Metabolic Rehabilitation [Q&As are placed in reverse chronological order. In other words, the latest Q&As come first. Earlier ones are further down the page.]

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Rehabilitation: The word "rehabilitate" comes from the Medieval Latin term for "habilitate," which means "to become fit." In modern English, rehabilitation (or rehab) is use of a systematic approach to people recovering health and good function. The approach restores, salvages, or reconditions a person to a state of good health and the ability to work, play, and engage in other normal activities of life.

When I invented the term 'metabolic rehab,' I did so because it involves the same systematic work needed to enable patients with cardiovascular and musculoskeletal problems to fully recover their health.

When performed properly, people who go through metabolic rehab use systematic measurements. They take the measurements at regular intervals. The outcome of the measurements lets the people know whether their current treatment regimen is improving their metabolism. If so, the newest measurements, compared with previous ones, let them know how much they've improved. If the improvement isn't enough, they may alter their treatment regimen in a way calculated to provide more improvement.

For most people who go all the way through metabolic rehab, the systematic process gradually enables them to live free from symptoms and other health problems that afflicted them before they began rehab to improve or optimized their metabolism.

September 4, 2007
Question: I don't understand the difference between "therapy" and "rehabilitation." Do you mind explaining what you mean by rehabilitation and especially "metabolic rehabilitation"?

Dr. Lowe: You can learn some about metabolic rehab by reading the Q&As on this page. If you're interested in the history of metabolic rehab and why I named the approach "metabolic rehab," I encourage you to read a short letter of protest I wrote. My protest was about Dr. Gina Honeyman falsely claiming that she named this clinical approach, after I taught it to her.

I regret that I had to show that Dr. Honeyman's claims was false.  My attorney told me, however, that if I didn't publicly protest her false claim, I'd forfeit certain privileges involving intellectual rights. At any rate, I wrote an excoriation of Dr. Honeyman's absurdly false claim. In it, I explained a good bit about how I, with the agreement of my colleagues at the time (long before I ever met Dr. Honeyman!) selected the term metabolic rehab for my clinical method.

To my knowledge, Dr. Honeyman has never withdrawn her false claim, nor has she publicly apologized for misleading clinicians, patients, and others about the true origin of the term metabolic rehabilitation.

 

June 14, 2002
Question: I’ve found your website very helpful, but I’m not clear on one point. You have a lot of information on fibromyalgia on the website, but is metabolic rehab useful for patients with other diagnoses, such as hypothyroidism?

Dr. Lowe: Fibromyalgia is little more than a pattern of symptoms (widespread pain and tenderness) of some patients who have either hypothyroidism or thyroid hormone resistance. Most patients’ fibromyalgia symptoms, however, are compounded and complicated by other factors that slow their metabolism. The most common of these other factors are low physical fitness, poor diet, multiple nutritional deficiencies, and the use of one or more metabolism-impairing medications.

Other patients'—those who don’t have the fibromyalgia symptom pattern—have major complaints other than widespread pain and tenderness. The diagnoses doctors give the patients usually depend on the major symptom. For example, if a patient’s major symptom is fatigue, she’s likely to get the diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. Other major symptoms that can lead to different diagnoses include depression unrelated to life events, menstrual abnormalities, high cholesterol, dry skin and mucous membranes, and the list goes on and on. Most of these patients’ symptoms are compounded by the same metabolism-impeding factors that worsen fibromyalgia patients’ symptoms.

What determines a patient's major symptom is the particular body tissues most sensitive to the combination of metabolism-impairing factors impinging on the patient. But despite the patient’s diagnosis, metabolic rehab is appropriate. This is true because of the aims of metabolic rehab—to identify and eliminate all factors impairing the individual patient’s metabolism, thereby enabling him or her to fully recover metabolic health. So, we treat not only patients with the fibromyalgia pattern of symptoms, but also those with a wide range of other major symptoms.

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If your doctor won't order the lab tests you want, order the tests yourself. Order any lab test you want at discounted fees through our arrangement with Direct Labs. Fees for thyroid tests are markedly low. The low fees apply to the TSH, T3, T4, and thyroid peroxidase and thyroglobulin antibodies. Just click below and read the easy-to-follow instructions. www.directlabs.com/drlowe

 

Our Educational Consulting Service We provide educational consulting to both patients and clinicians. Phone us at 603-391-6061, or preferably, write to us at  Tammy@drlowe.com. Our fax number is 303-496-6200. —Tammy Lowe

 

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May 16, 2000
Question: I've had fibromyalgia for ten years now. My doctor has let me try several treatments that didn't work, including amitriptyline, guaifenesin, and other medications. She also recently let me try a brand of T3 called Cytomel. She knows you use large amounts, so when I didn't improve after a week with the 50 mcg she started me on, she let me increase the dose to 100 mcg. After three days, I had tremors, was anxious, and was sweating profusely. These reactions frightened me, so I stopped taking the Cytomel. My doctor thinks that your treatment is not for me. Since your protocol didn't work for me, what alternative fibromyalgia treatments do you recommend?

Dr. Lowe: Several time each week, I receive the same question from other patients. Each has the mistaken impression that she's tried our treatment protocol. But she hasn't. Let me say emphatically: Our treatment protocol is not merely taking T3.  Instead, it’s a comprehensive metabolic rehab process. Fine tweaking all along the therapeutic way is critical to patients improving or recovering. With each patient, we strive to paint a metabolic masterpiece, and we can't succeed by headlong splattering of T3 on the patient's canvas.

During the process of metabolic rehab, we guide the patient to improvement or recovery based on frequent feedback from her. The feedback doesn't simply involve her telling us at intervals how she’s feeling. Certainly, we calculate into our therapeutic decisions the patient's subjective feelings in response to the treatment. But we also regularly use objective measures of the patient's tissue responses to treatment. We post the scores from the measures to line graphs. Then we study the graphs to learn what we must strategically do to guide the patient on toward recovery. Based on the patient's subject feelings, our observations, and the objective measures, we make revised decisions each step of the way.

So, in answer to your question, I do recommend an alternative to what you tried before—I recommend that you properly go through metabolic rehab. Your physician and you can intelligently approach your treatment by obtaining copies of my book, The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia. Both of you should carefully study the sections on diagnosis and treatment. Then you should start your treatment over, this time doing it according to the method that our studies have shown to be highly effective and safe. If your physician and you decide to use this informed approach, I'll be happy to answer any questions that come up during your treatment. I wish you the best of luck.

 

March 15, 1998
Question: Hello. My doctor and I find your T3 therapy interesting. We would like to know the name (brand name) and dosage for this therapy. He has started me on Armour thyroid 0.25 gr (15mg) tab 1 p.o. daily. Is this the right medicine, and is it the right dosage? Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Dr. Lowe: I am pleased that you and your physician are interested in our treatment protocol. For information on the approximate proper dosage of desiccated thyroid, I suggest you read my answer on February 15, 1998 to a similar question.

I would urge you to keep in mind, however, that our protocol does not merely consist of taking thyroid hormone. Thyroid hormone is necessary for most patients to improve or recover (albeit unnecessary for some). In general, though, taking the hormone is not sufficient for a patient to significantly improve or overcome her fibromyalgia. Producing the necessary sustained increase in your metabolism—and especially fine-tuning that increase—involves  considerably more. The indispensable ingredients include a wholesome diet and nutritional supplementation. Also, you'll have to exercise to tolerance. Many patients, however, are hardly able to exercise before beginning thyroid hormone therapy and nutritional supplementation. After beginning, they find that their capacity for exercise increases. (Of course, to detect increased capacity, you must be doing some amount of baseline activity to start with. This will give you a gauge by which to compare increases in capacity as the thyroid hormone and nutrients help to encourage those increases.)

By baseline activity, I do not mean activity that is so vigorous as to exacerbate your fibromyalgia symptoms. The intensity of your baseline activities should be below the level that would worsen your symptoms. As you find that your capacity for exercise is increasing, it is mandatory that you take advantage of that increase. The way to do that is to slowly increase your exercise intensity and frequency as your tolerance increases. And remember that throughout this process, you should be careful not to overextend yourself.

Once your symptoms have subsided, you should be able to increase the intensity and/or amount of your exercise more easily. And in doing so, you should suffer nothing more than perhaps some temporary, post-exercise soreness—soreness that would be considered normal for anyone who is increasing her exercise intensity. (You'll find additional information on our full treatment protocol in the section title "Is Treatment Available?")

When patients and their clinicians use our protocol properly, many of the patients markedly improve or completely recover from their fibromyalgia symptoms. I wish you the best in becoming one of these individuals. (Read a more detailed description of our metabolic rehabilitation and our description of what is necessary for a successful treatment outcome.)