Wellness

[nunu4u]

I have a good friend who was diagnosed with Hashimoto's many years ago, and she has been trying her best to dig herself out of it. She has gone to various doctors, tried supplements, and different forms of western medicine. And while she has made improvements, she is still very tired and brain fogged. A friend of hers recently recommended a doctor in Vero Beach, Fl. She sent me his letter to her and I am passing it on in case any of the ideas are useful to Hashimoto peeps here. My friend will see him in a couple of weeks and I will report back if his ideas help her:

"One thing to keep in mind at this point is that you do not have a thyroid problem. You have an immune system problem that is attacking the thyroid. Yes, you do need to use thyroid hormone replacement, because every tissue in your body needs thyroid hormone, and your thyroid is being destroyed by an immune system that has run amok. Always to consider too is that if you have an immune system attack on one tissue, you will usually have an immune system attack on some other tissue. The thyroid markers that you mentioned are going to, by the nature of the autoimmune process, fluctuate up and down as the immune system attacks and then become quiescent. TSH marker is only going to be helpful at this point to let us know if the dosage of Armour is appropriate. Conventional treatment of Hashimoto's is to keep you on the medication at the sufficient dosage to keep your TSH and T4 in range all he way up to the time that they have to remove the thyroid or have it ablated. We are not in a thyroid battle here. We are in an immune system battle. Laboratory blood markers that you need to get have not been done. You need to get a T & B Lymphocyte panel and a Cytokine panel to determine which part of your immune system is overfiring. You can see how difficult this is going to be for me to help you in this venue. If you can make a visit to come and visit your dear friend, then coordinate it with a visit to see me. If you have any recent blood work, please fax it to me or call the office of the doctor who ordered it and have the front office people fax it to me before I see you.

One final thing. Since you have already been diagnosed with Hashimoto's via the elevated TPO Ab, you are off gluten. If you are not familiar with this, then I urge you to educate yourself NOW. One exposure to gluten can fire up your antibodies for six months to attack your thyroid gland. Several case studies have been published showing that once gluten was eliminated from the diet, the immune system STOPPED attacking the thyroid gland. This does not happen in every case, but it is important for you to get off of gluten. I look forward to meeting you, Take care. If you have any other questions, I will be happy to help you in any way I can. After all, you have connections. "