Desiccated Thyroid Hormone Therapy - United Medicine Group

Desiccated Thyroid Hormone Therapy

Natural Vs Impure:

Therapeutic approach to various problems is changing. With an abundance of chemicals and additives in our daily life and an increasing death rate due to cancer at all ages, holistic physicians are now reverting to ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ medicine for optimum care of their patients.
Desiccated thyroid is not only a part of that natural approach but also a treatment of choice for many types of resistant-to-treat thyroid deficiencies. Desiccated Thyroid Extract comes from the porcine thyroid and it is a prescription medication approved by the FDA. It comes as 30, 60 and 120 mg pills. (or 1, 2, 3 grains respectively). Unlike your usual thyroid pills which are T4 only, it has T4 and T3 in the proportion of 38:9mg. Being natural it also has T1, T2, calcitonine and other minor extracts of the thyroid gland. All these ingredients make it a natural way of treating deficiency problems. However, many physicians see it as an ‘impure’ way of treating the thyroid.

Emergence of Resistant-to-Treatment Thyroid Patients:
Desiccated Thyroid was the only and the first substitution therapy for thyroid deficiency for more than 100 years till 1900. Synthesis of T4 by pharmaceuticals made it very easy for physicians to prescribe a dose and then monitor it by measuring TSH alone. We now have many generations of physicians for whom a T4 prescription has become standard therapy. There was nothing wrong with Thyroid Extract. It was just overshadowed by synthetic T4 produced by pharmaceuticals. Use of T4 led to a group of patients whose blood tests for thyroid functions were normal but they were still experiencing all the symptoms of thyroid deficiency.

What are T4 and T3?
Thyroxin or T4 has four iodine molecules. There are other minor hormones with fewer number of iodine molecules such as T1 and T2. These are all inactive forms of the hormone.
T4 changes into T3 in circulation which has lost one iodine molecule and is the active form of thyroid hormone. T3 binds to special cell surface receptors present on every cell in our body. T3 cannot exert its actions without being bound to its receptors.

Symptoms of Thyroid Deficiency:
Thyroid hormone plays a major role in the regulation of food metabolism, heart function, body temperature, menstrual cycle, and fertility. It also supports normalization of energy, weight, appetite, sleep, libido, clear thinking and hair growth.
Thyroid hormone deficiency can cause a variety of problems ranging from tiredness, weight gain, cold intolerance, lack of energy, slow thinking, poor memory, depression, hypotension, myxedema or swelling of the body, slow heart beat, constipation, loss of hair, menstrual irregularities, infertility and many more. All this happens due to low levels of thyroxin or T4 hormone which is produced by the thyroid gland.

What Tests Should be Done?
If anyone has any one or combination of these symptoms, the physician will measure T4 and TSH levels in your blood. TSH stands for Thyroid Stimulating Hormone and it comes from the pituitary gland inside our skull. TSH regulates and maintains thyroid hormone levels in our blood. If the TSH is low the thyroid function is high, and if the TSH level is high the thyroid function is considered to be low or deficient. There is an inverse but almost linear relationship between the two. Many physicians consider TSH as the only monitoring indicator for thyroid functions.

Apart from T4 and TSH most of the doctors may not ask for T3 level which is actually the active and functioning form of the thyroid hormone. Another hormone, rT3 (reverse T3) is also significant when treating resistant cases of thyroid deficiency.

What is rT3?
rT3 is becoming very important in view of a high prevalence of adrenal fatigue. During adrenal fatigue, T4 is largely converted into rT3 rather than T3. A blood test recognizes T3 and rT3 as identical. Therefore, if a blood sample shows that the T3 level is normal it may not be the case. The major part of that total T3 may be rT3, which is an inactive form.

rT3 behaves like T3 in some ways. For example, it occupies the T3 receptors at the cell surface and makes them unavailable for T3. There may be enough T3; however, in the presence of high rT3 levels, it does not have receptors to bind with. Such a person will have all the symptoms of low thyroid even though the blood reports show normal thyroid function levels.

rT3 may be high due to adrenal fatigue or other metabolic derangements. Such a patient is not going to feel normal even after substitution therapy either with T4 alone or even with a combination of T4 and T3. Please note that normally your physician prescribes only T4, hoping that it will convert into T3, which may not happen due to many metabolic changes at the cellular level. Substitution with T3 and T4 may also not be satisfactory to treat the problem when there is rT3 dominance.

Therefore thyroid assessment should be done by a physician who keeps his mind open to a variety of thyroid issues; both in testing as well as in treatment.

Treatment:
Many patients will feel OK with the usual treatment but a significant number of patients continue to have symptoms of low thyroid hormone. These are the patients who need to be looked after through a more open and logical approach and a wider range of blood markers to estimate the actual thyroid function.

Why treat with ‘Desiccated Thyroid Extract’?

Desiccated Thyroid is one way of treating such patients. It substitutes T3 and T4 and gradually decreases the rT3 level. Some physicians feel that TSH level may vary unpredictably in desiccated thyroid substitution therapy. A natural holistic physician does not go by TSH alone. To him the symptoms are far more important. Generally you start with a small dose and go on increasing it under your doctor’s strict guidance at regular intervals until a time when there are no symptoms. You will be closely followed by the physician who will regularly monitor your T3, T4, rT3 and TSH during this program.

The most crucial symptom to be monitored is body temperature. You are asked to keep a record of body temperature in a special way. Once you start on desiccated thyroid, the temperature and pulse record is continuously maintained.

If you have symptoms of thyroid deficiency even though you are taking treatment and still feel low, tired, overweight, sleepy and foggy, visit us in the clinic for a review and thyroid testing. Here you find conventional and natural medicine hand in hand under one roof to do the best for you—the patient, the centre of our world! During your first consultation you will have time to ask questions and fully understand how we are going to manage your problem.

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- by Amtul Q Farhat