Doctor Goes On Record About False Negative Thyroid Tests
“My father taught me after I got out of medical school, ‘Son, don’t poison your patients like all the other physicians do’,” says Dr. Steven Hotze, MD, author of Hypothyroidism, Health and Happiness (affiliate links). “He kept repeating this over and over to me.”
When his father became ill with heart issues he set out on a path of holistic health complete with nutrition through food, mineral and natural methods. In his research he uncovered a lot of the underlying cause of illness as a problem with the thyroid. After he read Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness by Dr. Broda Barnes, his whole perspective changed as did the way he practiced medicine.
Dr. Barnes say, “Of all the sly, subtle problems that can affect physical or mental health, none is more common than thyroid gland disturbance. And none is more readily – and inexpensively – corrected. Yet, none is more often untreated and even unsuspected.”
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After reading Dr. Barnes’ book, Dr. Hotze began taking tests of thyroid antibodies in over 30,000 patients, “What I found was 28% of male, 18% of women patients make antibodies to their thyroid gland. Which means they have autoimmune thyroiditis. They have antibodies attacking the gland so the body can’t assimilate it within the cells.”
Dr. David Brownstein, MD, author of The Guide To Healthy Eating (affiliate link) says, “The powers that be say autoimmune thyroiditis is occurring in about 1 to 3% of the population. (Dr. Hotze’s) numbers are correlating with exactly what my numbers are – about 1/3 of the female patients out there.”
Dr. Brownstein and Dr. Hotze both discovered the same thing. Their patients were experiencing thyroid issues yet their tests came back normal.
They found autoimmune thyroiditis was occurring in 30% of their patients while medical reports were telling them their numbers should be 2% of the female population and 0.2% of the male population. The numbers aren’t copacetic.
Nepal is reporting 37.5%.
The Oxford Journal, a British Medical Bulletin reports, “Early autopsy surveys (show) up to 50% of patients had thyroid nodules.”
In Germany goiter or thyroid nodules were found in 33% of a test sample of 99,278 adults in their prime of life.
Meanwhile Medscape, a medical news and perspective magazine reports, “Autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) is encountered in 10–15% of the general population and is often associated with various other autoimmune diseases, such as autoimmune gastritis (AG).”
Dr. Brownstein says, “We’ve got a major epidemic of hypothyroidism and auto-immune disease going on that conventional medicine doesn’t recognize and doesn’t know how to treat.”
Dr. Barnes recommends treating the thyroid from clinical symptoms and body temperature and then back it up with the blood test for antibodies, TSH, T4 and T3.
Dr. Hotze says fixing the problem is best solved with a therapeutic trial of pork thyroid gland a compounded preparation in a slow release formula.
He made keen note that two years ago he sent the same blood from the same 40 patients to two different labs saying, “I got differences in the thyroid hormone and T4 levels as much as 50% difference between the two labs. Which lab am I going to believe? Lab A or lab B? Or am I going to believe the patient? What I’m telling you is I don’t believe the lab tests.”
He goes on to say, “Another reason the lab tests should not be taken as the end all, be all for thyroid disease is because of the way they determine what the normal range is. The normal range is measured and determined by the laboratory, not by the doctor.”
Endocrine Web says, “Many millions will have this disease in mild to moderate forms which are more difficult to diagnose. The solution for these people is more complex and this is due to several factors. Some patients with very ‘mild’ deviations in their thyroid laboratory test results will feel just fine while others will be quite symptomatic. The degree of thyroid hormone abnormalities often, but NOT ALWAYS will correlate with the degree of symptoms.”
They further add, “Even the ‘normal’ thyroid hormone levels in the blood have a fairly large range, so even if a patient is in the ‘normal’ range, it may not be the normal level for them.”
Lab Tests Online, a public resource on clinical lab testing, says, “The sensitivity and specificity of thyroid antibody testing is improving but is still not as good as doctors would like it to be. There are many distinct methodologies and each has different reference (normal) ranges.”
WebMD says, “The normal values —called a reference range—are just a guide. These ranges vary from lab to lab, and your lab may have a different range for what’s normal. Your doctor will evaluate your results based on your health and other factors.”
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Other sources:
http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/1/39.full
Checchi, S., Montanaro, A., Ciuoli, C. et al. (2010) Prevalence of parietal cell antibodies in a large cohort of patients with autoimmune thyroiditis. Thyroid, 20, 1385–1389.
http://www.drbrownstein.com/
http://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/thyroid/hypothyroidism-too-little-thyroid-hormone-0
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jtr/2011/675703/#B1
http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/thyroid-antibodies/tab/test/
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/824480
http://www.njmsmanipal.com/downloads/NJMS_Vol3_No1_OA10.pdf
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889852905701894
http://thethyroidsummit.com/steven-hotze-md/
http://www.webmd.com/women/thyroid-stimulating-hormone-tsh?page=2
