It is a very strong prediction of this theory that low basal metabolic rates, and thus low basal peripheral temperatures will be found in many sufferers of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.
If this is not true, then the idea is refuted unambiguously.
After googling that claim that leads to Wilson’s syndrome. Do you think Wilson’s syndrome is what you are talking about?
I’ve also now read ‘Your Thyroid and How to Keep It Healthy’, by Barry Durrant-Peatfield, who appears to have been a proper doctor who had the disease and tried the obvious things and was converted.
There are a couple of mistakes, to my mind, in the book, but it’s basically sound from my point of view if taken as the honest report/advice of a brave man rather than as the whole truth. In fact given that he ‘voluntarily erased himself from the medical register’ and went into retirement, I’d be tempted to call him either a martyr or someone who didn’t think he could back up his beliefs in star-chamber.
You might well think him a quack who was damaging people. I now strongly suspect that he was failing in his professional duty to ignore the evidence of his own eyes, and to not do the things he thought helped.
He does seem quite concerned about fluoride and mercury fillings. I haven’t looked into those. Yet. Sigh. And he talks about adrenal problems a lot. I don’t know what I think about that. Certainly I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that it was possible to have a ‘peripheral resistance to adrenal hormones’.
It sounds like the Wilson in question has taken a tradition of medicine that has existed since 1940, misunderstood it, and then named it after himself.
One of the problems with trusting anyone in this mess is that medical types are in business to make a profit. I don’t hold that against them, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not trying to help people, but it may in this case have led to a certain carelessness. I would not personally choose to trust my health to this man, but it is perhaps a measure of how desperate people are that some people have done.
It doesn’t seem that Wilson has added anything new, but at least according to Wiki, he was claiming that it’s not hypothyroidism, it’s caused by ‘stress’, which sounds like some weird compromise between Barnes/Lowe and conventional medicine’s approach.
The Wiki article says ‘caused by low temperature’, so definitely not what I’m claiming theoretically, that would be a symptom from my point of view.
But they also accuse poor T4->T3 conversion, which would do the trick as well as Lowe’s ‘peripheral resistance’, but which would show up on blood tests, unless they’re talking about conversion inside the cells themselves, in which case err? I think T4->T3 conversion is generally believed to happen mainly in the liver, so failure of that would definitely show up on blood tests.
In short, I think, assuming Wikipedia is correct and not just getting the wrong end of Wilson’s stick, that:
Wilson was trying to sell Barnes/Lowe’s ideas to people. He has either misunderstood them or disagrees. He is however seeing exactly the polymorphous syndrome I predict, with the associated low temperature that Barnes thought was the best diagnostic for hypothyroidism, and he seems to think he can actually cure the problem with high doses of T3.
Neither Barnes nor Lowe claimed that they could cure it, as far as I know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were occasional spontaneous recoveries. Especially if the problem is an immune reaction of some sort. In fact I’d expect that to be self-reversing once the infectious agent is gone, since there’d be strong selective pressure for that. And of course, sometimes CFS does get better on its own.
It also appears that Wilson killed someone by giving them a T3 overdose. Which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
I hadn’t seen this before, but I have now read the book: ‘Type 2 Hypothyroidism’, by Dr Mark Starr, whom I strongly suspect of being a homeopath. How low I am fallen.
Again I wearily report that I can see exactly where he’s coming from, but I find his book full of insane pseudoscience, and if I hadn’t deduced the existence of the problems he’s talking about before I’d seen the book I wouldn’t have given it the time of day.
Nevertheless, good on him. He believes the evidence of his own eyes, he tries the obvious things. They work. He notices. If I’m right he’s outperformed medical science all on his own. If I’m wrong he’s a dreadful quack.
Sounds like exactly what I’m talking about. He’s observing as a problem what I’m claiming must be true.
I’m surprised by this: “thorough review of the biomedical literature has found no scientific evidence supporting the existence of ‘Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome’.”
There’s plenty of evidence that these problems exist, the argument is about what to call them, what causes them, and how to treat them.
I wonder if they mean that there’s no evidence that Wilson’s patients have low body temperature.
If what they mean is: “There’s good evidence that Wilson’s patients had basal peripheral body temperatures around 98.6/37C before he treated them”, then I’m surprised and possibly refuted at the same time. I don’t see how my idea can be true and yet he’s avoiding picking up at least some cases of what I’m talking about, and I do strongly expect low basal peripheral body temperatures in those people. If that’s not true, then my/Barnes/Lowe’s idea is wrong.
I wonder if they mean that there’s no evidence that Wilson’s patients have low body temperature.
The basic diagnosis for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome as described on http://www.wilsonssyndrome.com/ seems to be CFS symptoms + normal hormonal tests + lower temperature.
They say:
The primary sign for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome (WTS) is low body temperature, which can sometimes be the sole indicator that thyroid hormones aren’t quite right.… [...]
We have found that a low body temperature can cause life-promoting enzymes to tighten and malfunction – slowing metabolism and triggering a cascade of “low thyroid-like” symptoms. Blood tests come back normal, so treatment stalls out.
[...]
We have found that a low body temperature can cause life-promoting enzymes to tighten and malfunction – slowing metabolism and triggering a cascade of “low thyroid-like” symptoms. Blood tests come back normal, so treatment stalls out.
[...]
We have found that a low body temperature can cause life-promoting enzymes to tighten and malfunction – slowing metabolism and triggering a cascade of “low thyroid-like” symptoms. Blood tests come back normal, so treatment stalls out.
[...]
We’re here to get your treatment back on track. The medical protocol presented on this website is being used by hundreds doctors and has given thousands of low body temperature patients their lives back. The protocol is Wilson’s T3 Protocol (WT3).
Oh cool, thanks! Then he’s talking about exactly the thing I’m talking about, and he has a different idea about what the mechanism is, and I don’t like the sound of his treatment. I shall investigate.
I wonder what he thinks causes the low body temperature in the first place?
Thanks for the link! Have you happened upon a strong rebuttal of his claims, perchance?
And do you know if he happened upon the idea independently, or whether he’s an intellectual descendant of Barnes and Lowe?
They provide a list of Medical Providers for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome that gives the addresses of doctors that supposedly follow their protocol. If you think it’s a lie, then you could count the number of doctors in their list and contact a few of them as a sample.
And do you know if he happened upon the idea independently, or whether he’s an intellectual descendant of Barnes and Lowe?
At the moment I don’t know much more than what’s written on the website.
I may be suffering from some sort of cross-cultural confusion, but Dr Morris’s website appears to exist solely to make him look like an irresponsible lunatic who has been handing out powerful hormones for weight loss, of all things.
Especially since I think that this has been tried many times and found wanting. On the other hand, my faith in medical science is perhaps not now as strong as once it was, and if he’s really an Ivy-League non-conformist, maybe he noticed the problem a long time ago.
What I liked about it was that he has apparently noticed that in doing this, he was accidentally curing Chronic Fatigue. Again, no idea whether what he’s doing actually works, or what sort of terrible side-effects it might cause, or anything.
But again, it looks far too obvious to be the right answer.
Does anyone know if there’s one of these maniacs in England? If I can find a semi-trustworthy source of T3/T4 I am tempted to experiment on myself to see if they work as well as desiccated thyroid. I’m a bit nervous of NDT myself since it’s probably an allergen, hypothyroids are prone to allergies, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if I caused one of the well-known thyroiditises by taking it.
One strong objection to Dr Morris’ idea is that if it’s T4->T3 conversion, then there so is a blood test to detect it. On the other hand, if he hasn’t been doing the blood tests, then he won’t have noticed that. And I now think I can explain what’s really going on. When I first looked at his website, I didn’t have the type 2 idea. It seemed like a minor detail of Lowe’s work, and I was focused on working out what was wrong with the tests.
He is claiming independent invention, and he never once mentions Barnes or Lowe.
I didn’t see any obvious pseudoscience. (no crystals, no magic electricity thought reading machines)
He doesn’t seem to have any obvious explanatory theory.
What I’ve read of what he has to say makes considerable sense to me in the light of the above.
He doesn’t seem to be claiming that there’s been a PCRT of his protocol, without which I don’t believe it works.
He is absolutely claiming that the condition can be cured. Not alleviated. Cured.
I think conventional medicine concluded that T3 monotherapy was a disaster when they tried it for thyroid problems. They’re currently involved in a twenty year catfight about whether adding a bit of T3 to the usual T4 is a good idea. They’ve tentatively concluded no, but I think (and Lowe thought) that their reasoning is wrong. And Kenneth Blanchard, who’s unconventional, but a proper endocrinologist, thinks it works a treat. On the other hand, I spotted a couple of mistakes in his book, so I don’t trust him either.
Has he (Wilson) published anything? If not, why not?
It all looks a bit too good to be true, to me.
And a bit too easy.… If it was this easy we should already know.
Indeed, in fact I think I might have seen it before and ignored it.
Very early on, when I was trying to work out what the hell was wrong with me, I read about ‘adrenal fatigue’, and thought it looked very plausible (amongst a very large number of other plausible possibilities), but Wiki said it wasn’t a thing, and my doctor agreed, so I forgot about it. Maybe since then I’ve had filters on.
There’s even a chapter of Durrant-Peatfield’s book, which I read cover to cover not three days ago, which mentions Wilson’s Syndrome in exactly the sort of way that you’d expect an English non-conformist to mention a man who’d named someone else’s ideas after himself.
But maybe that’s not true. Maybe Wilson really did come up with it on his own many years ago, before the internet would have enabled him to find Barnes or Lowe. Sure looks like it’s going a bit nuclear now.
And still endocrinology isn’t interested? What on earth is going on?
After googling that claim that leads to Wilson’s syndrome. Do you think Wilson’s syndrome is what you are talking about?
And thirdly:
I’ve also now read ‘Your Thyroid and How to Keep It Healthy’, by Barry Durrant-Peatfield, who appears to have been a proper doctor who had the disease and tried the obvious things and was converted.
There are a couple of mistakes, to my mind, in the book, but it’s basically sound from my point of view if taken as the honest report/advice of a brave man rather than as the whole truth. In fact given that he ‘voluntarily erased himself from the medical register’ and went into retirement, I’d be tempted to call him either a martyr or someone who didn’t think he could back up his beliefs in star-chamber.
You might well think him a quack who was damaging people. I now strongly suspect that he was failing in his professional duty to ignore the evidence of his own eyes, and to not do the things he thought helped.
He does seem quite concerned about fluoride and mercury fillings. I haven’t looked into those. Yet. Sigh. And he talks about adrenal problems a lot. I don’t know what I think about that. Certainly I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find out that it was possible to have a ‘peripheral resistance to adrenal hormones’.
And I should also say:
It sounds like the Wilson in question has taken a tradition of medicine that has existed since 1940, misunderstood it, and then named it after himself.
One of the problems with trusting anyone in this mess is that medical types are in business to make a profit. I don’t hold that against them, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not trying to help people, but it may in this case have led to a certain carelessness. I would not personally choose to trust my health to this man, but it is perhaps a measure of how desperate people are that some people have done.
It doesn’t seem that Wilson has added anything new, but at least according to Wiki, he was claiming that it’s not hypothyroidism, it’s caused by ‘stress’, which sounds like some weird compromise between Barnes/Lowe and conventional medicine’s approach.
The Wiki article says ‘caused by low temperature’, so definitely not what I’m claiming theoretically, that would be a symptom from my point of view.
But they also accuse poor T4->T3 conversion, which would do the trick as well as Lowe’s ‘peripheral resistance’, but which would show up on blood tests, unless they’re talking about conversion inside the cells themselves, in which case err? I think T4->T3 conversion is generally believed to happen mainly in the liver, so failure of that would definitely show up on blood tests.
In short, I think, assuming Wikipedia is correct and not just getting the wrong end of Wilson’s stick, that:
Wilson was trying to sell Barnes/Lowe’s ideas to people. He has either misunderstood them or disagrees. He is however seeing exactly the polymorphous syndrome I predict, with the associated low temperature that Barnes thought was the best diagnostic for hypothyroidism, and he seems to think he can actually cure the problem with high doses of T3.
Neither Barnes nor Lowe claimed that they could cure it, as far as I know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were occasional spontaneous recoveries. Especially if the problem is an immune reaction of some sort. In fact I’d expect that to be self-reversing once the infectious agent is gone, since there’d be strong selective pressure for that. And of course, sometimes CFS does get better on its own.
It also appears that Wilson killed someone by giving them a T3 overdose. Which doesn’t surprise me in the slightest.
I hadn’t seen this before, but I have now read the book: ‘Type 2 Hypothyroidism’, by Dr Mark Starr, whom I strongly suspect of being a homeopath. How low I am fallen.
Again I wearily report that I can see exactly where he’s coming from, but I find his book full of insane pseudoscience, and if I hadn’t deduced the existence of the problems he’s talking about before I’d seen the book I wouldn’t have given it the time of day.
Nevertheless, good on him. He believes the evidence of his own eyes, he tries the obvious things. They work. He notices. If I’m right he’s outperformed medical science all on his own. If I’m wrong he’s a dreadful quack.
This:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson%27s_temperature_syndrome
Sounds like exactly what I’m talking about. He’s observing as a problem what I’m claiming must be true.
I’m surprised by this: “thorough review of the biomedical literature has found no scientific evidence supporting the existence of ‘Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome’.”
There’s plenty of evidence that these problems exist, the argument is about what to call them, what causes them, and how to treat them.
I wonder if they mean that there’s no evidence that Wilson’s patients have low body temperature.
If what they mean is: “There’s good evidence that Wilson’s patients had basal peripheral body temperatures around 98.6/37C before he treated them”, then I’m surprised and possibly refuted at the same time. I don’t see how my idea can be true and yet he’s avoiding picking up at least some cases of what I’m talking about, and I do strongly expect low basal peripheral body temperatures in those people. If that’s not true, then my/Barnes/Lowe’s idea is wrong.
The basic diagnosis for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome as described on http://www.wilsonssyndrome.com/ seems to be CFS symptoms + normal hormonal tests + lower temperature.
They say:
Oh cool, thanks! Then he’s talking about exactly the thing I’m talking about, and he has a different idea about what the mechanism is, and I don’t like the sound of his treatment. I shall investigate.
I wonder what he thinks causes the low body temperature in the first place?
Thanks for the link! Have you happened upon a strong rebuttal of his claims, perchance?
And do you know if he happened upon the idea independently, or whether he’s an intellectual descendant of Barnes and Lowe?
Hundreds of doctors has to be a lie, hasn’t it?
They provide a list of
Medical Providers for Wilson’s Temperature Syndromethat gives the addresses of doctors that supposedly follow their protocol. If you think it’s a lie, then you could count the number of doctors in their list and contact a few of them as a sample.At the moment I don’t know much more than what’s written on the website.
Here’s another one I did look at ages ago:
http://t3doc.com/
I may be suffering from some sort of cross-cultural confusion, but Dr Morris’s website appears to exist solely to make him look like an irresponsible lunatic who has been handing out powerful hormones for weight loss, of all things.
Especially since I think that this has been tried many times and found wanting. On the other hand, my faith in medical science is perhaps not now as strong as once it was, and if he’s really an Ivy-League non-conformist, maybe he noticed the problem a long time ago.
What I liked about it was that he has apparently noticed that in doing this, he was accidentally curing Chronic Fatigue. Again, no idea whether what he’s doing actually works, or what sort of terrible side-effects it might cause, or anything.
But again, it looks far too obvious to be the right answer.
Does anyone know if there’s one of these maniacs in England? If I can find a semi-trustworthy source of T3/T4 I am tempted to experiment on myself to see if they work as well as desiccated thyroid. I’m a bit nervous of NDT myself since it’s probably an allergen, hypothyroids are prone to allergies, and I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if I caused one of the well-known thyroiditises by taking it.
One strong objection to Dr Morris’ idea is that if it’s T4->T3 conversion, then there so is a blood test to detect it. On the other hand, if he hasn’t been doing the blood tests, then he won’t have noticed that. And I now think I can explain what’s really going on. When I first looked at his website, I didn’t have the type 2 idea. It seemed like a minor detail of Lowe’s work, and I was focused on working out what was wrong with the tests.
OK, a brief look around Wilson’s site gives me:
He is claiming independent invention, and he never once mentions Barnes or Lowe.
I didn’t see any obvious pseudoscience. (no crystals, no magic electricity thought reading machines)
He doesn’t seem to have any obvious explanatory theory.
What I’ve read of what he has to say makes considerable sense to me in the light of the above.
He doesn’t seem to be claiming that there’s been a PCRT of his protocol, without which I don’t believe it works.
He is absolutely claiming that the condition can be cured. Not alleviated. Cured.
I think conventional medicine concluded that T3 monotherapy was a disaster when they tried it for thyroid problems. They’re currently involved in a twenty year catfight about whether adding a bit of T3 to the usual T4 is a good idea. They’ve tentatively concluded no, but I think (and Lowe thought) that their reasoning is wrong. And Kenneth Blanchard, who’s unconventional, but a proper endocrinologist, thinks it works a treat. On the other hand, I spotted a couple of mistakes in his book, so I don’t trust him either.
Has he (Wilson) published anything? If not, why not?
It all looks a bit too good to be true, to me.
And a bit too easy.… If it was this easy we should already know.
On the other hand, how the hell did I miss this?
I found it by googling:
Low Body Temperature chronic fatigue syndromIndeed, in fact I think I might have seen it before and ignored it.
Very early on, when I was trying to work out what the hell was wrong with me, I read about ‘adrenal fatigue’, and thought it looked very plausible (amongst a very large number of other plausible possibilities), but Wiki said it wasn’t a thing, and my doctor agreed, so I forgot about it. Maybe since then I’ve had filters on.
There’s even a chapter of Durrant-Peatfield’s book, which I read cover to cover not three days ago, which mentions Wilson’s Syndrome in exactly the sort of way that you’d expect an English non-conformist to mention a man who’d named someone else’s ideas after himself.
But maybe that’s not true. Maybe Wilson really did come up with it on his own many years ago, before the internet would have enabled him to find Barnes or Lowe. Sure looks like it’s going a bit nuclear now.
And still endocrinology isn’t interested? What on earth is going on?