“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.” Sir William Osler .
Sir William Osler, a very brilliant man, was one of the four founding professors of Johns Hopkins. He is known as one of the greatest icons in modern medicine. Whenever you have symptoms such as cough, cold, chest pain, headache and your concerned, you go to the doctor’s office. In the wonderful World of Medicine, patients present because of symptoms they are having. I have never had a patient come to me and say “I am here because my lab work is bad.” Yet when it comes to hormones such as thyroid, medical providers always want to default to the labs instead of listening to the patient. Labs should be a guideline but the patients symptoms need to be treated. Patients tell me every day that they went to the doctor to tell their story of how bad they feel only to be told “the lab work is normal.” So what happened? Medical providers are taught to look at the numbers. I believe that in medicine we always look to rule out the worst case scenarios so many times, we overlook the obvious. What it comes down to is we need to step back and look at the patient as a whole. Are all the symptoms possible connected?
The thyroid tests currently available are unreliable. Yet many medical associations recommend the TSH as the “gold standard.” The thyroid affects your entire body from your head to your toes. Meanwhile your doctor is busy trying to treat all the symptoms and not the problem. The package insert on Synthroid actually states that the TSH should not be used to treat hypothyroid.
SO what is the WORST medical treatment? Not listening to the patient.