Useful medical information which has fallen into obscurity

[greygoose]

Doctors used to know about thyroid symptoms. Big Pharma has made sure they don't anymore...

sick2death.com/facts-about-...

[Clutter]

GG, it makes me so cross that clinical symptoms recognised and treated for years are ignored in favour of the blood tests. I like these old studies and books. They read well because they aren't written in medicalese and researchese.

I have a prolonged Q-T interval discovered when I was having thyroid tests and ECGs because of palpitations and fast heart rate. I was told it was an accidental find and possibly due to medication I had been taking but it is on the cardiovascular list of symptoms in your link.

[Jazzw in reply to Clutter]

Whoa.

Dyslexia is a hypothyroid symptom???

[Clutter in reply to Jazzw]

Jazzw, It's been thought so for a long time. Like everything else, Dyslexia can be due to reasons other than hypothyroidism and a diagnosis would have been made on having multiple symptoms/conditions not just one or two.

[Jazzw in reply to Clutter]

Yes, of course. It's just I'd never seen it on a symptom list before. And my husband has dyslexia (and is hypothyroid), and worryingly, our son is also dyslexic. So I saw that and thought, "Oh dear..."

[greygoose in reply to Jazzw]

Jazzw, i would say, yes, of course it is! No, it's not often mentioned, and I don't know where I read it, but it fits - like that other post yesterday

healthunlocked.com/thyroidu...

it's just a continuation of the same thing. Doctors told me my dyslexia was due to being badly taught at school! Pfftt! How come the other kids didn't have it then? lol I would go even further and say that inability to spell is a hypo symptom!

[PR4NOW]

Grey, the 2nd edition of that book is available on Amazon US for $543.98 New or $200.00 Used.

amazon.com/Thyroid-Disease-...

If I ever get a winning ticket I'd buy a copy just for fun. When they stopped teaching doctors (around 1975) about symptoms and how to do a clinical differential diagnosis it was a sad day for thyroid patients. The TSH test is responsible for more needless pain and suffering in my lifetime than any other test I can think of. PR

[greygoose in reply to PR4NOW]

Totally agree with you, PR. Thank you so much, Big Pharma!

[PR4NOW in reply to greygoose]

Grey, that actually wasn't Big Pharma, that was the endocrinologists that made that change. PR

[greygoose in reply to PR4NOW]

And you're saying that Big Pharma wasn't behing the endocrinologists making that change? Big Pharma moves in mysterious ways...

[PR4NOW in reply to greygoose]

No, they weren't actually, Big Pharma causes enough problems but this wasn't one of them. People tend to think that before the TSH test everybody got an accurate diagnosis and adequate treatment, unfortunately they didn't, an accurate diagnosis and adequate treatment has always been a problem all the way up to this day. Doctors started to incorporate laboratory science into the diagnosis back in the 1930s, the BMR. Around 1941-1942 they moved to the PBI, basically T4 + T3, which had problems with accuracy although it lasted 30+ years. Dr. Utiger's paper in 1965 seemed to show a dependable relationship that could be used for a laboratory standard and in 1973 a leading group of endocrinologists and thyroidologists in the US decided that it would be the diagnostic standard. It took a few years with some more twists and turns but eventually the TSH did become the standard. That is the short version. PR

[greygoose in reply to PR4NOW]

OK, well, that's not the story I heard! lol But, sounds plausable.

So, diagnosing and treating thyroid has always been problematic. They should have listened to their patients, then, shouldn't they!

[PR4NOW in reply to greygoose]

Grey, so tell me the story you heard. PR

[greygoose in reply to PR4NOW]

Well, come to think of it, I suppose that 'your' story doesn't preclude 'my' story. They could exist together. So, here's the story as I heard it :

"Before the 1960s, low thyroid was diagnosed by symptoms, and treated by NDT. And the dose was increased until all the patient's symptoms were resolved.

But Big Pharma wasn't making much money out of NDT because they couldn't patent it, being a natural product. So, they developed a synthetic thyroid hormone - T4 - and started spreading the word that it was superior to NDT. Doctors switched their patients to the new product. But the problem was/is that a lot of people don't do well on synthetic products and wanted to go back on NDT. So, Big Pharma developed a blood test called the TSH test to prove that synthetic T4 'worked'. Well, it worked at lowering the TSH into a dubious range, so that the patient was declared 'euthyroid'! But the patient was still complianing of symptoms. So, the powers that be decided to lump all those symptoms together, and call it Fibromyalgia. Or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Or ME."

Reads like a fairy story, doesn't it, with Big Pharma as the Big Bad Wolf - which I still claim it is! But, anyway, that's what I was told.

[humanbean in reply to greygoose]

You might find this interesting, greygoose :

tpauk.com/forum/content.php...

[greygoose in reply to humanbean]

Yes, that is interesting. And doctors still haven't got it!

[PR4NOW in reply to greygoose]

Grey, well, that is a great fairy tale but in thirty years of reading about endocrinology I've never read anything that would substantiate it. It does make a great internet fable and there are some small elements of truth.

Yes, the old standard was a complete family history along with a thorough physical looking for signs and symptoms and if a clinical differential diagnosis was made then the patient was placed on NDT and the dose slowly titrated until the patient's symptoms were relieved and their sense of well being restored. It can be said that thyroid is your sense of well being. However there still were cases where a diagnosis was not made or the patient wasn't dosed properly. There were also several brands of NDT and some weren't very good.

Starting in the 1930s the BMR was the first attempt at a laboratory standard to aid in making a more accurate diagnosis. It was fraught with problems in getting an accurate reading and didn't really catch on but it still used in some research settings today. Next came the PBI in the early 1940s and as Dr. Barnes's said, "There was almost a pendulum like swing to using it." Doctors tend to think that laboratory science is absolute and infallible just like they are. The PBI had obvious problems and by the late 1960s they were pointed out but the test had been used for 30+ years.

Next came Dr. Utiger's paper in 1965 and in 1973 the TSH was adopted as the standard and eventually became the standard because of cost and lack of complexity and a misguided understanding of the endocrine system. It probably didn't really catch hold until the late 1980s. Also in 1980, according to one paper I read, NDT was still about half the market here in the US but it steadily lost market share from then onward.

Thanks to humanbean's link I caught an error. I said Dr. Orr's paper earlier, I was having a senior moment, it was Dr. Utiger's paper in 1965. If you will notice Sheila credits one of their members, PRL, with tracking down the source of the quote. That would be me.

T4 was first isolated in 1914/1915 (paper written in 1915) by Dr. Kendall, PhD in Chemistry, here in the US. It was said he had enough for experiments with patients but I've never found the paper. In the UK in 1928 Harington improved the extraction process and was the first to synthesize T4. They did some experiments with patients over the years but the supply was expensive and didn't really catch on. Galaxo (sp) in the UK had a patent on T4 in 1952 in the US. The patent is on the process of making it, not on the chemical itself. In the 1960s the great thyroid hoax occurred and a large amount of NDT was produced that had iodine but no thyroid chemicals. This was shipped to Europe as well as here in the US and generated a lot of bad press on NDT which helped speed the change to the 'highly controlled' Syn T4. This coupled with the mistaken belief that if given T4 everyone will convert it to T3 contributed to the switch.

Allopathic medicine is very dogmatic and change takes forever.

As for FM and CFS or ME, Dr. Derry would agree that they were a consequence of the TSH test and under dosing or not recognizing the problem.

There is more but this should suffice. Big Pharma is at the root of a lot of evil but not all evil. What worries me the most is their growing influence in the academic research sphere. PR

[greygoose in reply to PR4NOW]

It worries me, too! Goodness knows where we are heading, but it bodes ill for humanity in general - and hypos in particular.

Well, that's a very interesting story, thank you for telling me. I'm a bit disappointed that my version wasn't the right one - it read so well! lol But yours is just as good and more complicated - I like a twist in the plot.

I didn't know about the great thyroid hoax. Who did that? And why? Just to discredit NDT? They could have killed somebody!

[PR4NOW in reply to greygoose]

Grey, it is unlikely we will ever know how the great thyroid hoax occurred. I have never been able to come up with a reasonable explanation nor has anyone else. It would be easy to attribute it to a conspiracy theory but without proof that would serve no purpose. As non medical people and non scientists we must be doubly careful in the arguments we put forward or we just end up looking like fools. PR

[greygoose in reply to PR4NOW]

True, but I don't see how else it could have happened. Must have been deliberate, no? How could such a thing happen by accident? Anyway, let's pray it never happens again!

[faith63 in reply to PR4NOW]

I am done with doctors. They treated me like i was crazy and i was drugged on anti depressants and benzo's, for 1/2 of my adult life as i got sicker and sicker..and they had the facts right under their noses. Did you know that here in the US, maybe there too, that Big Pharma, is teaching some of the classes at medical school?

[greygoose in reply to faith63]

Yes, I know. It's like having the criminals teaching in the police acadamy!

[greygoose]

Thank you, Londinium.

[humanbean]

I can't get your second link to work.

[humanbean]

Is the link supposed to bring up other videos by the same person? Or are the recommended videos related to something else?

[faith63]

Thank you so much!!! So glad that you found this!! I developed an umbilical hernia a few years ago and weight gain. Then shows up the hiatal hernia ..i also have a Pituitary Hernia.i am so sure that, have had Hashi's for many years before diagnosis and was possibly hypo before hashi's.

[greygoose in reply to faith63]

That is quite possible! In fact, it's more than likely.

[humanbean]

Thanks. Found them.

[Hidden]

greygoose, I know you put this up 8 years ago but excellent post on what doctors used to know about hypothyroidism.

Äpt conclusion with: "Prevent rather than lament".