 One of the most common chronic maladies affecting people is low thyroid function. People may notice unexplained symptoms, such as-
. . . and thus go to the doctor requesting thyroid testing. These symptoms are caused by lack of the active form of the thyroid hormone, T3. Invariably, as a part of the diagnostic work-up, the doctor will order a TSH† test, which is a brain hormone that stimulates the thyroid gland to make more or less of the inactive form of the thyroid hormone, thyroxine or T4. So, the thyroid gland makes T4, and it goes into circulation in the body, converting into the active form of the thyroid hormone, T3, in tissues requiring an increase of metabolic rate. If the TSH is high, the demand by the brain is for more production of Thyroxine. If the TSH is low, the request is for less production of Thyroxine. This is a general relationship that has no specific correlation with the signs and symptoms of low thyroid function. Remember, it is T3 that actually corresponds to how patient feels, not T4. Unfortunately, synthetic levothyroxine1 very poorly converts to T3. And this is the medication most commonly prescribed for thyroid patients. However, the TSH has a very definite, very specific relationship to the dose of synthetic levothyroxine. The problem is that most doctors have presumed, without any scientific evidence, that the TSH has an exact relationship to the suffering perceived by the patient.
So, if the patient tells the doctor that symptoms are improved with a higher dose, but since the resultant TSH level is below the range listed on the lab report, to the amazement of the patient, the doctor dutifully lowers the dose. The sales of synthetic Levothyroxine is a $2.6 billion dollar a year business in the US. The relationship between the dose of synthetic Levothyroxine and the TSH test allows the appearance of a rational mechanism for the diagnosis and treatment of low thyroid function. The reality is that there is no specific blood test for measuring hypothyroidism. The best way to determine adequacy of treatment is by how the patient responds to thyroid supplementation. Patients taking a product made from real pig thyroid glands will immediately notice an improvement. Pig thyroid glandular composition is very similar to that of the human. Highly processed porcine glands is a product called, Thyroid USP. Thyroid USP powder is made from the mixture of thousands of pig thyroid glands. The United States Pharmacopeia (USP) establishes written and physical standards for medicines and dietary supplement products. These standards are used by regulatory agencies and manufacturers to help to ensure that these products are of the appropriate identity, as well as strength, quality, purity, and consistency. Prescription medicines available in the United States must, by federal law, meet USP public standards. Would you like to discuss natural hormone replacement therapy? I can't wait to help! 
0 Comments
 How do women past age 40 drop excess fat?! The frustration of dieting and exercising...... and not dropping the weight!!! There are many reasons your body is incapable of losing the weight, such as an imbalance in your hormones, blood sugar is too high, etc. But first, you must realize that you do not have a problem that will be forever solved by simply the dropping weight. Why? Because the weight comes back on after you have stopped implementing the techniques that caused the weight loss. Most people, after losing any amount of weight decide "I no longer need to diet and exercise!" WRONG! The term "diet" refers to what you eat. It is a misconception that a "diet" is a temporary state, there is no such thing as "going on a diet" or "dieting". You can only change your diet. What is YOUR diet like? Do you only choose to eat healthy when you are trying to lose weight? This is one of your problems! If you only choose a healthy lifestyle to lose the weight then go right back to your unhealthy ways of living after the weight is dropped then you will be right back where you started in no time. However, once your metabolism slows due the number of issues that arise with age, most women require extra assistance to even be able to drop the weight in the first place. Two ways that actually work: 1. Medication & amino acids that raise levels of 2 neurotransmitters: norepinephrine and serotonin, reduce appetite, but more importantly enhance the breakdown of stores of fat. This technique has been used successfully by weight loss doctors for almost 30 years. 2. The natural hormone, chorionic gonadotropin or hCG. While dieting, taking this hormone causes you to drop fat, especially belly fat, with the average female dropping 25 lbs of fat in 40 days. The hCG diet includes 15 hours of fasting daily. This diet is not to last past 40 days at one session.  Some women can drop weight using (this will sounds strange) the diabetes medication, Metformin. Some can utilize intermittent fasting. Like diabetes or high blood pressure, obesity is a chronic problem, it must be gotten under control, then managed indefinitely. (That means no quitting your health routines!) The good news, is that you can maintain a normal body weight by paying attention, and re-starting the techniques that have worked for you in the past. You just need to make a pact with yourself to resume your healthy lifestyle, or at the very least, return to your weight loss routine whenever you reach a particular weight. You know, the weight beyond which you are uncomfortable. So stick with that plan! Don’t allow life’s unexpected events to prevent you from following this agenda and steal your happiest. Would you like to discuss a weight-loss "plan of attack" custom to your body? I can't wait to help!   You have a health problem and you want it analyzed and treated, if not cured. So, after a long wait, the day finally arrives for your appointment with the specialist. You sit down, and he introduces himself. But first, the preliminaries: he needs to fill out the electronic medical record. So, he whacks away on the laptop, filling in every box and line. He is required to do this by his employer. Wait a minute, you say! I am employing him! This is my chance finally to get to the bottom of this problem!
His employer considers the electronic medical record as legal proof of complete evaluation, a mechanism for legal protection. But, how does this help you? How does this get you closer to your quest? You thought that the medical record was a cogent evaluation of your health problem. Sorry, not true! So, he continues to ask questions: “Are you sexually active?” “How many times have you had sex during the last week?” “Masturbation?” “Do you have any firearms in the house?” “Do you spank your children?” After the electronic medical record is filled out, he turns to you and asks: “What brings you in today?”
He appears distracted. He hurries on. Remember, he works for his employer. He needs to produce. That means seeing more patients during the business day. The documentation that he has produced results in a “superbill”, which is a receipt that is electronically sent to the billing department from his laptop. Although your problem remains, the specialist has conducted what his employer needs in order to generate cash flow. There has been disposition of your case without any measurable benefit to you.
And you don’t have “health insurance”, you have “medical insurance” regardless of the name change over the previous 15 years. You need to find a health professional trained in functional medicine, perhaps including bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, whether a Naturopath or MD or DO. You need someone who will listen to you carefully, someone willing to spend the time and effort to look carefully into your situation. You need someone who works for you. Agreed? Do you have a question that you’d like Dr. Odom to answer? Submit your question here and look for Dr. Odom’s answer in a future post.   The anti-aging movement got its initial boost after the publication in 1990 in the New England Journal of Medicine of an article by Daniel Rudman, MD, professor of medicine and academic endocrinologist, whose career focused on the aging of the endocrine system and the resulting hormone deficiencies. His landmark article, "Effects of Human Growth Hormone in Men Over 60 Years Old", concluded that "Diminished secretion of growth hormone is responsible in part for the decrease of lean body mass, the expansion of adipose-tissue mass, and the thinning of the skin that occur in old age." (N Engl J Med 1990; 323:1-6.)
Us "anti-aging" or preventive medicine doctors rely on the increasing scientific evidence that optimizing hormones creates physical well-being. We see prevention of continued decline and even restoration of lost function. Conventional medicine, however, refuses to accept this simple concept. Mainstream medicine is stuck on the idea that pharmaceuticals are the best answer to life’s woes as we strike middle age. Increasingly alien molecules, totally not found in nature, are somehow going to ease the diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, and other maladies that strike us later in life. I have a patient who was doing very well on my bio-identical hormone program, who needed to see me, but could not due to distance. His new "provider" asked him why he was taking thyroid. He answered, for age-related decline. She told him that thyroid function does not go down with age. Huh?!
Let’s look at the scientific literature. “Serum TSH concentrations decrease in healthy elderly subjects due to an age-related decrease in TSH secretion by the pituitary.”[1,2,3] So, pituitary gland function declines with age, including production of the hormone (TSH) that stimulates the thyroid to produce more of what the thyroid gland makes, T4. The T4 is inactive, acting as an available store, and accessible for conversion throughout the body into the active form, T3. But, this T4 to T3 conversion occurs less and less efficiently as we age, also.[2] “After exclusion of.... confounders, most studies show similar results: A clear, age-dependent decline in serum Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) and (free) T3 ....”[2] In the elderly, “Thyroid hormones levels are usually within the lower part of normal values reported in the general population.”[4] “There is evidence that the decreased thyroid hormone levels observed in aging are due to lower TSH concentrations, and that lower TSH concentrations may be linked to an impaired pituitary activity.”[5] But, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, T4 to T3 conversion is vital as well, with “the net result of this decreased de-iodination with advancing age is a clear, age-dependent decline in total and free T3 levels...”[2]
Bottom line, in most humans, thyroid function declines with age. Exceedingly long-lived individuals do not show a decline of thyroid function.[7] Regarding the management of chronic health conditions, the sad reality about the current medical system is this: You get processed, but no benefit. In return for allowing the clinic to update your electronic medical record, and get access to your insurance money, you get a few prescriptions for pharmaceuticals that “manage” your problem. Who is satisfied with all this: the “provider’s” employer, who ends up with liability coverage and profit. Do you have a question that you’d like Dr. Odom to answer? Submit your question here and look for Dr. Odom’s answer in a future post.  Bibliography:
 Remember Fen-Phen? What was it? Actually, it was the simultaneous use of two separate drugs to effect weight loss.
The other drug, Fenfluramine, but going by the trade names, Pondimin and Redux, reduced appetite by releasing the neurotransmitter, serotonin. Serotonin makes most people feel relaxed, satisfied, even sleepy. So, Phentermine and Fenfluramine complimented each other. The problem was that excessive doses of Fenfluramine caused very high blood levels of serotonin which stimulated 5-HT2B receptors on heart valves and in the pulmonary arterial system. Fibrotic lesions of heart valves did result from excessive doses of Fenfluramine. Fenfluramine also stimulated 5-HT2C receptors in the brain, resulting in the desired anorectic effect.
What weight loss doctors have discovered is that the combination of Phentermine and Belviq mirrors the beneficial weight loss effects of Fen-Phen, but without the problems of heart valve issues. Many of you used Fen-Phen without any problems, but were scared away by the negative publicity.
They got better simply by discontinuing the Fenfluramine. Moreover, it was not widely reported that the patients having heart valve problems were typically taking 6 times the dose of Fenfluramine! Instead of taking 1 Pondimin pill, they were taking 6 of them! Also, what is not stated in the press is the widely held attitude that people taking medication to lose weight are “cheating”, that it’s their fault that they are overweight. “If they would just diet and exercise and not give into their lusts, then they would be thin just like us moral people.” If you have diabetes, it’s OK to take medication. If you have high blood pressure, you are not immoral taking medication. But, if you are overweight? You have to overcome your sin on your own. And this attitude is hurtful. It shows a complete lack of understanding. Do you have a question that you’d like Dr. Odom to answer? Submit your question here and look for Dr. Odom’s answer in a future post. 
I received my MD degree in June of 1970, so 49 years ago. At that time, all the excitement was about the human advent into space and NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon. My medical school, Baylor College of Medicine is in Houston, Texas, the site of NASA’s manned space flight mission control center. So, in my mind, I was going to be a “space doctor” and involved the first human activities in space and on other planets. But, that’s not how events transpired. Instead of witnessing a long-term movement into space, we all saw a limited program come and go. So, if not an astronaut, what was this young doctor to do with his career? There were absolutely no plans anywhere for a continued manned space program. I’ve always been interested in exercise, and nutrition, so, I pursued that as a personal choice; encouraging my patients to do the same during my sojourn as a general practitioner in the Los Angeles area. Then, after several years, I pursued the specialty of anesthesiology, thinking that having a specified schedule would give me access to a regular exercise routine. So, I became a “gym rat" and health nut. Once I had progressed in age enough to go through Andropause and my wife began going through Menopause, it became harder and harder to keep the weight off and became more apparent to me that there was a problem with the health industry; people in their middle age have a harder time loosing weight due to age-related hormone imbalances. So, in 1995, I began a practice in weight loss medicine and in 1997, I started learning bio-identical hormone replacement therapy, from the hormone guru, Neal Rouzier, MD, of Palm Springs. I never looked back. I felt that I had finally hit my professional stride, giving me the satisfaction of helping people improve their lives, just as I had improved the lives of me and my wife. I love helping others attain their best possible health. There are many chronic maladies which pop up over time, stealing our health. Heart attack, stroke, and cancer are those entities which finally get most of us. But, there are hormones and nutritional supplements which can allay the damage. So, not only can replenishing hormones make us feel better, but they have preventive benefit as well. I can't wait to help you, too!  |
Author - David M. Odom, M.D. Archives
August 2019
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed