Thyroid Balance

As the saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to get you."  Sometimes, practicing out of the conventional medicine mainstream, you can feel like someone's out to get you, or at least that you're Alice in Wonderland.  Nowhere is this more obvious than when treating chronic Lyme disease in one of my patients.Chronic Lyme disease is a diagnosis that doesn't even exist for much of medicine.  The fact that there's plenty of information on the chronic nature of Lyme, that lots of patients have symptoms that are attributable to Lyme and get better with antibiotics, and that the tests are positive in many of these patients doesn't seem to convince a lot of doctors who are

Two related events marked this week's trip to visit my parents in Boca Raton.  My father proudly showed me his plummeting cholesterol and LDL cholesterol (termed "Lousy" cholesterol by his doctor to distinguish it from HDL "Happy" cholesterol).  And, my mother showed me the stock market drop that Schering Plough had taken that morning.  The two events were linked by Vytorin, the Schering Plough drug to lower cholesterol. Vytorin is a combination of a statin drug (Zocor) and another drug (Zetia, actually made by Merck) that blocks absorption of cholesterol.  The ENHANCE study to study effectiveness of Vytorin was complete two years ago but the drug company dragged its feet in publishing for so long that a Congressional committee sent

As I've written about before, vitamin D  is the current sexy vitamin.  In fact, it's probably not a vitamin at all but a hormone that controls much of our metabolic and immune function.  New information on the wondrous web of vitamin D activities comes out all the time.What fascinated me about this article in the journal Metabolism is the implication that there is yet another area where vitamin D has a role: insulin and blood sugar metabolism.  No need to plow through the science here, unless that interests you.  The key for me is that obese children and adolescents with low vitamin D levels were at increased risk of developing insulin and blood

Every couple of years my patients go to the pharmacy to refill their prescriptions, only to have the same rumor gets whispered to them: Armour thyroid is going off the market.  It's happening again.In the past four months, it has been increasingly difficult for patients to get 120 mg (2 grain) and 15 mg (1/4 grain) of Armour thyroid.   Some of my patients have been told that these strengths are going off the market permanently, and one or two of my patients have been told that all strengths of Armour thyroid will disappear soon.  None of these statements are, in fact, true. So why does this rumor resurface?   I agree with Mary Shomon that the answer lies in a

 In the late 1970s I was Medical Director of the Marco Polo Rest Home in East Boston.  Anxious to improve the health (as I saw it) of the residents, I contracted with Quebrada Bakery (which coincidentally now lies down the street from my office).  Twice a week, they would deliver whole grain bread to the mostly elderly residents, who had previously dined on mass-produced white bread.  I was very proud of myself and I thought that I had done a good thing increasing the nutritional value of my patients' diet.Boy was I naïve.  A mile or two from the site of the Boston Tea Party, a new revolution ensued.  The rest home staff, convinced that I was torturing the

It happened again this year.  The Thanksgiving table got cleared and the dishes done and immediately the over 30s crowd sunk deep into the living room couch (there is a very long couch at my folks' house) and started the evening dozing.  It took the promise of decaf and multiple desserts (gluten-free for me, various cakes and pies for others) to rouse us from our naps. Which raises the annual question: does turkey cause drowsiness? The reputation of turkey to cause sleepiness is so widespread that it has attained the status of Urban Legend.  This reputation is based on the fact that turkey contains the amino acid L-tryptophan.  L-tryptophan is an important amino acid in brain chemistry.  It converts to 5

Here’s the story, repeated countless times in my office over my 32 years of practicing medicine. It goes like this: "My doctor found that I had thyroid disease, he put me on Synthroid (or other thyroid medicine) and told me the numbers were better. But I still feel tired, sluggish, bloated, constipated and depressed!" Another version: "I have gained all sorts of weight, I’m exhausted all the time, my skin is dry, my hair’s falling out and I’m constipated. I went to my doctor, sure that my thyroid was low. But she blood-tested me and told me I was fine! Now what do I do?" This is why I wrote Thyroid Balance, and this is why I’ve launched the Thyroid Balance Blogsite. I’d like

Another study has confirmed the relationship between thyroid function and mood. In this study, reported by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), 2/3 of 65 patients diagnosed with depression from Bipolar Disorder have “sub-optimal” thyroid levels. These patients with low-normal thyroid levels took an average of 4 months longer to respond to their depression medications. You can read about this study and a lot more interesting information on Dr. Daniel Amen's website. Dr. Amen is a physician who is in the forefront of innovative brain research and therapy. Two things interest me about this study. One is that medicine is weirdly compartmentalized these days. There are Thyroid Specialists who will not look at the adrenal, the ovaries or the other

Five absolutely baffling things said to my patients by other physicians: To a patient with persistent stomach problems, said by a gastroenterologist: "Take the Nexium". Don’t worry what you eat; food doesn’t make a difference in stomach problems." To a patient who had just completed an unsuccessful very toxic chemotherapy program, and was being offered another toxic regimen that was experimental (explanation: I suggested an intravenous vitamin C therapy to see if it would help with how he felt, and with his immune system): "We consider intravenous vitamin C to be too dangerous to give in our clinic." To a patient about to under go chemotherapy and radiation therapy for cancer, said by her oncologist: "Don’t eat any fruits or vegetables. The anti-oxidants

Things to blame chocolate cravings on…. Excuse #1: Gut Microbes Swiss researchers at the Nestle Research Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, recruited men - some who craved chocolate and some reportedly indifferent to its charms - then fed them all the same diets for five days. Urinary analyses found that the chocolate-lovers had a distinctly recognizable metabolic profile that involved gut microbe differences, low levels of LDL cholesterol, and marginally elevated levels of the beneficial protein albumin. This profile was identified even when they ate no chocolate. Excuse #2: Phenylethylamine This chemical compound, classified as an amino acid (protein building block), increases blood pressure, raises heart rate, and increases sensitivity. Boston Globe science writer Chet Raymo calls it