Thyroid Disorders: The problem with the typical medical approach.
A thyroid disorder can be an extremely challenging and frustrating thing to struggle with. The fact is that most people with a thyroid disorder will not be helped until the typical medical work-up of the problem changes. If you haven’t seen my recent video on “The problem with the typical medical approach to thyroid disorders,” then please feel free to watch it in the post below. Since sharing recent information and research on my approach and opinions on how to identify the causes/drivers of autoimmune disease, and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis in particular, I have had more interest and questions than I ever thought possible. Don’t get me wrong, I am glad that people are learning from the information I have published on autoimmunity and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, but it has been a complete surprise at the amount and number of questions. In response to the detailed questions on Hashimoto’s, I created a presentation that I recorded specifically on The Natural Approach to Hashimoto’s Disease and Thyroid Dysfunction that can be viewed on my website here. This presentation will answer a lot of questions that otherwise I would have to answer one at a time, and though I love teaching people so that they can become empowered, I also love getting away from the computer and video camera :). Over the next few weeks I will be posting more of the videos that I have created on Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and other autoimmune conditions so that you can become better informed on the contemporary approach to this problem. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video, and if you have already seen it then I hope you found it helpful.
Warm regards,
Dr. Shook
Transcription: The Problem with the Typical Medical Work-Up of Thyroid Disorders
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Hi, Dr. Shook here!
In this video, what I want to talk about are some of the common problems with allopathic or traditional medical approach to thyroid disorders.
With the typical patient that has a thyroid condition, you go to your primary physician, your primary care physician, and you will tell them that you have symptoms of fatigue. Your hair is falling out. You have brain fog all the time.
One of the things that they’re going to do is they’re going to order a thyroid marker or panel. Typically, what you get in this panel is one marker and one marker only and that is TSH, which is thyroid-stimulating hormone. That hormone is actually not a thyroid marker at all. It is an indirect measurement of your thyroid function.
What that is, the TSH is a hormone that’s made by your pituitary gland. If you go right here behind your eyes, between your eyes straight back, there is a small gland that looks like it has a little stalk and a little bulb on the end of it. It’s called your pituitary gland.
The pituitary gland makes thyroid-stimulating hormone. The thyroid-stimulating hormone signals your thyroid to ramp up its production of enzymes and to manufacture T4 and T3, which are your thyroid hormones. That is the only thing that’s typically measured.
If that number is high, then your doctor will reason that the gland is trying to signal your thyroid to make more hormones, so you must be low in thyroid hormone.
If that number is very, very low, then your doctor reasons that the pituitary is not telling your thyroid to make more hormone so you must have normal, or if it’s really low then you must have hyper or too much production of thyroid hormone.
In a lot of cases, most of the time that number is higher, which indicates or signals that your thyroid production is probably low. Okay so what they do in that case is they’ll prescribe you a thyroid replacement hormone and say, “Okay, take this and let me know how you do.”
In a lot of people, what ends up happening is they don’t feel any better, or they might feel better for a short period of time, then they feel worse. Then there’s another scenario where patients go in, everything looks good. They say, “You know what, I think you’re fine. Everything is fine. Here, take an antidepressant.” That is a very common scenario.
The problem with this is that there is no appreciation for why the person feels the way they do. There’s absolutely no further investigation. Here’s the thing: it’s not that your doctor doesn’t mean well because they do mean well, but that’s how they’re trained. That’s what their training is, and that’s how it works.
I mean it can be a very frustrating system to be put into, but you know thank God we have our primary care physicians because they do so much for us; but with a lot of chronic and inflammatory diseases, it’s not a great system at this point in time.
A lot of your primary care physicians, they’ll tell you that. I mean there are some shortcomings, and this just happens to be one that’s a very, very big one.
Here’s the scenario: with this type of problem, what really needs to be done is they really need to be ordering a more expanded thyroid panel.
But here’s the issue: they’re not going to do that because they don’t really know how to use a lot of those different numbers. What they’ll do instead of doing that, they’ll refer you to an endocrinologist.
A lot of times, the endocrinologist will order a more expanded panel. With an endocrinologist, you are more likely to get tested for Hashimoto’s or for Graves’ disease, which are both autoimmune conditions to the thyroid, which 90 percent of low thyroid is an autoimmune condition called Hashimoto’s thyroiditis or Hashimoto’s thyroid.
The reason for that is because it is a very common autoimmune condition. A lot of patients think that they have a primary thyroid problem, or your physicians think that you have a primary thyroid problem when in reality the reason that you feel bad and the reason that your TSH and your markers are off or that your TSH and markers are normal but you feel bad is because you actually have a primary autoimmune condition called Hashimoto’s disease.
The real problem with this is that the medical community is not finding it, and if they find it, unfortunately addressing what drives or causes an autoimmune condition is not being done.
What is done is that typically you’re placed on a steroid or some type of immune-suppressing drug, or there are a lot of other more invasive, more radical procedures, which sometimes aren’t necessary. But the steroids and a lot of times these anti-inflammatories or these immune-suppressing drugs, they do nothing to identify why you have an autoimmune condition. They do nothing for your symptomatology except to stop the thyroid tissue destruction by your immune system.
What I want to do is just touch on the major problems in the diagnosis and workup of thyroid disorders within our primary care medical system or allopathic medicine. If you have any questions, let me know.
I’m Dr. Shook. I appreciate you taking time from your day to learn more about your health. If you need anything or have any questions, just let us know.
Thank you!
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