Is Dr Toft now saying the same thing as Dr Skinner?

[t3rcam]

Now that Dr Toft has made his confession in his latest article that he made a mistake, is he confirming that what Dr Skinner was doing to help patients was in fact the right thing to do?

[diogenes Remembering]

Not quite but nearly. I think Toft is still uncomfortable with suppressed TSH on therapy as being acceptable. It is obvious that if the healthy TSH range is say 0.5-4, and the most frequent value found is around 1, then on therapy with a lower TSH range, some people who were at the bottom of the healthy range will be below it on therapy. And this could stretch to undetectable if at the same time a patient is a poor converter and needs much more T4 to achieve adequate T3. The basic problem that has to be overcome is to educate doctors that just "being in the range" is not the same as "having the values that are optimum for the individual". That is quite different. Our review makes that clear, and also throws doubt on the validity of all the trials that try to show links of thyroid function with outcomes like longevity, osteoporosis and AF as well as those comparing T4 only therapy and T4/T3 combination. I think Skinner was well ahead of his time, and I would hope, had he been alive, that he would have supported modern new thinking as a ripose to the old paradigm at present the bible for practice, diagnosis and treatment..