlate perfectly for you, the unique individual.
This type of lab work is a couple of years off before it will start to gain more popularity. Think of the possibilities though. The right meds, the right supplements and the right diet, all at the right dose to give you the very best chance of beating any cancer (including thyroid cancer).
But what can you do to make sure that you are in as much control of your health as possible today?
- Do things that have been proven to increase the sensitivity of the thyroid hormone receptors to the thyroid hormone itself. Specific nutritional supplements, dietary foods and lifestyle changes can all make your body more efficient at using thyroid hormones.
- Eliminate those things that have been proven to block the use of thyroid hormone on the thyroid hormone receptors. The world is filled with natural and synthetic stressors that can cause changes in the thyroid hormone receptor's ability to bind to thyroid hormone.
- Make sure that your medication protocol has either natural T3 (best alternative) or synthetic T3 in the mix. I would rather see a natural product like armour thyroid be used, since it is about 20% T3. Armour thyroid may also have other contents not yet understood that help with thyroid hormone function. Your doctor may want to mix the natural with synthetic thyroid hormone so that T3 is at a level more like it would be found in the body (some find great improvements with T3 levels at 2% and T4 at 98% of the thyroid hormone levels).
- Make anticancer changes in your life. While there are as any theories as to what causes cancer as their are doctors studying the issue, it is well excepted by almost all that you can live a life that promotes or prevents your chances of having cancer.
Stay healthy and keep your ears open. Big changes to the way we fight thyroid cancer and all other types of cancer is not too far off.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Normal TSH and Elevated TSH Means Absolutely Nothing
You read that title right...normal TSH and elevated TSH means absolutely nothing. Well, maybe I should put an * at the end of the title. That might be a little more appropriate.
TSH is a lab test that is used by many doctors to see if a person has a thyroid condition. An elevated TSH is suppose to mean that this person is not making enough thyroid hormone, while a normal TSH is suppose to mean that this person's thyroid is functioning as it should. This is not always the case.
Many doctor's use this lab test to make a diagnosis, one way or the other. All other factors are seen as insignificant and get ignored.
This is not the way to figure out if you have a thyroid condition. If it were, you could go and get the lab work done yourself and completely skip the middleman.
Your doctor was trained in how to figure out what is going on with you by collecting all the pertinent information and narrowing it down to the best fit by disproving all the other conditions. Reading a lab report that says normal TSH or elevated TSH is only one little step in this process.
An elevated TSH or normal TSH is only one piece of the puzzle and means absolutely nothing... on it's own. Have your doctor correlate this with family and personal history, past and present signs and symptoms and other pertinent diagnostic labs. You are paying him/her to correctly help you with your health, so make sure that it happens.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Top 10 Things To Consider When Treating Hormonal Problems.
Has your doctor ever admitted that regulating hormone levels is a very tricky thing to do?
Here is a list of 10 things to consider when you are dealing with treatment of high or low hormone levels:
- Lab test may show what the hormone levels are in the blood or saliva, but it does not show how much is actually being used.
- The creation of hormones is a multi-step process that requires many different substrates (which we get from our diets) in order to assemble and convert the hormone into its active form.
- Hormone levels are dependant on the environmental stresses placed on them for creating, converting and utilizing the hormone so that the body may properly respond (healthy living vs not so healthy living).
- Certain hormones act different depending on the levels of other hormones.
- Taking exogenous hormones (meds) can influence your body's natural production of the hormone.
- Taking exogenous hormones can influence the levels of other hormones.
- The majority of hormonal problems did not happen overnight. They are a problem of lifestyle choices, thereby responding to changes in lifestyle.
- Hormonal problems are not always easily identified, yet can cause a wide array of problems.
- Hormonal problems usually require multiple changes in one's life in order to make significant improvements, since multiple triggers of hormonal problems can usually be identified.
- Hormones have their say in both the nervous system and endocrine system, making these multitaskers very influential in our overall health.
Hormonal problems are classically treated by simply giving more hormones. I hope that this list has identified some problems in that way of thinking.
Changes in hormonal levels and utilization of the hormones can be addressed in ways that are directly and indirectly targeted at that hormone...which often has very impressive results.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Thyroid Problems Require Treatment Beyond More Thyroid Hormone
Let's pretend that you get to play doctor for a day. What do you think people would say is the reason for visiting you?
Some common problems are weight gain, pain, depression, fatigue, hair loss, numbness and tingling in the hands and feet, weakness, memory loss, pregnancy issues, estrogen problems, testosterone problems, high cholesterol, etc. Many of the people will come in with a couple from the above list.
Wouldn't it be great if there was one cause to all these problems? One cause, one solution.
This is the part where you are expecting the doctor who writes a blog on thyroid problems to blame all of life's woes on the thyroid. Well I'm not.
Even problems that can seem to be screaming "thyroid problems" do not end up as thyroid being the main culprit.
The way the thyroid actually works is a series of intricate steps of checks and balances that is set up in such a way to ensure that your body is functioning at a high level through very efficient means. Efficiency is absolutely necessary for survival.
If there is a breakdown in any one of these steps, if there are strong environmental influences that overloads or under stimulates one portion, if certain pathological influences dominate specific areas, or if there is some inherent genetic defect, you will have thyroid problems.
What's the point to all of this?
Thyroid problems are currently being treated by a trickle down effect. Give thyroid hormone and let it make changes on the body.
How did the thyroid problems even come to be? Shouldn't we want to get rid of anything that is causing problems on the thyroid. Maybe giving more thyroid hormone would not even be necessary if you took away the offender.
OK. Done rambling. Here is one last metaphor that will hopefully wrap things up:
If your head hurts, you can take aspirin. You could also stop banging your head on the wall.
If you have thyroid problems, you can take synthetic medications. You could also prevent thyroid problems by hunting down the offender itself.
Let's stop banging our heads against the wall and start correcting the problem.
