Standard pharmaceutically-oriented medical training teaches doctors only to recognize extreme disorders of metabolism, physiology, and hormonal balance. When it comes to hormones, they are taught to think that either the gland is working or it is not, either the hormone levels are within middle 95% of the tests done by that lab, or they are "low", in the bottom 2.5%--
allowing the physician to diagnose a deficiency. However, hormones don't work that way. Their effects run a continuum from the lowest to the highest levels. The population ranges are very broad and many persons with levels within the reference range have inadequate hormone effects for optimal health and quality of life, especially those with levels in the lower third of the reference ranges.
Most persons with inadequate hormone levels go undiagnosed and untreated. They are instead given non-specific labels like
“chronic fatigue syndrome”, “fibromyalgia”, "depression", "anxiety disorder", "PMDD", etc. These diagnoses are merely descriptions of symptoms. They are not diseases. They have no known genetic/biochemical cause. They are the end result of
a large number of biochemical, vitanutrient, parasitic, or hormonal disorders. Dr. Lindner finds that such persons often have inadequate levels of one or more hormones. These deficiencies produce different symptoms in persons depending on their genetics and physiology. Since doctors don't look for the cause, these symptoms provide pharmaceutical corporations with a
tremendous opportunity for diagnose-and-drug schemes employing anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, muscle-relaxants, stimulants, anti-epileptics, pain relievers and other products. These drugs do not correct the problem. They interfere with normal brain function producing alterations in feelings, thought and mood that may be viewed as an improvement by the patient, parent, or authorities. On the contrary, medical ethics require doctors to seek the cause and correct the underlying physiological deficit or imbalance whenever possible!
Severe fatigue, "depression", achiness, brain fog, and other neuropsychiatric disorders are often due to chronic parasitic infections--Babesia odocoilei or one or more of the Bartonella species.
Mild depression, fatigue, and pain can be caused by or worsened by insufficient sex hormone and vitanutrient levels, but severe fatigue, aches, and depression are often due to mild-to-moderate thyroid and/or cortisol deficiency (adrenal insufficiency, adrenal fatigue) or parasitic infestations (babesiosis and/or bartonellosis). The thyroid and adrenal glands produce powerful hormones that are essential to our mental and physical functioning, and thus our ability to live productive, active lives. Even mild deficiencies can produce a hypometabolic syndrome that manifests as depression, fatigue, pain and cognitive dysfunction ("brain fog") along with many other more specific signs and symptoms. When doctors do suspect a problem with these hormones, they make the mistake of relying upon insensitive tests that can detect only some kinds of thyroid and adrenal disorders. They rely on the TSH test, AM serum cortisol values, or ACTH stimulation tests. Such tests cannot detect mild-to-moderate gland failure or hypothalamic-pituitary dysfunction--where the glands are simply not receiving enough stimulation from the brain. In fact, even the best tests--the free T3, free T4 and reverse T3 for thyroid hormones, or the saliva cortisol profile for adrenal insufficiency--do not tell us what is actually occurring in the various tissues throughout the body. Some persons can have resistance to the hormone, or metabolize it too rapidly and therefore have inadequate tissue effects even when blood or saliva normals look fine. This validates the age-old medical dictum--"Treat the patient, not the tests".
When doctors do identify mild thyroid gland dysfunction with an elevated TSH level, they use inadequate doses of levothyroxine to just "normalize" the TSH level. This frequently brings no improvements because the TSH responds differently to once-daily oral thyroid replacement than it does to the constant hormone production of the thyroid gland. They falsely conclude that since their inadequate treatment does not help, the patient's problem can't be related to thyroid hormone. Mild-to-moderate thyroid and adrenal insufficiency are thus USUALLY undiagnosed and/or undertreated and people are instead given pharmaceutical products to treat their various symptoms. These help only partially and often produce side effects that are treated with additional medications. This is all very good for pharmaceutical corporations--which is why this unsatisfactory state of affairs persists.
Identifying and correcting vitanutrient, thyroid, adrenal, and sex-hormone deficiencies brings significant relief to those with chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, depression, and other "psychiatric" disorders. This natural-scientific approach should certainly be applied first before resorting to pharmaceuticals.
