Since it's World Thyroid Day, I was wondering how best to educate others? Most patients are 100% convinced that their doctors know everything, so if you bring up any doubt, they won't believe what you're saying. If for instance, you have a hypo friend or relative who is still unwell, even after being prescribed a dose of T4, telling them that doctors don't know much about TSH, FT3, FT4, etc., sounds like a conspiracy theory. Why would they believe that you know more than their doctor? Even with convincing studies available to share, it is very, very hard to convince most people that their doctors are very often causing them harm, by not treating their conditions adequately, or at all. I also believe that most people are almost allergic to medical information, so even if they want to have a hand in managing their own health, they can't cope with reading about it via studies, or even on forums such as this. I'm not sure that I'm conveying this concern well, but I often just keep mum, rather than trying to educate others about what might be going on with their health. Do others feel this way too?
Convincing others?: Since it's World Thyroid Day... - Thyroid UK
Convincing others?
I've come to the conclusion that it's just a waste of time. People who are obviously hypo, but have never been tested, will react to a suggestion of thyroid problems as if you are accusing them of having a sexually transmitted disease! Their attitud is that that sort of thing might very well happen to you (registed the snub) but it couldn't possibly happen to them! And they'll make us all sorts of excuses like 'I'm tired because I'm getting old', 'I've put on weight because I've been over-eating a bit lately', 'I've over-plucked my eyebrows' - to the point that only half of them now exist? Come on! Pull the other leg. They just cannot accept that they might have a problem.
Had one friend who had so many symptoms, and treatment after treatment for them. So, finally persuaded her to ask her doctor for a test. But, I warned her, doctors know very little about thyroid, so make sure you get a copy of your results so that we know exactly what was tested and exactly what the results were. But she didn't. She said she was so relieved when the doctor told her she hadn't got a thyroid problem (?!?) that she didn't want to take it any further by asking for the results. So, I gave up. But, I'm still certain she has Hashi's/hypo. Sigh.
Yeah, that too! And yes, even if you convince them to get tested, they trust the uninformed doctor's result, because their trust in the medical system is so absolute. So frustrating, and also telling, that if our group is so large, and there are so many in denial, or not treated, how many people are being lost in the cracks?
That's what I always wonder. Especially as not everyone even has a computer, even in this day and age. On my profile I've told the story of how, even though I had a computer, I didn't think to look for direct help on it, I used it to find a book on the subject! 🤣🤣🤣
you just described my mother…. In her eyes chronic illness and particularly mental health are things that happen to ‘other’ people, with weaker constitutions, in some way ‘below’ standard. Drives me up the wall. She gives me the ‘I’m so glad you have found so much out about your health’ meanwhile is refusing to see the diabetic nurse or go to a group for type 2, because she doesn’t eat bought cake and biscuits (never mind the tonic water, dried fruit, homemade bread etc.) ah well I’ll just look after my pixel and keep repeating gently that she could get tested. 🌱
I don't know what age group she's in, but many born in the early decades of the 1900's had an attitude of just "grinning and bearing" things, and that yes, only weak people had illnesses of any kind. So sad. I hope that your message gets through to her eventually.
I think old Ovid had the right idea...
"Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”
Indeed.
OMG! You hit the nail on the head! I have 2 sons in their early thirties who have almost all the hypo symptoms but refuse to get tested. They often accuse me of being obsessed with thyroid disease. They trust doctors 1000% and believe they are gods! Even though I had a total thyroidectomy, they don’t think there is anything wrong with me when I’m suffering with hypo symptoms. For this reason I suffer silently and pretend that all is well, even when my joins and muscles ache all day. What a dilemma? Is it because we were born as females? It surely is a world wide atrocity. Poor us!!!
With age comes wisdom.
Oh, the same with my 'kids'! And they are 50, 54 and 48. They think I'm obsessed with thyroid, and 'wishing it on them'! As if anyone would do that! My eldest son did go and see a top endo, got tested, got diagnosed and prescribed levo - even took it - then couldn't be bothered to go back for the follow-up. Ten+ years on, he seems to be ok-ish, although very thin, and always complaining about something or other: he has tinitus, he can't eat eggs, strawberries make him feel ill, etc. etc. etc. So, I don't know what's going on.
The only one that takes thyroid seriously is my eldest granddaughter, And that's only because I had a hypo dog, not because of me! 🤣🤣🤣
My younger son(42) did agree to a private FTT, the results were a text book example of a failing thyroid.
His wife thought he could sort it with vit D ( his was very low) and that I was over reacting...despite having spent the last 6 years reading and learning about my own rare thyroid condition! Grrrrr!!
He is now overweight, fatigued, raised cholesterol, pre-diabetic. I need to see my lovely, bright , funny, 6ft+ and fit son emerge from this thyroid murk....for his sake.
But....he has now gone to his GP and is being tested!!
The next hurdle will come with the results.... but he is beginning to listen to me.
These are highly intelligent professional people ....I don't understand why it takes so long for the message to sink in!
Then it struck me....the acorn didn't fall far from the tree. In my youth I would probably have reacted in just the same way! It looks different from up here at almost 78!!
So, it's wait and see now....
Give your sons a bit more time.
There's a saying " when the student is ready , the teacher will appear ",
The realisation that you can't trust Doctors to have enough knowledge, or to give you the best advice.... is very scary ... it's like you think you're in a nice safe swimming pool , then you look down and realise there 1000's of feet of dark water beneath you.
I'm sure we all remember how we felt when that penny dropped for us .
personally i think it's best to allow people find their way to that realisation in their own time. They won't thank you for pushing them through that particular door before they are ready and if they are not ready, they won't believe you anyway ... you will just sound like a conspiracy theorist.
same as dealing with children's questions about where do babies come from ....you just answer the specific question they asked , not the other 50 questions they didn't.
Well said. Knowing what we know though (and I lost trust in the medical profession long before my hypo diagnosis), makes it so hard to watch others suffering needlessly. My own friends and family members though, are sometimes annoyed with me, because my doctor will tell me what to do and I don't agree with him. They just don't understand that at all.
what the doctor told you to do is between you and the doctor...so why tell them ?
of course they'll be cross/ frustrated with you if they still trust Doctors.. just as you'd be cross with anyone you cared for who was ignoring sensible medical advice if YOU still trusted Doctors.
once we go down this path, we really are on our own and most people who haven't experienced it for themselves will think we're deluded, that's just the way it is .. no point trying to explain surfing to someone who's never seen an ocean.
I have another medical condition that prevents me from doing a lot of things, and I absolutely can't make plans in advance. Because I want to do things, keep appointments, spend time with my grandchildren, etc., my very close friends and family all root for me finding answers from my doctors. So when something looks promising, and they know that I'll be speaking further with my doctors, they await each appointment with me and then hope for good news. If the doctor comes back with something I don't agree with, I basically have to admit that, or else say that I've postponed said appointment, or something else came up, etc. My other issue is well known to my loved ones, so that's why I tell them. But yes, until they've lost their faith, they won't understand.
Me too! I lost trust in the medical profession long before my thyroid diagnosis. Very sad!
very sage, I will try and channel this in future, I’m still a bit ranty 🌱
Well... maybe. And maybe not. I didn't even get tested until I was 55, when I'm sure I was hypo from about the age of 8 years old. I didn't know what a thyroid was, but I think I would have been very grateful to anyone that suggested I get it tested, because it might just be the root of all my problems.
I too lost trust in doctors long, long before my diagnosis. So, I really can't remember the exact moment. It was probably more of a slowly dawning realisation that started in childhood. They certainly didn't give me the care I needed when I was a child!
i think it's a matter of where you draw the line ,, i too would have been glad of someone/ anyone suggesting my thyroid was tested years earlier than it was.. and i do sometimes suggest to others that their thyroid might be an issue they should get checked out ,because doctors didn't suggest it for me when it plainly should have been, but after that i 'play it by ear ' depending on where they are at .eg. i would ask if they knew what their actual result were because i'm aware of how many people are told they are fine / 'nothing to see here' when their TSH is 7 . and i'd give basic facts so they had enough information to make an informed decision. but if i hit resistance i back off.
i think i was always aware that mainstream western medicine was bit blinkered, and not holistic.. so it's not that i had complete faith in conventional medics before my diagnosis, i didn't . but did used to think they dealt in accurate information / proven facts and were being truthful , which i don't anymore.
Well, obviously, you have to play it by ear. But, even so, doesn't stop some people having a violent reaction to the suggestion and refusing to even contemplate the idea. And after that reaction, I drop it. I don't go around bashing people over the head with it. 🤣🤣🤣
I agree I wish someone had suggested that I have a thyroid test. After what, looking back, was a lifetime with numerous unresolved health issues and useless treatments I wish someone has said "thyroid test".
In 2000 and becoming familiar with computers I started to " dig" for answers as to why "struggling "had become a way of life... and a light dawned.
A thyroid test. Hypothyroid. Levothyroxine...never greatly improved!
Many tests and treatments, NHS and private but still no answers.
I told one haughty GP that if she had no answers I would find then myself!! That even surprised me!
No, she replied don't upset yourself....just do as we tell you.
Well that has been a success for the last. 50+ years hasn't it.
Trust.....gone!
Found TUK and some amazing people, asked some very silly questions but eventually the mist cleared and I had my answer. Not from doctors but from you and a few other knowledgeable and experienced members.
I began to join up the dots marking my life!
I think you probably all saved my life, I was very unwell and in a very dark place but thankfully with that support sheer bloody mindedness kicked in!
(Then, to confirm, I actually looked that phrase up.! "The behaviour of someone who is very determined and refuses to give up, to change their mind, or to do what others want them to do.)
It was what I needed!
Thank you!
That initial test was only the first tiny step in a long journey but it was vital and I wonder how different my health might have been if someone had stepped in decades ago and said the words"thyroid test".
I think we need to choose a time very carefully to offer an opinion to others but if we suspect someone has a thyroid problem we need to say those words. What the person then does is their business but at least the seeds have been sown....
I don't know how I might have reacted had they been said to me in my mid 20s when I began to realise something was far wrong....but a possibility would then have existed in my head that I may have pursued.
Several years ago my friend of 65+ years showed signs of what I thought could be a thyroid problem so I suggested a test. Oh, she said the doctors have done tests.....
And what were the results?
They said they were fine.
No details?
Why would I want details...they're fine
I don't think she wanted to face the possibility.
Her memory declined and symptoms increased so she saw a psychologist....several times
Fast forward and now...
she is in hospital, very confused and with a diagnosis of dementia at age 77.
I don't know if an early thyroid test may have changed anything.....maybe.
I just wonder how an intelligent woman could have trusted those medics quite so blindly....it's very sad.
tattybogle ....you say
personally i think it's best to allow people find their way to that realisation in their own time.
Maybe....but not everyone is capable of taking that approach and a gentle nudge towards testing may change their lives
That introduces a choice. No pressure, just a choice to consider.
Then again....you can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
I found that out!
Sorry, I'm ranting again but to quote that phrase frequently used here, "we are all different"!
i wasn't very clear in my earlier comment .. have just clarified to GG .....It;s the part abut 'Doctors not knowing what they are doing' that i think people need to get to in their own time .
..... but i'm all for making a suggestion of "? thyroid" and giving information to help them understand the results they got. .. i definitely wish someone had said '? thyroid' to me in the first year after my pregnancy instead of 4 yrs later when GP only did it because i came in every month for 6 mths and wouldn't accept antidepressants~ (wasn't depressed .. so why would i )
Understood tatty...
And there's a fine line to tread between trying to be helpful and being an interfering pain in the proverbial!
I've probably been on both sides of that line!!
But I agree....I'm all for making a suggestion and offering information.
Just do as we tell you! Ha! If I'd done that, I'd be dead by now, pretty sure of it. Or a dribbling vegetable in a corner.
One doctor said to me, very annoyed, 'if you don't trust doctors, why do you come and see us?' Welllllllllll, to start with, because I can't write my own prescriptions! But, I hadn't even said it didn't trust him, it must have been so obvious in my attitude, though, because he really was a dumbo. lol
I too wonder what my life would have been like had I been diagnosed whilst still a child. I imagine I would have had more self-confidence and not married the first cretin that asked me, and my health wouldn't have deteriorated so fast without his mental abuse. I possibly could be a star of film and stage, by now, or a best-selling writer. But, then, I wouldn't have my three gorgeous children and five wonderful grandchildren. Just because things would have been different, doesn't mean they would have been better. We always have to keep that in mind. 
Yes, that is so true
I'm so grateful to have a supportive husband, two lovely sons and two very special grandsons....the things I've missed pale into significance! The male gene is strong in this family, I had a brother too...I've been outnumbered. Thank goodness for DiLs!!!
You still have time to write that best selling book...after all Grandma Moses was 78 when she started painting in earnest!
Very good point about planting a seed. My mother taught me to do that years ago, and I find that it really can make a difference. I've had seeds planted on myself by others too, and while I might initially reject a suggestion, after I ponder it for awhile later, I sometimes see other options/ideas as helpful/viable. Seeds I've planted in others also sometimes result in positive actions.
NICE - patients should be more 'pushy'
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