Time and again, these programs have shown women describing symptoms such as:
- fatigue, exhaustion
- difficulty losing weight, or problems with inappropriate weight gain
- depression, anxiety
- body aches and pains
- hair loss
- feeling cold
- low or no sex drive
Some of Oprah's programs have actually offered detailed lists of symptoms related to a program's subject matter. For example, read this list of Early Warning Signs that indicate that "your lifestyle might be endangering your health" which was covered in the show titled "Is Your Lifestyle Ruining Your Health," a program that focused on stress and its effects on the body.
Cold hands and feet
Hair loss
Headaches or migraines
Heart-burn
Muscle aches and pains
Insomnia
Lack of "restful" sleep
No sex drive
New allergies
Skin problems
Constant flu and colds
Irritability
Low energy
Obviously, to any of us familiar with thyroid disease, this list of symptoms reads like an Endocrinology 101 list of common hypothyroidism symptoms. Yet thyroid disease was never mentioned once in the entire hour-long program.
Some of you may be Oprah fans, some not. I personally like Oprah's show for the most part, and admire her effort to offer the public greater information about self-improvement efforts, spiritual awareness, books and literature, and health, diet and fitness issues -- in what is usually an informative, enjoyable manner. There have been programs that I've felt have genuinely offered information that is helpful to me in my own life.
Certainly, Oprah's show can't devote the needed time and attention to many topics that warrant discussion, and many issues we feel are important will be overlooked. But there's no question that when Oprah turns her attention to a subject, she has the considerable and formidable power to reach millions of people, and change many lives for the better.
Several years back, Oprah did do a show that featured Olympic gold medal winning runner Gail Devers, who suffered from undiagnosed Graves' disease for two years, and nearly lost her leg, health, and Olympic hopes due to the lack of diagnosis. Gail appeared on the show to discuss her triumph over adversity, and thyroid disease was mentioned briefly. At the time, Gail was a paid spokesperson for the Synthroid-sponsored "GlandCentral" campaign. While Gail's struggle to get diagnosed was common, her post-treatment experiences were not. As an extraordinary athlete, and at 5'5" and 115 pounds, in serious athletic training every day for years, Gail's discussion of how she just takes her pill every day and usually feels great was clearly not representative of the experiences of the majority of thyroid patients.
I'm certainly not the only thyroid patient who is a regular Oprah viewer, or who has thought to herself that Oprah really should touch upon thyroid disease. In the past two years, there have been several concerted efforts to contact Oprah that were initiated by regulars at my Thyroid Forums. So far, no one has had any luck in getting hypothyroidism covered by Oprah in any way.
A year ago, when my book, Living Well With Hypothyroidism: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You...That You Need to Know, was published, HarperCollins, the publishers, also sent an extensive media package to the Oprah staff. I wrote a personal note to Oprah myself at the time, describing my mission.
So far, there's been no mention of hypothyroidism, and no response to my readers, my publisher, or me.
Time for Action: What Can You Do?
I believe it's time we make a major campaign to mobilize thousands and thousands of site readers to take positive action to contact Oprah and her producers, and make them aware of the issue of undiagnosed, untreated, and undertreated hypothyroidism.
