Why Thyroid Meds Don't Work

So, you go to the doctor and spill your bucket of symptoms–fatigue, weight gain, hair loss, etc. If you happened upon an alert doctor, you’ll get a thyroid test. And you’ll celebrate that help is on the way.

Well, maybe. While doctors love blood tests–and disdain symptoms–thyroid tests aren’t reliable. Doctors know this, but they go by the book.

But perhaps the test actually says you have a punk thyroid. The doctor prescribes Synthroid, levothyroxin or some other T4 med, assuring you it will fix things. And you celebrate that help is here.

Well, maybe not. We need to talk about this.

The body’s natural thyroid hormone has five parts: T4, tyrosine with four parts iodine, T3, tyrosine with three parts iodine, T2, tyrosine with two parts iodine, T1, tyrosine with one part iodine and calcitonin, which helps protect our bones (in a round about way).

T3 is where all the action is. Our bodies have to convert T4 to T3 before it can get in the game. Recent research says T2 is also quite active. Nobody knows what T1 does.

Doctors could prescribe Armour Thyroid, the natural medicine that includes all parts of the thyroid hormone and has a long, long history of successful use, but they don’t.

Most doctors prescribe an artificial T4 medicine, such as Synthroid or levothyroxin. They’re taught to distrust Armour, although their doubts have no basis in fact. It may be one of the greatest medical frauds in all history.

And, while it’s bad enough 80% of the thyroid hormone’s parts are missing, artificial T4 doesn’t match natural T4. Some bodies react very badly, while others just let it pass through.

Truth to tell, our bodies don’t like wanna-be meds. You may remember the Woman’s Health Initiative exposé of the artificial estrogen and progesterone in hormone replacement therapy. Instead of doing the good doctors said it would, HRT created havoc.

But you can’t patent the natural stuff, and the money’s in the patent, so we get anything artificial Big Pharma can come up with–regardless of whether it works or whether it does dastardly things to us.

Artificial thyroid meds fail us. We can’t convert artificial T4 to natural T3, which is what we need to feel alive, We can faithfully take our meds and still feel like death struck by a brick.

However, while T4 meds don’t do you any good, they satisfy the blood tests. If you complain about still not feeling good, doctors wave the test results in your face and insist you’re fine. And they don’t want to hear about symptoms, thank you very much.

But wait! There’s more! While artificial T4 meds don’t help your thyroid, they do eat your bones. As doctors reduce your medication despite ongoing symptoms, they quote studies saying overdoses of thyroid meds cause osteoporosis.

Not so fast, Chester. All the studies used Synthroid. Synthroid–and probably any artificial T4 med–causes osteoporosis. Overdoses have nothing to do with it. Before the days of artificial T4, when doctors prescribed Armour, the average dose was twice what it is now, and osteoporosis still didn’t rear its ugly head.

What we have then are tests that don’t tell the story, meds that don’t fix the problem and doctors who don’t really care. You were wondering why things weren’t going well?

The moral to this sad tale? We have to take responsibility for our own health and push back when necessary.