Dr. Betty Murray argues that standard thyroid care relies too narrowly on TSH levels and T4-only medication, ignoring free T3, free T4, antibodies, and reverse T3 that reveal the full picture. She describes building an integrative clinic in Erie, Pennsylvania to offer broader testing and treatment options like T3 and combination therapies.
Unfortunately, and this is the reality, in medical school, they are taught a very simplistic, linear standard of care for treating thyroid. And it goes like this. You test TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone. If TSH is above a 4.5, which is the standard lab value range cutoff, then you give T4 medication, Synthroid. You pat that patient on the back, wish him luck, tell them you'll retest them in 6 months. That is it. Maybe they'll go up and down in your Synthroid dose and your T4-only dose. That is standard of care. Years ago, Betty, I talked to a group of integrative wellness physicians, and they were literally moving from conventional care, opening up one of the first integrative wellness clinics in Erie, Pennsylvania, because we did not have any of that in that little podunk town. I'm talking to them about proper thyroid testing. I'm talking to them about being in the Synthroid box. So exactly what I said, why don't we test beyond TSH? There's free T3, there's free T4, there's the antibodies, there's reverse T3 that I talk about in the book as being one of the most important markers. And then we go over here and you're putting everybody on the same med. When we have, when we have T3, we have Armor Thyroid, we have NP Thyroid, we have Ren, we have all these other options. And guess what? We could combine those options too.
