Stimulating Thyroid?

Quote from a 30-year-old male patient being treated at a headache clinic:

"My doc is now putting me on some kind of thyroid medicine, even though mine is normal. He said studies have shown stimulating the thyroid can reduce headache."

Anyone thoughts on this one?

Cheryl

Absolutely Cheryl.
Check out some of the thyroid sites.
The people who cope with thyroid problems everyday have very different views on what test level ranges on vitamins, minerals, etc should be.
The levels they proscribe to are very different from standard medical practice.
One lady's explaination is that the standard range levels are designed to keep you alive, not keep you well.
So whether you have a thyroid problem or not, the discussions on what V & M levels should be are very interesting.

There are also many sites that talk about how deficient people are in iodine, and how that affects the thyroid, etc. I considered giving that to my son, but ended up trying it myself. I'm afraid I'll get his body chemistry goofed up and have to answer for it later at some doctor's office - that whole nightmare. But people claim that taking iodine can help so many things...including headaches. I don't know what to think after I read it. One site says it's dangerous to play around with iodine, others say we're so deficient it can't hurt you...you know how it is. I don't want to get his thyroid out of whack with my experiments!

I believe that "normal" isn't really normal for some people. But how many doctors out there will actually (horror of horrors) prescribe a thyroid med when you come up "normal?" Know what I mean?

Cheryl

man o man, this is scary.

i've been to this country's best neuroendocrinologists and they are rather conservative, even if you have thyroid or pituitary disorders. i can't see them playing around with supplemental thyroid to manage migraine or headache.

one anabolic steroid would be helpful for me, and it's off limits because of caridovascular risk. docs don't like to play with thyroid issues.

i'd tread very, very carefully.

Thanks for your thoughts, Marc. I was really wondering about it because I've never heard of a migraine doc doing something like this.

Cheryl

Anna's cortisol level is very low (1-2). But the endos we have seen don't want to treat it.

Cheryl

The thyroid is pretty touchy. An overactive one has its own set of problems as does and under active one. I'd be really cautious about pushing it with meds. I had a friend in school who had an overactive thyroid. As you might suspect, she was thin, nervous, jittery and seemed to have an abundance of energy. She was not aware of her overactive thyroid.

In doing her pre-op for an unrelated condition, it was discovered that she had had several small heart attacks. This was a woman under 30. Her doctor put her on medication to control the thyroid. I don't know which med(s).

Anyway, my point is that an overactive thyroid can cause a variety of health problems including serious heart issues. I don't think it's great idea to intentionally create that condition.

Chris

There are very lively discussions going on in Lyme support groups regarding thyroid values and treatment. Some Lyme Dr.s are experimenting with treating thyroid issues based on symptoms instead of testing. I have heard that most are doing better after treatment.

But, Lyme Dr.s are used to treating this way(since Lyme tests are iffy) and are usually good at it. The key is to go very slowly. I am going to talk to my Dr. about it since I am showing a lot of symptoms, but my levels read "normal". Hashimoto's Thyroiditis is very common in people with Celiac disease (which I have). So much to think about. I wonder how many of us could ace half of the claasses in med school?
Hugs,
Cindy

crt is spot on. thyroid is nothing to mess with.

my mother despite her heart problems, died from complications of a thyroid storm (blasted thing can throw off heart rhythm). get atrial fibrillation, throw a clot, and it's all over.

there's no way i would trust someone monkeying with the thyroid for the sake of trying to modify it outside of a base or normal function range.

thyroid is serious business.

The idea of helping the thyroid through correct v and m levels appeals to me very much.
I can see the logic that if you are deficent in the processors of hormone, that boosting them will allow hormone absorbtion at a greater level.
The test as I understand it for thyroid hormone levels, is the Thyroid Hormone Stimulating test. This is supposed to be a closed circuit loop. ie if your pituatary is putting out adequate levels of tsh, then the circuit must be functioning correctly and you are putting out adequate thyroid hormone.
My guess is that the logic falls down if the hormone is not being absorbed correctly.
ie the hormone is there but not achieving all it should.
Wish I could ace med school tests Cindy. It would sure help.

I have inherited Graves Disease. Hyperthyroid. It is in remission now but for 5 years in my mid thirties I had quite a few storms to deal with before I got it under control. I had insomnia and I was super hyper and losing weight real fast and all those crazy things. I also had migraines. I don't remember if it was less, but they certainly weren't gone or considerably less.

Thyroid is a very complicated area to work with. I wouldn't mess with it. Kill your thyroid and you will wind up with having to be on drugs for the rest of your life and other other list of problems to regulate.

I wouldn't touch it.


Angela

My mom has Graves Disease, and I know how rough it can be.

It's interesting this headache doctor mentioned studies behind what he is about to do. Don't you wonder about it? Did he tell the truth?

Cheryl

In my experience guided by probably our best thyroid dr in UK.
We headache people need to look at our adrenals as much as thyroid.

Broda barnes check on temperature is a pretty good home guide to thyroid levels.

Mine is right at the border of too low. So I take kelp extract pills to perk it up a bit. It's a tough mineral to get enough of if you don't eat seafood. They put in our table salt but with people using less salt now it's almost a moot point.

If your ancestors survived long term famine then you very likely have a slow thyroid. Low thyroid can induce metabolic syndrome which makes your body very efficient at energy storage. So the survivors of famine most likely had a slow/low thyroid and if it's genetic then it was passed onto to you. Native Americans and the Irish are very likely to have it.

No please, don't joke with thyroid.
I had it removed because it did not function well and had become enormous.
I have been on tiroxine for 13 years but have been WARNED to be very careful and always check my hormonal levels and adjust - if any - the dosage.
Hypertyroidism can cause severe and irriversible health issues which are NOT worth risking for.
There are other weapons to fight migraine pain.

BTW, when my thyroid overworked, my migraine were as bad as now. So, I'm afraid that this might be one of the many legends on migraine....

I don't want to identify the neuro who said this, but he is the head of a comprehensive HA clinic. I'm on a private forum where this info was shared, and the neuro is well known in "migraine world."

All I can say is that it caught my attention because I never heard anything like this before.

Cheryl

Over a year ago I posted a topic about the association with thyroid and chronic head pain. I then read how prevalent thyroid problems are and how many women it affects. Given a large number of mig patients are women I really felt it could possibly benefit someone here.

But the topic just slide down the page and into oblivion.

If you have a pokey, slow thyroid and are in metabolic syndrome then weight loss will be next to impossible. You are fighting a very powerful primitive survival system. Quite possibly being driven by genetics.

Beyond migs, a healthy thyroid is vital for so much of our over all health.

I am glad to see someone bring it up again here. You never know if it may be the magic bullet for some one here.

Brent wrote:If your ancestors survived long term famine then you very likely have a slow thyroid. Low thyroid can induce metabolic syndrome which makes your body very efficient at energy storage. So the survivors of famine most likely had a slow/low thyroid and if it's genetic then it was passed onto to you. Native Americans and the Irish are very likely to have it.

And I suppose that (famine) would include those of us with parents who grew up on farms during the Depression when crops and gardens didn't get the water needed to grow or were eaten by pests. My parents have told of some very lean years. How about lard sandwiches? Turns my stomach. Even in our poorest of times, my family has been well-fed, so it had to have been very difficult during those Depression years

My thyroid has been on the low normal side, and every doctor who has checked it has said it is fine (endocrinologist, Migraine specialists, PCP, etc.). I had a parathyroid tumor removed several years ago which really messed up my body for years (kidney stones and osteopenia). I'm always a little concerned that some of the migraine problems relate back to the parathyroid and/or thyroid.

Becky

I think I have said before I went and stayed a week with probably our best thyroid dr here.
He believes it is often responsible for headaches migraines and fibro.
He has written a really good book and I have many of his booklets still here.

For the Americans if you want to check out more about the thyroid's involvement.
Go for Mary Shoman and DR John Lowe.

Test are way out and the Barnes temperature check is a good indication used by all non NHS drs.

P

I didnt have time to make sure no one else posted this, but there is a great website www.stopthethyroidmadness.com. It is not active, but there is a lot of good info there. I am going to do the temperature checks that they recommend.
Cindy

And I was just reading about the food rationing during WWII int he US and UK. Malnutrition was a big problem and that is what started the federal school lunch program. Although that is a very small chunk of history and would not produce a bottle neck of gene types.

Coincidentally my wife had a parathyroid tumor and multiple docs missed it until it was almost fatal. She had 24 kidney stones out of the deal. If it was not for her medical background and researching her self she would have possibly ended up in cardiac arrest from hypercalcemia.

Her situation and mine have reinforced a deep mistrust for docs and to follow our gut and learn about a diagnosis.

Go for it Cindy. As I said al the good complimentary drs both sides of the pond seem to use the Broda Barnes method.
It is much more reliable than blood tests that just dump you "within range".
Suppose they were all correct these doctors and our thyroids are causing all this, or maybe something is ushing our thyroids out and causing it.....

When I stayed with the dr I took calls from patients in the daytime. They were mostly women and wanted to thank him for giving them their lives back. Now they were not migraine patients, but an awful lot of them had bad headaches and migraines...

Makes you think....

Brent wrote:Coincidentally my wife had a parathyroid tumor and multiple docs missed it until it was almost fatal. She had 24 kidney stones out of the deal. If it was not for her medical background and researching her self she would have possibly ended up in cardiac arrest from hypercalcemia.

I think mine may have started in childhood with kidney and bladder infections, a golf-ball sized kidney stone that completely blocked my right kidney at age 24 (surgical removal and massive infection), with kidney stones from then until age 42 when an excellent urologist finally figured it out. He had the lab redo the blood/urine tests three times, because they did them incorrectly--apparently there are some pretty scientific calculations that play into the levels they look for. According to him, they did not have the knowledge of these tests back when I had the original massive kidney stone in 1984.

I had another doctor tell me that the activities of the parathyroid and thyroid are closely related and when something goes wrong with one it affects the other, but no one has been able to tell me what or how.

Interesting info on the Broda Barnes method, Pen. I will see if I can find more information on it. Thank you. My mother has hypothyroid, so I think it is something that needs to be followed.

Becky