Why You Don't Hear About Lifesaving Medical Treatments

Over at HonestMedicine.com, patient advocate Julia Schopick has started an important new series on lifesaving treatments that we, as patients, rarely hear about...if ever. She has identified a number of treatments that all have several key factors in common: they've been around for quite a long time, they have helped patients with serious health conditions, there are doctors and patients who champion them, but these treatments are not money-makers for big pharma. And big pharma's inability to "monetize" these treatments into powerhouse, high-profit products has kept these treatments in the shadows, and encouraged physicians to dismiss these treatments, marginalize them -- or even label them as "anecdotal" or worse yet, "snake oil."

Certainly, this is a phenomenon thyroid patients are familiar with -- many doctors readily dismiss the use of T3 or natural desiccated thyroid medication, denounced them as "snake oil" or claimed that patients who enjoy improvements on these medications are experiencing the "placebo effect." (Interestingly, I have yet to find an explanation for how the "placebo" effect can result in scientifically measurable improvements in thyroid symptoms. For example, one doctor told of a patient who had pitting edema -- hugely swollen feet -- and saw her feet return to normal within a days of switching from Synthroid to Armour Thyroid. Other patients have dramatic improvement in their Achilles reflex -- slowness in this reflex is considered a hypothyroid symptom. Or a patient who after years on levothyroxine, had no outer eyebrow left, but after adding T3, regrew her eyebrows within months.)

In any case, Julia's article is the first in a series, and in articles to come, she will be looking at the whys -- why do doctors do this? Why are doctors apparently afraid of these treatments, and why do they dismiss them -- or refuse to hear about them at all? I guarantee you...If anyone is going to find out the answers to these questions, it's Julia Schopick! Read the article now.

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