Diagnosing and Treating the Thyroid
How often have I heard this story? The patient goes into the doctor with complaints of fatigue, weight gain, sometimes hair loss and brain fog, and is convinced that it must be thyroid. Unfortunately the patient is told that their thyroid is normal, and they are sent back to life with all of the same symptoms and no relief, if this sounds like you read on. There is hope and treatment.
First, in order to really diagnose a thyroid problem, the physician must test more than a TSH test. Unfortunately that is where about 95% of physicians stop, with an archaic inaccurate test. The TSH is the pituitaries opinion of whether it is receiving enough thyroid precursor. I look at it like a fire: The TSH tells me if the thyroid is getting enough wood to make a fire. What is doesn’t tell you is how big a fire are you building with the firewood.
In order to see if the body is effectively converting the wood to a fire, you need additional tests, amongst them, free t3, free t4 and in some cases reverse t3. These numbers, if interpreted properly will give me the real answer of thyroid is function in the system.
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Laboratory tests are based on the population average for a test. If you look around the mall or McDonalds, we are not a healthy population. 2/3 of our population is overweight or obese. I don’t want their average numbers! But even a normal number can be quite bad, you can have a result in the lower end of the curve, and still have all of the symptoms of thyroid, and still be considered “normal”. In my office, I don’t want a normal result, I want an optimal reading. Optimal is in the HIGHER END OF THE CURVE, and that is where people function the best in terms of quality of life and health.
Interestingly enough, that if the numbers are corrected to optimal, then most of the symptoms often go away! So was the thyroid really normal, or just not in the optimal range? I think the latter. If you want optimal treatment, then contact my office for an appointment.