If you take thyroid medication for hyper or hypothyroidism, here is a point of view you need to consider.

If you take thyroid medication for hyper or hypothyroidism, here is a point of view you need to consider.

There are many people who are on thyroid medication. From the medical point of view, if the numbers are either under or over the norm, you are likely going to be given thyroid medication to improve the levels of thyroid medications in the blood. If you have had the thyroid removed, you may experience the same type of treatment. In medical speak, this is called management which can go on forever.

Many of those who have numbers that are over or under the norm have entire hormonal systems out of whack. Taking medication to manage the symptom of hyper or hypo thyroidism does not solve the problems in the bodies hormonal systems, it just brings the numbers when bloods are taken into line with the currently accepted norms.

Unfortunately, this type of management is neither curative or preventative, since other problems will likely be seen as later problems in the body with other organ systems showing stress or even failure.

A more holistic way of thinking would look at the systems, the impairment to the systems and try to bring the body into homeostasis (normal functioning) using a functional approach to allow the body to self repair that system, and in turn, cause a normalization of how the thyroid works. That is markedly different than “managing” hormone levels.

Dr. John Bilas takes that type of approach to systemic problems such as thyroid hormone levels. If you are currently taking hormone supplementation, you will want to read this article. This approach is a curative one so it is worth your time.

THE FRUSTRATING THYROID

By Dr. John Bilas, DC, Nutrition Specialist Physician OnlineNaturalDoctor.com 609-204-2092 [email protected]

This is the everyday struggle a majority of thyroid patients face. They work with doctors who discount their ongoing thyroid symptoms because their lab values are normal or they just don’t improve much.

There are a multitude of mechanisms that are possible in this scenario. I want to explain two of the most common scenarios we come across in our patient population.

1. Functional Ranges – most of the lab ranges you see on your lab reports are based off of bell curve analysis. Basically this means that they take the average value from a sample of patients that had their blood drawn at that lab and call that “normal.” The problem is this lab normal doesn’t represent physiological normal function. If you pick up the most recent copy of your thyroid lab report you see that they listed the range for for TSH at .5 to 5.0. Dr. John uses functional ranges when analyzing your thyroid blood test results.

So what exactly is a functional range then?

A functional range is just a tighter range that is more representative of physiological normal. The functional range for TSH is 1.8 to 3.0. So if we see a patient with ongoing thyroid symptoms and a TSH of 4.2 … we know there is still an underlying problem.

Since your doctor is likely interpreting your lab values through “lab ranges”, not functional ranges, they will miss subtle clues pointing to a solution to your thyroid symptoms.

2. Under-conversion – your body makes primarily T4, which is the inactive form of thyroid hormone. Our body must then convert the T4 into T3, the active form of the hormone which is responsible for creating the thyroid metabolic response.

I see countless lab reports that only measure TSH and T4. They never even check to see if T4 is properly converting to T3. If you have normal TSH and T4 but abnormal T3 then you are going to have ongoing thyroid symptoms. How would you know if they never even measure it?

So there you have it. If there is a underconversion, are you evaluated for why the underconversion is taking place? That’s what Dr. John can do for you and tell you what to do about it.

Just two of the many ways patients can have normal thyroid labs and still have thyroid symptoms. There are up to 24 different patterns for abnormal thyroid function. I just noted only one to you.

At OnlineNaturalDoctor.com we thoroughly investigate these and many other mechanisms that could create the scenario of normal or abnormal thyroid labs and a dysfunctional thyroid. We don’t just do a quick glance at a lab report and tell you “everything looks normal” or “come back in six months and let’s do it again”

 

If you want to get started with our very personalized and unique approach to dealing with thyroid symptomsthen sign up with Dr. John at OnlineNaturalDoctor.com.