Thyroid Testing
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Stop spreading the unscientific myth about the normal T4:T3 ratio!
Sigh. Just sigh. Even some of our best thyroid patient advocates can unknowingly share misinformation about thyroid therapy. Mary Shomon’s thyroid articles on Verywell.com are usually to be trusted. But yesterday I was saddened to see that an article supposedly authored by Mary Shomon was spreading unscientific myths about “normal” thyroid secretion ratios being 13:1…
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Thank you, good thyroid doctors!
Today is Canadian Thanksgiving Day. Today all thyroid patients in Canada and all over the world can reflect with gratitude toward all our good thyroid doctors past and present. To guide reflection and thanks, I’d like to outline 10 of the important things good thyroid doctors know and do. We all know there is no…
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LifeLabs BC handout reveals thyroid testing policy failure
This week (as of October 4, 2019), a thyroid patient from British Columbia posted an image of a piece of paper handed to her at a LifeLabs laboratory. LifeLabs BC was using this paper leaflet to explain to her why “Free T3 and Free T4 will not be tested when the TSH is in reference…
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Individual thyroid ranges are far narrower than lab ranges
We’ve known since at least 2002 that being within “normal range” is never good enough when it comes to thyroid hormone blood tests. An important set of four articles has taught us that each human being has an optimal range for TSH, Total T4 and Total T3 that is far less the width of the…
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Overreliance on TSH is a thyroid therapy policy that fails to detect its own failure
In standard T4 thyroid therapy, TSH normalization is so easy to achieve that it is almost impossible to fail. First, TSH out of range is the judge of an initial DIAGNOSIS. Next, normal TSH becomes the sole TARGET of therapy. Finally, normal TSH becomes the sole JUDGE of therapy success. This is faulty reasoning. There…