Has this been discussed on the forum?

[Naomi8]

I heard Hugo Rifkin interview Max Nieuwdorp about his newly published book"The Power Of Hormones"on his Times Radio Saturday review,yesterday.

The author said that the future of thyroid replacement medication should lie in the method of diabetes insulin medication-ie continuous monitoring & administering 24/7.

He also made reference to the affect on the adrenals of thyroid hormone disorders.

Needless to say,my brain lit up!I will have to listen to this book on audible!

Any interesting articles on this?

[RedApple Administrator]

' the future of thyroid replacement medication should lie in the method of diabetes insulin medication-ie continuous monitoring & administering 24/7.'

I've been saying this for years. It's such an obvious solution to the problem. But as long as the theory of T4 being all that's needed, and it can be taken in large dollops because it's a 'storage' hormone, continues to prevail, nothing will change.

Am certainly pleased to know that someone is thinking outside this current tightly closed box! Thanks for posting about this 😊

[tattybogle]

lovely idea , but first they have to solve a rather large technical problem .... as far as i understand it (which isn't very far) blood sugar is a MUCH simpler substance to test than thyroid hormones are , it's simple enough to test blood sugar outside of a lab .... but currently you need a lab to test fT4 and fT3 levels.

there are now some bloodspot tests available for TSH .... but they are so simple as to be pretty useless ie. they only tell you if TSH is over range 'yes / no' .

So there's a long way to go scientifically before we can have any form of continuous thyroid testing .. or even bloodspot testing.

[helvella Administrator in reply to tattybogle]

Continuous monitoring is certainly beyond current technology. But near-continuous administering is almost easy! A tiny squirting mechanism that doses, say, one microgram at a time. With a trivial timing circuit to trigger it.

This would have numerous immediate benefits:

Avoid all ingestion and absorption problems;

Achieve a far more even blood level;

Be totally automated so no forgetting to take tablets or mis-timing.

Not much more would be needed to allow the device to profile the dose by time. That is, slightly different amounts through morning, afternoon, evening and night - or more finely.

And, maybe, reduce to dosing to a fraction of a microgram - but, obviously, dosing more frequently.

Furthermore, such a device would prepare the way for a future monitoring capability to be added.

(I keep suspecting that monitoring things other than FT4/FT3/TSH might be a large part of the answer. In other words, monitor the things you can measure rather than giving up because the obvious, possibly ideal, things cannot be measured.)

[HealthStarDust]

It’s available from Spotify if you have a subscription.