Sometimes science does not retain knowledge, but rather chooses to forget. After endocrinology fell in love with L-T4 monotherapy, it was too tempting to forget the history of the OTHER monotherapy — L-T3 monotherapy. Modern doctors might assume that because they didn’t have the TSH test back then, they were blind! They had no way of knowing whether they were harming patients! But no, that’s not true. Before the TSH test, we collected a wide range of data on thyroid levels, more data than we now collect since we fixate on TSH alone. Let’s review some of what we learned. …
Category: T3-monotherapy
History of the three thyroid medications
Three thyroid hormone medications have had a long history of effective use. I discuss them in chronological order, from the earliest thyroid medication to the most recently invented. No new thyroid medications have been invented since the 1950s, although all three of them have been further refined, and various manufacturers exist for each of them. 1. Animal-derived thyroid hormone Since the 1800s, animal-derived thyroid hormone was first extracted from the thyroid glands of sheep, and later, from pigs. Some therapies even involved eating raw or cooked fresh sheep’s thyroid gland. Murray (1920) “described ‘The Life History of the First Case …
All thyroid therapy is artificial
If you prefer natural desiccated thyroid (NDT / DTE) over synthetic thyroid hormone I know you might bristle at my word “artificial.” Animal-derived vs. synthesized — that’s not an argument I get into here. What I argue here is that at a more fundamental level, taking any ORAL thyroid hormone is NOT the same as secreting and converting hormone within your own body every minute of every day. This is an important biological fact with huge biological implications for testing and therapy. It’s important for patients, doctors, and the medical system to agree about this as a starting point before …