Q:  Wilson's Thyroid Syndrome

I have been searching for information relating bipolar disorder and thyroid dysfunction, wondering about the nature of the relationship.  Are you familiar with, and if so, what is your opinion of, Wilson's Thyroid Syndrome and Dr. Wilson's work? My son is not managing well on the medications he's been prescribed for bipolar (early onset, and as is so often, he's not consistently med-compliant, probably in part because of their minimal efficacy). My mother has Lupus; my father severe excema and probably undx'd bipolar; and I have sx's refective of (undx'd) hypothroidism.

Thank you for your site and forum and most especially, your work.

Sincerely,
Ms. C'


 Dear Ms. C' -- 
Well, this is sobering.  You'd think given my interest in thyroid and bipolar I'd have heard of this.  Especially since fibromyalgia and migraines are things I see all the time associated with mood problems.  I just surfed around the Wilson's site, because of your question.  

Now usually I'd have a great deal of skepticism about such a site, as after all is read, one eventually arrives at an opportunity to spend at least $32 for the "Doctor's Manual".  If this treatment is so great, and so logical based on existing medical knowledge, why haven't I encountered it before?  Why isn't it all over the place as standard medical knowledge?  Why is it that the only way into this "treatment" is through the $32 doctor's manual?  

But, surfing around, there's the "tape" you can buy to give your doctor.  The text of the tape tells most of the story.  The references in the "review article" (which isn't really a review article in the traditional sense, i.e. published in a medical journal) are pretty ancient.  One of them is the Broda Barnes work on body temp., which I've seen has been abandoned for quite a while in endocrinology circles. 

On the other hand, I've encountered a fair bit of closed-mindedness in endocrinology circles, so that shouldn't be the end of the story.  I learned some good stuff on this site that needs some checking out.  Most importantly, I learned that there may be a link between stress and changes in thyroid function.  I've been looking at stress and changes in metabolism from a different point of view.  All of a sudden it looks like there might be a connection with the thyroid side of things too.  So this bears some serious looking into. 

For now, I'm still skeptical because of the link to "buy my manual".  Have to look into this sustained-release T3.  But this could explain some of the results I'm getting with T3/T4 combinations.  I'd sure like to see what's out there in medical journals about this, and will now look.  

Thanks for directing me to this work.  I haven't really answered your question; perhaps the answer is, "hmm, this is worth looking into; I think it has some truth in it somewhere; but be careful".  

Dr. Phelps