Thyroid expert Dr. Antonio C. Bianco, MD, PhD, speaking at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinology (AACE) annual meeting about T3 and T4 therapy, has just acknowledged that many patients (he says 10 – 20%, but as you will agree, this percentage is much larger), treated for hypothyroidism using levothyroxine (T4, “the number one prescribed drug in the country”), fail to experience an improvement in their symptoms.
Of course, this isn’t news to those of you who are familiar with abnormal thyroid function and particularly, those who know the details of intracellular hypothyroidism, a.k.a. euthyroid sick syndrome, low T3 syndrome, nonthyroidal illness, functional hypothyroidism, etc..
However the fact is that a major player in traditional medicine is willing to admit that something is wrong with medical doctors’ usual treatment for hypothyroidism.
So: it seems that our doctors’ understanding of the problem is improving.
That’s REALLY encouraging!
Dr. Bianco, further to his credit, has noted that combination T3 and T4 therapy doesn’t entirely solve the problem for folks with low thyroid function (as you may know, slow-release T3 is the best way to go, if the problem is intracellular hypothyroidism: if your problem is true hypothyroidism, due to Hashimoto’s disease or some other cause, T4 is obviously best).
However it seems that the medical establishment is not yet ready to embrace the idea of investigating thyroid function with TSH, free T4, free T3 and reverse T3 (+ T3/rT3 ratio) treating Intracellular Hypothyroidism with slow-release T3.
If you would like to read about Dr. Bianco’s article, please see “Debate Continues on Combination Therapy for Hypothyroidism“, by Miriam E. Tucker, dated May 20, 2022
the URL for this article is https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/974330
