Incorrect Hypothyroid Diagnosis Affects One Third of Patients

Dr. Ruscio Radio, DC: Health, Nutrition and Functional Healthcare

Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC

Medical, Health, Functionalmedicine, Alternative Health, Health & Fitness

4.5 • 774 Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2021

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, you may be among the 34% of patients who may be incorrectly diagnosed. Symptoms such as fatigue, constipation, depression and insomnia are often associated with hypothyroidism, but they may actually be related to other causes such as gut issues or female hormone imbalances. In today’s podcast I discuss a new clinical review that investigates outcomes for patients who were prescribed thyroid hormones as a result of a healthcare provider’s misdiagnosis. I also provide recommendations for those who think they may be incorrectly diagnosed, including tips for reading your lab report and how to work with your doctor to discontinue thyroid hormone treatment (if appropriate).
https://drruscio.com/incorrect-hypothyroid-diagnosis
My book Healthy Gut, Healthy You is available at https://drruscio.com/getgutbook/
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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Dr. Rousho Radio, providing practical and science-based solutions to feeling your best.
0:15.4	To stay up to date on the latest topics, as well as all of our prior episodes, make sure to subscribe in your podcast player.
0:22.9	For weekly updates, visit Dr.ru Shoe.com. That's d r-R-R-U-S-C-I-O.com.
0:30.9	The following discussion is for educational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose or
0:36.0	treat any disease. Please do not apply any of this information without first speaking with your doctor. Now, let's head to the show.
0:44.4	Hey everyone, this is Dr. Rucho. Welcome back to Dr. Rucho, and today let's discuss a pivotal piece of evidence that further supports something you've heard me mentioned on the podcast many,
0:54.4	many a time, which is this overdiagnosis of hypothyroidism, which seems to be harming a
1:01.8	decent subset of individuals. There was a crucially important paper, in my opinion, published,
1:08.3	and the title of this paper was clinical outcomes after discontinuation
1:13.1	of thyroid hormone replacement, a systematic review and meta-analysis hot off the press in
1:20.1	the journal Thyroid, 2021 May 31st. The short summary is this study examined data from 17 observational studies,
1:32.3	looking at a total of 1,105 patients. Get this, roughly a third, 34 percent, were able to successfully discontinue thyroid medication and maintain normal thyroid function.
1:50.8	That's really encouraging, and it reinforces something I've been harping on on the podcast for years now.
1:58.5	Those diagnosed with true hypothyroidism prior were shocker, less likely to be able to
2:06.7	successfully discontinue medication, only 11%. And there's one caveat here, which is there is some
2:14.5	risk of bias in this data set because it's predominantly observational data.
2:19.6	There was a lacking of adjustment for confounding variables, and the sample size was somewhat small.
2:25.7	However, this is the best data we have to date to give us a quantification of how often are people being incorrectly labeled with hypothyroidism
2:37.0	and therefore undergoing lifelong thyroid medication therapy.
2:41.2	So, even though the data is not perfect, this is the pinnacle of the pyramid.
2:47.3	It may be lower down on the pinnacle, but as I discussed, gosh, I forget where I use this analogy,
2:52.9	I think it was in Healthy Good, Healthy You. Let's say the Ferrari is the best car. This might be a Porsche.
	...

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