He is incorrect, Stacy. He's not alone though, it's a common problem with doctors - they have all bought into the line of bull put out by the big pharamaceutical companies.

Ask him if he knows where Premarin comes from and if he ever prescribes it for his patients

This is from the Armour website:

What can you tell me about batch-to-batch consistency of
Armour™ Thyroid?

ANSWER
Armour™ Thyroid is made from desiccated (dried) pork thyroid glands. The amount of thyroid hormone present in the thyroid gland may vary from animal to animal. To ensure that Armour™ Thyroid tablets are consistently potent from tablet to tablet and lot to lot, analytical tests are performed on the thyroid powder (raw material) and on the actual tablets (finished product) to measure actual T4 and T3 activity.

Different lots of thyroid powder are mixed together and analyzed to achieve the desired ratio of T4 to T3 in each lot of tablets. This method ensures that each strength of Armour™ Thyroid will be consistent with the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) official standards and specifications for desiccated thyroid lot-to-lot consistency. The ratio of T4 to T3 equals 4.22:1 (4.22 parts of T4 to one part of T3).

What is interesting is that in the past few years the drug that has been pulled from the shelves because of inconsistencies in batches is the synthetic (t4). In fact they were only able to sell the synthetics because of a grandfathered clause; they only passed FDA regulations in the last few years (2002 July was when the last one was approved)

This is better than nothing, but again, he is WRONG in his facts (although telling him that probably won't help your case any)


Hopefully he is doing the right tests; has he ordered FT3 and FT4 blood draws? IF not then he's not going to have the information you need. Taking a T3 med w/o having the numbers (FT3) isn't a bright idea.

Here is a little more info on the differences between the various hypoT drugs:
http://www.bites-medical.org/hypo/med/comp.html
http://www.thyroid-info.com/drugs/

Tonight? No. But in general, there is a pretty exhaustive list.

Stacy, if you really want Armour then you're going to have to find a doctor who's enlightened and understands thyroid disease; this will most likely NOT be an endo or an internist. You want a naturopath or an osteopath; they are holistic in their approach and understand that often Armour (natural desiccated thyroid) is better. Most of us get nowhere with traditional doctors. You should have a look through the TopDoc list for one in your area.

Nat