About Dr. John C. Lowe---fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, thyroid hormone resistance

Director of Research: Fibromyalgia Research Foundation
Editor-in-Chief: Thyroid Science (ThyroidScience.com)
American Academy of Pain Management (Ret)

Dr. John C. Lowe is a fibromyalgia, thyroid, and metabolism researcher. As Director of Research for the Fibromyalgia Research Foundation, he has spearheaded the scientific study of two related topics: the metabolic causes of fibromyalgia, and the relief of fibromyalgia symptoms through the treatment approach he developed and named "metabolic rehabilitation." He and his research team determined that the two main

underlying causes of the documented symptoms and objective features of fibromyalgia are hypothyroidism and/or peripheral thyroid hormone resistance. He is author of the internationally acclaimed book The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia. The book, considered by many to be the most important document every published on fibromyalgia. At the same time, the book comprehensively covers the basic and clinical thyroidology.

In addition to conducting studies, Dr. Lowe also provides long-distance educational consulting for clinicians, fibromyalgia patients, and other patients with hypothyroidism or thyroid hormone resistance.

Biography: Dr. Lowe holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in research-oriented general psychology from the University of West Florida. He also holds a B.S. degree in human biology and a doctorate in chiropractic from the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, now the Southern California University of Health Sciences. He formerly taught psychology at the Miami Dade Community College and was a faculty member in the Clinical Sciences Division of the Texas Chiropractic College.

He has authored more than 160 articles, scientific papers, and book chapters. His writings have appeared many journals, including Psychological Reports; Medical Science Monitor; the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry; the American Journal of Pain Management; Anabolism—A Journal of Preventive Medicine; Medical Hypotheses; Lyon Méditerranée Médical: Médecine du Sud-Est; the British Medical Journal; the Journal of Myofascial Therapy; the Clinical Bulletin of Myofascial Therapy; the Massage Therapy Journal; the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association; and Thyroid Science. Trade papers such as Dynamic Chiropractic, the Chiropractic Journal, and others have published articles and monthly columns by Dr. Lowe.

The authors of at least twenty-three books have cited or described Dr. Lowe's work. Among his own published books are Spasm, Your Guide to Metabolic Health, and The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia. Study Sphere gave Dr. Lowe its Excellence Award for his chapter in The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia in which he shows that fibromyalgia is not a psychiatric disorder. In the chapter, he refutes the notion that fibromyalgia is a mental or emotional disorder. He also argues that the misdiagnosis is usually a product of the psychological disturbance of physicians who make the misdiagnosis.

In 1977, the American Chiropractic Association awarded Dr. Lowe its Annual Scientific Paper Award. In 1992, for his contributions to the field of myofascial therapy, the National Association of Myofascial Trigger Point Therapists appointed him an honorary lifetime member. In September 2004, he became an official scientific reviewer on the International Reviewers' Panel of Medical Science Monitor. The Monitor is an international journal for experimental and clinical research. As a reviewer, he does critical reviews of submitted research papers in the fields of hypothyroidism and thyroid hormone resistance.

Dr. Lowe is a member of the Board of Medical Advisors of Thyroid UK, and is a member of Index Copernicus Scientists, a global information networking system for scientists. He is Editor-in-Chief of the open-access journal Thyroid Science (www.ThyroidScience.com), which publishes papers on the full range of topics in thyroidology. He formerly served on the Advisory Board of Inside Texas Running Magazine and the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies. He is a former editor of the Journal of Myofascial Therapy and the Clinical Bulletin of Myofascial Therapy.

The 62nd edition of the premier biographical source Marquis Who's Who in American was published in 2008. (For a history and description and Marquis, and its committee's process of selecting individuals to include, see Wikipedia's article on Marquis.) Dr. Lowe was selected by the Marquis committee to be included. Marquis, which began publication in 1899, chronicles the lives and careers of men and women their committee considers noteworthy Americans. (Dr. Lowe's comments on his inclusion in Marquis.)

Marriages: Before he married Tammy Lewis, Dr. Lowe had said on this webpage that his marriages had been best exemplified by a song of the Allman Brothers' Band. However, yesterday, June 8th, 2009, he said: "Today, Tammy and I received another email from someone courteously asking whether that song refers to our marriage. The answer is a resounding no! I should have clarified that on the webpage long ago."

"Tammy's and my relationship," he said, "was so good before we married that I was afraid to do it; I didn't want to risk the pressures of life together within marriage spoiling what we had. That misgiving was entirely wrong. What seemed the best of all possible relationships for me has, since we married, steadily grown into even more. She slipped through my fingers more than twenty years ago, but after she and I reunited again after some 18 years, I wasn't about to make that mistake again. Marriage to Tammy has made my life better than I ever imagined it could be. I cherish her and our marriage more than I can find words to express, and it's all the better because of our beautiful daughter, Michele, whom we had in 1984. This assessment of our marriage is especially noteworthy in that we've long passed the time that the newness typically wears off."

"I know that as human beings, we're all fallible," Dr. Lowe said. "Because we are, I accept in stride the mistakes I've made in life and their punitive consequences—that is, all but one mistake: not having talked Tammy into marrying me all those years ago. But it's a mistake now joyfully rectified."

Underpinnings of Dr. Lowe's Work: Underpinning Dr. Lowe's work are his two main intellectual interests: (1) theoretical-deductive science, which enables one to make the best possible sense of study findings in a research field; and (2) symbolic (mathematical) logic, the discipline one uses to determine the validity or invalidity of his own and others' conclusions and arguments.

Dr. Lowe is a devout critical rationalist. This means that he subscribes to the hypothesis (proposed by Sir Karl Popper and articulated by David Miller and others) that the ultimate job of logical, scientific thinkers is to formulate bold hypotheses, and rigorously try to falsify them. The reason for falsifying the hypotheses is to eliminate errors in them and perhaps the entire hypotheses. Free of at least some of their errors, ideas, beliefs, hypotheses, and theories may become more accurate representations of truth, which is correspondence with truth. If eliminating errors makes it obvious that an idea, belief, hypothesis, or theory is entirely false, then we can—having learned from the falsification—replace it with one that is hopefully more accurate.

He is also an active critical analyst. This means that he logically analyzes his own thinking and beliefs and those of others to learn whether or not these are accurate and rational. In recent years, drug and medical device corporations have largely co-opted medical research, the medical profession and its institutions, medical practice guidelines committees, and the US Congress. These corporations have essentially turned all of these groups, to varying degrees, into marketing tools for the products of the corporations. This phenomenon is the basis of the statement that the major motive behind science today is economics rather than curiosity and problem solving. This corruption of science has brought about a necessity for patients and clinicians to protect themselves from marketing disguised as scientific findings. Through critical analyses, Dr. Lowe is exposing such marketing disguised as science in the fields of fibromyalgia and thyroidology.

Examples of Dr. Lowe's critical analyses are his critiques of the T4 vs T4/T3 studies; the false and potentially harmful beliefs of the self-proclaimed "real thyroid expert," Dr. Richard Guttler the British Thyroid Associations presentation of selective and false evidence in advocating T4 replacement over treatment with desiccated thyroid; and Dr. Guttler's false claims about natural desiccated thyroid.

History: Dr. Lowe began using myofascial therapy in 1980 under the tutelage of the late chiropractic radiologist and clinician David Ramby, D.C. For years, Dr. Lowe's main clinical focus was patients' chronically tense muscles, fascial adhesions, and myofascial trigger points. To help these patients, he used a broad-spectrum therapeutic approach. It included soft tissue manipulative techniques, Travell and Simons's stretch and spray, clinical nutrition, and various physical therapy modalities, especially ultrasound. After studying "perpetuating factors" (factors that make myofascial patients treatment resistant) as described by Drs. Janet Travell and David Simons (especially in the 1st edition of their famous Trigger Point Manual published in 1983), he began tenaciously studying biochemical abnormalities that render some patients resistant to otherwise effective myofascial therapy.

While studying the role of thyroid hormone deficiency in treatment resistance of myofascial pain syndromes, Dr. Lowe found that hypothyroid fibromyalgia patients usually recover from their fibromyalgia symptoms when treated in one or both of two ways: (1) a thyroid hormone dosage greater than a replacement dose (the amount needed to keep the TSH level within the dubious "normal" range), and (2) with desiccated thyroid or T3 rather than the customarily prescribed T4 (thyroxin). He also found that most fibromyalgia patients who aren't hypothyroid also improve or recover without overstimulation when treated with fairly high dosages of plain as opposed to sustain-release T3. These patients can be said to be partially resistant to thyroid hormone.

In 1995, one of Dr. Lowe's patients who had recovered from her fibromyalgia symptoms through his metabolic approach convinced him to established the Fibromyalgia Research Foundation (FRF). The three purposes of this 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization are to: (1) support scientific studies of the metabolic treatment of fibromyalgia patients; (2) determine the underlying molecular mechanisms of fibromyalgia; and (3) educate fibromyalgia patients, clinicians, researchers, and the general public about the findings of FRF-sponsored research.

FRF's charter requires the organization both conduct and publish research and educate patients, clinicians, other researchers, and the general public about fibromyalgia. Complying with this requirement, Dr. Lowe has remained vocal about what his research group determined to the ultimate creator of what we call fibromyalgia. That ultimate creator is T4 replacement therapy. The therapy is so mistakenly conceived and clinically ineffective that since the early 1970s, when it first imposed on thyroid patients, a range of mysterious new diseases have been reported. Published research shows that the plausible mechanism most of these conditions is too little thyroid hormone regulation.

In 2006, Dr. Lowe published the first two studies that showed that on average, female fibromyalgia patients had resting metabolic rates about 30% below normal. fibromyalgia patients. In two studies published in 2006 (for the publishes study report, see Medical Science Monitor [scroll down to "Clinical Research"] and Thyroid Science). The studies also showed that fibromyalgia patients had significantly lower basal body temperatures than those of healthy controls. In two ways, results of these studies vindicate Dr. Lowe's hypothesis of fibromyalgia in two ways: (1) the studied found that fibromyalgia patients are hypometabolic, and (2) that the most likely mechanism of the patients' symptoms is too little thyroid hormone regulation.

Dr. Lowe has also determined that some 90% of fibromyalgia patients have thyroid disease. The thyroid diseases include primary hypothyroidism, central hypothyroidism, and partial peripheral cellular resistance to thyroid hormone. Most hypothyroid patients fully recover when they undergo the metabolic rehabilitation using natural desiccated thyroid or T3 alone. And most fibromyalgia patients with thyroid hormone resistance markedly improve or fully recover when they go through metabolic rehab and use T3.

Dr. Lowe is firm that he has determined the underlying mechanisms of most patients' fibromyalgia. Peter Warmingham of Thyroid UK pointed this out in 2002 in his article titled "Fibromyalgia has been solved" (Fibro Focus Supporter, 3:1-3, 2002). Dr. Lowe repeated Mr. Warmingham's announcement on August 19, 2005 in Sugarland, Texas at the Functional Endocrinology Symposium (sponsored by the Professional Compounding Companies of America), and he reiterated it on May 25, 2007 at the endocrinology symposium of the Institute for Functional Medicine in Tucson, Arizona. Overwhelming scientific evidence supports Mr. Warmingham's and Dr. Lowe's announcements.

Index Copernicus Scientists: In December 2005, Dr. Lowe became a member of Index Copernicus Scientists upon invitation from its CEO Mark R. Graczynski, MD, PhD. Index Copernicus Scientists is a global information networking system for scientists, designed by and for scientists.

According to Dr. Graczynski, “The aim of this web-based communication platform is to offer a set of essential tools to encourage the effective exchange of information between scientists worldwide as well as to promote and initiate international research collaboration.” He also notes, “The system encourages the effective exchange of information between scientists worldwide as well as to promote and initiate international research collaboration.”

Dr. Lowe's line of metabolism research over the last twenty years led to two significant outcomes: First was the solution to the problem of fibromyalgia, showing that its main underlying mechanism is too little thyroid hormone regulation, often complicated by nutritional deficiencies, low physical fitness, an unwholesome diet, blood sugar dysregulation, and the use of metabolism-impeding drugs; second was his creation and coining of “metabolic rehabilitation,” a high-precision, data-driven clinical approach for helping patients to improve or recover. His hope is that his interaction within the community of international scientists through Index Copernicus Scientists will lead to researchers in other countries becoming involved in the line of metabolic research he began and continues.

Dr. Lowe's Curriculum Vitae