Hi, my name is Andrew

[Barliman]

I am a general medical practitioner with an interest in the holistic (including drug) management of fibromyalgia and ADHD.

I am becoming increasingly in the areas of optimising diet to improve acuity of mental functioning, and the now related issue of nutrigenomics.

I have been a silent reader of Ray's articles for some years.

As an allopathic doctor, I work in a profession in which there is excessive conformity, and a depressing lack of intellectual curiosity.I am particularly impressed by the more original thinking and careful scholarship i see on Ray's site, and hope that the forum will complement that.

 

[charlie]

Andrew, welcome to the forum!

According to Peat, things like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome are all simply symptoms of a hypometabolic state.

I think its really neat to have a doctor here. And I think your patients are lucky to have you looking outside the "box" and not adhering to the conformity of the medical profession. Bravo!

If you do notice. We do tend to rag on doctors here. It's only because they are not like you(a lot of us have been kept sick by doctors and their knowledge), and do not want to think for themselves. For the most part they would rather follow marching orders and be done with it.

 

[Barliman]

For the most part they are usually kept too busy fitting in with current regulatory requirements to look beyond the ends of their noses.

 

[narouz]

Welcome, Barliman!
It will be nice to have an (open-minded) M.D.'s point-of-view here.

 

[charlie]

For the most part they are usually kept too busy fitting in with current regulatory requirements to look beyond the ends of their noses.

I could definitely see how that would make things very difficult.

Welcome, Barliman!

It will be nice to have an (open-minded) M.D.'s point-of-view here.

Indeed. I am looking forward to it.

 

[jyb]

My doctor seemed aware of a thyroid supplement controversy, but was unwilling to give me any other form of thyroid than synthetic T4 - which I politely refused - because "that's what we do here". So I was suspecting that it was due to some compliance. But I was disappointed that he had been aware of some controversy, yet hadn't bothered to look into it into more details or suggest something more helpful.

I was also surprised at how unscientific he was when analysing my blood results, for example treating the "standard" TSH range as very rigid (I'm either hypo, normal or hyper but nothing else depending on the range) without considering standard deviations of my TSH and said it was better to be above the range (hypo) than below (hyper) and I should therefore stop taking thyroid supps - which I refused. This is nonsense, not only because the upper range he uses is too high, but also because he has never thought about relative scalings. How does he know that being 0.1 below the lower ranger is worse than being 1 above the upper range?

More generally when I talked to him about my symptoms, lethargy, low temperatures... he remained very silent and didn't seem to know what I was talking about. I think he assumed that nothing could be done and whatever I was talking about was some random bull**** found on the internet.

 

[Barliman]

Well in Australia the problem is that there is no insurance rebate for testing reverse T3, so everyone assumes it is unimportant.

There can be problems with normal ranges as well:
ie Zinc levels
Firstly it is controversial which is the best way to measure Zinc levels.
Secondly we have old soils - so the whole population is relatively zinc deficient.
The normal range is based of the Australian population- so whe whole question of Zinc deficiency is hidden.

 

[gretchen]

Wow, exciting, a doctor. Welcome!

 

[Barliman]

My doctor seemed aware of a thyroid supplement controversy, but was unwilling to give me any other form of thyroid than synthetic T4 - which I politely refused - because "that's what we do here". So I was suspecting that it was due to some compliance. But I was disappointed that he had been aware of some controversy, yet hadn't bothered to look into it into more details or suggest something more helpful.

I was also surprised at how unscientific he was when analysing my blood results, for example treating the "standard" TSH range as very rigid (I'm either hypo, normal or hyper but nothing else depending on the range) without considering standard deviations of my TSH and said it was better to be above the range (hypo) than below (hyper) and I should therefore stop taking thyroid supps - which I refused. This is nonsense, not only because the upper range he uses is too high, but also because he has never thought about relative scalings. How does he know that being 0.1 below the lower ranger is worse than being 1 above the upper range?

More generally when I talked to him about my symptoms, lethargy, low temperatures... he remained very silent and didn't seem to know what I was talking about. I think he assumed that nothing could be done and whatever I was talking about was some random bull**** found on the internet.

The other issue here is that we have a situation in the medical profession where three undesirable factors converge:
1) The long term monopolistic trends in the profession (as typified by the actions of the American AMA in trying to stamp out chiropractic).
2) The increasing squeeze on consultation times in the name of productivity.
3) The increasing demands for useless paperwork in the name of "accountability". (It is my experience that more of most consultations is now tied up in compliance and documentation than in doing any work.
The nett effect of the latter two is that the "cognitive surplus" of most medical practitioners is completely tied up in trivia and exhaustion- and nobody has any time or energy to consider anything except that which is presented to us on a platter by our professional organisations.