Kenneth Blanchard - Functional Approach to Hypothyroidism: Bridging Traditional and Alternative Treatment Approaches for Total Patient Wellness

The Functional Approach to Hypothyroidism
Text Copyright 2012 Kenneth R. Blanchard, Ph.D., M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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DISCLAIMER
This book does not give legal or medical advice. Always consult your doctor, lawyer, and other professionals. The ideas and suggestions contained in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with a physician. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eISBN: 978-1-57826-457-5

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v3.1

The Only Thing That Matters Is
Does It Work or Doesnt It Work?

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, then it is attacked and finally, it is regarded as self-evident.

S CHOPENAUER

T HIS BOOK AND my career have been possible because of several loyal and dedicated employees over the years. Elisabeth Daniels, Carol Shander, and Kay Kearney got me through some difficult times in the early and middle portions of my career. In recent years, Maggie MacLeod, Cheryl Gaucher, and Barry Heller have served me well and protected me from the many stresses of running a medical practice. Many thanks to the staffs at Chatham Yacht Basin and (now) Pirate Cove Marina for making my excursions out on the ocean so pleasurable and restoring. Thanks to Tony Fiory, Jim Latimer, Bob Vernon, and my other MIT rowing colleagues, with whom I have shared the thrill of rowing 8-oared crew races again 45 years after the college experience. Many thanks also to Dennis Katz of Hopkinton Drug, whose compounding wizardry was extraordinarily helpful in this work. I have been extremely fortunate in having a wonderful family, which has spared me from some of the difficult experiences that many people face later in life. Many thanks also to Anna Krusinski and Christine Schultz of Hatherleigh Press for their expert editing suggestions. Lastly, I would like to thank the many loyal patients who have come to me from far and wide and have remained in my practice for many years, offering ultimate vindication to all the things I have done in this field.

T HIS BOOK REPRESENTS the product of 33 years of medical practice, the first half of which was spent following the basic dogma about hypothyroidism that has been taught to all physicians since the 1970s. At the core of standard academic teaching in the field of hypothyroidism is the concept that the TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) test is the absolute yes or no test for the condition and its treatment, along with the belief that treatment with 100 percent T4 is all that is needed because T4 is converted to T3 in the body. As I started to question these teachings in my practice in the mid-1980s, I experienced a great deal of anxiety about going against the specific teachings of academic physicians whom I regard with great respect. What if a coincidental medical disaster were to happen to one of the patients in my practice while being treated the wrong way? I would have been the local M.D. who was disobeying the rules of practice set down by eminent academic physicians with hundreds of publications on the subject. However, it has all worked out extremely well for me and my patients, and it is very clear to us that the standard teachings in the field are simply wrong or at best, incomplete. I would like to repeat a bit of philosophical wisdom from the introduction to my previous book: the only people who have absolute answers to anything in medicine are medical students, malpractice lawyers, and well-compensated expert witnesses. When desperate patients give this book to skeptical physicians, they will be met with cries of anecdotal and no studies prove this. However, I will stand by all the assertions that I have made in this book and history will ultimately determine which side of the argument is right.

The contents of this book are informational. Treatment for a specific individual must be in the hands of their personal practitioner. Thyroid hormone replacement therapy is strictly by prescription, and for good reason.

Why?

T HIS BOOK is written for the millions of hypothyroid patients who have not been diagnosed or, if diagnosed, are treated poorly. Hypothyroidism is a disorder characterized by a wide array of symptoms but centered on fatigue caused by inadequate secretion of hormone by the thyroid gland located at the base of the neck. It is my assertion that the fundamental teachings in the field of hypothyroidism in the last 3 to 4 decades are largely wrong. Like-minded physicians and I have been dismissed by the academic leaders in this field because of the blind belief that anything that appears in a double-blind study in a major journal must be true, and anything that appears in a popular book like this one is dismissed as anecdotal.

THE MYTHS OF HYPOTHYROIDISM

. You cant be hypothyroid because your TSH is within normal limits.

. Nobody needs T3 because T4 gets converted to T3 in the body.

. Studies have proven that T3 makes people worse rather than better.

. Studies have proven that thyroid function has nothing to do with premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

. If your TSH is normal, you cannot benefit from taking thyroid hormone.

. There is no relation between fibromyalgia and hypothyroidism.

. There is no benefit in seasonal adjustment of thyroid replacement therapy.

. A normal TSH rules out hypothyroidism as a cause of infertility, miscarriage, or prematurity.

. Postpartum depression has nothing to do with thyroid balance.

. If you are on thyroid and your TSH is normal, your symptoms cannot be related to hypothyroidism.

. Hypothyroidism has nothing to do with susceptibility to motion sickness.