Alisande, I'm sorry your husband experienced the problems you describe and I hope the matters were resolved without difficulty.

I took the time to read through the linked article and came upon what appears to be a joint statment of the national association of Endocrinologists and the American Thyroid Association, which says:

" no evidence to support using desiccated thyroid hormone in preference to L-thyroxine monotherapy in treating hypothyroidism, and therefore desiccated thyroid hormone should not be used for the treatment of hypothyroidism. "

To step back, likely millions of people are treated effectively with the synthetic form. It's a known phenomenon that some small individuals may not respond to particular medications in the expected way. Oddly, I have such a situation for a medical issue of minor but annoying consequences, in that a drug's generic form is ineffective for me and I have to take the brand only.

Medical care is evidence based and if the governing body for docs and also the Thyroid Association both say no evidence supporting the natural form exists and that it should not be used, there's no controversy as the article suggests. Other than as your husband's situation and perhaps that of others might suggest, limited instances of the synthetic form being ineffective.

Medical care is evidence based and if the governing body for docs and also the Thyroid Association both say no evidence supporting the natural form exists and that it should not be used, there's no controversy as the article suggests.

Elmer, there's a huge controversy. It involves empirical evidence. Synthroid is a synthetic form of the thyroid hormone T4. We need T3 (the active hormone) as well, and some (possibly most) bodies convert T4 into T3. But not all do. As the article states, the confidence in the medical community that Synthroid was the best thyroid hormone replacement "was based on the assumption that everyone is capable of effectively converting T4 into the active T3 thyroid hormone needed by the body to resolve hypothyroidism." But many have learned that's a false assumption.

Thyroid issues interest me because I have a labile thyroid. The internet is full of shared experiences about insufficient thyroid testing and treatment. Don't roll your eyes at "the internet;" There is great value in the ability to learn from one another. Just as we do at the Kitchen Table.

Alisande, with all due respect, I know you're a thoughtful person. Individual docs (just as with any group of any occupation) fit into a bell curve of competence, as you know. Some are terrific, others are terrible, and many are in the middling middle. You hold an opinion in opposition to a majority view and position statement of thousands of practicing endocrinologists treating real patients every day of the week. You favor random chat from anonymous people on the internet.

Are the majority of endocrinologists wrong? Not plausible to me.

You've said before that you live in a rural area with very limited access to medical services. Turning to strangers on the internet is not a substitute for proper care. If your medical complaint is important, I hope you can get yourself to the right place to get competent care. Your PC and the internet can't provide that.

Good luck and best wishes, of course.

There's a misunderstanding here, Elmer. I haven't turned to strangers on the internet to ask about my thyroid, and I don't need medical care for it. But I know many others who have been dissatisfied with the usual thyroid test and the usual prescription.

You might not agree with this, but in my experience many physicians are quick (too quick) to prescribe in general, and they lean toward drugs that have been promoted to them. And if they're not even being taught in med school about options to treat hypothyroidism, they're certainly not going to undertake any research on their own.

Just another side of the coin we are learning about….

We have a genetic research company here in town, a non-profit, HudsonAlpha. They put on free seminars for the public to educate those interested in their research. One item they discussed recently is that genetic makeup plays a part in one’s response to medicine. A case study described a woman who was prescribed opiates for recovery from extensive surgery and was not responding to pain relief. After a while, it was thought she was ’faking’ to obtain more drugs, when nothing seemed further from the truth from her history. I’m shortening this story for brevity, but eventually genetic testing showed she was not capable of processing opiate-type drugs, the doctor changed her medications, and she obtained relief.

Alisande, have you been seen by an endocrinologist at a medical school? I think you're too quick to distrust experts and too quick to latch on to conspiracy theories.

Your information is otherwise strictly anecdotal - I found the article you linked to be embarrassingly amateurish. Especially, just as one example, the ridiculous generalization about what is and isn't "taught in medical schools". If that's the kind of info source you like, fine.

While synthroid works for me, I do know others who feel better on armor thyroid. I also knew someone who felt better on synthroid than on the generic. I also have a friend who did much better on a supplement from New Zealand (she lived in Australia for several years) than anything she could get in the States, so she special orders her product from there.

As far as scientific studies, too many are poorly done, and even if done optimally, they still talk about averages. Individuals can have very different results from the average. Everything is a probability. If you are not the average, then your results can be quite different. As OutsidePlaying points out, we are learning a lot more about genetic testing and genetic differences can absolutely result very different result from what studies have shown. Just look at a list of side effects from any drug...not everyone will experience them, but if they happen to you, it makes no difference if it's common or rare. And a doctor has no way of knowing ahead of time if it will happen to you.

Moreover, any dr. worth their salt, regardless of what science studies indicate, should recognize placebo effect which can be very powerful. So even if the dr doesn't believe the armour thyroid should make a difference, if the patient reports feeling better, and if providing it does no harm and especially if it keeps the patient out of the ER, then the physician should prescribe it.

As far as what the majority of drs think, I'm reminded of the 20 yrs it took for medicine to widely adopt anesthesia for surgery. The drs. falsely believed at the time that the pain the patient felt was an important part of healing so refused to use it.

There is long-standing bias against women in medical research. The fact that we often turn to one another for understanding and to share experiences shouldn't be a surprise.

Annie D, what imagined or hypothetical actual situation are you carrying on about? I do understand people's reactions to medications can differ, I mentioned that as regards myself in my very first comment.

I was responding to what seemed like an Emily Litella comment, taking her husband's unfortunate incident and condemning the world of endocrinology about it. With a less than convincing article by a non-technical person with seemingly no relevant credentials whose occupation is listed as "Patient advocate". I know better than to give credibility to a fluff piece like that written by a person like that, others should too.

I am taking Levothyroxine for my sluggish thyroid but not sure if it is working well. I am always cold. My next blood test is in June but the Doctors here only will test for T4 and not do other tests. I asked about the natural thyroid and two of my Doctors say they don't prescribe it. My go to person for all my thyroid questions is Amy Berger, she is the nutritionist in the group I belong too. If you are interested watch this video, Amy

is very knowledgeable about thyroid issues.

I'm interested in thyroid issues. Mine was removed a year and a half ago. I'm on sythroid and so far it's ok. I get tested every 3-4 months and the dose is tweaked.

Elmer you dump all over me for doing internet searches and laud personal experience. So I share experiences and then I'm told my personal experiences are "imagined or hypothetical". Clearly the common factor is you dumping on *anything* I post. Not surprised, though I'm ever hopeful you'll grow out of your childish hostility toward me. Silly me.

Cherryfizz, now you can order and pay for your own blood tests. For example, https://www.questhealth.com/. TSH, T3 and Free T4 are the best ones to watch. My dr and I have managed my situation so I am in the normal range, but the high end of normal as I feel better than I do at the low end. It matters how much you take each week, so I take my supplement 6 out of 7 days a week which puts me where I need to be.

And for those who are unfamiliar, Mary Shomon has written a lot of books and done a lot of work for decades on thyroid function and treatment. She was led to the work because she and so many other patients were unhappy with the treatment they were receiving from their doctors.

Outside Playing, that's a great point. When I had my DNA tested it provided valuable information, including several specific drugs that could prove useless to me. So much expert advice on health and diet consists of generalizations, failing to take individual differences into account.

Annie, another great point about the history of reluctance to adopt anesthesia. Medicine has a long history of resisting change. My favorite--and saddest--example of this is Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian doctor who was so vilified for his contention that women were dying in childbirth because doctors and midwives were passing germs from one patient to another. The simple advice to wash their hands had the medical community in an uproar, and they were brutal to him.

When I was six years old my adenoids were destroyed by radiation--intentionally, because at the time doctors were convinced that radiation was safer than surgery. Big mistake, but my parents were told they were doing the best for me. Whenever I think of that, I wonder what currently popular procedure or prescription might be regretted at some point.

Alisande, I too was told to get radiation to destroy my thyroid. I resisted and found a dr who was willing to treat me with medication. It gave me many years of having a normal thyroid function with no medication...something that would not have been possible with radiation. And I avoided some of the worst side effects, like a gal I know whose ablation triggered an awful case of thyroid eye disease which she suffered with and was disfigured by for many years and ended up needing surgery to correct. No thank you.

My cat ended up with thyroid disease which I insisted on treating with medication. My friend, though I warned him, chose the ablation for his cat who died shortly thereafter. Very sad.

No commotion intended, alisande. I was responding to what seemed an overreaction to an article of questionable creds. The uninformed vilification of modern medical practices and broad baseless assertions seemed typical to me of a lot of the drivel too easily found on the internet.

It's not the tip of an iceberg. There's no iceberg. We all need to find authoritative sources and experts to rely on and to know when something falls short of that standard. .

Deviating from the current topic - I agree with you, Alisande about the tragic case of Ignaz Semmelweis who, as you pointed out, urged medical staff to wash their hands between examining different patients to avoid the spread of disease. Women of the time were aware of the high rate of mortality in hospitals and would prefer to give birth elsewhere if at all possible. Semmelweis was ridiculed, as you point out and certainly not recognized for his observations. I had read a biography of this medical visionary with his "unconventional" theory. Back to regular programming ...