Get ready for a battle between mainstream medicine and various alternative practitioners over the dispensing of thyroid hormone to treat quasi-thyroid issues. The British Medical Journal has published a report by the Royal College of Physicians sounding alarm bells over the widespread and inappropriate use of thyroid medication.

The problem for various practitioners of alternative medicine is that they actually have a point. There are far too many people who think they need thyroid medication because they have various symptoms of poor thyroid function, which is true, but taking thyroid hormone is little more than symptom treatment for a majority of such individuals and may lead to significantly worsened health over time.

Most of these thyroid-related symptoms are actually from a variety of different kinds of nutritional deficiencies, stress, and toxin exposure problems. Treating the problem with thyroid hormone may improve symptoms for a short period of time, like exposing metabolism to caffeine when it has never before experienced caffeine.

There are far too many “natural� websites promoting the use of various types of thyroid hormone, rather than getting to the source of the problem.

Of course, Western medicine is complaining because their turf is being threatened. This group has no answers besides drugs of one kind or another - it is a dead end paradigm which is why so many people are looking elsewhere for help. My point is - we can do a much better job of helping people than simply giving medication to regulate symptoms and lab numbers that in reality are not really fixing the issues.