No More Begging and Pleading Dr. John C. Lowe I received the question below at AskDrLowe@drlowe.com yesterday. Since I wrote my answer to the woman's questions, I've had to control the outrage that I must quash inside myself every day. It wells up from my awareness of the misery hypothyroid patients suffer from the commercially-driven dictates of the endocrinology specialty (dictates that the specialty euphemistically calls "practice guidelines").At the same time, I've felt a mixture of other emotions from my memory of conversations with many practicing clinicians. They've admitted to me that they know the specialty's dictates harm patients, but they comply with the dictates from fear of retaliation from the endocrinology specialty through medical regulatory boards. I feel especially outraged over the suffering of British patients from the recent diagnostic and treatment recommendations of the British Thyroid Association and the Royal College of Physicians. I say "especially outraged" because I fully expect that the recommendations will cause even more widespread suffering than already afflicts so many British hypothyroid patients. As I reflect back over my years of clinical practice, I see countless faces of hypothyroid patients. Most of the patients had long suffered due to the endocrinology specialty's dictates. Many of their faces were wet with tears, others were clinched tight from anger, and still others were weary or despondent from the dismal days-and-nights the dictates had caused them to suffer through. And I can never stop thinking about all the people yet to become hypothyroid, many of whose lives those dictates will spoil, outright ruin, or bring to a premature end. I know some clinicians who courageously violate the specialty's dictates. By doing so, they get many hypothyroid patients well. But those few clinicians practice medicine in constant danger of local endocrinologists filing complaints against them with medical regulatory boards. The complaints most often cite the clinicians for suppressing patients' TSH levels. Only if a hypothyroid patient has had thyroid cancer does the endocrinology specialty approve suppressing his or her TSH, allowing the benefits that come from it, such as a longer life, improved health, and an improved sense of well-being. But if a patient hasn't had cancer and suppresses his or her TSH with thyroid hormone, the increased life span, better health, and improved well-being, according to the specialty, must be "placebo effects." And the specialty warns that the price the patient is likely to pay for enjoying those "placebo effects" is osteoporosis, adrenal crisis, or sudden death from a heart attack. No endocrinologist I've ever asked has explained to me why these adverse effects don't befall thyroid cancer patients who live for decades with suppressed TSH levels. But feeling justified in "protecting" the noncancer patients from their TSH-suppressing clinicians, some endocrinologists send complaints to regulatory boards, and woe betide the cited clinicians. For hypothyroid patients and their TSH-suppressing clinicians, the circumstance isn't improving but is getting worse. Because of that, I've come to believe that a particular route is best for many of these patients to take. If they don't have collaborative, dictate-violating clinicians to help them get well, the next best route to follow—rather than allowing the dictates to keep them sick—is to turn away from conventional medicine and educate and treat themselves. Fortunately, in the U.S., hypothyroid patients are at liberty to do this, at least for the time being. They can do it thanks to the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. That Act allows access by personal choice to effective medications classified as "dietary supplements" rather than FDA-regulated drugs. Patients don't need prescriptions to use dietary supplements; all they need is the knowledge of how to properly use them and the gumption to turn away from big pharma's drugs and put the dietary supplements to use. For anyone who benefits from the information I include here, I ask only one thing in return: that you be ever vigilant for what, at the root, are big pharma-prompted attacks on the 1994 Act. And when one is under way, take prompt action by letting your legislators know that you demand the health freedoms the Act ensures. We'll let you know at drlowe.com when the Act is under attack, and we'll be grateful for your steadfast and repeated defense of it along with ours. Now . . . here's the email inquiry I mentioned at the start that set off all these thoughts, and my response to the person's questions.
Question: I have Hashimoto's and was feeling like a new human being on 2
grains of Nature-Throid. I'd never felt as good before in my life. Then, last month I went
in for my regular visit to my family doctor and she checked my thyroid.
Her nurse called a week later and said my TSH was too low and I was
overstimulated, and she made me drop my dose from 2 to 1 grain. I
did, and for the last week, I've felt like a slug again. I'm depressed and
constipated,
and I'm freezing and wearing a sweater while everybody else is in T-shirts,
bare feet, and flip-flops. I called and told the nurse that I had felt great on 2 grains and that I did not
feel overstimulated at all. I also told her how awful I've felt since
dropping my dose to 1 grain. She put me on hold, and when she came back,
I was shocked at what she said. She told me the doctor said I'm better off feeling awful than
getting bone fractures or a heart attack from too much thyroid. Are those really
my only two choices, feeling awful or dying from a heart attack? Do I
have to beg and plead to use enough thyroid hormone to feel well, like I
did on 2 grains of Nature-Throid?
Properly treating yourself
for hypothyroidism is basically this: treating yourself as most doctors
treated hypothyroid patients before the mid-1970s. After that time, the
endocrinology specialty came more-and-more to promote the use of the TSH,
as corporations made vast fortunes off the test and shared the profits
with the specialty. Nowadays, when it comes to diagnosing and treating hypothyroidism,
an implicit motto indelibly stains the collective brain of the endocrinology specialty.
That motto is, "The TSH and the TSH alone
in the service of health . . . and, as a side benefit, power and profit!"
The specialty imposes this motto on other clinicians through its
"practice guidelines," actually dictates imposed at the expense
of your health and that of millions of other hypothyroid patients. But
you don't have to let this institutional falsehood (that the TSH is the
test of choice) harm you any longer.
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Our Services I f you want to discuss the services we provide, please contact me. You can reach me by email at Tammy@drlowe.com or by phone at 603-391-6061.Dr. John C. Lowe, PLLC © 2009 John C. Lowe, MA, DC, DAAPM. All rights reserved. This email newsletter may be copied and distributed subject to three conditions: (1) All text within the full document or any section copied must be copied without modification with all pages included. (2) All copies must contain the following copyright notice: "© 2009 John C. Lowe." (3) Neither this full document nor any section of it may be published or distributed for profit. |
