Mary Shomon has an interview with Dr. Richard Shames MD concerning the new ATA Guidelines. It is a good read. PR
"First, I am distressed that an organization that gets substantial funding from levothyroxine manufacturers can publish over 200 pages of medical-ese, mainly intended to browbeat every doctor in the country into treating a complex, chronic, autoimmune, hormonal illness like hypothyroidism with simple levothyroxine alone. It's a bit like Washington, DC's "K-Street tactics," where the government regulators writing the rules are former and future industry employees."
Thanks PR4NOW. Instead of concentrating on making patients well, it seems to me they have become bullies of the first degree. Browbeating other medicals personnel into prescribing levo only even though many patients don't become well and have to have other prescriptions for the remaining/new symptoms. Thus making nice profits for the pharma companies.
Let's hope the Dr Weetman's et al take some levothyroxine to make their brains work and will be surprised when they become completely incapable. I would like to know why they do not listen to the patients who take this medication and don't get well. There is no lack of evidence but it is ignored by these ignoramuses.
The situation with thyroid patients would have made an excellent episode for the "Twilight Zone" although I'm not sure even Rod Sterling's writers could have dreamed up something this insane. PR
You're right. This is what Dr Lowe said. I would never-ever have thought that people who were well-educated and had studied medicine could come up with such rubbish. I have just read today that now they have decided that ME and CFS are 'neurological' diseases (does that mean, i.e. it's all in the head' there's nothing wrong with you):
"Potential harm from T4-replacement has thus been scientifically documented. In view of the risks, you must consider for yourself whether you'll permit your therapy to be changed from Cytomel to T4-replacement. If you decide not to permit it, you can seek out an alternative doctor who understands how ineffective and harmful T4-replacement is for many patients. Alternative doctors are generally more cooperative than conventional doctors, and most of them take the time to learn the cause of troubling symptoms. Because of this, you should be able to find one who'll help you ferret out and correct what's causing your occasional symptoms of overstimulation".
Don't worry too much! The more I look at what we've found out, and the indications that a good minority of subjects don't take to T4 only - AND WHY - the more I think this is truly the last roar of the dinosaurs before, not a destroying fireball from space, but much more telling, the insidious undermining of an indefensible intellectual stance. I really believe that the real story, the individuality of the subject will prevail as a diagnostic, that is a return to looking before diagnosing. I went to the Thyroid UK conference, and one thing struck me beyond all others. And that was an oldfashioned GP proclaiming the value of examining the PATIENT first and not the computer screen of anonymous raw data. The data help, they don't define.
I loved the part where the doctor said when he first started his own practice and if a patient had a home visit and lived alone, he and the doctors in his practice would also have a cup of tea and a chat with the person. That is definitely a vocation - to care for the sick.
The medical profession is extremely conservative. In a sense they are Panglossian - "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Therefore they all tend to move and think in concert and so define (often from the top) what they are collectively thinking as correct. Until, after a great deal of pressure, they find they aren't. Then the great oil tanker slowly changes direction until "Lo, we never thought otherwise" when the new paradigm is finally believed. Altering medical thinking is a slow and frustrating process - even in the face of overwhelming evidence. And the challenge has to come from the right direction - if the source is not to their liking they don't believe it.
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Hypothyroidism and Pregnancy
Mayo Clinic Q&A podcast: Overtreating an underactive thyroid
NICE and NHS Guidelines - Links to useful bits!
