Who is Really Right in the Oprah Thyroid Debate? His and Hers Opinions from Drs. Richard and Karilee Shames
When there's controversy in the thyroid world, I frequently turn to two experts in thyroid disease, Richard Shames, M.D. and his wife, Karilee H. Shames Ph.D., R.N. Dr. Richard Shames graduated from Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, and has been in private practice for more than 25 years. Dr. Shames practices holistic medicine -- with a focus on thyroid problems, hormonal imbalances, and autoimmune conditions. Karilee Halo Shames, Dr. Shames' wife, is herself hypothyroid, and is a clinical specialist in psychiatric nursing and a certified holistic nurse with a Ph.D. in holistic studies. They are coauthors of ThyroidPower and Fat, Fuzzy and Frazzled, and run a medical and healthcare practice in California.Usually, the pair are in agreement on their approaches to thyroid disease, but when it comes to the thyroid philosophies of Oprah and Dr. Christiane Northrup, the Shames are split.
I had an opportunity to get their "his and hers" input on how they disagree about the issues, and know that thyroid patients will find it illuminating.
Her View: Karilee Shames
Mary Shomon: You've worked for years with your own thyroid condition, and with other women, using energy healing tools and techniques, and focusing on self-responsibility, self-care, and the mind-body connection. Did you understand what Dr. Northup was trying to say about thyroid disease when she appeared on Oprah?
Karilee Shames: After 40 years, I understand exactly what Dr. Northrup was saying, about the fifth chakra (throat) being related to self-expression and speaking one's truth. And, to be honest, yes, I have worked on these issues consistently for decades in order to help myself to heal.
In order to be fair, I want to say that part of the problem may have occurred in translation. My husband and I have not been on Oprah's show, but we have been on television and radio. What we can tell you is that in instances such as this, the speaker frequently must present years of research and innovative material in 5-second sound bites. We spent years writing long books only to have their entire messages be reduced for radio and TV to "You can still be low thyroid, even with normal tests" or "Hormones rule metabolism".
So imagine the complexity of trying to convey a deep understanding of mind-body relationships in short sound bites, and you might begin to see how easily Dr. Northrup's message could have been distorted by the medium and setting. Yes, Oprah is blessed to be in a position to take a month off and care for herself. I certainly know how powerful that can be, and I try to incorporate self-care into my life as well. And, I understand that many women are not as blessed as Oprah, and must go to work and care for their families day in and day out, without a whole month of this type of restoration.
I am happy that this show illuminated some important concepts, but keep in mind that they only had a chance to scratch the surface of a very crucial issue. And if it came across as blaming women for their thyroid problems, we might also give them some credit, as you have suggested, Mary, for putting a spotlight on thyroid issues and their complex nature.
So I believe that our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors do absolutely impact our thyroid situation. It's just clearly not the whole story. The energy healing approach is only one aspect of my total thyroid care program. I have also taken thyroid medicine since age 20, had thyroid scans and evaluations, and had regular blood and saliva testing to determine how my program is working. And I have resorted to emotional release and energetic interventions to boost my program. I use herbs and aromas to help restore myself. I regularly exercise, meditate, dance, stretch, and seek a balance of laughter and crying in my complex and stressful life.
Here is the bottom line: I am an ordinary woman, with a medical condition, and I'm taking a prescription medicine for it, the dose of which is modified based on good medical testing. I have confidence in what I do, and I also know that working with someone's belief system can sometimes be as important as what the tests say. So I have chosen the holistic approach for myself, believe in it, and it is working for me.
I believe that the surprising uproar at the implication that "you caused your condition" or "you can heal it with emotional release" may in fact have more to do with how women are discounted in the medical realm and most often told "it's all in your head."
In that sense, Chris Northrup was right. We thyroid patients DO have feelings-- about our throats, our thyroid conditions, and the medical attitudes that discount our critical and vital input as to how we can proceed with healing our lives and our thyroids. And it is definitely time to express our feelings, to claim our voices, to speak out and join together in strength, to change this serious omission in the medical world.
His Thoughts: Dr. Richard Shames
Mary Shomon:What were your thoughts about Dr. Northrup and Oprah Winfrey and their thoughts about thyroid disease.
Richard Shames: I feel that the information on self-expression is not what the large majority of viewers most need to know.
Consider how it would have been received if Dr. Northrup had prefaced her remarks to Oprah with something like this:
"In addition to careful testing of your thyroid status, and in addition to medical treatment using prescription and natural remedies, here is one useful but underutilized tool that has helped me in guiding some of my patients. It is called 'the mind-body approach'..."Had she used something like this as a preamble, maybe what she said could have been seen in a more comfortable perspective for the large range of viewers. For instance, one of my patients who had seen the show came in to see me last week. She was outraged that it was being suggested that somehow she had caused her own thyroid problem.
She told me that her grandmother had Graves' disease; her mother had severe Hashimoto's, and that she herself developed Graves' disease in her twenties, had her thyroid removed, and was now on prescription thyroid medicines. It angered her to have it suggested that this almost inescapable family history and her current status of having no thyroid gland to make thyroid hormone could have been perceived as her fault, and that she could now just think and feel her way out of it.
Another patient had thyroid cancer. Although that was not the Oprah-Northrup topic, this patient was also angered at the thought that her cancer "was her fault." Or that she could feel her way out of it.
What these examples -- and in fact much of the whole debate above -- bring up for me is the confusion that occurs when a medical illness has multiple risk factors and multiple causes, as well as multiple sensible treatment approaches.
People seem to like to understand things as simply as possible. A Strep exposure causes throat infection; penicillin is the cure for it. These black and white instances are convenient, but do not always apply to the complexity of some chronic conditions such as thyroid illness.
Consider the prime example of a multi-factor illness. Heart disease is now known to be "caused" by several important risk factors, including heredity, smoking, obesity, high blood cholesterol, type "A" stress personality, high homocysteine blood levels. And treatments for heart disease cover a broad range: cholesterol lowering medicines, balloon angioplasty, clot dissolving blood thinners, exercise, diet, stress reduction, angina reduction nitrate medicines and patches, etc. These lists could go on and on, but the point is clear: not only are there multiple causes of coronary heart disease, there are also multiple effective treatments.
How does this relate to thyroid problems? IT'S EXACTLY THE SAME. There are many contributing factors such as:
- Heredity
- Environmental Chemical Exposures (including fluoride in drinking water)
- "Life Event" Triggers (puberty, childbirth, menopause, surgery, and crises)
- Certain prescription medicines and x-ray dyes that can precipitate thyroid problems
- Diet (Excess consumption of goiter-producing foods such as soy)
- Taking T4 - thyroxine (Synthoid, Levoxyl, etc.)
- Adding T3 to T4 when appropriate.
- Adding natural prescription thyroid (Armour, Naturethroid, etc)
- Exclusive use of T3 alone
- Exclusive use of natural thyroid alone
- Vitamins, minerals, herbs and glandulars (alone or to augment any of above)
- Acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, counseling, energy work
- A Christiane Northrup-like attention to unblocking the throat region and expressing one's feelings more fully and beneficially.
I feel it is incumbent upon health professionals and talk show hosts to provide a preamble or a context for understanding their points, rather than unwittingly suggesting that this particular part of the story is somehow the entire issue.
I urge those experiencing thyroid challenges to first look at the big overall picture, complete with its many options for diagnosis and treatment. Then, and only then, focus in on the details most pertinent to your individual situation, hopefully utilizing the guidance of a well-trained health professional.
Where they Agree
Mary Shomon: In what ways do you both agree on the issue?
Richard & Karilee Shames:Our approach is that attitude and beliefs can indeed impact our biochemistry. For that reason we encourage people to use positive imagery and affirmations as part of their healing program. Since we clearly have the power to change our minds, we can direct our intention towards changing our bodies by changing our minds, or changing certain aspects of bodily function.
Yet there is a very delicate dance when it comes to finding the line between empowerment and blame. And here is where the art of "whole person care" is most tested. Any practitioner who "blames" you for your condition could, in our view, likely benefit from an enhanced understanding of the mind-body healing journey.
It is indeed a journey, and we are all -- even practitioners - learning and evolving. So we practitioners need to tread cautiously, attempting to convey a sense of personal power to our patients without adding to their stress or sense of shame. Otherwise we are not providing healing!
Photos courtesy Richard and Karilee Shames
Comments
To quote Karilee Shames:
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I certainly understand what you’re saying here but Dr. Northrup’s claim that we ’cause our own thyroid disease’ by blocking the throat chakra, thereby blocking our ability to express ourselves, is irresponsible and sets us back a hundred years.
In my mind, Dr. Northrup represents the countless medical professionals I have seen since my postpartum hemorrhage 36 years ago. While my secondary hypo was treated early on, doctors kept my TSH ‘anywhere within the range’ and said my thyroid medication was ‘just fine’. In other words, it was the ‘all in your head syndrome’ that I was suffering from.
Finally, finally, I have an endo who did the proper testing to diagnose me with ACTH deficiency THIS YEAR. I’m 58 years old now and the hemorrhage was when I was 22 years old. Don’t think I haven’t been vocal about my thyroid condition through all those years!
What irks us most is that a medical doctor would blame thyroid patients for their own conditions. I have difficulty with you saying, “In that sense, Chris Northrup was right.” I believe she’s dead wrong and instead of women damanding better medical care, they’ll be blowing kisses at themselves in the mirror.
Dr. Richard is correct for me anyway.
Mother’s side-cancer I’ve had malignant melanoma, breast cancer, thyroid cancer.
Father’s side, autoimmune diseases.
I had Graves, and have RA.
Additionally, I’ve been outspoken for 53 years!
I am so grateful to Mary Shomon’s website. This is a very confusing topic and I am slowly beginning to understand small parts of this. I was diagnosed with hypothyroid in my mid 50s. I’m glad I didn’t see Oprah’s show during those initial months– I would have believed the expert. hogwash!
Thank you so much to the Shames for this very reasonable and balanced response. As with most things, I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Emotions and self-care are certainly part of the picture but not all of it. I, myself, have a strong genetic component to my Hashimotos (two sisters, a niece, and my son also have it), and I struggled for years to get diagnosed and then struggled more years to get optimal (beyond Synthroid!) treatment. So I understand why thyroid patients can be a little touchy about anything that sounds like blame or “it’s all in your head.” That said, I think Dr. Northrup’s point was that we need to value ourselves enough to care for ourselves — body, mind, and spirit. It’s too bad she didn’t put it in context.
I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism 22 years ago and I was like a great many patients ….trying to convince my doctor I STILL didn’t feel good even while taking Synthroid! Finally, after many years I insisted on being switched to Armour and that made a world of difference!
Now, as far as whose fault my thyroid condition is, I’d say I inherited it from my mother since she also had the same problem. But I read somewhere that we actually inherit our DNA predispositions as well as the actual health issues. So in that sense, I think if we have a predisposition and know about it, then we can actively take steps to avoid the health issue (e.g. as perhaps in the case of heart disease). But when we wind up with a disease that our parent had, it’s difficult to accept that, ‘it’s our fault’! However, since I definitely believe in the mind/body connection, I have to think that the ancestor who came down with the disease in the first place, probably was doing something in their lives to bring it about. Whether it was due to bad diet, lack of interest about their general health or whatever, it could have been any number of reasons. So in that sense, yes it WAS that person’s fault because of something they did to bring it about. Then most likely that ancestor passed that particular DNA down to their descendants. It’s a generational thing!
But really, you can’t even blame that ancestor because they probably had no clue what was going on with their body. Like most of us, we tend to think our body is just going to run on auto pilot, especially when we’re young. And then all sorts of things can go wrong if we inadvertantly make some errors along the way with our health.
So what I’m saying is that while the problem may have been avoidable to begin with, I don’t think we can blame ourselves if we know we have not been reckless with our own health and have done all we can to stay healthy.
I have to say that ultimately the body responds to certain stress factors whether we realize it or not. The stress can be from worry, over-eating, fear, a chronic negative attitude, over-exertion, etc. etc. and so we will suffer the consequences from it…..the body will break down under those continuous stress factors.
Consider that we don’t have any problem accepting certain restrictions if we come down with a disease, e.g. no more eating sweets if you’re a diabetic, or staying away from a high fat diet and keeping anxiety levels down if we have heart disease. So, if we understand those cautions, then why don’t we understand it’s the same for any disease! The body just responds to what it is exposed to! And even while I have thyroid disease myself, I take full responsibility for responding to certain stress factors throughout my life. Of course I’m not going to beat myself up over it….what good would that do! But now that I know how my body is influenced by what goes on in my mind, then I can make the choice not to react negatively to certain stress factors. I have free will so I can change how I react….we all can do that.
So now that we have Thyroid disease, where do we go from here with it. Well I suppose we try to keep our lives as stress free as humanly possible. Get on a health kick and watch what goes into our body, get enough sleep etc. Who knows, we may all wake up one day and find that our thyroid condition has resolved itself.
Hey….anything is possible!
In response to Mare, my father’s family has a predisposition to heart disease as well as autoimmune diseases. However, I think it would be unfair to blame them for my ongoing struggle with thyroid diseases! As for stress, my biggest issue is getting my doctor to take me seriously, and monitor my treatment by symptoms, rather than the “gold standard” tsh test. We’re still missing the point!
During my ten years of undiagnosed hypothyroidism, I was suffering from Fibromyalgia, which, after treating my hypo, seems to have disappeared. I think most diseases come from inflammation, hormone imbalance and acidity in the body, so I use natural supplements to address these issues. I was actually prescribed Synthroid but had a major allergic reaction. Come to find out, the Synthroid coating has sulfur in it, and I’m allergic to that. Oddly enough, neither my doc or the pharmacist was aware of this. Since I don’t know of any local docs who will prescribe Armour, I’ve tried several supplements and have found things that help me. Bottom line is, we are all different and will respond differently to various treatments. In my opinion, getting a thorough hormone workup is a good idea, so we’ll know where we are lacking and can then investigate ways to balance our bodies. Having no luck with the medical community around here, I did my own research and discovered that there are many natural approaches that work for me. Taking responsibility for our own health means listening to our bodies and recognizing that we are all different and there are no “cookie cutter” solutions for any diseases.
Thank you for exploring a more balanced view and more thorough explanation of the mind body connection. The previous conversation was way too polorizing.
I think it is outrageous for a physician to suggest that thyroid disease can be overcome and healed by positive thinking and self expression. It is also very dangerous to suggest such garbage to those suffering thyroid conditions. I did not cause my Hashimoto’s disease; my grandmother had it, and my father, sister, and me have it. No amount of positive thinking or expressing of my feelings is going to cure this inherited disease. Now I know why I don’t watch Oprah’s show, and after this am definitely not about to start.
The vast majority of the medical profession is still in the stone age when it comes to Hypothyroidism and women’s health issues in general. I am low-normal hypo/ high symptoms with m.d. after m.d. not validating what’s going on with my body. I know it is not in my head it is in my body. I have a mother who was adopted,died young (46yrs.old) and an unknown medical history. I have a brother w/Graves. I finally told my m.d. hypothyroidism is looked at like depression was 30 or so years ago. The research is not advanced and you have an untreated population out there. He agreed. And as for Oprah, please-the wealthiest woman in the world, who has access to the very best care in the world is not the last word. Let’s be real. p.s. Any recommendations for progressive m.d.’s in the Milwaukee,Wi area?
About 1948-1950, my mother was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Fortunately, our family doctor had read an article about the subject. The article also stated that this physical problem tended to run down through the female line.
Thst being said, he had Mother tested. At that tine, you lay down, they put what looked like a “scubber diving mask” over your face and your breath we collected. The results were positive for hypothyroid, therefore I had to be tested. Again, another postive.
The next question to my mother was, Do you have any sister?”. “Yes, seven.” All my aunts and femate cousins on that side were tested and proved to be either hypothyroid or hyperthryoid.
Hypothyroidism is draining. If you do not strickly follow your medical guidelines, you can’t get out of your own way. As my original doctor said, “If you don’t take your medication, you will become so lethagic you will go to sleep and never wake up”. So far, life has been good, and I have embraced every one of my sixty nine and half years!
Didn’t see Oprah but do understand things can be misrepresented when not given enough time to explain the topic well. This article does a good job. I am hypothyroid & like many women went to my Dr, had tests, & was told “everything is within normal ranges” … great, I still had all the symptoms. Found a dr that did nat’l hormone treatment. What is really sad is a lot of us might not still be taking meds had we been treated properly from the beginning. My daughter was treated at age 21 (with natural supplements & then Rx as necessary) for 9 – 12 months; everything started functioning okay – now she, at age 24, only takes a multi-vitamin! (Goes back to this dr annually just for checkup as her whole endrocrine system was out of wack! Adrenals, female hormones, etc.) Dr. needs to be testing our cortisol levels (not just one point in time … like 4 times thru a day/eve) to ck adrenals as they should be healed before thyroid meds are given. So if you’re being treated for hypothyroid & still having problems, you might take a look at adrenal fatigue or adrenal exhaustion.
Excellent Dr in California: Dr. Cassandra Ndiforchu at Carson City, CA. In Iowa: Dr. Jean Lorentzen at Boone, IA. To find others try Mary Shomon’s website http://www.thryroid-info.com
For the woman from WN here’s the link & there were several from Milwaukee:
http://www.thyroid-info.com/topdrs/wisconsin.htm
If no doctors are listed for your area, another way is to go/call a local pharmacy in the city you need the Dr. … ask the pharmacist for some names of Dr/ARNP/PA that prescribe “compounded prescriptions” like nat’l hormones or thyroid “T3 or T4″ and then you’ll have a medical professional that at least recognizes the importance of the whole endrocine system! (Doesn’t usually mean that you’ll end up with nat’l compounded Rx, most will still prescibe regular ones too.) But these dr are usually (IMO)more knowledgeable overall about thyroid, etc. My reg dr now didn’t know that a hypothyroid person shouldn’t eat soy (or very much anyway) – she requested I bring in the article!!
Last, I would say that how we treat ourselves/body does have an effect on our medical condition. Not saying that we cause our medical “diseases” but we certainly can aid in our recovery with our overall attitude & treatment of our body (healthy eating, exercise, optimism, vitamins, etc. the whole mind-body-spirit thing). Whether it is thyroid or any medical problem, please know that we must be actively involved in our own health & cannot just rely on others (Dr, ARNP, PA, etc) to absolutely know the best up-to-date treatments. Also realize that the medical industry is pretty much driven/run by big business pharmecutical so your treatment may not always be non-biased. Always go to your appt prepared, ask questions – you can’t have too much information to make decisions about your health!
Best of health to everyone.
I am from Mumbai, India, and am amazed to find that the problem of locating a good, empathetic endo is a universal one! I myself have been to 4. Felt best when i was put on T3…lost weight, lost the ugly facial puffiness and had boundless energy…till the palpitations started. Could hear my heartbeat drum loudly in my ear. It probably just meant having my dose regulated, but i got spooked after doing a spot of research on the net and finding all kinds of side effects linked with T3. That, coupled with most of our local endos’ reluctance to prescribe T3, has kept me away from the medication that actually gave me dramatic results. Commonsense dictates i should go back to the doc who put me on T3 and let him monitor levels and regulate dosages, but he is a little casual and does not set much store by tests, saying he will decide “clinically”, also heard he tends to put everyone on T3 which is a bit cavalier. My older docs have flatly refused to prescribe T3…so am in a bit of a bind as to what to do. Any advice? It will be most welcome. Also, please share your experience re
chest tightness and painful sinuses. I sound like a hypochondriac even to myself as i talk about the new aches/pains which ail me every second day. My poor husband has been very patient, and hears me out, each and every little detail… but seems to feel if i got more busy, i would have less time to dwell on my symptoms. He’s probably right… but there’s also the very real problem of simply not having enough energy to get going. Catch-22!!