• Abnormal menstrual cycle

• Cold hands and cold feet,

• Constipation

• Depression

• Dry skin

• Dry hair

• Difficulty losing weight

• Fatigue

• Hair loss, including eyebrow hair

• Low libido

• Memory loss and slowed thinking

• Slow heart rate

• Slow reflexes

Most of the these endocrine imbalance are associated with women, but men can have low thyroid conditions too.

More than 40 million Americans are suffering from this untreated condition. Mild, or subclinical hypothyroidism, is missed by routine testing. If you have a normal TSH and a normal FT4 level, most doctors are reluctant to treat you, even if you have every symptom of low thyroid. Normal laboratory tests can leave many without appropriate thyroid therapy.

Low thyroid conditions are also associated with symptoms often not correlated with hypothyroidism. For example, nearly 20% of people with high cholesterol levels have an untreated – or under treated – thyroid condition. Subclinical hypothyroidism is an important independent risk factor for heart disease in women.

A More Complete Assessment

Undiagnosed and under treated low thyroid conditions affect millions of people, especially women. Osteomed goes beyond routine thyroid tests – usually only a TSH and T4 test – to assess your thyroid health. In addition, our practitioners use a much more specific, much narrower range for a "normal" TSH test.

In 2004, a consensus report regarding the treatment of hypothyroidism published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) acknowledged that there was a "paucity of evidence-based data" to determine what the normal range should be for the TSH test. The report maintained that the upper limit of TSH should remain at 5.5 mIU/L. In addition, the authors recommended neither routine testing for nor routine treatment of subclinical disease. The paper concluded that the "available data" was not convincing enough to recommend that Endocrinologists should routinely use T4 (thyroxine) therapy and treating patients with clinical symptoms and even treating a TSH between 4.5 and 10 mIU/L "is not warranted."

A Different Point of View

There is another school of thought about this issue. In 2002, the American College of Clinical Endocrinologists (the AACE) made the recommendations for the Evaluation and Treatment of Hypothyroidism. These are the guidelines used by Osteomed:

1. An upper limit of normal for TSH is 2.5 IU/L. (We also believe that the ideal range for the TSH should be between 1.0 and 1.5 IU/L)

2. Thyroid antibodies should be measured in all patients having symptoms of hypothyroidism and this information should be used as a clinical tool in deciding upon treatment.

3. AACE guidelines recommend treatment of patients with symptoms compatible with hypothyroidism to improve outcomes with fertility and maintaining pregnancy.

4. The guidelines recommend that the physician who has performed a comprehensive history and physical examination should decide on treatment of each individual patient.

The measurement of TSH is considered to be the most reliable test to diagnose all forms of hypothyroidism. We have seen too many success stories doing things differently. The laboratory TSH range is currently 0.4 to 4.0 mIU/L for a normal individual, even though a population study in 2003 suggested that this range should be reset to 0.5 to 2.5 mIU/L.

Narrowing this range allows many who have been told there is "nothing wrong" to get the help and treatment that the need. This is the position that we take at Osteomed when we assess and treat your thyroid.

Thyroflex Testing for low thyroid symptom here.