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Site is back up….and beating a dead horse once again

Whew.

I go away for a few days on business, and when I get back, I find out that the site has been down the entire time! Turns out that the Domain name had expired, and notices of its impending expiration were being sent to an old, non-existent email address. Thus, I got no warnings and had no idea the domain name was about to expire. But we are back up…and they have my correct email address. 😉

And by the posts of alarm by thyroid patients on several yahoo groups, one thing sure stood out: THIS IS AN IMPORTANT WEBSITE for thyroid patients. The information compiled here was sorely missed!

Why was it missed? Because the information on STTM is ground-breaking, by patients and for patients. It reflects the hard-earned, tough-learned knowledge of YOU against decades of a thyroid treatment THAT HAS BEEN AND IS WRONG and HAS KEPT THYROID PATIENTS SICK!!

Equally as important, STTM gives ground-breaking information on the common condition of adrenal fatigue and how to treat it. There is now a growing body of thyroid patients who have successfully weaned off their HC thanks to the information presented here!

Second, I discovered via a few emails that there are some VERY generous and kind thyroid patients out there. One gal thought that something had gone financially wrong, and she offered to completely host the site and work on it according to my direction. HOW NICE!!

But do know that everything WILL be paid for (and especially now that they have the correct email. lol) You can also be a part of the cost by contributing to the web hosting. See the HOSTING DONATIONS ACCEPTED button at the bottom of each page, or go here. That donations allows YOU to be a part of this important information revolution for thyroid patients, besides helping me as the individual who owns this site and doesn’t have a rich uncle. 😆

And I think I will beat the dead horse in a new post above this one…in a few days.

What planet to do you live on, Oprah??

Cuz it ain’t the one WE live on, dah’ling.

For a few years now, patients have repeatedly written the Oprah show, begging her to address the thyroid scandal of decades of T4-only medication and the lousy TSH lab, both of which have left MILLIONS of patients with lingering hypo symptoms while our doctors proclaimed we were NORMAL…and about a FAR better treatment called natural desiccated thyroid and dosing by symptoms, NOT the TSH.

And when she finally has a program which somewhat addresses the thyroid issue this week, she allows her hallowed guest, Dr. Christiane Northrup, to state “your symptoms are actually your soul’s way of bringing deeper issues to your attention.” Hogwash! And thyroid patient Mary Shoman has rightly proclaimed that “thyroid disease is NOT your fault, despite what Dr. Northrup says.”

But the issue goes even further. Oprah implies, by her own experience, that taking a month vacation and eating fresh foods is enough to make one well from thyroid disease?? Double hogwash! Thyroid patients seek to live some of the healthiest lifestyles there are. All you have to do is observe the conversations in most any internet thyroid patient talk group, and you will see daily posts on the best supplements to take, healthiest foods to eat, and best ways to de-stress our lives. We are overall a VERY educated group of patients about health, and we practice it. We HAVE to be in light of how poorly educated most of our doctors are about our thyroid disease. And in spite of all the above, our thyroid condition persists.

What has CHANGED our lives is leaving the scandal of T4-only treatment in the dust, and learning about desiccated thyroid like Armour, switching to it, and dosing according to the elimination of symptoms, NOT simply labs.
We have also faced the fact that at least 50% of us have adrenal fatigue, which leaves us impatient and angry, with headaches and body aches, chronic back pain and body aches, a loss of passion, and sleep issues. And we have tread new ground in our knowledge on how to treat it, when many of our doctors pooh-pooh the reality of adrenal fatigue.

I love ya, Oprah, as do millions of women out there. But taking a month vacation and eating fresh foods does NOT cure our thyroid disease. So time will tell what went on with you! So now, all we can do is hope eternal that Oprah will get on the planet that the rest of us live on, and help us to spread the word as to why millions of thyroid patients have been suffering and about a far better treatment. If you can continue to have persistence, you can email her here. STOP the thyroid madness!

P.S. Go here to read thyroid patient Anna’s humorous experience with following the same kind of advice given on Oprah’s show.

The FDA is improving T4’s potency….but it won’t change one particular FACT…

Is this akin to “improving” cardboard?

The FDA announced today that they are tightening the potency specifications for levothyroxine sodium (aka Synthroid, Levoxyl, etc) “to ensure the drug retains its potency over its entire shelf life” rather than what often occurs with any T4 med: the deterioration of T4 before it’s expiration date. They state that this tightening will improve the quality of the product.

Cough.

Let me give you some history. After it was isolated, T4 was first produced as a treatment substance over 80 years ago. The T4 did result in some improvement in patients they tried it on at the time. But guess why they never gave it to patients beyond the early experiments? BECAUSE THEY KNEW IT WASN’T STABLE. They knew that fact 40+ years before it came back on the market in the 60’s due to the heavy and moronic pharmaceutical promotion.

And the irony of this so-called improvement is that it’s NOT going to stop the deterioration of T4. They are only attempting to stop it before “the expiration date”.

Sorry FDA. You can improve the tensile strength of cardboard, but you can’t improve the FACT that T4-only meds are about as effective as giving a hypothyroid patient CARDBOARD…whether it’s stable or not.

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01717.html

(Thanks Stephanie)

Count on it: your doctor is going to ignore your symptoms

At the heel of Oprah’s revelation that she has a thyroid condition (see my blog post below) comes this article on September 13: Statins: Doctors ignore patients’ complaints of reactions to drugs

Boy howdy, doesn’t THAT sound familiar!

Sure, it’s about a non-thyroid drug called a statin, which has an advertised purpose of lowering your high cholesterol. But the information MIRRORS the experience of ALL thyroid patients!! Namely, the article shows that doctors rarely believe that the pill you are on is to blame for your “real – or imagined reactions”.

The article outlines a study that involved 650 patients who had complained of particular reactions after taking their statin. And the problems these patients observed are COMMON to being on statins – muscle problems, cognitive loss, and nerve pain called peripheral neuropathy (and my dear mother-in-law, who is on a statin, has all three). And what they got across the board is that their doctors either denied or barely considered that the statin could be causing the problems which the patient complained about!

And there’s a huge double whammy irony here. Namely, not only do thyroid patients have this exact experience when we are on T4-only meds and continue to have hypo symptoms that our doctors dismiss, but WE ARE A CERTAIN BODY OF THOSE ON STATINS because of one of the key continuing hypo symptoms that our doctors dismiss–high cholesterol.

Clinical presentation has gone by the wayside in favor of a lazy worship of the infallibility of pills.

Oprah…you can save yourself a lot of problems….

….if you will take the time to read here of what thousands of patients have found out about the medication you will PROBABLY be put on, and about the lab you will PROBABLY be dosed by.

For those who haven’t heard, Oprah announced on September 10th during her Good Morning America interview that she “blew her thyroid out”. Now that also sounds suspiciously like she also has adrenal fatigue, but time will tell.

And Oprah will now join the club of an estimated “billions” worldwide with thyroid disease. But even worse, she may also be joining the club of those who for nearly 50 years, have been put on the lousy T4-only medications (Synthroid, Levoxyl, Levothyroxine and others) and who have been terrorized with the TSH lab and it’s dubious and pathetic “normal” range.

Yes Oprah, beginning in the 1960’s, doctors starting putting ALL of us on T4-only meds, and in the early 1970’s, dosing by the TSH lab. And NEITHER have worked. Sure, some will state they felt better. But many will tell you that NOTHING changed. And ALL, to one degree or another, have been left with a variety of hypothyroid symptoms while doctors have been proclaiming that those VERY symptoms had nothing to do with hypothyroid since we were now “adequately” treated.

But we have NEVER been “adequately” treated, Oprah. Doctors became cattle in the chutes of their pharmaceutically-financed medical schools, blindly believing that T4-only meds were working and that the man-made TSH was the gold standard of diagnosis and dosing…and ignoring clinical presentations which showed the opposite.

And when we still complained of symptoms, we have been put on anti-depressants, statins, anti-anxiety meds, and a variety of other pills to bandaid our continuing hypo symptoms.

And we finally fought back Oprah. For the last 7+ years, patients like myself found out that there has always been a MUCH better treatment (desiccated thyroid), MUCH better labs (free T3 and free T4) and much better dosing strategy (by symptom elimination). Our lives have become far better because of what we have learned.

This website represents the knowledge of a large and constantly growing body of patients worldwide, and some wise doctors, which goes totally COUNTER to nearly 50 LOUSY years of pitiful thyroid treatment.

You, Oprah, are a megaphone of influence. And if you can take the time to read this website, you might play a huge role in helping to change MILLIONS of lives. Because right now, the vast majority of the medical community does NOT get this, and is continuing to keep patients SICK and TIRED and/or with continuing hypothyroid symptoms of some kind. And YOU are going to be one, with your own continuing list of symptoms, if you don’t consider what thyroid patients are trying to tell you by nearly 50 years of LIVING it.