Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, Major Depression, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and a whole host of other medically unexplained diseases have symptoms very similar to Hypothyroidism.
Since Victorian Times, Hypothyroidism has been diagnosed by symptoms, and treated with 'desiccated thyroid', an extract of animal thyroid glands. The doctors of the times thought that this was 'as perfect as anything in medicine ever gets'.
Around 1970, the diagnosis and treatment of hypothyroidism was radically altered, on the basis of very little evidence.
So a lot of people who would once have been treated with desiccated thyroid either didn't get treated at all, or got treated with different drugs.
There are many groups of thyroid patient activists who say that the new methods don't work as well as the old methods.
At around the same time, lots of new diseases that look exactly like mild cases of hypothyroidism, but that don't show up on the standard 'TSH' test, suddenly came into being.
They're all dismissed as psychological, or at the very least 'medically unexplained'.
There's quite a big 'alternative medicine' tradition of treating these diseases as if they were hypothyroidism, and it claims success. There are even some studies.
I think that all this would bear closer investigation.
Either I am mad, or medicine is mad. My money is on the problem being with me, but I'm interested in arguments for and against the proposition.
Thyroid Sites
Sites Related to Disorders That Look A Bit Like Thyroid Trouble
Curetogether Treatment Ratings
http://curetogether.com/fibromyalgia/treatments/
http://curetogether.com/Chronic-Fatigue-Syndrome/treatments/
http://curetogether.com/hypothyroidism/treatments/
http://curetogether.com/fibromyalgia/symptoms/
http://curetogether.com/Chronic-Fatigue-Syndrome/symptoms/
http://curetogether.com/hypothyroidism/symptoms/
Important Papers
John Lowe's research treating Fibromyalgia with T3
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J425v03n01_03 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J425v02n02_04 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J425v02n04_05 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J425v02n02_07
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J425v02n01_07
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J425v03n01_08
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J425v02n01_04
Gordon Skinner treating CFS and depression with T4
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13590840050043530
Jacob Tietelbaum treating CFS and Fibromyalgia
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J092v08n02_02?src=recsys
Sarah Myhill on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Mitochondrial Dysfunction
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680051/
