Yes, Dr. Walsh of Australia, patients were right about T4-only therapy.
My mouth just fell open last night.
Apparently, in December of 2002, an Australian doctor named JP Walsh (Department of Endocrinology and Diabetes of Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Nedlands, Western Australia), and an Endocrinologist to boot, wrote an most interesting article in the journal Current Opinion in Pharmacology.
This incredibly stunning article was titled Dissatisfaction with thyroxine therapy – could the patients be right?
The abstract states:
In some patients with hypothyroidism, symptoms of ill health persist despite thyroxine treatment. It is unclear whether this arises from comorbidity or because standard thyroxine replacement is in some way inadequate for some individuals. Some patients feel better if they take a slightly excessive dose of thyroxine, but this carries a potential risk of adverse cardiac and skeletal effects. There are conflicting data on whether combined thyroxine/triiodothyronine treatment is preferable to thyroxine alone in dissatisfied patients
I am unable to read the full article, as it is required that you pay a sum I don’t have. But you definitely get the impression that this doctor was on the cusp of figuring out what we have known solidly all along. Because Dr. Walsh, the patients WERE right, and still are. Synthroid, Levoxyl, Eltroxin, levothyroxine and all other T4-only medications suck, and have sucked for a long, long time. www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/t4-only-meds-dont-work and www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/long-and-pathetic
I so hope to be able to contact Dr. Walsh. Do you know him? Because he and I need to have a long talk.
Janie
p.s. Thank you Gerry.
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I too am looking for a good endocrinologist in either Adelaide or Melbourne. Any advice welcome
I would like to know whether anyone has found a sympathetic and knowledgable Endocrinologist in Australia. I would happily travel to Sydney to see one if there was someone who was able to help me feel well. Currently I just feel confused and unsupported.
Is there any where in Australia that I can get armour thyroid – I have hashimotos and would like to feel “normal” or more so if that is possible with armour.
I am impressed with the thoroughness of your website. I want to thank you for your time and effort in creating this forum for people to come together to connect the dots. I, like many of you, have bounced from Dr. to Dr. and medication to medication, some against my will. I have come to realize that we are our own best advocate and if we do not stand up for what we known to be true…..how we feel… and not numbers on some lab report, we will be the victim of good intending doctors with misinformation. The best advice I have read thus far…..become informed and then work the plan!
Hi,
Thank you for your web site. It was great to know that I am not the only woman who is having trouble. I have Hashimoto disease and it took 57 vials of blood before they found it. Another thing that has happened due to my disease is my arteries are blocking as the thyroid system is not doing it’s job correctly. I was first told there was no relationship between to the two, but recently a young registra new that thyroid disease can lead to cardio vasucular disease. Keep up the good work. So many women need your website.
Jen
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/88/10/4543
Some further info and contacts!
(from Janie: Louise sent a link to another study in 2003 that Walsh participated in with other researchers. They concluded that “in the doses used in this study, combined T4/T3 treatment does not improve well-being, cognitive function, or quality of life compared with T4 alone.” Well of course!! The participants weren’t given enough, and the researchers didn’t recognize that the observed “anxiety and nausea” was due to undiagnosed and untreated adrenal fatigue! Thanks, Louise, for sending that.)