Topic of the Week
My doc keeps insisting I remove or nuke my thyroid calling it “definitive” treatment. Is this true?
My doc keeps insisting I remove or nuke my thyroid calling it “definitive” treatment. Is this true?
No! It’s not true! The term “definitive treatment” is very misleading and completely false!
You’re merely trading a hyPER thyroid for a hyPO thyroid. There’s nothing definitive about it whatsoever because you’ll be treating the hyPO state created for life with replacement hormone that comes with its own set of problematic issues.
Graves Disease (the root cause) is incurable but we can achieve antibody remission. RAI does absolutely nothing to reduce antibodies and once the thyroid is gone antibody remission rarely occurs. Remember, the thyroid is only one victim of Graves Disease. The eyes, heart, muscles, skin are also victims unrelated to your thyroid.
Long term use of MMI or CBZ does NOT have negative effects in LOW doses (see the 10 year study in the Files Section). Because doctors don’t know how to dose this med properly and they don’t advise their patients to eat a low iodine diet they use higher doses than necessary and that’s when issues on bone density are seen. Side note: 90% of the general population is deficient in Vit D and calcium which is the REAL cause of bone density issues. It’s impossible to blame anti thyroid meds when there are no patients who have good lifetime Vit D and calcium levels AND are also taking anti thyroid meds to study. Instead, it’s just a convenient reason with no science to back it up.
The real reasons for the push for removing or nuking your precious thyroid:
Docs are lazy and uneducated on the autoimmune disease of Graves. Managing an intact Graves thyroid requires more diligence than they’re willing to put in.
Docs like to play with nuclear medicine. Endos especially because Graves is one of the rare times they ever get to use it.
Due to the risk of thyroid storm if you stop your meds, docs don’t trust you to be able to understand this risk nor do they want to take the time to advise you on it.
They actually believe that “definitive treatment” term because they’re ignoring and/or uneducated about the root cause of your hyperthyroidism, Graves Disease.
We keep our thyroids because:
It leads to the best quality of life. Your own natural hormone is far superior to fake or pig hormone.
We can achieve full antibody remission through long term low dose meds combined with the correct amount of low iodine in our diet.
We’re educated enough to know that their definition of “definitive treatment” is actually NOT definitive in the least.
I 
my ! Learn to your too!
