> Nancy Hugo <[log in to unmask]>

>  Would it be okay with the people who have posted messages about ReverseT3,
>  and it's effects, if I print those messages out to share with others?
I doubt if most of us would mind but we do like to hear about it from time to
time so we know we've accomplished something.  Part of the reason we're on
the list is to help others.  Even the ones who just lurk looking for answers
sometimes become enlightened participants because suddenly they realize from
this list that their problems really are low thyroid.  It's what happened to
me, I joined around the starting date of the list.  I didn't post much except
to occassionally to ask about my son's problems, which I didn't directly
relate to hypothyroidism since his TSH was excellent and his symptoms
different than mine. Then in 2000, a light went off and I realized the
doctors were wrong, almost any disorder known to many can be caused by
thyroid.  I'll temper that by saying my wife's asthma was cured with
treatment.  I assume it's possible to have asthma without hypothyroidism, I'm
open to that extent.   If doctors don't know that Armour Thyroid in an
adequate dosage, or timed release T3 can cure asthma, how do they know it's
not the sole cause?  If they knew in a 1940 excerpt from a medical textbook
recently posted by Greg deGuzman that hypothyroidism not treated properly
generally led to sleep apnea, and 59 years later I went to the ENT and the
family doctor, whom I had been telling I needed more Armour, because I had
developed sleep apnea and had to go through the long delay in scheduling for
the two sleep studies insurance would require for a CPAP machine, why if 59
years later they didn't even mention the possibility to a hypothyroid patient
the cause of his problem might be that very disorder, why should we believe
anything but that hundreds of disorders are nothing more than the symptoms of
an untreated or just as likely, and even sadder undertreated thyroid gland,
because after all those years trying to find help, you had hope that you
would be normal again, you had seen your doctor practically enough to be a
best buddy, but he doesn't care that you need more synthroid, or synthroid
doesn't work at all and Armour works for some, and that mention of Wilson's
Syndrome with timed release T3, well a doctor ought to just give poison.
(Maybe when they think that it's about how their bank accounts will be
poisoned when the general population becomes educated to what they are doing.)

>  would particularly like to share the comments with a group of mental
>  health adminstrators, program managers, and family members....as well as
>  my own physicians.
Many of us would like that, use a more favorable tone to doctors letter than
this one, they prefer that.  Just because your typical endocrinologist is
likely to tell the woman who just gained 20 pounds last  month, has hair
starting to fall out, hasn't changed her diet or exercise routine, and she's
sorry the family doctor forgot to send her files, but she knows her TSH is
normal.  The wonderful doctor of enocrinology in America is likely to know
the problem immedicately - gaining weight?  Oh, that's easy I'll writhe out
the Fen-phen (appetite suppressant) prescritption now.  From this list, I
learned Austrailian endos are different, they suggest stomach stapling in
similar circumstances.  No, using those same tones with doctors who we visit
for the first time because we're too naive to use the phone before we spend
the money so they can say, "you're in fine health, your thyroid is good, I
don't know why you think anything is wrong, you just work too hard, that'll
be $100 please."  No those doctors don't like similar tones or treatment.

>
>  Doc Don....I owe you a mountain of gratitude. I would like to ask if you,
>  or anyone else from the list, think there is any possibility that this
>  reverseT3 problem could be an issue for individuals suffering from
>  psychological trauma and/or post traumatic stress disorder?
Yes, a lot of us owe Doc Don some gratitude.  I knew who to call when after 3
years of going to the family doctor and specialists I pointed out to her in
black and white the words of the Magic Foundation, a clinic specializing in
children's growth problems.  I pointed them out in black and white asked for
treatment before he died or went into a coma, and fortunately I knew who to
call when the doctor of 6 years turned me down.  When she didn't care if my
son died.  I made the call in my mind before I left her office.

> I've been acquainted with several women who have
>  various problems with childhood trauma issues, who are taking levoxyl or
>  synthroid, in addition to many other meds, and just don't seem to do very
>  well. I have been on levothroid for about two years, recently changed to
>  Armour....with what seem to me to be very dramatic results. I'm wondering
>  now if much of the problems these other women are having might not be a
>  reverse T3 problem.
That's what Dennis Wilson says.  Whatever the reason for it, from my wife's
experience, she had increased all the way up to 18 grains of Armour  to
compensate for the reverse T3, which we didn't know about at the time.  Can
you imagine, doctors hate to give Armour at all, mine stranded me in chronic
fatigue at 2 grains, and she had normal pulse and blood pressure at 18
grains.  She's doing lots better on the timed release T3.  If you keep
needing to increase your Armour dosage, because you get better but keep
needing to go up,  this is likely why.

>  Another question I would like to ask....how does one come to terms with
>  the lost years?
In our severe hypo days, we would have just sat there and said, "oh well."
Or, on the really bad days such as the ones during which we couldn't make it
out of our easy chair and practically cried over TV shows, we might have
cried if we thought too much, but we're really good at ignoring things.  Kind
of like a shock victim, we can't face reality so we commonly are in a
trans-like state. (When we're really bad, I'm not sure antidepressants would
make us any more indifferent to what happens.)   I remember my mother always
seeming to be in a trance somewhere else  that way for many years, until
recently I thought it was the anti-depressants of the day.  Now, I know it
was hypothyroid brain fog and problems. This defintion used to be applied
openly to hypothyroid people like my mother," extreme depression of mind or
spirits often centered on imaginary physical ailments."  Many hypothyroid
people have all kinds of illnesses and problems people think are imaginary,
but they aren't.  Today's doctors don't use those terms anymore, not do they
still tell patients it's all in their head.  That doesn't mean they don't
think it.

As far as today's reaction to the wasted years, I'm awake enough to know I
wish I hadn't slept through the decade of the 90's.  I'm no longer tired and
if I even hear the word doctor if I don't hear attached to it the word, Don,
Michael, Collins, Wilson, Teitalbaum, or Barnes, I bristle at the thought of
the morons.  How did most of them get through medical school without
developing either compassion or clinical accumen.  How come when I calll my
lab, the president says that "normal" is a statistical definition falling
within 2 standard deviations of the mean, which means 95.5 percent of the
population tested is "normal" and it is not a well/sick cutoff point.  How
come my lab knows it's not a diagnosis, just a guide to paint part of the
picture not as important as patient history, but my doctor sees a "normal"
reading and tells a patient with the ring of authority that "normal means
there couldn't possibly be a thyroid problem,"

Yes, we get mad.  Some of us Americans remember an attempt at a national
health plan.  Obvioulsy we didn't trust our government to take care of us.
Worse yet, many of us now know we can't trust most doctors either.   Our
country was built on certain freedoms.  One thing they thought they needed
was the second amendment.  They didn't think  they needed the second
amendment because they wanted to hunt, they's just been in a war where they
fought for their very lives and freedom, and saw it as a way to keep tyranny
at bay.  When my son was close to death and my doctor refused to treat,
wasn't that an attack on my family the same way as someone threatening to
push him off a cliff?  It just appeared more civil.

Thank God, this is America and we do have choices.  It's not like the UK yet,
which suspended it's best chronic fatigue doctor for giving Armour and
hydrocortisone the things that made me considerably better.  I'm free to
choose other doctors who will actually treat, and in my old age I've learned
to use the telephone to make sure the doctor is either 1.) willing to work
with me. This is worth it'' weight in gold, or 2.) Knows a great deal about
the condition I'm going to be treated for, if it's thyroid I ask him enough
questions to see if he's likely to give Armour or some other new treatment
like timed release T3 that might work better as opposed to letting me suffer.
I think in spite of the fact I may be the only NRA (National Rifle
Association) member to own a gun, if it comes to our Barry
Durrant-Peatfield's getting suspended, or Armour or T3 becoming illegal, we
are smart enough to know that someone is attacking us and wants our life to
be sick and miserable. It would make me feel even more the way I did when I
found out they used to put fluoride in drinking water given to prisoners of
war to make them docile and stupid, it will make it clear there really is a
war I haven't know about to destroy the health and lives of millions, and
again I would have to ask who wants us too tired to think or defend
ourselves?    At that point it's time to read the second amendment a few
times, to see if we feel the way our ancestors do.

Skipper Beers

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