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70 Years of Levothyroxine - new book

helvellaAdministrator•

Just happened across a new book - 70 Years of Levothyroxine.

Unusually, it appears that it is intended to be Open Access - online with only the physical paper copies being charged for. (I hope I've got that right!)

To be published, in physical form, on 21/02/2021.

I'll be as fair as I can and reserve opinion until it is available. Though I'll admit to my expectations being quite low.

70 Years of Levothyroxine

Editors: Kahaly, George J. (Ed.)

• Written by leading experts

This open access book presents the history, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of levothyroxine, discussing its role in the thyroid pathophysiology of patients of various ages and during pregnancy. It also describes the influence of levothyroxine on heart, bone and in cancer.

When it was first synthesized in 1949, levothyroxine represented a significant advance in the treatment of hypothyroidism, providing a safe and effective treatment option for millions of hypothyroid patients around the globe. This synthetic form of thyroxine is now one of the most prescribed drugs in the world. Levothyroxine was first introduced by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in 1972, and since then the company has remained actively engaged in research on this mainstay of hypothyroidism treatment.

This book is intended for healthcare professionals.

springer.com/gp/book/978303...

The above is a link to the publisher's site. You can find it mentioned all over the place - everywhere that sells that sort of book, around the world. Cost around 45 pounds.

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helvella

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...written by leading experts.

Well, we'll have to wait and see, Helvella. This book will hang or fall depending on which 'experts' are cited.

So we must wait and see...are those experts somatoform disorder aficionados or those giving credence to patients' truths: Levothyroxine is not the one size fits all magic bullet some clueless endos have claimed since it was first introduced... and in some presents such awful outcomes that it should never have been prescribed at all.

I remember years ago your spirited challenge to a poster who claimed that all ADs rendered levo useless. I recall there being more than a hundred ADs cited in your response. The sad thing is that should we suffer depression, there are so many choices and if one doesn't work, as hoped for, a mental health professional has many others and CBT or other talking therapy to trial, until the depression is alleviated. Whilst hypos have levo, or levo, or levo.

For me, this drug was a filthy poison which left me exhausted, stiff, in pain, four stones over weight and incredulous to have my GP tell me I was 'in range' and should go away and rejoice.

My ardent hope is the experts are of the open minded view that it's unlikely one drug fits all, all of the time. In the meanwhile, like hundreds of thousands of others around the world, I am effectively abandoned to live a half life or spend time, effort and money securing my own solutions. Talk about life is sh*t and then you die...

My fear is that if the former type of experts hold sway, all this book will do is reinforce already entrenched views, leaving my cohort out in the cold.

I am absolutely sure that just throwing levothyroxine at a patient who doesn't respond well to it is appalling mistreatment.

The stats are that the majority don’t actually have any problem on thyroxine. I’ve never had a problem with thyroxine just doctors who’ve misdiagnosed. However the minority who don’t get on well with it (like my daughter) should be taken seriously.

Please have a look at the fighting Graves e book. I am newly diagnosed and off the scale eyes body agony you name it...this would help everyone - it’s ALL in the gut and the lifestyle. Get all ones vitamins tested. X

Have you followed their advice and found yourself benefiting?

Started and I know it’s going to work! Without a healthy gut we are just limbs! Will report back for sure 🙏🏻😂not going to let big pharma make anymore $ out of me! Doctors do about 7 hours of nutrition and are propped up by drug Industry - it’s appalling. It’s also about rest lifestyle and just some tweaks that we, I for sure, need reminding of, and this quote helps ‘it’s the small habits like how you spend your mornings, how you talk to yourself, what you read, what you watch, who has access to you, that will change your life’ . I like it and try and remember it! X

Seemed quite expensive for an ebook - 40 dollars USD.

It’s a lunch out! And what price health: will let you know if it works. Seeing as not one single doctor had a plan to help and my eyes are swollen and painful and full of chemosis and bulging out of my head - my heart pounding like a drum - I am willing to try gut health and lifestyle in the absence of anything else out there. Autoimmune starts there alongside the liver. Will shout from the rooftops if it sorts it out!

Lover58,

Lunch out? 40 USD?

That's a lot of money that many cannot afford, especially in these Covid times when people have lost their jobs, cannot keep their small businesses going etc. etc.

I have to agree with helvella it's expensive. For that I would want a signed first edition hardback

That’s lucky that I am the one buying it then....I thought I was sharing some interesting information about gut health and healing. That I had found after many sleepless nights research. But I can see from this site that some people would rather give their money to big pharmaceutical companies and not deal with the root cause.

I wish everyone well with their health issues. But I am unsubscribing. I don’t feel any kindness or warmth in your comments.

Lover58 I am unsubscribing. I don’t feel any kindness or warmth in your comments.

Did you pay money to join this forum? Does any member here pay money to receive the immensely valuable help and advice that can be found in abundance here? Every day, many members willingly give their time, experience and knowledge to others, freely and with 'kindness and warmth'.

Thanks for sharing the details of this book. I’ll be really interested to hear how you get on with it and I’m sure lots of others will as well. 🤗

Well said ....... some of us are getting really bored of eating swede for dinner and haven't been out to lunch for years, (well, not in that sense of 'out to lunch' anyway)

That is so interesting. The question surely is why is it the most prescribed medication. Are there any links to background radiation or other environmental factors. When I was diagnosed in late 20s I’d suffered for years going up and down mainly because thyroid problems in most doctors eyes and therefore I suspect in their training was associated with middle aged or older women. Wonder if there’s any research?

The question surely is why is it the most prescribed medication.

One reason is that with many other areas of medicine there are multiple possible medicines. For example, analgesics include paracetamol (acetaminophen), aspirin, ibuprofen, anti-depressants include citalopram, prozac, welbutrin, and so on. We should count up all the analgesics, or all anti-depressants, together if making this sort of point.

With levothyroxine, there really is no serious alternative. (Even if you include liothyronine/T3, they could be looked at as being variants of the same basic substance. Like carbimazole converts to methimazole.)

But the reason for such a large number even after you have re-assessed its ranking, really is a matter of interest and concern.

I would think antacids are up there with the medicines - mainly due to crap diets!

I meant also to include two further reasons:

Levothyroxine is a medicine that is taken every day - so 365 doses a year. Whereas many other medicines are only used for limited time.

And I have no idea if they calculate by number of tablets or number of patients. If you are in the UK and need 175 micrograms of levothyroxine, that works out as three tablets. (Unless you take Teva!) Whereas with some other medicines, you can often take one tablet a day.

Could it also be higher levels of iodine causing Hashimotos. In Japan they have some of highest levels of Hashimotos in the world.

There could be something in that but we have to look very carefully at the evidence.

For example, in the twentieth century, the USA introduced widespread use of iodised salt. Whereas the UK largely moved away from using iodophore teat disinfectant in milking cows. Yet rates rose in both countries.

Hi @helvella . I’m sure there’s research on this. I’ve gone from thinking about supplementing iodine to thinking it’s one of those things that when you don’t have enough it’s v bad and when you have too much it’s also v bad!

There has been an awful lot of research in iodine over the years.

The usual end result is to find a U-shaped curve - either too low or too high being bad. But the precise points at which the curve starts to rise varying a bit. And some people being much, much more tolerant than others.

Even the stories about the huge intake of the Japanese being often exaggerated. And Japan has high rates of Hashimoto disease.

Random thought on thyroid disease. Used to be a thing called Derbyshire neck, a goitre due to having no iodine in their diet. Furthest from sea. Same in Switzerland, Some of the past royals (can’t remember which and which country ) had thyroid eye disease and large staring eyes became quite fashionable. (Personally when I had it I didn’t find it so attractive!)

Radio active iodine is taken up by and kills off the thyroid and that’s what was used to treat my thyroid - and my daughter’s and my brother’s and my aunt’s! Iodine is in milk and cheese as well as obvious stuff like seaweed.

If numbers of people with thyroid problems have not increased then I wonder what happened to them before monkey glands were available? Of course many would probably have been quite mad as well so locked up? Witches?

monkey glands ?

Where they used to source thyroid extract from before they used pigs and then they synthesised thyroxine. Met an 80+ yr ’s who started on monkey derived thyroid extract! Natural dedicated thyroid is still from pigs and many people sourced theirs from Thailand. God knows what welfare standards there were.

I thought before pigs it was sheep thyroids, at least in the UK.

Never heard of people sourcing monkey glands from Thailand. Maybe your 80+ person was living in Thailand at the time and that was what was used there.

Lots of people buy their NDT from Thailand these days. For the people that take it, it is life saving.

So far as I was aware, references to monkey glands were usually to this:

Serge Abrahamovitch Voronoff (Russian: Серге́й Абрамович Воронов; c. July 10, 1866 – September 3, 1951) was a French surgeon of Russian extraction who gained fame for his technique of grafting monkey testicle tissue on to the testicles of men for purportedly therapeutic purposes while working in France in the 1920s and 1930s. The technique brought him a great deal of money, although he was already independently wealthy. As his work fell out of favour, he went from being highly respected to a subject of ridicule. Other doctors, and the public at large, quickly distanced themselves from Voronoff, pretending they had never had any interest in the grafting techniques. By the time of his death in 1951 at the age of 85, few newspapers noted his passing, and those that did acted as if Voronoff had always been ridiculed for his beliefs.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serge...

There is very little in PubMed:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?te...

Umm, right, thanks Not quite the same thing is it!

From online source “The vast majority of goitres in the world population is caused by lack of Iodine (which is mainly found in milk and seafood and a common cause of an underactive thryoid) Indeed you may have heard this condition called “Derbyshire Neck”- this came about because parts of Derbyshire are the furthest away from the ocean in the UK and so locals displayed the condition having eaten less seafood than much of the rest of the population.”

I had a goitre too and so did my aunt but don’t think it was when underactive, thought had gone over. Not everyone in a family will react or take up iodine in the same manner. 3 of my 5 siblings had no thyroid probs. Such much of the thyroid is a mystery.

What online source? We need the link please so we can see it for ourselves.

markvanderpump.co.uk/blog/p...

How strange I was looking for a private Endo online and he caught my eye Mark Vanderpump I so wish to be off Levo T4

Despite extensive further searching, I have only found one reference to monkey (rather, ape) thyroid gland:

While many surgeons of the period experimented with testicular grafting, the use of monkey glands was the innovation of Serge Voronoff of Paris. Born in 1866 in Voronezh, Russia, Voronoff emigrated to France when he was eighteen. He trained in medicine and worked for some years in Egypt as a physician to the Court of Khedive Abbas II. In 1910, he returned to Paris and set up a fashionable surgical practice. At about the same time, he began to experiment with organ transplantation. He claimed successful transplantation of the thyroid gland of an ape in a cretinous child of fourteen. Then, during World War I, Vornoff joined the French army and acquired considerable experience in bone grafting on wounded soldiers[20].

core.ac.uk/download/pdf/141...

Not monkey thyroid extract but attempted transplantation.

Please reread! Not monkeys from Thailand!! Person on monkey glands was in UK in the 20s /30s. Not sure where monkeys sourced but lots kept for medical experiment.

Sorry, misunderstood However, still never heard of monkey glands for thyroid treatment in the UK. This link from helvella about the history of thyroid treatment (on another post) doesn't mention it either unless I missed it in the article jameslindlibrary.org/articl...

When I was first diagnosed and prescribed thyroxine it came from pig glads and had done for many years. I have come across some horror stories of monkey gland transplants. Alternatively patients eating raw or cooked actual thyroid gland. Thank goodness I was diagnosed circa 1960 when porcine was well established. Particularly as so many monkeys went through horrendous testing. Your friend was no doubt glad to take any medication and fortunate that GOs were aware of hypothyroidism in children at that time rather more than they seem to more recently. So many on this forum report being hypo for decades before diagnosis. And yet in have lived through years of “advancement” in medical science .

Derbyshire is around 70 miles from the coastal waters. (Obviously, it depends on how you measure it - but something like Bootle to Buxton or Derby to King's Lynn.)

Further from the sea than the coastal counties of the UK, but very similar distance to parts of Leicestershire and Staffordshire. And massively less distant from the sea than most of Europe, most of Africa, most of the Americas, most of the Indian subcontinent, most of Asia, most of Australia.

Derbyshire neck was odd as individual families could have some children who developed it, and others who were perfectly well. Despite all using the same water supply and eating the same food.

I suspect that the causes were more subtle and complicated than just distance from the sea. And not necessarily just iodine. Perhaps a balance of zinc, selenium, and many other elements?

There are reasons to think that iodine is a vital part of cloud formation and rain can deposit considerable quantities of iodine even in areas far from the sea. Nothing like as mush as truly coastal areas but more than was once thought.

My GP once said village idiots in the past were probably thyroid sufferers!

I think a number of thyroid sufferers might be able to see how they could re-order those words to say something about GPs. (Probably ignoring the "in the past" bit.) Especially ones who make glib comments...

Fortunately for the GP's, i no longer have the cognitive ability to do anything as complicated as re arrange words.......and I've never managed to get paid a salary for being an idiot .

I do it for free.

He also used my thyroid condition to explain any symptom I ever had lol

Hi I have been told to take omeprazole for similar stomach problems which were caused by ibuprofen in my opinion as my GP told me to use them refusing to give me a cortisone injection for a frozen shoulder for a year! No matter how much I begged! I had to suffer through phisio that didnt work also. So it's not always about diet. And as you age it is very common to get this kind of stomach problem as I am finding out now! I am on levo and didnt know it could have an effect but the omeprazole is short term so I am going with it and take both on an empty stomach first thing. Leaving an hour before food.

Frozen shoulder can be another thyroid symptoms. I had it bad as had been left underactive after RAI for a while and took ages to recover but acupuncture was really effective. I avoid ibuprofen and have aspirin listed as an allergy.

Really? Sorry I find that very hard to believe

I mean the cause of frozen shoulder not your experience

What you think I’m lying? That frozen shoulder is now a noted part of thyroid disorder or that I was cured by acupuncture!.?

No I dont think you are lying. I find it hard to believe a muscular problem was caused by a thyroid problem that's all. If that was the case why did acupuncture work? Just asking not attacking.

It's well known , when you think about how many kinds of cells in the body have thyroid hormone receptors it makes perfect sense scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0...

Wish I had known this! After 2 frozen shoulders! Consider me enlightened thank you! What about my slipped discs and arthritis?

i've not come across a slipped disk /osteo arthritis connection to thyroid hormone..... they're probably just the good old fashioned kind of knackered

Yes you are probably right hahaha!

I went to a thyroid sufferers group ( late eighties - old style in someone’s house ) we were talking of strange symptoms and I asked if anyone had stiff/ frozen shoulder and all bar one had! (Also a feeling like rubber bands round your wrist )

I’ve seen it listed as a symptom in books now, but then it was hospital saying see your doctor and doctor saying ask the hospital. As my excellent osteopath who also did acupuncture said, she was treating a quarter of a body. Couldn’t lift arm much above shoulder height. The thyroid effects every cell in your body so muscles are not immune. Acupuncture is good for so many muscular- skeletal things. Cured my sciatica. And crippling hot pain in feet (arthritic). also cured by my doc with acupuncture. Worth a try! (Hasn’t worked so well on muscles round my thumb - sadly still can’t play guitar. )

Definately! I am being advised to exercise and keep moving and use paracetamol for extreme pain. I have to admit I see slow progress but still cant walk far outside without seizing up. The tightening sensation I get is in the bottom of my back although the disc prob is at the top of the spine. I stretch using basic tai chi which is a lockdown love. Acupuncture is now top of my list to try! Thank you!! Also getting proper thyroid blood test as people have said here as long as you are in range you are ignored really by GP. Learnt a LOT today.love this forum!

Best thing I’ve done is lose weight! I can walk with moaning about my knees continuously - a blessing to my friends!!

Agree! I am on the 5:2 diet, my 4th week and lost half a stone so far and really happy. It all helps!

Update on the stomach problem it is a hernia with oesophical (dont know if I spelt that right) inflammation so beware ibuprofen is my advice! My left frozen shoulder was treated with injection plus manipulation under anaesthetic marvellous results I went private under the ex's health insurance. Right shoulder cortisone injection not so marvellous and no manipulation NHS. Now just been told that my hips could benefit from manipulation as the lower back problem is in the pelvis where the spine meets it apparently so not slipped disc related. This is why I can only walk short distance before seizing up! Thyroid not mentioned at all but I will be bringing it up with GP next week. Sorry for rambling!

Thank you helvella - very intesting - only tried Levo in Feb/March/April 2010 - had to stop, clearly did not need any more T4. My issues lay elsewhere but always interested in 'their' obsession with T4. 😇

I'm sure it works both ways - with some doing poorly simply due to dire management of dose, poor absorption, intolerance of excipients, etc. Plus, I suspect a considerable number fall into the category of people who were fine for years, then not. (Or even vice versa.)

DIDO!!! Well said Helvella.

Thanks for this ScrumblerWhat’s the impact of PPIs on thyroid? My husband has been on PPIs for about 5 years- he’s got a bit of diverticulitis and without PPIs he gets discomfort.

I’ve tried to get him off omeprazole but it seems it’s the only way to prevent the diverticulosis pain.

Don’t think there’s a cure for that.

Any other suggestions anyone ?

Thanks v much

Just to say to the person with Graves, my thoughts are with you, I know its a living hell. Good luck, I found that sion after taking thyroid suppressants I began to sleep better which is a big thing.

I said mainly! Look at the adverts ...take this pill and you can eat and drink what you like! I had it really bad and had cameras down throat etc. Specialist wanted me to take more and more Omeprazole but said and knew nothing about diet so I stopped having any refined flour or sugars and a few other things and haven’t taken Omeprazole for years except if I know I’m going out and limited in what I eat.

Well done on living PPI free it is good to hear, I am glad you have found a natural answer. I have to stay with Omeprazole as I have hiatus hernia and Barrett’s Oesophagus. I have a diet very low in processed foods as diabetic. Porridge, a glass of milk an apple or even soup can make life miserable without the omeprazole I have learnt to,live with it.

Interesting. Sorry to ask but are you talking about tinned soup? The tiniest of added ingredients can be a problem to me ... thickeners additives etc. I’ve changed to proper sourdough bread and that has made a huge difference (you get used to the taste) and buy as much organic as I can afford. White flour and sugar is a trigger. Haha the list is endless.

No I prepare all my food from fresh ingredients.

Great! The sourdough may be worth a go. I can even now enjoy white sliced (Bertinet) . The reason I decided to make changes even though my diet was pretty good is that I got excruciatingly painful kidney stones twice and found some link with Omeprazole.

Not quite sure why I woukd want to start eating a product which I have no particular desire to include in my diet without finding some health benefits from it. Is there some research to suggest adding an extra carb ( something diabetics think seriously about) in this form will some how heal / reverse the Barrett’s and therefore any risk of stomach cancer associated with it. I’d love to see it. Many thanks.

Just a suggestion as on sourdough I don’t get bloating or acid reflux. Research on diet has been poor and barely taught to medical students (a few hours one doctor reported). You might be interested in Professor Tim Spector’s book The Diet Myth .. ( he is the voice of the Zoe Covid research and reporting app). He sees us all as individuals with different dietary needs, (he did a lot of research on twins, identical genes but often different) not one size fits all. He’s very keen on healthy guts though and likes fermented foods.

Identical twins, despite the term, do not actually have identical genes.

Identical Twins Accumulate Genetic Differences in the Womb

DNA replication errors during cell division cause monozygotic twins to diverge from each other even during the earliest stages of development, a new study finds.

the-scientist.com/news-opin...

Thank you , it’s many years since I studied and taught food and nutrition, and new and interesting information is always coming on the market. I will read with interest. I know doctors have no nutritional knowledge imparted, it’s been that way for many years. One of my friends at university was studying to become a dietitian. A profession many doctors relied on to help their patients. I think I will definitely pass on adding sourdough to my diet, I am glad it has benefited you but as you have said we are all individuals. I am still waiting to find someone else on this site who shares my diagnosis. I am sure you know only too well that non Hashi folk are few and far between. Unlike you I had no investigation to determine borderline HH. I was diagnosed once the conditions were present. As also diabetic I really don’t want to have to deal with the problem of keeping control of bs when adding carbs until I am confident it will reverse the BO and HH. But thanks for sharing your success in avoiding HH.

Being an adopted child with absolutely no family history my entire life has been one of no knowledge of any gene links. It’s never impacted on any decisions about my health. Lucky me!

When I finished Agri Environment degree (at 43,) I fancied teacher training with a food slant but nothing but Food Technology on offer. Anyway I developed Thyroid Eye Disease and that was that ...more wasted years! I don’t know what I have. Grave’s was the diagnosis as was diagnosed in the hyper phase. When underactive I was dismissed as having all sorts of women’s problems.

My teaching years go back to 1972! We still taught old fashioned subjects but with smarter names than previously Domestic Science became Home Economics and we taught Food and Nutrition and Dress and Design. Both to A level standard. Then things changed......

That's what they were called at my school !.... please tell me your name isn't Miss Doughty.... and if it is, i'm very , very, sorry i swore at you about my lacking custard.

There is something dreadfully wrong with food teaching in schools, one of my kids doing whatever passed as cookery lessons nowaday's was given "design a pizza" as homework..... she 'designed' one with strawberries on , had to buy the ingredients and take to school and cook it , and then spend another lesson on designing the box......... as far as i know , no mention was made of the nutritional content of a stawberry/chocolate pizza .......there is just so much wrong with that i didn't know where to start. In my day we had to "plan a nutritionally appropriate menu for a builder / elderly lady/etc ", explain why it was nutritionally suitable, write up a time plan , cost it , cook it and present it ,

I am old school, but not your Miss Doughty! Not that I wasn’t sworn at!

I agree with your comments to Catseyes235 . I left teaching when I saw what they were doing. I despaired when I saw how poorly my children were taught but by the time I had grandchildren I found myself living in an alternative dimension. No wonder our young people are so unaware of healthy eating.

I know lots of my pupils found it boring, so much so one carved it into a brand new workstation at school. They were not going to help their children learn.

Klin Med (Mosk). 2006;84(2):71-4.

[Hiatus hernia and gastroesophageal reflux disease as a manifestation of a newly revealed hypothyroidism].

[Article in Russian]

Savina LV, Semenikhina TM, Korochanskaia NV, Klitinskaia IS, Iakovenko MS.

Abstract

The aim of the study was to reveal hypothyroidism (HT) in patients with hiatus hernia (HH), treated at Russian Centre of Functional Surgical Gastroenterology. The subjects were 64 women: 18--with HH and diffuse or diffuse nodular goiter, 36--with HH, and 10--without endocrine or somatic disease background. The examination included the evaluation of the thyroid and metabolic status, endoscopy, and 24-hour ph-metry. The results show that one of the early signs of HT is HH and gastroesophageal reflux disease. The latter in HT patients is associated with gastrointestinal motor-evacuatory disturbances rather than with acid exposition in the distal esophagus.

PMID: 16613012 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Abstract only available here:

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/166...

My sister and brother have had HH but no thyroid problems. I was told I was borderline HH but now I’ve changed /modified diet I’m absolutely fine.

Thanks for the link helvella . I developed HH and Barrett’s many years after hypothyroidism diagnosis. In fact for most of my life my stomach suggested the constitution of an ox. I was in my fifties before I needed to speak to GP about things. I did have heartburn during my first pregnancy but the bump was “high” and huge. I list over two stone giving birth and for a women of 4ft 11 ins that’s a lot. It was a further thirty years before it bothered me again.

I must see if I can find to read up on the subject. This has really interested me.

I so wish I could get hold of the full paper - preferably in English!

Thanks ScrumblerNo I don’t think omeprazole treats diverticulitis directly but because it reduces acid I think it lessens the soreness of the “open wound”. My words not the doctors ! But I think that’s the theory.

Shame there’s nothing they can do about the diverticulitis.

Thanks again

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