Robert Whitfield MD spent 20 years with thyroid symptoms despite normal lab results, then 10 more years on Synthroid that didn't help. He switched to natural thyroid hormone and a functional-medicine approach and finally felt better. He has Hashimoto's, an autoimmune attack on the thyroid.
Let me just tell you my story, because I'm getting all riled up here. My story is that for 10 years, I had symptoms of low thyroid function, but every time I went to get my thyroid tested, I was always told it was normal, even though I had this big old enlarged thyroid gland in my neck. And it took 10 years before finally my lab test went out of range, and I was told, okay, now you're hypothyroid, Even though I just had all the same symptoms. And I was put on Synthroid, which is that synthetic thyroid medication, and I was on it for another whole 10 years, and I felt absolutely no different. My lab tests were normal, but I didn't feel any better. And it wasn't until I learned this whole functional medicine, you know, whole person approach that I was able to, you know, deal with all of the different issues that were making me feel poorly. And I switched myself over to the natural form of thyroid hormone, and I felt so much better. And for me, because it had been so many years, I have Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune condition that attacks your thyroid. So my thyroid had been attacked for, like, 20 years at this point, so I couldn't salvage it. But for a lot of women, where we can figure out that their thyroid is under attack earlier, sometimes we can salvage it. So just like you're saying, get the implants removed, get the inflammation down, and their thyroid can function better. But what happens to a lot of women is that even if their thyroid gland is actually okay, the thyroid gland is working. It's putting out the exact right amount of T4, which is the main thyroid hormone that it makes. That T4 doesn't really do anything.
