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Tag: dark ages

Yes, Jessica Terry, it’s weird to have to self-diagnose, but thyroid patients have had to do the same thing!

Jessica Terry is an 18 year old student at Washington State high school in the Bay Area who had years of problems which doctors couldn’t figure out: vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss and stomach pains.  Doctors said she had irritable bowel syndrome or colitis, and said her intestinal tissue was just fine according to slides.

Yet, she just knew that wasn’t correct.

So she took some of her own intestinal tissue to her Biomedical Problems class, and voila…she diagnosed her own problem:  granuloma, and specifically, Crohn’s disease, an inflammation of her intestines.

Sound familiar??

Yup, thyroid patients have had to do the exact same thing–self-diagnose– for almost ten years because of continuing symptoms of hypothyroidism which doctors have routinely dismissed, pooh-poohed or blamed on something else.  It’s all been a horrific, wide-reaching and damaging 50 year medical scandal by the medical establishment upon thyroid patients.

And why has this calamity occurred? Because doctors have always been hoodwinked by their medical school training, continuing education and Big-Pharma-financed-research in believing that T4-only thyroxine medications like Synthroid, Levoxyl, Levothyroxine, Eltroxin, et. al. were from God Almighty, and the TSH lab test was just as holy.

And thanks to thyroid patients around the world who had the gall to use the internet and join patient groups, we figured out it’s all because those medications and labwork have not worked, and what has worked. Additionally, it was patients who discovered they had adrenal fatigue and/or low ferritin and how to treat it, and patients who have succeeded in beginning a wave of change around the world in the treatment and diagnosis of hypothyroidism (except for the UK, who has gone backwards to the dark ages).

You can read Jessica’s story first reported in the Sammamish Reporter,  and only recently reported to a wider audience in the Bay Area News newspaper. She also spoke to a CNN affiliate.

Thanks to Kem on NTH for informing me of this news.

P.S. Do ya think that any newspapers or major news outlets like CNN are going to finally get what a huge story thyroid patients have given them?? We’re still waiting……

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4 replies

British Thyroid Association still thinks a TSH up to 10 is borderline NORMAL????

A thyroid patient from the UK, and a member of Thyroid UK, reminded me of the ongoing travesty in the UK concerning the TSH lab test. And I thought it was worth revisiting due to its extreme absurdity. Quoting from www.brf-thyroid under FAQ, then Hypothyroidism, then Treatment:

The most sensitive indicator of developing hypothyroidism is a rise in the TSH result. Generally a TSH result of <5 is regarded as biochemically ‘normal’, a result of 5-10 is borderline and a result of >10 (in a patient who is not acutely ill) is regarded as consistent with hypothyroidism. The biochemical results have to be considered along side clinical symptoms, and together they determine the point at which the physician will introduce Thyroxine therapy.

Yikes. 5-10 is only BORDERLINE hypo?? What planet to they live on?? I have come across MANY thyroid patients on internet groups who have had a TSH below 3 with RAGING hypothyroidism, and for YEARS being told they were normal. Never, ever has the TSH been a “sensitive” indicator until it finally rises enough to reveal it….but that can be YEARS in the making, and the patient is now living with adrenal fatigue to further complicate their ongoing hypothyroid condition. The TSH lab test does NOT work.

Then from http://www.british-thyroid-association.org/Guidelines/, and downloading the 2006 final version of the UK guidelines for the Use of Thyroid Function Tests , and reading 3.2.2, comes this:

The decision on treatment of patients with subclinical hypothyroidism should be guided by repeated TSH measurements. When TSH is elevated but <10 mU/L there is no consistent evidence of an association with symptoms, secondary biochemical abnormalities (hyperlipidaemia), cardiac dysfunction or cardiac events.

No consistent evidence of an association with symptoms?? Then what ARE those symptoms that thyroid patients have experienced over and over and over, even with a TSH as low as the 2’s??? And repeated TSH measurements?? There is a huge body of thyroid patients across the world who have had years of a NORMAL TSH yet raging hypothyroid symptoms.

They also add:
There is evidence of improvement in the lipid profile and symptoms when patients with modestly raised TSH (mean 11.7mU/L) were rendered euthyroid with thyroxine

Calling anyone “euthyroid” (normal thyroid-wise) on a T4 med, with an average TSH of 11, is so laughable that it stands on its humorous own.

The Dark Ages persist in the diagnosis and treatment of hypothyroidism. What a shameful, blind-sighted travesty! Are you from the UK and dealing with the backwardness? Talk to us by replying to this blog (and be patient–comments don’t always show up quickly.).

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