A Case Study: Hypothyroidism

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http://www.alternativemedicine.com/digest/issue16/16013R00.shtml

REVERSING 10 YEARS OF HYPOTHYROIDISM

When , aged 47, first walked into my office, he had near total body failure and was almost permanently bedridden. He had chronic fatigue, intermittent headaches, light sensitivity, multiple chemical sensitivities, heart palpitations, mood swings, and anxiety fluctuating with depression. was cold all the time, his appetite was poor, his mental abilities were sluggish, and he’d been sick for most of the previous 10 years. He was also on prescription antidepressants. I ordered standard laboratory tests for ’s thyroid function, to evaluate the status of T3, T4, TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone), and FTI (free thyroxine index, to see how much thyroxine was actually active). Some physicians only look at T4 levels. Taken alone, this is useless. TSH is the most sensitive indicator of thyroid function, but the whole thyroid panel should be run. Of the 4, ’s TSH levels were elevated; the normal range is 0.35 to 5.5, but his was 10.6. Any elevation of TSH means the thyroid gland is failing functionally.

started taking a quarter of a grain daily of natural thyroid hormone derived from animals. Over the next 3 months, I gradually increased the dosage to almost 2 grains per day. My preference was to run a series of allergy sensitivity tests but ’s budget didn’t allow for this. As a way of working around this, he began a low-fat diet that was high in complex carbohydrates and low in “glycemic” foods, which means foods whose carbohydrate (or simple sugar) composition is absorbed too rapidly into the bloodstream.

Patients with preexisting heart problems should not take high doses of thyroid hormone (more than 2 grains/day) except under physician’s careful supervision. tracked his diet to see which foods provoked problems, and identified wheat, corn, and dairy as allergenic foods to be eliminated. He took a high-potency multiple mineral/vitamin supplement and about 1000 mg total of the essential fatty acids omega-3 and omega-6. These were in the form of gamma linolenic acid (GLA) from borage oil (240 mg, twice daily) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA; 240 mg, twice daily).

also took daily doses of Ester C, a form of vitamin C (500 mg), calcium (125 mg), and magnesium (65 mg). I also increased his dietary protein intake so that more amino acids (the building blocks of proteins) would be available to his brain where they could help offset the biochemical side of his depression. Over the 3 months on the thyroid hormone, ’s condition steadily improved. Stamina, energy, digestion, muscular function, mood—everything got better. All of his systems had been operating at suboptimal levels; restoring the correct level of thyroid hormone was like stoking the flames in all his cells.

was a classic “basket case” before taking the thyroid hormone, but now he is a functional human being, doing a world better than he was before. He’s able to fend for himself, prepare his own meals, and exercise regularly without being drugged to the eyeballs on conventional medications which gave him practically every side effect possible. In fact, ’s mental processes improved so much with the thyroid hormone, that he was able to stop taking all his prescription drugs.