About Thyroid

Many, many books have been written about the thyroid gland. The sad and bad part is that most people are ignorant about it, and this includes doctors.What you need to know is that in order for thyroid to work, adrenals must first be supported. Also a cause of thyroid problems could be toxins, stress, and many other conditions that may need clearing first.

Your thyroid is your master timer gland; it sets your body clock and tells your organs how fast or slow to function. It can be thought of as the conductor in a grand orchestra.

When the body can’t cope with stress, the natural reaction of the thyroid is to slow the metabolism. The most common problem when it comes to thyroid is under-functioning, slow thyroid, otherwise known as hypothyroidism. When someone suffers from this condition, the whole body becomes sluggish.

Slow thyroid is a widespread problem today. You might wonder why this is. It is difficult to say, and there could be many causes. Based on my experience, I would make the educated guess that this epidemic-like spread of thyroid problems is a result of the ubiquitous use of fluoride products and maybe other toxins too.

I realize that this may be shocking and confusing, so please allow me to explain. Thyroid hormones have one to four iodine atoms attached to them. Since fluoride competes with iodine, some these essential iodine atoms may dislodge, and be replaced by the fluoride, thus rendering the thyroid hormones inactive.

My intent is not to frighten you, but you must consider your toothpaste an enemy of your health if it does contain fluoride, which many do. You should carefully read the packaging and search for non-fluoride toothpaste. The same holds true for drinking water; you may need to search for healthier options if you live in a city where the water supply is contaminated with fluoride.

Assessing Thyroid Function

How do we recognize thyroid problems? Common symptoms include weight gain, water retention, sluggishness, and hair loss. Besides these visible problems, there are many internal ones we cannot see with bare eyes. For instance, hormone levels can be severely out of balance, and metabolism could be severely slowed.

Blood testing is a great tool is a great tool to assess thyroid function. Ideally, the most common indicator, TSH, should be below 1.0, even though “normal” is up to 3.5 and some irresponsible doctors accepting it up to 5.

The thyroid makes mainly T4 (the inactive hormone) .In the case of hypothyroidism, free T3, the active thyroid hormone, is made both in the thyroid (a very, very small amount) ,but mainly inside every single body cell. The cells form the active T3 by removing one iodine atom from the normal four existing in T4.

Total T3 is not a very valuable indicator, as most of it is bound and not bioavailable. There are many factors that can block the conversion of T4 to T3. Some factors are toxins, stress, any severe illness, deficiency of selenium, zinc, and other factors.

You need to keep the levels of thyroid hormones in the normal values, however TSH should be in the lower part of normal (below 1-1,5), free T3 in the upper part of normal and Reverse T3 (another inactive thyroid hormone) will target the middle range.

Supplements and Medications for Thyroid

When it comes to how we react and respond to various tablets and pills, we are all different. Most respond best to dried but standardized pig or veal thyroid in tablet form, also known as “natural thyroid.” There is also a better way to replace thyroid hormone by way of a compounded T4/T3 formula. It is not widely used due to many factors not the least being the price of a compounded medicine.

Despite ignorant statements and arguments from many doctors, natural thyroid IS reliable, it IS easy to adjust by increasing or decreasing dosage, has an easily measured body impact, and offers a phenomenal success rate, with minimal side effects.

Doctors who consider natural thyroid with disdain seem to enjoy reciting medical propaganda they learned long ago, when they were on medical school. They may claim, “Natural thyroid has not been shown to be beneficial or reliable,” or, “It’s outdated.” This is blatant negligence and foolishness on their part, because few have actually tried this approach to see if it actually works, which it does. If a doctor tells you that something does not work, simply repeating rhetoric he or she has been taught, it is proof of that doctor’s laziness, closed-mindedness, and unprofessionalism.

Natural thyroid works, and it is usually given in 30mg increments. It contains all the thyroid hormones, nutrient factors, and minerals necessary for proper thyroid function. Because it is from another animal species your doctor may need to keep anti thyroid antibodies under supervision.

Side effects with natural thyroid are extremely rare. However, as I mentioned, we are all different when it comes to reactions to medication and supplements. Not everyone’s body responds well to natural thyroid. A small number of patients will respond better to synthetic thyroid hormone T4, which is given in micrograms, not milligrams, but this comprises only 10 to 15 percent of all thyroid patients. In conclusion, 90 percent respond best to natural thyroid, while only 10 percent respond best to T4. Bearing this in mind, if you were a doctor, which approach would you try first? The sad truth is that many doctors are either unaware of this fact or are unwilling to accept it for one reason or another.

What we recommend to our patients is to start the natural thyroid. If this does happen to result in side effects such as anxiety or agitation, we switch them to synthetic thyroid, usually Synthroid, the brand name of synthetic T4.

Nutritional supplements are helpful for thyroid boosting, too, albeit not as helpful as some commercial advertisers would like you to believe. Some supplements are marginally helpful, like iodine or tyrosine, selenium, zinc, magnesium, etc. We usually do not recommend these for the purpose of treating thyroid hormone levels, but hey definitely help some people.

There is a thyroid condition knownas thyroiditis, a medical condition that may signify inflammation of the thyroid. This condition is usually self-limited and manifests almost always with overactive thyroid or hyperthyroidism. In later stages, left untreated, it can result in thyroid burnout, and this also leads to hypothyroidism or sluggish thyroid. It is treated with medication, but almost always responds to low doses of lithium (5-20 mg) and iodine.

Since thyroiditisis a type of inflammation, it can be treated with anti-inflammatories too. For those who suffer from thyroiditis, we recommend a special no-grain diet and low doses of lithium orotate, 10 to 20mg daily for a few months, with fish oil and iodine.

Multiple thyroid nodules are very common; however, they almost never transform into cancer and do not require treatment unless they grow too large or become active. In any case they should be monitored by a doctor. Most surgeons suggest removal, but I believe this is a mistake. Single cold nodules, however, need to be worked up and checked for cancer and malignancy and may require surgical removal.

Summary

• Keep TSH lower than 1.5 and free T3 normal – high.
• Thyroid makes T4, every cell of the body transforms T4 in T3
• T3 is the “active” thyroid hormone.
• Most people respond better to products containing T3