Monday, July 21, 2014

maybe it's not your thyroid

     You're tired. You want to nap. You don't sleep well at night. You don't have any enthusiasm for anything. You can't lose weight even though your appetite is poor.   You have inexplicable food cravings.  You ache.  You feel moody, irritable, anxious or depressed.   Sometimes you feel too cold, or too warm, or both. Your heart may skip or race. Maybe you have night sweats.
     According to a number of websites and self-proclaimed thyroid specialists you have a thyroid problem. These sources say that even if your blood tests are normal you still have a thyroid problem. Ignore the blood tests and ignore the research, find someone who will prescribe you desiccated pig thyroid and you will feel better.
     You probably will feel better for the first few weeks taking a dried animal gland, and then you will relapse. So you take a higher dose, you feel better for a bit and then another relapse. Keep upping the dose and you will eventually start having typical symptoms of too much thyroid medication. Not only that but now you have also damaged your glands ability to function naturally on its own, which it was doing just fine before you started taking an unnecessary medication.  I know there are plenty of testimonials about the miraculous recovery of people once they went on thyroid, but these are a mere handful compared to the many for whom it failed or caused adverse side effects such as osteoporosis with fractures, or atrial fibrillation.
     So why then do you feel so poorly? It is spelled S-T-R-E-S-S. the symptoms you're having are attributable to stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline.  Our bodies are developed to handle acute stress but not chronic stress.  When these hormones are chronically elevated bad things happen, namely the list of symptoms at the top of the page.  No, this isn't 'adrenal fatigue' either.  You don't need to help your adrenal glands work better with any herbs or nutritional supplements.  Your adrenal glands are doing exactly what they are supposed to do in response to stress and it becomes quite unpleasant.  The stress isn't easily fixed with a pill so people don't want to deal with it.  but until you deal with it you will continue to look for novel diagnoses and a convenient pill treatment and you will continue to feel poorly.
      There are some wonderful resources to learn more about stress and stress management. I highly recommend visiting the American Institute of Stress website. there is a program coming up July 24-26 and I look forward to watching it.  No it isn't easy to manage chronic stress.  But is may be the only effective treatment available.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

insulin without a prescription

If you find yourself in a bind needing insulin because your forgot it, the bottle broke, etc you can buy human regular insulin and human NPH without a prescription. They are available at WalMart for around $25 a bottle. No, it's not available in pen form so you may need to buy syringes as well. No, they don't work exactly the same as Humalog, Novolog, Apidra, Lantus or Levemir. But it can still help you through the situation. Ask your doctor about appropriate dosing in case you need to use this option.