Posted by bleauberry on February 14, 2009, at 18:06:09
In reply to Thyroid Function Test, posted by psyclist on February 11, 2009, at 13:11:14
I am not familiar with the lab numbers themselves. I am more familiar with "patterns". As some mentioned already, the lab numbers are basically for screening. While many doctors look at them as diagnostic and reliable, they really are not. A typical "normal" range is actually quite broad. Someone could test low/high normal and yet have bad symptoms that fit thyroid issues, and yet not be treated because they were within normal. Normal is too broad.
What we want is optimal, not normal. That is, each number should be close to the borderline on the extremely good side of the normal range, to where it just couldn't be much better than that. Each number has to be that way, not just one or the other.
You need to find out what the "normal" ranges are that your lab used, plot your numbers within those ranges, and see where they stand.
That said, treating thyroid is often a clinical diagnosis and not a lab diagnosis. Challenge tests, or trials, or T3, or T4, or both, or Armour Thyroid, are much more diagnostic. If you improve on one or more, then it makes no difference what your labs say. The labs are wrong pure and simple in that case. Many people are treated this way, where labs are used more a guideline to see where you are now compared to where you were a few months ago, but not used to make a definitice diagnostic decision. That decision is more accurately made by clinical observation of what happens when meds are tried.
In Dr Bob's Tips there were numerous doctors around the world that supplemented thyroid for mood/energy improvement even when there was no basis on labs to do so.
To make it even more complicated, as my doctor told me, we can measure thyroid in the blood, but we cannot measure thyroid within the cells where it actually works...in other words, it might not be getting in the cells where it is supposed to work. Causes could be genetic, heavy metal blockage, or some other unknown reason. What circulates in blood is not meaningful. What happens at the cellular receptor level is. Sometimes it takes more thyroid in the blood, from supplementation, to break through whatever road blocks exist. When symptoms improve, you may never know why, just that they did.
poster:bleauberry
thread:879453
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090213/msgs/880141.html