This is a general question not related to any particular brand.
I know these products (thyroid/adrenal) cannot state the hormone content or they would not be allowed as supplements.
Therefore, the manufacturers are not required to measure the hormone content. One reason people are told not to take glandulars is that you never know how much - if any - hormones you´re getting.
But my question is: we know the T3/T4 ratio in pigs and cows. Assuming nothing is removed from the raw material: can the hormone content vary so much from batch to batch or from even capsule to capsule so that sometimes you are not getting any hormones at all and sometimes more than you think? Or will the hormone content be more or less stable, although with slight variations (the way our own thyroid gland functions when healthy)?
There are many adrenal glandulars said to work great. I am trying to understand why thyroid glandulars seem much more problematic.
We humans are not all the same, when we have a healthy thyroid I expect we produce different amounts of thyroid hormone naturally and what I need and produce may be very different from what the next person needs and produces. This is borne out by the reference ranges, even though they're not infallible and are quite wide (especially for T4), comparing two normal healthy people with no thyroid problem they could have very different T4 and T3 levels. So there is no "normal" amount that can be attributed to the thyroid.
I expect this is the case with pigs and cows too. So each porcine or bovine thyroid gland used in the production of these glandulars could have very different amounts of hormone, and many glands would be used to produce a batch, so it's perfectly feasible that one batch of the supplement could have a different hormone content to the next batch. It's possible that one batch could be hormone heavy and another batch could be hormone light and yet another could be a perfect blend.
I wouldn't imagine that capsules from the same batch will have different hormone content, one expects the mixing of the ingredients will (hopefully) distribute the hormone fairly evenly.
As we don't know how they are produced, all this is pure speculation, and these are just my thoughts
The official desiccated thyroid products, such as Armour Thyroid, are only as consistent as they are due to the use of processes of assaying and blending.
Although we have little evidence of exactly how they operate, it seems clear that batches of powdered thyroid are assayed. Then blended both with bulking agents and with each other, to achieve good consistency. And assayed again.
In years gone by, Armour used to have a whole animal testing laboratory. When they had done their blending and assays, they then gave animals doses of the product. (At that time, we did not have the highly refined chemical assays now available. They had to make do, more or less, with checking how much iodine was bound to organic compounds.)
It is also possibly interesting to consider that Armour were a meat-packing company and thyroids were effectively a waste product. The costs were getting from those raw thyroids to a decent medical product.
There were quite a number of competing products. Yet patients would seek out and pay extra for Armour. That is one reason most of the other makes disappeared.
The choice of pigs as the prime source for desiccated thyroid products was itself driven partly by the need for consistency. Pigs tend to have relatively even thyroid hormone levels throughout the year. Cattle far less so. Both weather/annual seasons and fertility seasons have a pronounced impact.
We also see labelling where some products claim "whole thyroid" whereas others state "defatted thyroid". Some say the products contain "no hormones" - whatever they actually mean by that.
We know that choice of other ingredients impacts the potency of thyroid medicines - whether animal or synthetic. For one example, the "old" Teva levothyroxine in the UK change one ingredients and ended up reducing potency by around a third. (That change was unauthorised but it appears simply to have changed the precise specification of only that one ingredient.)
We know that heat, light and humidity all affect thyroid hormones. How well do all these manufacturers manage these factors - from original thyroid, through production of powder, tablets, storage and distribution?
Many who produce tablets (or capsules, of course) appear to buy in ready-made thyroid powder. They might well find that for reasons of availability and cost, they have to use more than one supplier. We have seen regular mention of New Zealand, Argentina and China. Do we really expect them all to be highly consistent in themselves and with each other?
I agree with SeasideSusie that if they have acceptable mixing and filling machines, capsule to capsule variation should be modest. But batch to batch and make to make variations could be very substantial. Anything from having barely any available thyroid hormone through to being super-potent.
I cannot meaningfully comment on adrenal glandulars.
Well, I guess that if there are less seasonal fluctuations in bovine adrenal than bovine thyroid, that would explain why bovine adrenal generalls works well. It seems all adrenal glandulars and cortex are bovine so there must be a reason why that is used rather than porcine adrenal...funny when you come to think of it that they use the pigs´thyoids but not their adrenal glands...
All I can add to other replies is that I have been using them (on the advice of Dr P) for many years now and they work for me . A spell of several month when NutriThyroid was unavailable I went downhill, then thankfully became aware of Metavive, and started on that I gradually became well again. The only inconsistency is when I occasionally forget to take a dose.
I was aware that other people were having problems so, as I had a good supply in my cupboard, I gradually mixed new in with old and haven't had any problem
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