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.
