Been romping around the internet today looking for recent articles that might support my upcoming NHS endo battle. Unfortunately I have just become acquainted with the concept of SSD via an article published last week, which not only implies that in most cases our mental health is questionable, and that TSH is the holy grail (with no reference to ft3/ft4), but that we are all going to die !
" Overtreatment with levothyroxine (and probably liothyronine), leading to low (and particularly suppressed) serum levels of TSH, is associated with increased risks of cardiovascular morbidity, osteoporosis, dementia and death "
I have to say that before I began T3 treatment I was concerned that my heart was failing & that I had an early onset dementia.
It does seem incredible to me that you take a set of unresolved symptoms..... throw some T3 at it (with a fare bit of tweaking has to be said)..... symptoms all resolve..... but it's still apparently all in our own heads?
I see that one of our admins had warned a couple of years ago to expect on onslaught of such literature.
I have the full article but not sure show to post it here?
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muppetme
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'I have the full article but not sure show to post it here?'
You can't post anything other than images unfortunately.
I searched for the article and found a link to Research Gate where you can put in a request for the full article as a PDF. But if you have a link that allows immediate download, then please let us know!
Basically it's garbage , and yes there will be a lot more of it coming .
they have the cheek to close the article by saying that the subject requires honest and unbiased consideration of both elephant and mouse ... while presenting a blatently 'mouse-ist ' point of view and biased choice of evidence themselves.
'people being started on levo while euthyroid' is not a big problem in the UK as far as i can tell, and the NHS accepts there is evidence showing subclinical hypo has increased risks and should therefore be treated. So this is a strange/ misleading way to start the article .
the korean study they so confidently refer to didn't have any TSH or fT4 or fT3 results to look at ...just information on whether T3 had been used ..... so that proves nothing much , no way to know if it was the T3 use itself that caused the issues ... or if they were in fact overmedicated and overmedication caused the issues. Plentl of reputable/ unbiased research papers have pointed out this glaring lack of TSH/ T4 /T3 data when citing this korean study .... why do these guys not do so ?
and as for the fictitious condition of 'probable somatic symptom disorder' and the other guff about personality types , we can all see what they are up to there and have ranted about it at length on here when the results from that EMPATHY survey was published.
but i may have done previously in a reply to helvella 's post : healthunlocked.com/thyroidu... ~see my reply beginning "i was furious too .."
the EMPATHY survey appears to come directly from collaboration /conspiracy with Anthony P. Weetman .... and those with the same attitude as him are already using it as a basis to hang further garbage on ..... to build a 'new' large body of (phony) evidence that our complaints of unresolved symptoms are all in our heads or due to personality type.
All presumably to help the CBT pushers get their sticky fingers in as many lucrative pies as possible .
The above may well be slanderous but 'frankly my dear i don't give a damn'
I’m a coach, and have also gained counselling qualifications and can say beyond a doubt that’s CBT only helps around a third of people for a discrete range of conditions. It’s basically not very helpful for the conditions it was intended to support recovery from, let alone genuine physiological illness… These people leave me feeling extremely frustrated.
" Overtreatment with levothyroxine (and probably liothyronine), leading to low (and particularly suppressed) serum levels of TSH, is associated with increased risks of cardiovascular morbidity, osteoporosis, dementia and death "
Do doctors/medical researchers not understand that this presents an oxymoron. They state that T3 is always unecessary, provide T4 monotherapy where in some patients conversion isn't adequate, increase the dose, T3 still inadequate, and then moan that TSH is depressed and T4 still high and you're going to have health issues.
They're also distorting prior proper research results, stating that suppressed TSH causes the issues they have stated. This is incorrect and biased to fit their narrative. The majority of the results conclude this is actually from a high T4/T3 ratio (which will often cause suppressed TSH) but the primary cause of a high ratio is of course.... T4 monotherapy, the treatment that they argue is the only way it should be done.
Have these people ever wondered why in a normal healthy person the Thyroid produces ~10% T3? If everyone can cope with just T4 and peripheral conversion, why does the Thyroid bother, why hasn't it evolved over time not to do so?
Lastly, in any of these papers, why is the TSH in patients on T4 therapy even being compared to TSH ranges from normal healthy people? The reason is that these people simplify TSH to reflect "peripheral conversion", because they don't really understand it. The HPT feedback loops are complex and not fully understood, but fairly recent research has shown that there is likey a TSH-T3 SHUNT feedback loop, and has been added to some models. So T3 released from the Thyroid likely has an influence on TSH. So to what degree is the TSH readings of people on T4 mono different to those with normal healthy people when missing part of the feedback loop? We just don't know.
Sorry, that was a long rant from me, I feel better now
And what about us Hashimotos sufferers who have had their thyroid removed due to goitre choking them to death!😵💫 No T3 available here! Crap conversion means the Levo dose high just to get some level of a life worth living! Some of these academics need a reality jab before they spout their detritus!🙄
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Petros Perros. Unfortunately this ‘person’ has a new book coming out peddling the same old tripe. The book may even be out. I noticed he is using as many spuriously academic references as he can, to push forward his case. Must have taught Simon Pearce as well. It’s the same attitude to research. “Never mind the quality feel the width”. Cream off from the research only the stuff which can be adapted to their personal theories.
I am sure William Shakespeare would have a handy quote for this ‘person’ and his personal contribution and influence in the devastation of countless lives.
I have not been diagnosed long enough to know this. However early on I came across an interesting piece which made me think Petros was at least Pearce’s mentor if not actually his supervisor.
In fact I think I posted about it almost when I started here. I will have a look through my posts because there were some incredible things highlighted in it that were very revealing in a mixed up way. The mental illness stuff and something about why they couldn’t attract better minds into endocrinology. Perhaps just my reading of it but presumably something along the lines of - because no properly free thinking, open minded medic wanted anything to do with that cabal.
I always assumed Pearce was Perros's mentor, but maybe it was the other way around. They have definitely done a lot of research together. Perros is highly regarded here up North.
Petros Perros is also the genius behind statements like 'patients...have recently launched a war against "conventional" endocrinologist'. endocrinologyblog.org/2018/...
Petros Perros is also the genius behind statements like 'patients...have recently launched a war against "conventional" endocrinologists.
Ask Ukrainians, Gazans, Lebanese and Somalian people about war. Somewhat regrettably, we are not in armed conflict with you, Peter Perros, but nevermind. Your shield of smug and cape of 'ology' will save you. Go and join the other Avengers, whydontya
Meanwhile, some sh!t from Thailand (ave) and the merest smidgeon of illicit T3 prevent my raging somatoform condition and the slow degeneration of my defeated levo-taking body. 🙄Kill me and I'll try it again.
Will you please just go and play somewhere else. May I suggest the M25? Levo for all is no answer.
Unfortunately not savvy enough to do that. I have taken a photograph of the post but still don’t know what to do with it. If you click on my name and posts, it will come up. Unfortunately it’s the second post I ever made so it’s way way back.
If symptom relief is the goal, then therapeutic failure and disappointment is assured for this group of patients.
This is simply not true. I take T4 and T3 and yes, it took a long time to get where I am today, and yes, I would like to feel better still, but I am far better than I ever was without thyroid hormones of either kind.
If doctors do research on newly diagnosed patients with hypothyroidism I'm sure many of us on here know how difficult it was to get well or get close to getting well. It took me years. And I did make some mistakes along the way. But I got 85% there under my own steam.
But doctors so rarely realise that many of us have poor nutrient levels, and have poor levels of cortisol (either too high or too low)
Getting my nutrients improved (at least the ones that I can afford to test occasionally) has made an enormous improvement in my overall health and feelings of wellbeing. But doctors don't appear to associate thyroid issues with nutrient deficiencies so patients aren't tested, and often aren't treated when necessary for more than a couple of months.
Although I resent the fact that I have to pay for so much of my own testing, I'm still glad that doing so is possible in the UK because I know I would be denied by doctors if I asked.
Interesting, I was diagnosed as having hypothyroidism only on the basis of a blood test (I've never been asked what my symptoms were/are). As far as I was concerned I didn't have any symptoms, except feeling the cold, which I'd been since a child. On starting on levothyroxine, I was messed up for about three years! Clearly the problem was the levothyroxine, I think my body couldn't adjust to it, it put me in a 'brain fog'. It seems that the entire medical 'profession' simply can't get its head around the condition (too complicated?), so it's reduced to a problem with the patient's head. Brilliant!
I had quite a lot of symptoms of hypothyroidism starting in childhood and continuing for decades. But I also had various issues with very low nutrient levels too, particularly iron.
I find it impossible, with hindsight, to separate out some of the symptoms of hypothyroidism and some symptoms of nutrient deficiencies. And that is still true even now.
When I first got a prescription for Levo I was suffering various health problems including, amongst several others, severely low iron. I didn't get very far tolerating thyroid hormones until I had got a few of those other problems fixed. It took me a few years but I now tolerate both T4 and T3, and I take both.
I think the basic problem is the fact that the thyroid is pretty much central to the body's optimum functioning, it affects so many organs and processes that interact with each other that treating it needs a holistic approach, not something the NHS is known for in spite of all the hype about treating the person, not the disease.
I was also diagnosed hypothyroid - aged 65 - as the result of a random blood test; I never had, and still haven't as far as I am aware, symptoms (as for feeling cold, I've spent my whole life feeling too hot!) although some doctor noted in my records some time in my forties "thyroid?" but it was never mentioned or pursued. Since diagnosis I seem to have settled on 75mcg levo daily and manage my own vitamins and still can't tell really what is supposed to be wrong with me. I asked the doctor recently (by e-mail) if my next blood test could involve vitamin levels, TSH, ferritin etc, and I was told to "Come and see me" (I usually just see the phlebotomist, and the pharmacist seems to have input too) so I gathered the answer was going to be a resounding "No" and I haven't managed to get there yet. I'm 67 now and it's only a 20-month diagnosis so far and I feel okay so . . . I'm not denying the hypothyroidism diagnosis (especially as when I was put on 100mcg it apparently took me over into hyperthyroidism and was reduced to 75 mcg). Maybe I was the one they got right second time! But I still didn't have symptoms. Which is where you came in, Mlinde.
yes, this is the problem, everyone is different! So one size fits all doesn't work for quite a lot of underactives. Eg, I'm a bad converter of T4 so ideally I should 'top up' my T4 with T3 but getting it on the NHS is a lottery (I gave up, wrong postcode). As for Vits etc, the NHS used to test mine automatically but not any more! Also getting T4, T3 as well as TSH tested is yet another lottery, I have to make sure my GP gets them all tested. I have all the symptoms of an underactive thyroid, but nothing extreme, in other words, I shiver if the temp drops below 23C, brittle nails, thin hair but plenty of it (I'm 79) dry skin, low energy if I don't eat plenty (that's the bad conversion) and I've been on 125mcg for the past few years. Before that, 100mcg and I was really ill, sweating, freezing, felt awful, so the balance is really fine.
There are around 300 known symptoms of hypoithyroidism so unless you are completely symptom free of any kind there is a chance that what you think is caused by something else is actually caused by being hypo as symptoms often overlap.
Or if you were diagnosed on TSH only which as we know has nothing much to do with the thyroid function as such then it may not be thyroid after all.
You could join a Facebook group called ITT - improving thyroid treatment . You can post it on there, or ask if you can email it to one of the admissions on the team.
Hey muppetme, I would LOVE to read it if you can direct me to it. Used to take T3 and it was like the lights went on again different. Sadly it was via a private endo who is retired.
How/ who/ where to you go to be listened to enough to be prescribed it please? Also have heart & bone, slug-brain issues akimbo. You're making big sense to me.
my recent medichecks shows how this is inadequate. Tsh well in range at 0.962 (0.27-4.2)
T4 well over range 24-9 (12-22) T3 very low in range 3.9. ( 3.1-6.8)
Something not right here but GP would have gone TSH and stopped there . I need to show my GP but then have to admit to private testing and they know nothing and I will probably end up in a worse mess.
Hysteria, in Greek, means basically wandering womb, doctors used to believe women suffered from mood swings, erratic behaviour, depression, anxiety etc because their wombs wandered about their bodies causing symptoms.
And no I 'm not making it up. What's worse is we have charlatans like the authors of this paper, basically blaming personality types and MH for feeling ill on Levothyroxine. Not their inadequate treatment. Just shows doctors havent advanced much in their attitudes since the days of Hippocrates.
The ancient Greeks didnt have the knowledge we have today so can be forgiven for their crazy theories. Modern medics however? No excuse.
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Low T4 - ? need to adjust T4/T3 medication ratio
Very low blood sugar - anyone had anything similar ?
Direct measurement of T3 likely vital say researchers
