Natural Solutions Magazine Hits Thyroid Article Out of the Park

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This article in Natural Solutions magazine is the very best mainstream article I have ever read about thyroid issues. Kudos to Natural Solutions! They got the story right.

Check out The Hidden Epidemic: Is Your Thyroid Making You Fat?

How Is Your Appendix?

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Do you still have your appendix? If yes, you lucky dog, you.

Mine is missing. It was taken out in 2000 after it ruptured. I am a stubborn soul and my right side hurt for several days until I was finally bedridden on a Saturday. I screamed anytime I had to get up but laying down felt okay so I informed my husband that I would wait until Monday to see a doctor. Even back then I was suspicious that I was not getting the best medical care possible and I was no fan of doctors, mostly because I had been seeing an endocrinologist for several years who assured me I had no thyroid condition and it was all in my head. He was wrong on two counts as it was not in my head, it was in my neck, and I most certainly did have a thyroid condition.

Luckily for me, my husband is a wise man and he literally forced me into the car to go to the ER. Whattya know, my appendix had burst. Had my stubbornness prevailed, I would probably not be here now because when the appendix ruptures, you are likely to get some ugly gangrene spreading inside you.

As I was being wheeled down to the operating room, the ER doctor came out to meet me and I started grilling him on his experience. He was not happy about my giving him the third degree, but I didn't want any body part that was remotely necessary to be removed unless it positively had to go. The surgeon said that it was the most common procedure performed and he had done it hundreds of times. He also informed me that nobody needs their appendix. I thought that was an odd statement -- why did I have one if I didn't need it? It seemed like all of my other internal body parts served a very real purpose.

My husband added, "Honey, let's not piss off the man wielding the scalpel right now." Okay, okay, I said, let's get this thing out already. So it was removed and it had ruptured but thanks to my husband, it was caught before gangrene had set in.

For years afterward, I would try to find any information regarding the appendix because I wanted to know why we all had one if it was obsolete. I felt it must serve some purpose. I never found an answer, until now.

I picked up a fantastic book at Sprouts titled "Gut Solutions -- Natural Solutions to Your Digestive Problems" by Dr. Leonard Smith and Brenda Watson, N.D. They have an entire chapter devoted to the appendix. They write "In the past, medicine has not been able to assign a particular function to the appendix. Today, however, it is becoming more apparent that the appendix and surrounding lymphatic tissue probably serve an important role in immunity."

IMMUNITY. I have several autoimmune conditions: hypothyroidism, weak adrenals and the loss of female hormones. The only medicines I take are for hormone replacement. I am low in very important hormones because I ate foods for all of my 44 years that were toxins for me. Could the loss of my appendix have helped my autoimmune conditions take root? Why did it burst in the first place?

Here is what the authors of "Gut Solutions" have to say: "Obstruction of the appendix can occur due to solid pieces of stool or as a result of the stool becoming hard like stone."

I remember talking poop in college with a girlfriend and I was shocked to learn that she had bowl movements EVERY DAY. This was news to me as I went once a week. Where did all that poop go? Apparently some of it was turning to stone in my appendix.

Now that I have become self-educated on digestive issues as a sheer necessity to staying alive and thriving, I can see that I have had lifelong gut issues . . . but no one put them together until I was 44 years old.

I hope each of you will take stock of your gut. Ask yourself a lot of questions and keep asking until you find the answers. Pay attention to how you feel after you eat anything. If you have ANY autoimmune condition, look closely at what you are eating and consider blaming your diet for helping your condition along.

Most important of all -- listen to your gut.

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• Researchers Say Many Appendectomies May Be Unnecessary (inquisitr.com)
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• Appendix Pain - Location and Symptoms (healthhype.com)

Armour Thyroid Is Harder to Find than a Needle in a Haystack

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I have been hypothyroid most -- if not all -- of my life. I went to a lousy Austin endocrinologist who could do no better than shrug his shoulders at my three pages of symptoms that I brought to him for 5 years. I fired him and finally found a truly caring doctor who actually understands how the thyroid works. As I have gained my health and thus my life back, my anger at that harmful doctor is still present, though lessened somewhat by finally feeling healthy again. My good doctor has almost erased my wrath at the arrogant endocrinologist, but every now and then a news story crops up about thyroid medications (such as the one below) and my anger at the needless suffering of the millions of thyroid patients at the hands of their doctors and Big Pharma gets my mad going again.

I am now sure that I was first gluten intolerant and a lifetime of not knowing that whittled my thyroid gland down to nothing. Mr. Big Fancy Pants Endo -- who is paid thousands every year to give "lectures" by the makers of his favorite drugs, including Synthroid -- apparently has never heard of Celiac's or gluten intolerance and probably has never even heard of gluten itself. He certainly never suggested that I may have some serious food allergies that caused all of my health symptoms.

I was put on Armour Thyroid on March 8, 2007 by my new doctor. I have that date marked on my calendar every year and I celebrate it as that is the date I started to get my life back. I had been practically bedridden for most of 2005-2006, so when my brain fog started to lift and my energy levels came back, I was in love with Armour Thyroid as that is the drug that made health possible for me.

I was on Armour Thyroid until the summer of 2009, when for some incomprehensible reason, the makers of Armour changed the 100-year old formula that worked wonders for countless thyroid patients. I began to feel hypo again. I also felt nauseous from something the genius makers of Armour decided to add to the formula. The company ignored pleas from thyroid patient advocates and refused to answer why they changed the formula. So most of us switched to another form of thyroid called Nature-thyroid. You can guess what happened next -- that also became nearly impossible to find.

Synthetic thyroid brands such as Synthroid simply do not work for me and for thousands of other hypothyroid patients as well. We have to have thyroid that is not synthetic or we remain ill.

What would happen in the national media if a major maker of insulin suddenly changed their formula and diabetics everywhere began to feel ill from the new formula? What if the makers of the most popular statin drug started playing around with that formula and people felt ill from that change? Would there not be a national outcry?

It is incredibly sad to me that we have to become health detectives and figure out for ourselves why we feel like shit. It is even sadder that once we finally find a medicine that gives us hope for a healthy life again, that medicine is suddenly changed and no longer does what it should for thousands of sufferers.

But saddest of all, you have to find that special doctor who refuses to be told how to treat patients based on what an insurance company thinks is best and instead relies on his or her training AND he/she bothers to listens to the actual symptoms the patient presents. Every day I say a small prayer of thanks to the thyroid patient advocates whom I have never met in person but who I count as dear friends as they are the one who directed me to the doctor who cared enough to actually heal me. I have a pit in my stomach every time I meet someone new who has suffered at the hands of an unknowledgeable and lazy doctor who has permitted that patient's life to ebb away until there isn't much there anymore.

For more information about the importance of getting on the right thyroid medicine, please bookmark Stop the Thyroid Madness and make it your personal thyroid Bible. Also check out Thyroid patients panicked as medication disappears.

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• No End In Sight To The Armour Thyroid Shortage? (prweb.com)
• Misdiagnosis FACT (thyroidlife.blogspot.com)
• Study Links Thyroid Disease to Non-Stick Chemicals (nlm.nih.gov)
• Wait For It... (thyroidlife.blogspot.com)
• Daily Dose: How Healthy is Your Thyroid? (dailywd.womansday.com)

Are We Grain Gluttons??

We ARE grain gluttons. Not just wheat -- we eat too much corn, rice, etc.

My maternal Grandmother Mimi spent three-fourths of her long life living with the condition called Paranoid Schizophrenia. You have surely heard of it and know that if you have it, your mind plays tricks on you and you can have hallucinations and live in a great deal of fear.

Mimi loved her wheat toast, more than anyone I have ever known. She was severely anemic, which points to not absorbing nutrients in the gut, which points to a big problem with gluten. I think she also had a thyroid condition and the end result of not getting the right amount of thyroid is: paranoid schizophrenia.

I am hypothyroid, which means I do not get enough thyroid in my cells. I am thankfully on the right medication and have been able to get back on my feet and off the bed, where I spent nearly a year before I found the right doctor to help me help myself.

Along with cutting edge M.D.s, I now wonder: which comes first, an autoimmune problem such as a thyroid condition or a problem with gluten that results in an autoimmune condition?

I put my money on the gluten problem. It has been linked the following:


Malnutrition
Cancer
Osteoporosis
Kidney stones
Miscarriage or congenital malformation
Preterm delivery
Short stature
Seizures
Lactose intolerance
Infections
Dermatitis herpetiformis
Thyroid disease
Type 1 diabetes
Liver disease
Sjogren's syndrome
Autoimmune polyglandular syndrome --
Uncommon group of disorders that may include type 1 diabetes, Addison's disease (adrenal insufficiency), yeast infections, vitiligo (a skin disease), alopecia (hair loss), pernicious anemia or other conditions.
Collagen vascular diseases
Rheumatoid arthritis
Lupus
Polyarteritis nodosa
Scleroderma
Dermatomyositis


Makes you want to put down that piece of toast, doesn't it?

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• RA and Lupus (brassandivory.blogspot.com)
• Celiac Disease Insights: Clues to Solving Autoimmunity (scientificamerican.com)