Why aren't All Doctors Restoring Hormones to Optimal Levels and/or
Effects?
There are many reasons, including out-dated ideas about aging and hormones, but these could
be easily corrected if not for the corruption of medicine by patent law and pharmaceutical
corporations. Natural molecules, vital to our body's normal function, cannot be patented.
Pharmaceutical corporations, therefore, have little interest in the restoration of health through
the correction of hormonal, vitanutrient, or other biochemical disorders. They instead seek to
market alien molecules (including alien hormone-like molecules) that will bring some kind of
improvement, almost always at the cost of side effects that diminish both quality of life and
overall health. Unfortunately, with their billions of research and advertising dollars,
pharmaceutical corporations exert control over medical information at all levels--from the
studies that are performed, to the content of journals, to the opinions of experts, to the
conferences doctors attend, to the recommendations made by the professional groups they
fund, right down to the drug rep. bringing lunch, drug samples, and trinkets to your doctor's
office. They train doctors to view every symptom as a syndrome for which the treatment is a
patented drug; instead of looking for and correcting the cause, which in many cases is a
hormone or vitanutrient deficiency/disorder. The use of patented drugs is encouraged, and
the optimization of nutrients and hormones is discouraged as ineffective or even dangerous.
This is just what one would expect from pharmaceutical corporations. The result is that among
physicians, including endocrinologists, there is:
1. Ignorance of the importance of optimal levels of vitanutrients and hormones in human
biochemistry and physiology, which is tantamount to ignorance of human biochemistry and
physiology in general.
2. Ignorance of the complexity of the hormonal system and the many interactions between the
various hormones.
3. Failure to see aging as a disease, and therefore failure to see the loss of hormones with
aging as deleterious. As a consequence, doctors do not view low hormone levels as a problem
in general.
4. Adherence to the old disease model of endocrinology instead of a functional model. Docs
think that the hormonal system functions perfectly unless it's attacked by some obvious
disease. In fact, nothing works perfectly, especially as we age and are subject to malnutrition,
toxins, illness, and stress. Most persons with suboptimal hormone levels have no identifiable
disease.
5. Use of indirect and insensitive tests (e.g. TSH, AM serum total cortisol, ACTH stimulation
test, GH stimulation) to "exclude endocrine disease" even when the patient has low hormone
levels and signs and symptoms of inadequate hormone effects.
6. Consideration of hormones as drugs, with "side effects". However, they are not drugs; they
are molecules that belong in the body, parts of a very delicate and complex system. They do not
cause "side effects" as drugs do. They are among the best-studied molecules in Nature. They
can cause well-known problems if introduced into the body by the wrong route, if given in too
high a dose or if there is a lack of balance with other hormones. Example: When adults given
growth hormone in studies developed fluid retention, joint aches, and diabetes, the doctors
concluded that growth hormone has serious "side effects". Because of their "drugthink", they
failed to realize that they had simply caused excessive effects with excessive doses! Hormones
need to be considered and used differently than drugs, both medically and legally, but this is not
happening in our pharmaceutical system.
7. Misuse of the broad laboratory reference ranges (misleading called "normal ranges") that
often include the levels of 95% of all persons of all ages referred to the laboratory for testing.
Laboratories have not based their ranges on an optimally healthy, youthful population. Their
approach to setting ranges might make sense if they could guarantee, by physiological studies,
that 95% of the population they tested had optimal hormone levels, but this is never done. With
this broad "normal range", only the bottom 2.5% of the population is considered to be "low" and
therefore deserving of some minimal hormone restoration to within the "normal" range. This is
population statistics.It is not medicine. These ranges do not define what is optimal for the
species or for any individual. Much more than 2.5% of the population has suboptimal levels due
to aging and disease. Because so many persons have low levels of some hormones, the
statistical treatment of the data yields reference ranges that go to "0" at the low end--no
hormone whatsoever is "normal"! This misunderstanding of the lab report results in the
unthinking practice Dr. Lindner calls "reference range endocrinology". The doctor glances at
the lab report and if there is no bold "H" or "L" for "high" or "low" next to the hormone level,
declares that there is no hormonal problem, even if the patient has the symptoms and the
hormone levels is near the bottom of the range! This simplistic On/Off thinking is inconsistent
with all the evidence that hormones work on a continuum from the lowest to the highest
levels. One cannot draw a line and say everything above this line is "normal", and everything
below this line is "disease". Also there are many other factors involved in hormone action; the
level of hormone in the serum does not always correlate with the action of the hormone in the
tissues. Letting the laboratory report make the diagnosis fulfills the doctor's desire for simple,
objective criteria so that he doesn't have to trust his own mind or use his judgment. In fact, the
human body is more complex than we know, so there is no substitute for medical judgment in
deciding who will benefit from hormone restoration. This question can only be settled with a
clinical trial--supplementing the hormone to higher levels to see if it helps the patient.
8. Persistence of a number of FALSE ideas about human hormones, such as believing that:
As the result of the delusions listed above there is:
9. Fear of restoring natural hormones; yet no fear of prescribing any of the thousands of toxic
chemicals blessed by the FDA.
10. Ignorance of the How-Tos of hormone restoration: preparations, delivery methods, doses,
monitoring, interactions, troubleshooting, etc.
11. Fear of legal liability or professional censure for straying outside of officially-sanctioned,
reference-range-based practices--which themselves are determined by pharmaceutically-
funded research and pharmaceutically-funded "experts", medical schools, medical
organizations and journals.
12. Over-prescription of patented drugs to treat symptoms and disorders that are caused by
inadequate hormone and vitanutrient levels (e.g. overuse of antidepressants, psychostimulants
like Ritalin® and Provigil®,anti-anxiety drugs, cholesterol-lowering drugs, painkillers, birth-
control pills, anti-clotting drugs, osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax®, etc.).
Almost all physicians believe that the pharmaceutical "drug for every syndrome" model
taught in schools, conferences, and journals is the only true medical practice. They believe
that the ideas and practices advocated in textbooks and journals are uncontaminated medical
science as determined by objective experts. If they were to doubt this, each of them would have
to begin researching every issue on his/her own--a daunting and time-consuming task. It's so
much easier to just go with the system and stick to one's out-dated medical training and the
proclamation of pharmaceutically-funded medical organizations. It's also better for one's career.
Besides, medical schooling, like all other schooling, does not encourage or even allow
students to challenge what they are taught. Therefore the overschooled doctor will not stray from
the conventional system unless he is somehow struck with the realization that something is
wrong. Even then, he will need to have the time, the desire, and the ability to do independent
study and to re-learn many aspects of medicine. Very few doctors are therefore able to learn the
truth about hormonal disorders and how to correct them, and those who do, do so only late in
their careers. No young physicians are being trained with this knowledge. The bottom line is that
those who control medical information control medical practice. Follow the money.
You might think that board-certified endocrinologists should be experts in diagnosing hormone
deficiencies of all degrees and optimizing hormone levels for best health and quality of life.
Unfortunately this is not what they are trained to do. They are taught reference range
endocrinology, and worse, they adhere to a nonsensical TSH-based thyroidology. In fact, most
endocrinologists subscribe to all the false ideas and approaches described above, and are
their main defenders. In addition, they don't know much about testosterone because they leave
that to the urologists. They don't know much about female hormones because they leave
estradiol and progesterone to the gynecologists. Since all hormones affect each other, this
fragmentation guarantees that endocrinologists cannot understand the hormonal system as a
whole, nor be adept at restoring optimal/youthful hormone levels and balance. Perhaps one day
"Restorative Endocrinology" as introduced in these pages will be a universally recognized
specialty, and the population will have easy access to knowledgeable hormone restoration
specialists.
Hormone and vitanutrient restoration to optimal levels for health and well-being is not
alternative medicine. It is the very foundation of all intelligent medical practice.
Effects?
There are many reasons, including out-dated ideas about aging and hormones, but these could
be easily corrected if not for the corruption of medicine by patent law and pharmaceutical
corporations. Natural molecules, vital to our body's normal function, cannot be patented.
Pharmaceutical corporations, therefore, have little interest in the restoration of health through
the correction of hormonal, vitanutrient, or other biochemical disorders. They instead seek to
market alien molecules (including alien hormone-like molecules) that will bring some kind of
improvement, almost always at the cost of side effects that diminish both quality of life and
overall health. Unfortunately, with their billions of research and advertising dollars,
pharmaceutical corporations exert control over medical information at all levels--from the
studies that are performed, to the content of journals, to the opinions of experts, to the
conferences doctors attend, to the recommendations made by the professional groups they
fund, right down to the drug rep. bringing lunch, drug samples, and trinkets to your doctor's
office. They train doctors to view every symptom as a syndrome for which the treatment is a
patented drug; instead of looking for and correcting the cause, which in many cases is a
hormone or vitanutrient deficiency/disorder. The use of patented drugs is encouraged, and
the optimization of nutrients and hormones is discouraged as ineffective or even dangerous.
This is just what one would expect from pharmaceutical corporations. The result is that among
physicians, including endocrinologists, there is:
1. Ignorance of the importance of optimal levels of vitanutrients and hormones in human
biochemistry and physiology, which is tantamount to ignorance of human biochemistry and
physiology in general.
2. Ignorance of the complexity of the hormonal system and the many interactions between the
various hormones.
3. Failure to see aging as a disease, and therefore failure to see the loss of hormones with
aging as deleterious. As a consequence, doctors do not view low hormone levels as a problem
in general.
4. Adherence to the old disease model of endocrinology instead of a functional model. Docs
think that the hormonal system functions perfectly unless it's attacked by some obvious
disease. In fact, nothing works perfectly, especially as we age and are subject to malnutrition,
toxins, illness, and stress. Most persons with suboptimal hormone levels have no identifiable
disease.
5. Use of indirect and insensitive tests (e.g. TSH, AM serum total cortisol, ACTH stimulation
test, GH stimulation) to "exclude endocrine disease" even when the patient has low hormone
levels and signs and symptoms of inadequate hormone effects.
6. Consideration of hormones as drugs, with "side effects". However, they are not drugs; they
are molecules that belong in the body, parts of a very delicate and complex system. They do not
cause "side effects" as drugs do. They are among the best-studied molecules in Nature. They
can cause well-known problems if introduced into the body by the wrong route, if given in too
high a dose or if there is a lack of balance with other hormones. Example: When adults given
growth hormone in studies developed fluid retention, joint aches, and diabetes, the doctors
concluded that growth hormone has serious "side effects". Because of their "drugthink", they
failed to realize that they had simply caused excessive effects with excessive doses! Hormones
need to be considered and used differently than drugs, both medically and legally, but this is not
happening in our pharmaceutical system.
7. Misuse of the broad laboratory reference ranges (misleading called "normal ranges") that
often include the levels of 95% of all persons of all ages referred to the laboratory for testing.
Laboratories have not based their ranges on an optimally healthy, youthful population. Their
approach to setting ranges might make sense if they could guarantee, by physiological studies,
that 95% of the population they tested had optimal hormone levels, but this is never done. With
this broad "normal range", only the bottom 2.5% of the population is considered to be "low" and
therefore deserving of some minimal hormone restoration to within the "normal" range. This is
population statistics.It is not medicine. These ranges do not define what is optimal for the
species or for any individual. Much more than 2.5% of the population has suboptimal levels due
to aging and disease. Because so many persons have low levels of some hormones, the
statistical treatment of the data yields reference ranges that go to "0" at the low end--no
hormone whatsoever is "normal"! This misunderstanding of the lab report results in the
unthinking practice Dr. Lindner calls "reference range endocrinology". The doctor glances at
the lab report and if there is no bold "H" or "L" for "high" or "low" next to the hormone level,
declares that there is no hormonal problem, even if the patient has the symptoms and the
hormone levels is near the bottom of the range! This simplistic On/Off thinking is inconsistent
with all the evidence that hormones work on a continuum from the lowest to the highest
levels. One cannot draw a line and say everything above this line is "normal", and everything
below this line is "disease". Also there are many other factors involved in hormone action; the
level of hormone in the serum does not always correlate with the action of the hormone in the
tissues. Letting the laboratory report make the diagnosis fulfills the doctor's desire for simple,
objective criteria so that he doesn't have to trust his own mind or use his judgment. In fact, the
human body is more complex than we know, so there is no substitute for medical judgment in
deciding who will benefit from hormone restoration. This question can only be settled with a
clinical trial--supplementing the hormone to higher levels to see if it helps the patient.
8. Persistence of a number of FALSE ideas about human hormones, such as believing that:
- False: The TSH test is immaculate--always indicating the overall thyroid hormone status of
the person whether taking or not-taking oral thyroid hormones. (No, the TSH production is
just as likely to be inadequate as is the thyroid gland's production.) - False: Simply normalizing a hypothyroid patient's TSH levels using levothyroxine
(Synthroid) is adequate treatment. (Multiple studies show that it is not.) - False: A low TSH in a person on thyroid replacement therapy means the that he/she is
overtreated and will suffer all the consequence of hyperthyroidism, even though the free T3
level is within its reference range. - False: Free T3, the active thyroid hormone, is irrelevant to diagnosing thyroid insufficiency
and need not be tested. (In fact, studies show that the free T3 corresponds better to
symptoms than any other test.) - False: There is no benefit to giving a thyroid patient T3 or Armour thyroid (which contains
T3 and T4), because the body always converts just enough T4 to T3. (When a doctor says
"always", you know he/she is wrong.) - False: Armour thyroid is an outdated treatment and is inconsistent in hormone content
from batch to batch. (In fact it is USP-certified because it passes the same tests for
hormone content as Synthroid and other T4 preparations. It is highly efficacious because it
contains the active thyroid hormone, T3.) - False: Testosterone is bad for a man's heart. (actually low testosterone is a major risk
factor for heart attacks in men.) - False: Testosterone causes prostate cancer. (No, low testosterone is a risk factor for
cancer. Read Dr. Morganthaler's "Testosterone for Life".) - False: Men do not need optimal testosterone levels, whatever is "normal" for age is OK.
(Studies show that higher testosterone levels can improve many health parameters.) - False: Transdermal estradiol for menopause causes blood clots, strokes, and heart
attacks just like oral Premarin® and birth control pills. (It does not.) - False: Progesterone is no different from other drug-company-invented progestins. (They
are different molecules, and most studies show marked differences.) - False: Female hormone doses do not have to be individualized. (Well, no smart doctor
actually believes this but the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology made this
statement under pressure from its supporters, the drug companies!) - False: Progesterone causes breast cancer. (In fact there is overwhelming evidence that it
protects against breast cancer, unlike Provera®.) - False: Restoring a woman's estradiol and progesterone increases the risk of breast
cancer. (No it doesn't. See the E3N-EPIC study in the powerpoint presentations.) - False: Adult women do not need optimal testosterone levels, after all the lab range is 0-76!
(In women, testosterone improves mental function, muscle strength, and sexual function!) - False: Adults do not need DHEA, the most abundant steroid hormone in the human body.
(Consider the odds.) - False: Adults do not need any growth hormone and cannot benefit from supplementation.
(In fact adult growth hormone deficiency is well-known to reduce health and quality of life,
and older adults often make practically no growth hormone.) - False: Adults have all the cortisol they need unless they have a disease the destroys their
adrenal or pituitary glands. Functional cortisol insufficiency does not exist. (In fact cortisol
deficiency in women is prevalent and is diagnosed instead as depression, fibromyalgia,
chronic fatigue, hypoglycemia, and insomnia.) - False: Cortisol is no different from any of the artificial patented steroids, except in dose.
(Only the correct, bioidentical hydrocortisone molecule works properly in the human body.) - False: Taking any dose of cortisol long-term will cause all the problems of Cushing's
syndrome. (Many studies of patients on cortisol replacement long-term show no
problems--it's just a matter of giving the right dose.)
As the result of the delusions listed above there is:
9. Fear of restoring natural hormones; yet no fear of prescribing any of the thousands of toxic
chemicals blessed by the FDA.
10. Ignorance of the How-Tos of hormone restoration: preparations, delivery methods, doses,
monitoring, interactions, troubleshooting, etc.
11. Fear of legal liability or professional censure for straying outside of officially-sanctioned,
reference-range-based practices--which themselves are determined by pharmaceutically-
funded research and pharmaceutically-funded "experts", medical schools, medical
organizations and journals.
12. Over-prescription of patented drugs to treat symptoms and disorders that are caused by
inadequate hormone and vitanutrient levels (e.g. overuse of antidepressants, psychostimulants
like Ritalin® and Provigil®,anti-anxiety drugs, cholesterol-lowering drugs, painkillers, birth-
control pills, anti-clotting drugs, osteoporosis drugs like Fosamax®, etc.).
Almost all physicians believe that the pharmaceutical "drug for every syndrome" model
taught in schools, conferences, and journals is the only true medical practice. They believe
that the ideas and practices advocated in textbooks and journals are uncontaminated medical
science as determined by objective experts. If they were to doubt this, each of them would have
to begin researching every issue on his/her own--a daunting and time-consuming task. It's so
much easier to just go with the system and stick to one's out-dated medical training and the
proclamation of pharmaceutically-funded medical organizations. It's also better for one's career.
Besides, medical schooling, like all other schooling, does not encourage or even allow
students to challenge what they are taught. Therefore the overschooled doctor will not stray from
the conventional system unless he is somehow struck with the realization that something is
wrong. Even then, he will need to have the time, the desire, and the ability to do independent
study and to re-learn many aspects of medicine. Very few doctors are therefore able to learn the
truth about hormonal disorders and how to correct them, and those who do, do so only late in
their careers. No young physicians are being trained with this knowledge. The bottom line is that
those who control medical information control medical practice. Follow the money.
You might think that board-certified endocrinologists should be experts in diagnosing hormone
deficiencies of all degrees and optimizing hormone levels for best health and quality of life.
Unfortunately this is not what they are trained to do. They are taught reference range
endocrinology, and worse, they adhere to a nonsensical TSH-based thyroidology. In fact, most
endocrinologists subscribe to all the false ideas and approaches described above, and are
their main defenders. In addition, they don't know much about testosterone because they leave
that to the urologists. They don't know much about female hormones because they leave
estradiol and progesterone to the gynecologists. Since all hormones affect each other, this
fragmentation guarantees that endocrinologists cannot understand the hormonal system as a
whole, nor be adept at restoring optimal/youthful hormone levels and balance. Perhaps one day
"Restorative Endocrinology" as introduced in these pages will be a universally recognized
specialty, and the population will have easy access to knowledgeable hormone restoration
specialists.
Hormone and vitanutrient restoration to optimal levels for health and well-being is not
alternative medicine. It is the very foundation of all intelligent medical practice.
For Health and Quality of Life
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