McCall McPherson was prescribed Synthroid at 27 while bedridden, but her doctor dismissed her symptoms as normal despite lab results. She argues that levothyroxine, the standard treatment, doesn't work for most women because their bodies can't convert it into usable T3, leaving 91% of hypothyroid patients symptomatic.
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I was 27 on Synthroid, and I was spending 16 hours a day in bed. And I went to my doctor, and I was already practicing medicine, so I knew enough. Oh, I must just need an increase in my meds. Went to my doctor, was told, "No, your labs are normal." He didn't run adequate lab data. He didn't look at the information correctly, and I was sent away and told, "Eat less, exercise more." And by the way, here's a Lipitor prescription for your cholesterol issue that was. Just due to my thyroid. So anyway, 91% of Americans have that same experience. They have persistent symptoms. They go to their doctor. Their doctor says, your labs are fine. And it's because Synthroid, levothyroxine, Tirosint, Levoxyl, Unithroid, all the same thing. Okay? I want you to think about it like crude oil. We don't put crude oil in our car to make it run. Okay? We need it to make gasoline. To put in our car to make it go. But guess what? If I give you all the crude oil in the world and you can't convert it to gasoline, you're not going anywhere in your car. And what we're doing in medicine ubiquitously across the board, it's the only thing we're actually trained how to do, is give people crude oil hormone, give them levothyroxine. The vast majority of women in our country cannot take that medication and convert it to its usable form. It's called free T3, to actually fuel our body to function. So we're stuck. It is destroying the lives, tens of millions of women all over our country. I see them every day and it's devastating. Meanwhile, no one actually believes that it even matters.
