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The dirty-yellow brick road to ADRENAL FATIGUE…are you headed there??

 

STTM YELLOW BRICK ROAD(This page was first written in 2008 and has been updated to the present day and time. Enjoy!)

Do you ever feel like you want to strangle your doctor with your bare hands?

Of course, we don’t mean it literally, but there is heightened frustration about the lack of knowledge displayed by our doctors! 

Today, I am once again appalled and saddened by the endless body of thyroid patients who continue to plummet into the abyss of adrenal fatigue/adrenal insufficiency, day after day after day. And it just never needs to happen if doctors would simply pay attention and be informed.

Belinda is the perfect example.

She didn’t participate in thyroid patient groups anymore, living her life happily, because she thought her post-RAI thyroid treatment was under control, being on 2 grains of Natural Desiccated Thyroid for a year and a “normal” TSH.

But suddenly, she felt the need to return to her groups and seek feedback. Because 2 grains was not an optimal dose for Belinda. She has become more irritable and moody, has a hard time falling asleep, and feels frequently anxietal. Labs are redone, and she finds herself with a slightly over-range free T3 and a very suppressed TSH. Her doctor decides to lower her thyroid meds, which in turn improves her insomnia and anxiety, but weight starts piling on. She’s confused and wonders how she can find her balance between being on too little with unwelcome weight gain and being on too much with uncomfortable anxiety and insomnia.

What Belinda didn’t get, and what her doctor didn’t get, is that Belinda had now joined the dubious camaraderie of those with adrenal fatigue/adrenal insufficiency–a needless condition of over-stressed and now under-functioning adrenals i.e. low cortisol. As a result, T3 in natural desiccated thyroid starts to pool in the blood, or raises the inactive Reverse T3, either causing anxiety, insomnia, and all sorts of low cortisol symptoms.

In Belinda’s case, the problem was that 2 grains was not an optimal dose for Brenda, even if her TSH looked oh-so-normal! Because it’s never about the TSH. It’s about where our free T3 falls and more.

Thyroid patients just like Belinda have to first discover what is going on, then face the complicated balancing act of treating adrenal fatigue AND hypothyroidism. And it’s a path that never needed to happen.

WHAT IS POTENTIALLY TAKING YOU DOWN THE DIRTY-YELLOW BRICK ROAD TO ADRENAL FATIGUE??

  1. Being undiagnosed, or being dosed by, the faulty TSH lab test and its dubious “normal” range, which will leave you with lingering hypothyroid symptoms. 
  2. Being treated by T4-only medications like Synthroid, Levoxyl, Eltroxin, et al, which end up teasing your adrenals to work harder to take up the slack of an inadequate treatment, then to fall into the abyss of low cortisol.
  3. Lowering your expectations of what “normal” is. No, it’s not normal to have less stamina than others, to be on an anti-depressant to bandaid your hypo depression, to feel colder than others, to require frequent naps, to feel the need to avoid people, to be bothered by lights or noises, to be told by those you love that you are too defensive or over-reactive…and so on.

I hope anyone reading this comes to an understanding that you canNOT enter your doctor’s office as if you are entering the throne of a god. Your doctor, no matter how educated, dedicated or wonderful, may not have a strong understanding of the role of adrenal function in relationship to bad treatment via T4-only meds or the TSH lab range. You may have to bring this knowledge to your doctor, or find another one who is either learned, or open-minded. Because your chances of having adrenal fatigue/insufficiency are higher if you are on T4, if the TSH is worshipped by your doctor whether on T4 or desiccated thyroid, or if you keep walking into the doctor’s office and hang your own knowledge on the hook outside his or her door.

JanieSignature SEIZE THE WISDOM

 

 WANT TO UNDERSTAND MORE ABOUT HOW WE FALL INTO HAVING LOW CORTISOL?  

Order the STTM II book and read Chapter 15. It’s brilliantly written by an MD who gives a most excellent explanation of how we get there!

 

 

 

STTM graphic How cortisol can cause problems when raising NDT

25 replies

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.

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Patient experience in the doctor’s office makes you weep

I’m sick. I’m tired. I feel awful. I’ll go the my doc’s office for help.

We have all done it, filled with hope and promise. I have done it!! Why not, since our doctor has had at least four years of medical school training that we couldn’t fathom doing ourselves, including working with patients under the supervision of licensed doctors, and 1-3 years of residency following school. Oh and let’s not forget the continuing education, besides experience with thousands of patients before me.

I’m in good hands.

THUD. For thyroid patients, it couldn’t be FARTHER from the truth. The experience in the beloved doctor’s office has been nothing less than dismal, disgusting, and depressing….and nothing more than pure malpractice.

Why? Because there’s not a thyroid patient anywhere who hasn’t gone in with raging hypothyroid symptoms…and 1) was dismissed, 2) told they needed an anti-depressant/pain med/statin rather than better thyroid treatment and/or 3) were told they were “normal” simply because those ink spots called labs ‘said so.’ So we have left…sick, and for years.

Whatever happened to “clinical presentation”????

And if you think that I am barking up the wrong tree, take heed. The following true story, which was related to me two days ago, is exactly like THOUSANDS we hear on this site every week:

I walked into the Endo’s office, feeling awful. I had been told he was the best in the state and I knew he held a high position in the University. First, when I told him about my unrelenting brain fog, he dismissed it. When I told him my cholesterol keeps rising, he said I wasn’t eating correctly (I love veggies and eat fowl more than beef). When I told him my throat felt tight, he said it was a temporary inflammation, take tylenol and it would pass. When I told him that I wanted a treatment with T3 in it like Armour to help my depression, he laughed, saying there was no connection between T3 and mental health. I left with my normal script for 125 mcg Synthroid, a pronouncement that I’m “normal”, feeling crazy and stupid, moving to a sense of COMPLETE rage, and mostly, I felt like a complete fool for ever taking the time. What will happen to me? I can only get worse with my symptoms, which thanks to you site, I can now see are ALL hypo symptoms. Will ANY doctor LISTEN TO ME???

I WEEP.

17 replies