Re: Meds for life?

[Guest guest]

It depends on the extent of damage to the thyroid that the disease

or condition caused. About 11% of thyroid patients can get off

thyroid therapy in 6 to 8 years of treatment. It appears that

treatment doesn't permanetly ruin the thyriod for at least some

people. There have been reports in the body building field that

using thyroid to loose weight for competitions for too long of a

time can result in permanent low fucntion. I suspect the problem of

giving thyroid really affect the brain and not the thyroid. Giving

cortisone at too high of a dose for too long can permanently cause

the pituitary/hypothalamus to become weak and unable to return to

normal function is less than about 5% of people. This same sort of

thing may happen in hypothyroidism. Also, many hypos have pituitary

problems anyway and their pituitaries do not make enough TSH.

People with auto-immune thyroid disease who have been on adequate

therapy to suppress their own thyroids sufficiently for long enough

can loose the antibodies that attack the thyroid. In other words,

over time of thyroid treatment, the body can forget the information

to attack the thyroid. Then the thyroid can return to normal when

you go off to medication. However is takes a minimum for 6 weeks for

the gland to return to normal after medication is withdrawn. I have

seen studies where they gave heatlhy people thyroid and they were

all able to get off the meds. But, there was a month or so of low

thyroid function before the gland returned to normal. It required

that the pituitary put out a lot of TSH for some time to get it

going. Many hypos don't have great pituitary function.

Well treated hypothyroid patients who get enough thyroid to be

heatlhy (a ral challenge today) have an advantage over non hypo

people and they can actually have longer healthier lives. In normal

people, thyroid function declines with age. Then they are at

increased risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease and many other

thyroid related conditions. So, there are advantages to being on

medication.

Tish