Do you know when blood tests for thyroid levels were introduced? I had what was labelled a break down in the mid 196Os.

[maggiew]

I got diagnosed in my mid 50s when I learnt more about the symptoms of hypothyroidism, depression,tiredness, heavy periods migraines etc

[shaws Administrator]

The TSH was introduced in the 1960's and from then on I believe many people were misdiagnosed due to not taking clinical symptoms into consideration. Lots of people have been treated for the symptom instead of being given thyroid hormones. Many of these were diagnosed with a mental condition or one three new diseases. which were eventually named - ME, fibroymyalgia and chronic fatigue.

Dr Peatfield and Dr Skinner are two UK doctors who treated diagnosed and treated patients as they were taught as medical students. The result was that Dr Peatfield resigned from Medical Practice due to the stress of appearing before the GMC. Dr S has had similar treatment but has not given up as yet.

Dr Derry of Canada is like these two doctors and was eventually forced to resign last year. You cannot go against the Establishment.

thyroid.about.com/od/thyroi...

[Marz]

...think the TSH test came into being in the early 70's - as quoted in - Stop the Thyroid Madness....At the same time synthetic T4 was shouted about from the rooftops and the NDT criticised for being unstable. We often read about the FDA being on the payroll of big Pharma in the States - just wonder how it works in the rest of the world ??

[helvella Administrator Thyroid UK]

Early testing was very different to current day testing. For example:

Determination of thyroidal plasma iodide clearance as a routine diagnostic test of thyroid function.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/148... 1951

Some of the early testing relied on total protein bound blood iodine - which can be very misleading.

There was also a preponderance of tests based on radio-active iodine.

Clinical value of the TSH test in the diagnosis of thyroid diseases. 1955

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/132...

A test of thyroid and pituitary function using thyrotrophin. 1958

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/135...

As these were papers rather than widespread clinical use, the answer wound have to be "after" those dates.

Rod

[rosetrees]

Thanks for starting this thread. This is information I'd been wondering about. What I don't understand is WHY the pharmaceutical companies and hence most medical bodies across the world, refuse to acknowledge the thyroid/adrenal connection and so have invented ME and reclassified CFS and Fibromyalgia as illnesses in their own right. These "illnesses" are undiagnosable (no tests) and untreatable (no profit for Big Pharma).

Whereas a proper diagnosis, involving extensive testing, and proper treatment would surely bring more profit for Big Pharma. Patients could be prescribed not only T4 but T3, possibly a range of combined T4/T3 pills along, perhaps, with a pill containing supporting vitamins and minerals, and adrenal patients could be prescribed hydrocortisone and other associated drugs. Goodness, an enterprising pharmaceutical company could even produce NDT and Adrenal extract. Imagine????

Surely everyone is losing out. Patients are ill. Children are losing their childhoods (as far as I'm concerned any doctor diagnosing ME in a child should be summarily shot). Adults are unable to work and on benefits. Severely ill patients need home carers and support. Surely the financial cost of all this is far greater than correct diagnosis and treatment? Surely the pharmaceutical companies are losing out here?

Who gains? Someone, somewhere must be. The only lobby that I can think of that gains is the psychiatric lobby. I know they are powerful, but are they that powerful? Why DO the GMC strike of anyone that helps and thus shows up everyone else? Why not come out all guns blazing, train doctors properly, and blow their trumpet about how clever they are and how we are the first country to effectively treat these conditions and get patients back to work?

Oh no. Another rant.

[wall in reply to rosetrees]

Well spoken and so tue !!!well done for you !!

Those that are good like, Dr Gorden Skinner who has helped and still doing so many with thyroid problems ..they are always trying to put him down ..get him struck off ......poor man has been before BMC several times .....why not address this very urgent illness so many thousands suffer from young and older ..lives a misery.... instead of putting it off because they disagree with each other ....or do not understand it >>>????????????????

[Angel_of_the_North]

I think anti-depressants are very lucrative, plus pain killers for your joints etc. And there aren't enough jobs to go round, so ...

[beaton]

Thanks for this thread and all the comments so far. I have an under-active thyroid diagnosed a few years ago. I have learnt a lot from this site which has made me realize people I know, who have been diagnosed with M.E. have the same symptoms. One friend is on 150 mcg. Levo. I think (and I am sorry if I offend.) that these people get a lot more help and benefits,so why should they want to be told it is "only" their thyroid.

[Kangagirl in reply to beaton]

I became ill in 1972 after a 'flu-like virus' (acute continuous nausea, lost 3 stones in weight, crippling anxiety, extreme fatigue, off work for over a year, 'diagnosed' as Anorexia although it wasn't that at all). Nobody seemed to know what was wrong or gave a rats, including the psychiatric quacks whom I was continually off-loaded onto. I did have a whole battery of tests but nothing was ever found - or nothing that I heard about. I was only 23 at the time and in those days you didn't think about asking to see results, you were only too relieved to hear you didn't have something awful - although of course it WAS awful, whatever it was. Even if apparently 'all in the mind'. Ha ha.

It was actually a great relief to me when in 2005 a GP at last questioned the Anorexia label which I had been lumbered with for so long and said he thought I had ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - which I had worked out for myself years before but nobody wanted to know. Perhaps it was another label, but at least one that carried slightly less of a stigma, not because there was any cure, or more help or benefits. When I was on Incapacity Benefit, (before being declared permanently medically unfit in 1984), it was in the days when you first had to be off sick for 28 weeks straight, and had to have a GP's sicknote every two weeks.

So nobody was actually falling over themselves to shower you with benefits, you had to be genuinely ill, and for a considerable time. I did keep going back to work as soon as I felt any better - but had to give up in the end.

I don't know if I was ever tested for underactive thyroid - I didn't have any of the other symptoms, only fatigue, and if I overdid things or was under stress for a long time, a relapse of the CFS would bring about the long term nausea, loss of weight, long periods off work and all the rest. Calling it Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is in fact a huge understatement because there is so much more to it than fatigue. That's the only argument I've got with the diagnosis or the name.

I was only diagnosed HypoT in 2000, by accident really, (still had none of the recognised symptoms except fatigue at the time, though I have the whole lot now) - and I have actually had a lot more fuss and attention (sometimes unwelcome) made about it since that diagnosis than I ever had when I 'only' had CFS. And there is also the point that I didn't get free prescriptions when I only had CFS, whereas with HypoT I do. Not that I wouldn't far, far rather be well and pay for my prescriptions if needed. I just wanted to make the point that if benefits are a concern, you are better off with HypoT than CFS.

Perhaps people who get diagnosed with ME or CFS NOW get lots of care and help, but I certainly didn't. I battled for years, didn't have any help or care, and basically had to work out my own regime of treatment, what foods and chemicals made me ill when they hadn't before that first virus, how much I could do without causing a relapse, how to deal with the anxiety and panic attacks, how to try to come to terms with day to day life being so erratic and not being able to do what I could before, etc.

A great many people who are HypoT seem to be utterly insulted if anybody even mentions ME or CFS, I'm not sure why. I have found that being HypoT greatly complicates and worsens ME/CFS - and vice versa, but why shouldn't the two conditions exist side by side? There is no doubt that both can and do make life hell, and I would never dream of saying that somebody 'only' had HypoT, any more than I would say they 'only' had ME or CFS. Does the supposed non-existence of ME or CFS make the work of people like Dr Myhill a lot of nonsense or quackery then?

I don't wish to cause offence either, but I believe it is perfectly possible to suffer from ME/CFS or HpoT, or both. In my case it was quite the opposite of what beaton says - I have had a lot more fuss and supposed treatment - (although as I say not always correct or welcome, and often a battle) - than I ever did when I was one of 'those people' who 'only' had ME or CFS, when I was ignored or told it was all in the mind for over 20 years.

Just my personal experience, others may have found it to be different.

[beaton in reply to Kangagirl]

Hi kangagirl,what a well written post

As I said I have no intention of causing offence.Where you ever tested or was it suggested that your thyroid was a problem in the beginning?

As I said I have two friends with M.E. One who is the same age as me and I have known her for years,we are very close. I have had an under-active thyroid for years. Like you I had a flu like illness (1979) which was the start of my poor health.I battled on working and bringing up my family until 2010. My friend had the same flu at the same time. Her GP diagnosed M.E. and was instantly put on sick benefit,even though she was not working. Yes she had to get sick notes but she also got a home help as it was then,who cleaned cooked and did personal care. This friend is still getting help twice a day,she is now retired. My friend was sent to see see specialists and give prescriptions,even liquid foods for cancer patients.She has never been tested for thyroid.

Like I said no offence intended. Each case is different.

I wish you well.x

[Kangagirl in reply to beaton]

Hi beaton - I don't know if I was ever tested for thyroid at the beginning. I had a lot of tests, mostly gastro related, and blood tests too, so they may have, but they were completely fixated on Anorexia (in the absence of any other concrete diagnosis). My then GP fancied himself as a bit of a psychiatrist (Psycho more like), and because I wasn't able to eat - due to the constant nausea not because of wanting to be thin), that was the diagnosis I got stuck with. I knew virtually nothing about the thyroid at that time so didn't even think of it.

I always felt that something had gone severely out of whack during that initial virus, and the reason nobody could diagnose it was because they weren't testing for the right things. I had always been pretty well up until then, well, normal (which I can just about remember!), so I didn't know about ME or CFS either and floundered around for years until it became more in the public domain and explained so many of my symptoms I couldn't see what else it could be. Even so, most GPs merely scoffed at the mention of ME at that time, never mind CFS, so I didn't get taken seriously.

It's very interesting to hear that the flu-like virus started both your friend's problem and yours. It may well be that my thyroid went crazy at the very beginning, but I will never know now. Although, as I say, I didn't have the host of hypo symptoms then that I have now, except fatigue, anxiety and nausea, (which was quite enough). One thing that makes me think that maybe it wasn't thyroid in the beginning, is that for the past 18 months I have been on and off various thyroid meds since T4 began to make me ill, (after 12 years on it), and the only thing I have found out is that taking nothing at all isn't an option, because you just feel iller and iller and iller. You don't get better or even improve with time and rest like you can sometimes with ME/CFS.

I did more or less recover - not to 100% but a lot better - from my initial bout of whatever it was, although it took a long time - I was off work for over a year, and it was about another year before I felt anything like normal. Then it was a case of feeling better, go back to work - relapse, have to take months/years off', repeated on a regular basis. Sometimes I could go for several years feeling if not 100% normal, then at least functional, which I certainly don't feel since the thyroid meds began to disagree with me. My experience with HypoT is that you just don't get better (unless properly medicated), however much rest you get or whatever you do, but with ME/CFS you can achieve a degree of recovery with time IF you're careful and lucky.

Your friend has been very fortunate (if I can even use that word) to have had such a lot of help. I have certainly never ever been offered anything like that. I did manage to wangle a blue badge, but it has run out and I can't get another one. Apart from that, naff all. Being half dead with HypoT doesn't count, apparently.

What can I say? You're right, everybody is different, and some fare a lot better with Social Services than others. My late mother had to be very ill with heart trouble, and my 96 year old aunt had to break her thigh and was completely bed-bound before either of them got a sniff of home help or personal care.

It seems like a lottery, and not a very fair one at that. I wish you all the best too. x

[beaton in reply to Kangagirl]

Thank you for a wonderful post. I think I better try doing the lottery. Good luck.x

[Kangagirl in reply to beaton]

Thank you for the kind words You would probably have a better chance of success with the lottery! They say money can't buy you happiness - but at least you can be miserable in comfort.

[Glynisrose]

Don't know when the test was introduced but I read somewhere that the clinical trial involved only 12 people!! It was invented to support the use of levothyroxine which I believe the drug companies offered to the NHS cheaply or gave other incentives for the NHS to buy it. If I hear anyone say 'its only your thyroid' I immediately have a go and tell them they are maligning the central control system of the body, without sufficient thyroxine you would have no control over your temperature and would not be able to remember anything!!

[wall]

Dr Peatfield and Dr Skinner are two UK doctors who treated diagnosed and treated patients as they were taught as medical students. The result was that Dr Peatfield resigned from Medical Practice due to the stress of appearing before the GMC. Dr S has had similar treatment but has not given up as yet.