From the Desk of Carolyn Dean MD ND
By now you should know that I’ll critique anything. This blog is no exception. A doctor I knew in New York, Ronald Hoffman MD, wrote a March 2024 Book Review: “Rethinking Hypothyroidism” by Antonio Bianco MD, Ph.D.
My first thought was, have they finally caught up with me and realized that the thyroid requires 9 minerals in their stabilized ionic form in order to make thyroid hormones? What exactly was the “rethinking” that went into writing a 311-page book.
Unfortunately, it’s really nothing new. The book talks about the standard allopathic treatment of giving synthetic T4 thyroid hormones that ignores the 10-20% who don’t respond well. This group of people continue to have brain fog, low energy, poor memory, and poor concentration.
The Importance of Selenium
The underlying concern with synthetic T4 therapy is that the body has to convert T4 into T3, which means dropping one of the 4 iodine molecules from T4 to make T3. The enzyme that performs this function, deiodinase, requires selenium as its mineral cofactor. Is selenium deficiency the basis for a poor result? Dr. Bianco doesn’t say.
Dr. Bianco does say that this group of poor responders to synthetic thyroid hormones need more options. What are those options? Unfortunately, not my 9 minerals that are buried in ReMyte® – my 12-picometer mineral formula.
Historically, Dr. Bianco details that the early treatment of hypothyroidism used extracts of animal thyroid, which gave them both T4 and T3 hormones. When the switch came to the more “medically accepted” synthetic T4 drugs, 10-20% of patients wanted to go back to their animal thyroid extract, which I say is because they may have selenium deficiency and are unable to convert T4 to T3.
Just Old Thinking
In my general practice I often had to argue with endocrinologists about prescribing Armour thyroid, made from pig thyroid. They thought it was unregulated, not standardized, and not medically acceptable. But it was qute acceptable to my patients because they felt better on it than on synthetic thyroid.
Dr. Bianco says that endocrinologists were treating blood tests and if the tests looked OK, they tried to tell their patients that any residual symptoms they thought they had from thyroid disease was just in their heads.
Dr. Bianco mentions selenium, but just says it’s an antioxidant co-factor with glutathione that protects the thyroid from autoimmune attack. He doesn’t say that it’s a necessary cofactor in the breakdown of T4 to T3 with deiodinase.
What Dr. Bianco does concentrate on is using synthetic T3 formulations like Cytomel (Liothyronine) for people who’s synthetic T4 isn’t sufficient. But Cytomel seems to act erratically and inconsistently, and his “rethinking” includes demanding that pharmaceutical companies develop an improved delivery system for T3, that avoids the spikes in T3 levels that may make it seem unsafe.
Some more or his “rethinking” has to do with the dream of “targeted stem cell therapies that restore normal function to under-performing glands.” Perhaps he’s heard of our Pico Silver®, which stimulates stem cell production in bone marrow! Nah, I doubt it.
So, that’s all we have on the frontier of thyroid therapy – something I learned 45 years ago in my Naturopathic training – the thyroid needs both T4 and T3.
So, it turns out that I have the breakthrough and I’ve been rethinking the thyroid. The breakthrough is that we don’t have to wait for the thyroid to totally collapse and then give synthetic or even natural “hormone replacement,” we just need to provide it with the 9 mineral building blocks to make our own thyroid hormones.
My thyroid recovered after only 6 weeks on ReMyte® and I was able to drop my 60mg of Armour thyroid. My low thyroid symptoms disappeared, and my hands and feet have been toasty warm ever since! You too can ReThink your own thyroid with ReMyte®!
Reference:
https://drhoffman.com/article/book-review-rethinking-hypothyroidism-by-antonio-bianco-md-ph-d/
Carolyn Dean MD ND
The Doctor of the Future
