steve richfie1d

Given less than half the facts, almost any opinion and course of action
can seem reasonable. Now, for the rest of the story...

Healthy people sleep at 97.4F, and pop up to 98.6F during the day. If
you doubt this, just take the temperature of your healthy teenager when
they first wake up, and again later in the day. However, many people get
stuck at their nighttime temperature for various reasons, one of the
rarest being hypothyroidism. To keep going, you produce lots more
adrenaline to make it through life in a sort of sleepwalking condition.
This excessive adrenaline necessitates a lot of vagus nerve activity to
keep your heart from racing. This eventually causes a constellation of
symptoms that have come to be known as "hypothyroid symptoms", and
eventually results in either adrenal or vagal burnout that then brings
on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or atrial fibrillation.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, thyroid
hormone supplementation usually makes people with low daytime body
temperatures feel a little better, but is a really poor substitute for
simply resetting your daytime body temperature back to 98.6F and being
done with the problem for once and for all, without continuing medication.

Since 1990 there have been techniques to reset some people's low daytime
body temperatures WITHOUT correcting any underlying hypothyroidism.
Three years ago, much better techniques were developed that could "reset
the temperature of a stone". Now, many people have had their
temperatures "reset" to 98.6F, some with continuing untreated
hypothyroidism. These people have almost always experienced a complete
or nearly complete resolution of their "hypothyroid symptoms" -
certainly much more so than people who take thyroid meds but do NOT get
their temperature up to 98.6F during the day.

The bottom line here is that people's "hypothyroid symptoms" clearly
follow their daytime body temperatures that can now be separately
controlled, and NOT their TSH, T3, T4, basil temperature, or any other
objective thyroid test result.

T4 and T4-containing supplements like Synthyroid, Levoxyl, and Armour
Thyroid actually BLOCK your temperature from ever exceeding 98.0F, even
in the presence of medications like T2 or Cytomel that would otherwise
have pushed your temperature higher. Hence, there really is no "pot of
gold" at the end of the T4-containing "rainbow", though it can often
make you feel better than doing nothing. There are ways taking
T4-containing supplements while maintaining 98.6F for people who really
ARE hypothyroid, but these methods all require that you first get your
temperature up to 98.6F BEFORE taking these supplements.

Most, but certainly not all people with low daytime body temperature
actually have a condition known as "central hypothermia", meaning that
their brains are carefully controlling their body temperature to their
nighttime value. There is now a simple do-at-home test for this. Just
take a long hot shower with a thermometer in your mouth and see how high
you can push your temperature without making yourself really sick. A
person without central hypothermia can push their temperature above
100F, whereas a person with central hypothermia can only push it to
98.something because their bodies turn and fight to keep their
temperature DOWN.

Depending on your underlying problems, most people with low daytime body
temperatures can now reset their temperatures in just ONE DAY.

OK, so let's look at the small percentage of people with low daytime
body temperatures on whom the known methods of temperature resetting do
NOT work. They seem to share one thing in common - they have taken
large-dosage thyroid supplements. In short, there is a very BIG downside
to just presuming that a constellation of "hypothyroid symptoms" really
indicates hypothyroidism - as the wrong treatment screws up the right
treatment.

Like all things in medicine, the key to success is in fully
understanding the problem, and NOT in taking any standard approach.
Indeed, there are even several different approaches to resetting low
daytime body temperatures, depending on the underlying problems.

The big surprise for you, but NOT for Mary Shomon and others who help
her with her web site and newsletter, is that Mary and her support staff
are quite familiar with all of this. They have steadfastly REFUSED to
provide either a comprehensive differential diagnosis web page or links
to information sources that don't actively promote thyroid hormone
supplementation, even though many of the people on this forum can easily
be shown to have problems other than with their thyroids.

Let's see, there is a word for people who are causing other people harm
by presenting a purely one-sided view of things, who have been provided
lots of information to show that they are misguiding people, yet still
have refused to mitigate the damage that they are doing by delaying
effective treatment. What is that word? CRAZY. Sure, Mary helps some
people, but if your daytime body temperature is below 98.6F and your TSH
is below 5.5, as it is for many people on this forum, then you would be
well advised to look elsewhere for competent advice. Some resources are:

1. <http://www.DrRind.com> is a Washington DC physician specializing in
adrenal fatigue, that underlies many cases of low daytime body temperature.
2. <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WS-Forum/> where some doctors send
their "hard cases" who fail to respond to routine procedures to reset
their low daytime body temperature. There, in thousands of postings for
the whole world to see, with successes and failures all mixed in
together, you can read how people with various underlying problems were
diagnosed and walked through this process.
3. <http://www.smart-life.net/Steve> is my own web page, used to get
people started in this process.
4. <http://wilsonsthyroidsyndrome.com/> features the original
1990-vintage treatment for low daytime body temperature. This is for
historical reference only, as I wouldn't now recommend this approach.

Steve Richfie1d

steve richfie1d

Given less than half the facts, almost any opinion and course of action
can seem reasonable. Now, for the rest of the story...

Healthy people sleep at 97.4F, and pop up to 98.6F during the day. If
you doubt this, just take the temperature of your healthy teenager when
they first wake up, and again later in the day. However, many people get
stuck at their nighttime temperature for various reasons, one of the
rarest being hypothyroidism. To keep going, you produce lots more
adrenaline to make it through life in a sort of sleepwalking condition.
This excessive adrenaline necessitates a lot of vagus nerve activity to
keep your heart from racing. This eventually causes a constellation of
symptoms that have come to be known as "hypothyroid symptoms", and
eventually results in either adrenal or vagal burnout that then brings
on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or atrial fibrillation.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, thyroid
hormone supplementation usually makes people with low daytime body
temperatures feel a little better, but is a really poor substitute for
simply resetting your daytime body temperature back to 98.6F and being
done with the problem for once and for all, without continuing medication.

Since 1990 there have been techniques to reset some people's low daytime
body temperatures WITHOUT correcting any underlying hypothyroidism.
Three years ago, much better techniques were developed that could "reset
the temperature of a stone". Now, many people have had their
temperatures "reset" to 98.6F, some with continuing untreated
hypothyroidism. These people have almost always experienced a complete
or nearly complete resolution of their "hypothyroid symptoms" -
certainly much more so than people who take thyroid meds but do NOT get
their temperature up to 98.6F during the day.

The bottom line here is that people's "hypothyroid symptoms" clearly
follow their daytime body temperatures that can now be separately
controlled, and NOT their TSH, T3, T4, basil temperature, or any other
objective thyroid test result.

T4 and T4-containing supplements like Synthyroid, Levoxyl, and Armour
Thyroid actually BLOCK your temperature from ever exceeding 98.0F, even
in the presence of medications like T2 or Cytomel that would otherwise
have pushed your temperature higher. Hence, there really is no "pot of
gold" at the end of the T4-containing "rainbow", though it can often
make you feel better than doing nothing. There are ways taking
T4-containing supplements while maintaining 98.6F for people who really
ARE hypothyroid, but these methods all require that you first get your
temperature up to 98.6F BEFORE taking these supplements.

Most, but certainly not all people with low daytime body temperature
actually have a condition known as "central hypothermia", meaning that
their brains are carefully controlling their body temperature to their
nighttime value. There is now a simple do-at-home test for this. Just
take a long hot shower with a thermometer in your mouth and see how high
you can push your temperature without making yourself really sick. A
person without central hypothermia can push their temperature above
100F, whereas a person with central hypothermia can only push it to
98.something because their bodies turn and fight to keep their
temperature DOWN.

Depending on your underlying problems, most people with low daytime body
temperatures can now reset their temperatures in just ONE DAY.

OK, so let's look at the small percentage of people with low daytime
body temperatures on whom the known methods of temperature resetting do
NOT work. They seem to share one thing in common - they have taken
large-dosage thyroid supplements. In short, there is a very BIG downside
to just presuming that a constellation of "hypothyroid symptoms" really
indicates hypothyroidism - as the wrong treatment screws up the right
treatment.

Like all things in medicine, the key to success is in fully
understanding the problem, and NOT in taking any standard approach.
Indeed, there are even several different approaches to resetting low
daytime body temperatures, depending on the underlying problems.

The big surprise for you, but NOT for Mary Shomon and others who help
her with her web site and newsletter, is that Mary and her support staff
are quite familiar with all of this. They have steadfastly REFUSED to
provide either a comprehensive differential diagnosis web page or links
to information sources that don't actively promote thyroid hormone
supplementation, even though many of the people on this forum can easily
be shown to have problems other than with their thyroids.

Let's see, there is a word for people who are causing other people harm
by presenting a purely one-sided view of things, who have been provided
lots of information to show that they are misguiding people, yet still
have refused to mitigate the damage that they are doing by delaying
effective treatment. What is that word? CRAZY. Sure, Mary helps some
people, but if your daytime body temperature is below 98.6F and your TSH
is below 5.5, as it is for many people on this forum, then you would be
well advised to look elsewhere for competent advice. Some resources are:

1. <http://www.DrRind.com> is a Washington DC physician specializing in
adrenal fatigue, that underlies many cases of low daytime body temperature.
2. <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WS-Forum/> where some doctors send
their "hard cases" who fail to respond to routine procedures to reset
their low daytime body temperature. There, in thousands of postings for
the whole world to see, with successes and failures all mixed in
together, you can read how people with various underlying problems were
diagnosed and walked through this process.
3. <http://www.smart-life.net/Steve> is my own web page, used to get
people started in this process.
4. <http://wilsonsthyroidsyndrome.com/> features the original
1990-vintage treatment for low daytime body temperature. This is for
historical reference only, as I wouldn't now recommend this approach.

Steve Richfie1d

tasher

Question? So why is low body temp a symptom/condition of hypothyroid
even prior to a diagnosis, and even before someone starts to take
thyroid hormone replacements? (I am not saying that independently there
very well may be a technique to raise temp. But temperature is only one
aspect for some people of being hypothyroid.)

I am obviously not a medical professional, but I do know that there is a
lot more to being hypothyroid than just the temp. Raising body temp
alone will not cure thyroid disease, I don't believe.

Terri

tasher

Question? So why is low body temp a symptom/condition of hypothyroid
even prior to a diagnosis, and even before someone starts to take
thyroid hormone replacements? (I am not saying that independently there
very well may be a technique to raise temp. But temperature is only one
aspect for some people of being hypothyroid.)

I am obviously not a medical professional, but I do know that there is a
lot more to being hypothyroid than just the temp. Raising body temp
alone will not cure thyroid disease, I don't believe.

Terri

skipperbeers

Maybe not. But, one doctor calls it "multiple enzyme deficiency" because
enzymes do not work well at a temp lower than the 98.6 your body was meant to
function at. So, it is possible some of the symptoms can be taken care of
even if there is still a thyroid problem.

Ayways, once the thyroid / adrenals are treated, the body temp is frequently
raised indicating that the low temp really was a sign of low thyroid. Not the
only sign, and the low temp isn't exclusive to low thyroid / adrenals, it's
just an extremely strong indication and more diagnostic in my family than TSH
has been.

I suspect the reason our body temps tend to run low is because we typically
have less blood volume, and weaker cardiac output so the blood doesn't
circulate well enough to keep us, and especially our peripheral areas warm as
we should be.

Skipper

steve richfie1d

Terri,

We have some definitional problems here. Your TSH value indicates how
far turned up your "furnace" is, with 5.5 indicating the typical
maximum. If your TSH is less than 5.5, then your thyroid is probably
doing whatever it is being told to do. However, like any furnace, it may
still have problems running "flat out", so sometimes higher TSH values
that are still less than 5.5 are associated with problems.

Note that your TSH is as much related to how warm you keep your
environment and how warmly you dress as it is to what thyroid hormone
supplements you take. Once people understand this, some people who are
truly hypothyroid still elect to just dress really warmly rather than
juggle expensive thyroid supplements.

Hence, hypothyroidism really just means increasing your heat loss to
meet or exceed your heat production ability, which is a SOCIAL issue
since most people don't like wearing Alaskan parkas during the summer.
Once you lose heat faster than you produce it, your temperature is
FORCED down. However, people can be easily trained to estimate their
temperatures within 0.2F, so that they immediately recognize if their
temperature is being forced down and take immediate measures to
counteract this.

The bottom line here is that nearly everyone who is truly hypothyroid
has acquired low daytime body temperature, but few people with low
daytime body temperature are truly hypothyroid.

Presuming of course that you really DO have thyroid disease. From what I
can tell from reading postings, people with genuine thyroid disease are
in the minority on this forum.

Of course, this all depends on your particular situation. People on this
forum range from mild symptoms all the way to missing their thyroids,
with everything in between. I tend to believe TSH > 5.5 in 70F indoor
environments and with long pants and blouses. However, Crazy Mary says
that TSH values of half this indicate "mild" hypothyroidism regardless
of ambient temperature and dress. For this, the doctors have diagnosed
Mary as crazy, and when you look at how TSH works, it's hard to argue
with this diagnosis.

BTW, what is your situation? Do you have some sort of genuine thyroid
disease? Do you still have your thyroid? What is your TSH?

Steve Richfie1d
===============

steve richfie1d

Skipper,


YES!

The problem is that usually fixing the underlying problems only pushes
your temp up to around 98.0F, and not all the way up to 98.6F. THAT is
where central hypothermia and its treatment comes into play.


If that were the case, then YOU WOULD BE DEAD! People can only stay
alive and conscious within a fairly narrow range of temperatures, so
when they become unable to maintain 98.6F, getting just a little bit
worse promptly KILLS them. No, people drop their temperature yet keep it
high enough to stay alive and conscious as a control system strategy to
save calories, save wear and tear on their metabolic system, keep their
temperature more stable, and for a variety of other reasons, depending
upon each individual's metabolic problems.

Steve Richfie1d
================

tasher

Well, I lived all my life, 47 yrs, in sunny So Cal. In the LA area it
just really very rarely gets unbearably cold. I hated wearing heavy
clothes, or layering clothes, and I never really had a problem with
feeling cold at inappropriate times. Cold extremities was never a
problem with me. Now for the past 3 years I am living at 4500 ft in the
So Cal mountains, and yes, we get the full four seasons here, including
snow. So, I have learned to wear more clothes in the winter, and
actually possess a half full closet of sweaters (unheard of in LA). When
I get cold here it is because it really is cold outside, and chilly
indoors too (by California Standards). My hypo thyroid started while I
was still in LA, at least 6 years ago. Other symptoms popped up, and
being cold wasn't one of them. (And I still can't sleep with socks on!
Bare feet must hang out from under the covers!)

....I am not an airhead, not totally, so I do understand the
synergistic nature of what you are proposing with regards to body temp.
I am just a little sensitive to someone calling (or quoting) that
someone is CRAZY, especially when that person is on a mission that is
aimed at trying to help people, not hurt. (Cussing and fowl language I
can handle, but name calling rubs me a little raw.) The door you have
left open is of course worth being looked into. Again, I am a
lay-person, and I see many open doors.


I am hypo, overweight, I was originally told I had multinodular goiter,
still have my gland, and last I checked TSH was in the 2's range. It
went up to around 6 something a few months ago, and I take my meds every
day. I felt best when it was around 1.9. a couple years ago. I am now on
..88 Levoxyl. I don't know the other numbers because as I have mentioned
before (long story short) I am low income without insurance so it is
hard to have tests done to get the big picture. I did a 4 day basal temp
test two months ago, the first 4 days of my period, and I ranged from
96.6 - 97.4, done on an old glass/mercury thermometer.

Terri

--
To email reply to me remove "spamnoone"
http://www.portfolios.com/17407.asher

skipperbeers

Perhaps that's why a "synthroid friendly" website says you can't diagnose by
body temp.

Anyway, my temp went up to 98.6 on Armour and my wife's on T3. The problem
tends to be getting a doctor to give you an adequate dosage, not the inability
of thyroid meds to increase temps.


???? I'm not quite sure what you mean. First, lower blood volume and cardiac
output are known to be caused by hypothyroidism. And I know people who say
their temps were 96 before thyroid treatment. Beyond a certain point you
officially get hypothermia and die, but I don't know where that cutoff point is
supposed to be and you certainly don't feel well long before that point is
reached. Eventually, it does send you into a hypothyroid coma.

Skipper

lois

: her with her web site and newsletter, is that Mary and her support staff
: are quite familiar with all of this. They have steadfastly REFUSED to
: provide either a comprehensive differential diagnosis web page or links
: to information sources that don't actively promote thyroid hormone
: supplementation, even though many of the people on this forum can easily
: be shown to have problems other than with their thyroids.

If Mary Shomon is crazy just for choosing not to espouse someone's personal
theory at her website, then the a.s.t. website team is also crazy. I'm proud
to be in the same category as Mary.

People can present whatever theories they want in this newsgroup, which is a
forum for different opinions, among other things. As webmasters and website
teams, though, we choose the focus for the websites we create, and we're
responsible for their content.

My definition of "crazy" appears to be different from yours. Personally, I
think it would be crazy to let anyone convince you to do what you don't
believe is the right thing to do. Even if they call you names for not
bending to their requests to have their links or material at your site.

I'm not at all surprised that Mary chose to include only what she considers
worthwhile at her site. She's very informed about a wide range of thyroid
issues, and she impressed me again by deciding not to include your theory.
Thanks for letting us know again what a fine person she is.

Lois