Treatment with T3 reduces mortality
My favorite subject
As my readers will be aware by now, one of my “hobby horses“ – perhaps my favourite subject – is the importance of T3, the active thyroid hormone which is manufactured in the tissues, from T4. Regular readers will be familiar with the Low T3 Syndrome (LT3S) and its deleterious effect on body temperature, muscle/fat balance, bowel function, hair follicle death and sebaceous gland paralysis (dry skin), to name a few areas in which the function of T3 is indispensable.
The active thyroid hormone: T3.
Less obvious and less well known, however is T3’s activity in maintenance and repair of nerves and their myelin sheaths and its activity in maintaining muscle – especially Myocardial muscle – and muscle function.
T3 increases the basal metabolic rate and activates the Brown Fat, which regulates body temperature, maintains serum glucose and cholesterol balance and keeps body weight in check. It stimulates oxygen consumption in the tissues, boosts gastrointestinal motility, promotes skeletal growth and bone maintenance, has an integral effect on the development of the brain and nervous tissue in the developing fetus and is essential to myelination. In the adult, T3 enhances alertness, prevents anxiety, promotes cognition and provides feedback to the pituitary to suppress TSH production. In the tissues, T3 directly influences protein synthesis and enzymatic activity. by binding to nuclear receptors: in brief, T3. is essential to all bodily functions.
Thus I was unsurprised to find, in my pursuit of knowledge via the WWW, a paper which I had somehow, previously missed. entitled “Triiodothyronine (T3), inflammation and mortality risk in patients with acute myocardial infarction”.
Written by Salman Razvi, Avais Jabbar, Arjola Bano, Lorna Ingoe, Peter Care, Shahid Junej, Honey Thomas, Caroline Addison, David Austin, John P Greenwood and Azfar G Zaman, it had been published in the European Thyroid Journal on 10th January, 2020 – its DOI is 10.1530/ETJ-21-0085, PMCID: PMC9142797, PMID: 35007210:
I invite you to access it, read it and file a copy, which you should have available, to support you in discussion with your cardiologist if you ever turn up with a heart attack (you should tell the cardiologist that you would like to check your T3. and reverse T3, so as to derive the T3/rT3 ratio for diagnosis of LT3S, if it is present).
The protective effect of T3. on myocardial function
Here is an unexpurgated copy of the first paragraph of Razvi et al’s paper:
“There may be several possible explanations for the protective effect of T3 observed in AMI patients. Thyroid hormones, particularly T3, have considerable modulatory effects on myocardial tissue. In animal studies, T3 has been shown to be safe and cardioprotective in a post-infarct situation, resulting in preservation of ventricular function and arrhythmia reduction. Alterations in T3 levels affect mitochondrial function and have been linked with ischemia-reperfusion injury. In patients with heart failure and those undergoing surgical revascularization, T3 therapy has been shown to improve left ventricular function.”
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