+1
Mrs Cad did this with her weight problem Turns out she has Hashimoto’s Disease which after several doctors and thousands of doctors went undiagnosed for years. Now her doctor wasn’t totally woo but rather was unconventional and took her symptoms and history seriously. She is down over 50 lb and has a much healthier lifestyle that is wheat-free and low non-gluten carb.
Sometime woo works.
If she’s having nodules frozen, then it sounds like she may have a toxic adenoma or toxic multinodular goiter, rather than Graves’ disease, or at least they think she might.
As I understand it, there’s really only one drug used in the US for hyperthyroidism, methimazole. In the early stages of treatment, though, doctors will often also prescribe a beta blocker to control the cardiac symptoms. Getting the dose right can take some time, but doctors typically start out high and then slowly lower it. Methimazole treats the symptoms and returns you to feeling normal quickly. If the problem is Graves’ disease, you may have to stay on it for months or years to outlast the underlying antibody that causes it. More than half of Graves patients resolve with drugs alone (without having to burn out the thyroid), albeit not much more than half.
If the problem is not Graves but something nodule-related, then I think the doctors are likely to recommend the iodine. Methimazole would still work to return normal function, but the underlying condition would not go away and would return whenever the drug was withdrawn.
I think surgery is rare unless cancer is found or suspected.
Or losing weight makes a real difference.
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, by the way, is a very common cause of hypothyroidism. Replacing thyroid hormone will help a lot; getting rid of wheat/gluten = fashionable but not helpful.
But you’re only an MD…this is an ND. It’s one higher in the alphabet.
That’s why I recommend everyone see an optometrist for all their medical care. O.D. is even higher in the alphabet!
In defense of ND’s…When my prostrate biopsy came back positive for cancer, I talked to the urologist.
He said, “Don’t worry, I have a knife.”
Then I spoke with the oncologist, he said, “Don’t worry, I have radiation.”
Not liking the risks involved with the above, I saw a ND.
He said, first, lets send your slides to a lab that specializes in reading prostrate biopsies.
My Gleason score went from a 7 to a 6. Although it is only one point, the score is exponential and therefore made a big difference on my future treatment.
Glad I saw the ND!
Ah, but can he and his fancy lab so easily handle erect biopsies?
First of all, I hope your prostate cancer stays indolent for a very long time to come.
And getting a second opinion on a biopsy diagnosis can be a good idea, especially as in your case where the Gleason numbers are on the borderline between suggesting an indolent cancer or one that has a moderate chance of progressing within a few years.*
But if you listen to naturopaths’ advice on treating prostate cancer, you’ll get a mishmash of suggestions including unproven dietary manipulations and “detoxification” nonsense.
Along with anecdotal stories of “the woo doctor found a problem the real doctors didn’t” we also need to look at the large number of anecdotal accounts of woo docs missing serious disease and leaving a mess for physicians to take care of later (check out whatstheharm.net for gruesome stories).
*the subject of what prostate cancers to treat remains controversial, and depends on a variety of factors including the Gleason grading score, age and health of the patient etc. One confounding factor is that Gleason grading of biopsies often (about a third of the time according to some research) underestimates the score of tumor and thus its potential aggressiveness. When radical prostatectomies are examined, they may well harbor areas of higher grade tumor that were missed on a small biopsy. So there’s still an element of crapshooting when it comes to watchful waiting.
???.
Maybe you should re-read the post.
Thank you for your reply. I appreciate it.
What I am saying is that neither the urologist nor oncologist suggested a review of the biopsy, done by a radiologist in a small town. The idea of questioning the only available material never occurred to them.
It has been 6 years since the biopsy. I have enjoyed countless orgasms/ejaculations which may have never happened if I had chosen door number one or door number two. Should I expire tomorrow, I feel I made the best choice.
I see what you did there. 
Prostate cancer is so frustrating. How to screen for it properly is such a challenge to figure out, then how to treat it if found is such a maze of different possibilities. Many prostate cancers will never pose a threat, and too many of those types are treated too aggressively, and the treatment can cause far more morbidity and mortality than the cancer. Yet some varieties are so aggressive that the big guns need to be brought out early, to have a chance of saving a life. And figuring out which is which is still a pretty inexact science.
So a second, or even third or fourth opinion should always be considered when faced with a prostate cancer diagnosis.
harmonicamoon, live long and . . um, well, ejaculate.
It seems your friend has gotten good advice from her conventional doctors, presented in a poor way. Without knowing the naturopath in question, you can’t say if he is one of the ones that respect and use modern medicine in additional to other strategies or one of the many who rely solely on woo. It’s similar to chiropractic in that there is some evidence that chiropractic can help back pain and there are good chiropractors who use manipulation to alleviate musculoskeletal back pain. However, when they start saying that they can cure cancer by aligning the spine you are in trouble, and you can’t know how much of their spiel to believe. Certainly, taking a skeptical approach to a natural doctor cannot hurt. At the least, find out what his theory of disease is and if he starts talking about removing toxins and balancing humors, you know you are in trouble.
Not to give medical advice online, but if your friend has Graves disease, she will eventually be trading hyperthyroidism for hypothyroidism whether she wants to or not. That is the normal course of the disease. Eventually, the thyroid will become underactive. Like her doctors told her, she has 3 choices:
#1) Take medication, which works in 30-50% of people to control the symptoms until the hyperactive stage resolves (usually in about a year). If it works, then she gets watched periodically until the time, 10, 20 or 40 years from now when her thyroid stops working and she eventually will need supplements, unless something else kills her first.
#2) Take radioactive iodine to destroy the thyroid (and stay away from pregnant women and infants for a week) and then take supplements to give her the right amount of thyroid for the rest of her life. They can aim to destroy just enough thyroid so that the remaining amount works normally, but it is very hard to judge, and as noted above, her thyroid will eventually become underactive anyway so most doctors err on the side of overtreating.
#3) Surgically remove the thyroid and take the medication as above. Again, you can aim to remove just enough of the thyroid to have normal function, but you risk undertreating and having to retreat or overtreating and having to take supplements anyway and since the patient will eventually end up on supplements anyway, it makes sense to overtreat.
In short, your friend unfortunately likely has a sick thyroid and eventually she will need to be on supplements. It sounds like she is having a hard time dealing with this. As noted above, she has to think of it as an essential nutrient that she needs to live, vitamin T as it were. I think that once she accepts the fact that she will likely eventually need daily thyroid supplements for the rest of her life, she will feel better about her options. Also, she needs a doctor with a better bedside manner.
Latest update. She is on some kind of heart medication but refuses to see a cardiologist, because … Not sure … She doesn’t want to be prescribed more medications?
Her personality has changed a lot over the last few months. Don’t know if it because of the hyperthyroidism or the heart medication. She’s very exhausted and physically and mentally sluggish and her memory is foggy.
She has refused to go on the medication for thyroid because “it just makes you sick.”
She has dropped $1,300 on the naturopath and her supplement regime—inclusive of a $200 deposit for her next appointment.
Something like 20 pills a day including Eskimo oil, magnesium, cobalt, cytosine, iodine, don’t know what else.
N.D. told her she probably had Hashimoto which developed into Graves as a result of failure of first Endo to diagnose.
M.D. continues to monitor. She just had a blood test today.
Endo is being kept in the loop but is unhappy with situation. This is actually the third endocrinologist.
The second Endo refused to go for a pituitary test saying “we already have a treatment plan” and told her “oh, you’re one of those. You think a plant will cure you.” And then told her to find herself another doctor.
Update:
She got tired of spending thousands on the naturopath and decided that her symptoms were too severe for her to wait it out like the naturopath insisted on.
She is currently undergoing radioactive iodine therapy and is quarantined.
However, she has just been informed that both her GP and her current endo are retiring in two weeks, and neither of them has arranged for her ongoing care (weekly monitoring for six months and then monthly monitoring for a year) to be transferred to a trusted, recommended replacement.
Why stop there? Go see a Ph.D.!
Here’s a sort of stupid quip that has some profound implications. It’s in the form of a riddle.
Q: What do you call “Alternative Medicine” that really works?
A: “Medicine”
The point of modern Evidence-Based Medicine is that they use stuff that has been shown to work. It doesn’t matter where it comes from. If someone can show via double-blind studies that eating eye of newt and toe of frog (in a cauldron boiled and baked) cures cystic fibrosis, then that will become a legitimate medical treatment.
Wore them out, did she?
State medical boards commonly require physicians who decide they no longer want to treat a patient to give adequate notice and help with referral to another physician. How that works in your state for physicians who are retiring may be a different matter, but it’s hard to see how it would be permissible just to leave a patient in the lurch like that. If there’s no referral forthcoming, a call to the local medical society or state board should yield assistance.
I am happy to hear your friend was treated. It was worrisome to hear that she was beginning to have heart problems. She will likely continue to feel bad until her thyroid levels are stable but will then feel much better. I also cannot believe that her doctors are not arranging plans for follow-up. In the US, this is abandonment and is a good reason for lawsuits. They need to arrange follow-up, either giving her enough notice to find a new doctor or arranging it themselves. I agree with calling the state medical board if they just informed her that they are retiring in 2 weeks without giving her advanced notice.
Yeah, but Qadgop quoted the Doobie Brothers, so he moves up to D in the alphabet.