Dedicated to Helping You
Recover from Fibromyalgia

Hello,

This month I'm going to focus on your thyroid and I would like to stress how important this gland is and how your health can improve, if your thyroid is treated and supported properly.

In just the last couple months, I've been on a higher dose of thyroid medication. I can tell the difference in my energy level (duh), my depression level (surprise there!), my cravings (thank God they've decreased) and my patience level (my kids are happier about that).

These are all subtle things that a small increase has done for me. I thought I was on a good dose for me, but adjusting it has truly made a difference.

Let me start from the beginning. TSH (Thyriod Stimulating Hormone) is the most common thyroid test. The normal scale for a TSH result is .5 to 5 (sometimes .5 to 5.5). This means that when your doctor tests your TSH level, if the result comes back in between those two numbers, they tell you your "results were normal" and that's the end of it.

Don't stop there!

What I would suggest to you is to call your doctor's office, ask the nurse to look up the test results for the TSH level on your chart (assuming you've had your thyroid tested--if not, get it tested) and find out what your number came back as.

Most people do best with a number between 1 and 2. If yours came up as a 3 or 4, you are borderline deficient in your thyroid gland.

This is going to deplete your energy, add to your depression, make losing weight nearly impossible, and increase your irritability--among other things, like give you dry skin.

If you are borderline deficient, you have two options:

1) go on thyroid medication.

2) work at rejuvenating your thyroid's ability to function on it's own.

The first option may necessitate that you take thyroid medication for the rest of your life. And it can be a long process to find the right dose, because most doctors want you to be on a dose for 2 months before getting retested. Then you have to adjust from there.

There are better methods for finding the right dose for you. They are outlined in the book Thyroid Power.

If you are on the correct dosage, there are little or no side effects to thyroid medication, so this may be the route you wish to go.

But here's a warning: when you start taking any thyroid medication, your body will shut down it's own production of thyroid hormone, so that you will eventually need to take more and more until you've basically replaced most of your body's natural production of thyroid hormone.

This is why, once you go on medication, you will most likely need to stay on it, unless you follow Option 2.

One more note on thyroid medication. If you do take thyroid medication, ask for Armour Thyroid medication. It is a natural thyroid medication from an animal (I don't like to think of the source) that has T3 and T4 thyroid stuff in it.

Most synthetic thyroid medications have only T3, which your body needs to convert to T4, in order to utilize it. If your body isn't converting T3 to T4 well, the thyroid medications that provide only T3 will not work well for you, either.

I literally froze for two years on Synthroid and it's generic equivalent Levothyroxine (I think that was the name). My hands and feet were cold all of the time. I wore a long-sleeve shirt and pants when it was 74 degrees Farenheit outside and I resorted to long underwear when it got below 50 degrees Farenheit.

My hands warmed up the very first day that I went on Armour Thyroid. I will never forget that wonderful feeling! Many doctors are hesitant to prescribe this brand because they've been taught that it's not a precise amount of thyroid medication--that each pill varies too much.

Baloney! Beg, plead, and say "Just give me a chance to see how I feel for 3 months" or find another doctor who will let you try it.

I'm not kidding. One of the best doctors that I've seen switches every patient to Armour Thyroid!

There's much more I could go into about thyroid, but I want to keep these newsletters shorter. Read the book, Thyroid Power. You'll find a link to the book on this page . This will help you and your doctor decide which thyroid tests to conduct and how to interpret test results to find the very best level for you. It also goes into more complicated issues like having high anti-thyroid antibodies (that's me).

Oh, one more blurb: If you would like to learn how to increase your own body's thyroid production, as in Option 2, without resorting to medication, I know of a method that helps women decrease or totally get off thyroid medication through a completely natural program. It takes a lot of supplement support, but it can be done. If you are interested, I can outline the program for you. Just drop me an email.

My warmest thoughts go out to you.

Sincerely,

Anita Murray

Professional Health Coach
Founding Editor/Owner of FibromyalgiaHope.com

If a friend DID forward this to you and you like what you read, please subscribe to The Fibro Hope Messenger.