What’s REALLY Causing Your Fibromyalgia?

December 29, 2017

Do you have joint and muscle pain, fatigue, brain fog, trouble sleeping and anxiety, among many other unexplained symptoms? Are you frustrated with doctors because you can’t find out why you have these symptoms?  If you’ve been give a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, then you owe it to yourself to watch this video. Dr. Hotze reveals a very common, yet overlooked, cause of fibromyalgia.

Video Highlights

1:52: In Latin. ‘Myo’ means muscle, ‘algia’ means pain, so fibromyalgia is the fibrous tissue and the muscles are in pain. That’s what causes your joint and muscle pain.

2:24:  Now, fibromyalgia, as we mentioned, is just a Latin term for the symptoms you’ve described to the doctor. Well, that’s not a diagnosis. That’s what I call “labelitis,” and it’s a problem that afflicts many conventional doctors. They take the symptoms you describe and convert them to Latin terms and say, “That’s your diagnosis.”

5:41: Hypothyroidism is caused by either an inability of your thyroid gland to make adequate amount of thyroid hormone, which governs your body’s metabolism, which enables your cells to produce and use energy – that’s called Type 1 Hypothyroidism, or Type 2 Hypothyroidism, where your cells don’t adequately assimilate or you have a resistance to assimilate the thyroid hormones.

8:04: The underlying cause of these symptoms is an inadequate amount of energy production within your cells, and one of the key components of producing energy within your cells is the active thyroid hormone T3.

9:11:  95% of the people fall within the normal range because that’s how the lab defines the normal range. So, you can’t hardly fall out of the range. So if the doctor is simply looking at your blood test, TSH or T4 in your blood, he’ll go, “Everything’s fine. You’ve got normal levels. You’re in the range.”

9:58: My philosophy is this: I believe that any individual who has the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism deserves a clinical trial of natural, desiccated thyroid hormone.

10:38: As a matter of fact, the more symptoms that you describe, he’s going to think, “It’s all in her head because the blood tests are normal,” and that will inevitably lead that physician to place you on an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, or a sleep medication.

12:16: Now, what would cause you not to make enough thyroid, or not to adequately assimilate thyroid? A common cause is autoimmune thyroiditis, where you make antibodies to your thyroid gland.

13:35: Some other things that can cause hypothyroidism, and I think the most common cause of hypothyroidism in our country, and I think there’s an epidemic of hypothyroidism, is fluoride in the water. Fluoride in the water, and in the toothpaste, and in other foods, and even in the drugs, the pharmaceutical drugs that they give.  Fluoride poisons the enzyme within your cells that converts the inactive thyroid hormone T4, with four iodine atoms, to T3.

16:37: I like to say this: The reason I use the natural, desiccated thyroid, which contains both T4 and T3, is because it works. And I believe in result-based medicine.

Video Transcript

Stacey B.: Welcome to Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. This is Stacey Bandfield with Dr. Steven Hotze, founder of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center. And just as a reminder, please go to our website, HotzePodcast.com. It’s H-O-T-Z-E podcast.com to download all of our podcasts. I’m really excited about this program today because we’re going to be talking about a very common symptom that people experience, and it’s called fibromyalgia. Okay, Dr. Hotze, if you could explain what that is.

Dr. Hotze: Well, let me ask you. Have you gone to your doctor complaining of recurrent and chronic muscle and joint aches and pains, and fatigue, and insomnia, and they’ve run blood tests on you and they say everything is normal? Maybe they’ve done an x-ray examination. Maybe they’ve done MRIs or cat scans and they come back and tell you, “Well, after all our tests, we think you have fibromyalgia.”

Now, that term, fibromyalgia, sounds very ominous. It must be something bad. But you’ve had these problems maybe for years, and you’re finally glad to have what you think is a diagnosis, when in fact the term fibromyalgia simply means muscle pain.

Stacey B.: In Latin.

What’s REALLY Causing Your Fibromyalgia?Dr. Hotze: In Latin. ‘Myo’ means muscle, ‘algia’ means pain, so fibromyalgia is the fibrous tissue and the muscles are in pain. That’s what causes your joint and muscle pain.

So you come in and tell your doctor, “I have joint and muscle pains, fatigue, and insomnia, and a host of other problems. I don’t think well. I don’t feel well. I get recurrent infections. I’m overweight. I don’t think clearly.” You tell him these problems and after a work-up, he says, “I think you have fibromyalgia.”

Now, fibromyalgia, as we mentioned, is just a Latin term for the symptoms you’ve described to the doctor. Well, that’s not a diagnosis. That’s what I call “labelitis,” and it’s a problem that afflicts many conventional doctors. They take the symptoms you describe and convert them to Latin terms and say, “That’s your diagnosis.”

So, the real question is what is causing fibromyalgia? What is causing him to give you the diagnosis of fibromyalgia? Let me just read to you some of the very common symptoms that are associated with the diagnosis of fibromyalgia, and tell me what they sound like. What underlying cause, true diagnosis, do these symptoms of fibromyalgia seem to indicate you might have? Well, let’s look.

Symptoms of Fibromyalgia

  • joint and muscle pain and stiffness
  • fatigue
  • sleep disturbances
  • insomnia
  • inability to focus and to think clearly
  • headaches
  • migraine headaches
  • brain fog
  • joint and muscle aches and pains
  • irritable bowel syndrome or constipation
  • bloating
  • mood swings
  • depressed moods
  • painful menstrual periods
  • panic attacks
  • anxiety attacks
  • skin disorders
  • dry skin
  • blurred vision
  • dizziness
  • sore throat
  • increased allergic symptoms

All these things are associated with a conventional diagnosis of fibromyalgia. And if you’ve had these symptoms for over six months, they can make the diagnosis of fibromyalgia. 

Prescription Drugs Are Not the Answer

And since it is a symptom, they want to mask the symptom, and what they do is they use antidepressants. One of them is Lyrica. So, now you’ve got a symptom being turned into a diagnosis for which you’re being given a very dangerous psychiatric, psychotropic medication and antidepressant. They may even put you on anti-anxiety medication and sleep medication. So now you’re going to be on one, two, or three different medications that can adversely affect the way your brain functions; the way the neurotransmitters in your brain function.

What do these symptoms sound like? The fatigue, the difficulty with weight, the low body temperature, inability to focus or think clearly, brain fog, inability to concentrate, slow speech, insomnia, anxiety attacks, depressed moods,  panic attacks, joint and muscle aches and pains, dysfunctional bowels. Maybe you’ve got constipation. Maybe you have irritable bowel syndrome. Also, you may have other signs that go along. Well, you may have some other physical signs, but what are those symptoms sound like? Well, those are classical signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism.

Hypothyroidism

Hypothyroidism is caused by either an inability of your thyroid gland to make adequate amount of thyroid hormone, which governs your body’s metabolism, which enables your cells to produce and use energy – that’s called Type 1 Hypothyroidism, or Type 2 Hypothyroidism, where your cells don’t adequately assimilate or you have a resistance to assimilate the thyroid hormones. That’s Type 2. And you don’t make adequate amount of the active thyroid hormone within your cells.

Your thyroid gland produces two thyroid hormones. It produces T4, which is the thyroid molecule with four iodine atoms. That’s the pro-hormone. It’s basically an inactive, not active, hormone that’s secreted. 80 to 85% of all the thyroid in your blood is T4, not active. It has to be assimilated into the cells, where there is an enzyme that cleaves off one of the iodine atoms and gives you T3. T3 is the active thyroid hormone.

Now, the thyroid hormone is what enables your cells’ power plants, called mitochondria. Thyroid hormone is what activates those power plants so they can produce energy, electrical energy, which is then carried by specific molecules to biochemical processes in areas of yourself where the biochemical processes occur, so your cells can function and carry out their biochemical processes.

If you produce low levels of energy, your body is going to run suboptimally, sluggishly. Your metabolism is going to be low. Is there any surprise if your metabolism is low and you’re not producing an adequate amount of energy within your cells that you wouldn’t think clearly? That you would have fatigue? You would have difficulty with weight? You’d have a low body temperature? You would have brain fog. You’d have maybe slurred speech or slow speech, or you wouldn’t be able to react quickly mentally. You might have sleep disorders. You could have depressed moods or panic attacks or anxiety attacks; joint and muscle aches and pains, and all these other symptoms. Sluggish bowels, or maybe irritable bowels, because you’ve had recurrent and chronic infections for which you’ve taken antibiotics. Now you have yeast overgrowth.

The underlying cause of these symptoms is an inadequate amount of energy production within your cells, and one of the key components of producing energy within your cells is the active thyroid hormone T3.

So, when you go to your physician, who is a conventional doctor, why don’t they make the diagnosis of hypothyroidism? Well, here are the reasons why:

  • First, they’re not trained and schooled in how to properly assess an individual based upon their clinical symptoms to determine whether or not they have symptoms consistent with a hypo or low thyroid condition.
  • Second, they rely strictly on blood tests. The blood tests are performed by the laboratories. The lab comes up with a value, a normal range, and the normal range is as wide as the Grand Canyon, and as tall as the Empire State building. 95% of the people fall within the normal range because that’s how the lab defines the normal range. So, you can’t hardly fall out of the range. So if the doctor is simply looking at your blood test, TSH or T4 in your blood, he’ll go, “Everything’s fine. You’ve got normal levels. You’re in the range.”

Stacey B.: And we hear that all the time from people.

Dr. Hotze: And let me tell you, you may have had optimal levels of thyroid hormones within your cells when you were younger, and now your thyroid hormone within your cells is declining. And guess what happens? You don’t produce enough energy. Oh, but you’re in the normal range. I’ve even had guests tell me, “My doctor told me I was in the low normal range, but not low enough to be treated.”

Dr. Hotze’s Philosophy on Diagnosing and Treating Hypothyroidism

My philosophy is this: I believe that any individual who has the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism deserves a clinical trial of natural, desiccated thyroid hormone. Small doses, incrementally increased, to see if that resolves their symptoms. If it does, then the diagnosis is hypothyroidism.

So, why doesn’t your doctor make the diagnosis? He’s not trained to think about thyroid problems as causing a host of symptoms.  Your doctor only spends five or seven minutes with you and has no time whatsoever to listen to your whole series of symptoms. As a matter of fact, the more symptoms that you describe, he’s going to think, “It’s all in her head because the blood tests are normal,” and that will inevitably lead that physician to place you on an antidepressant or anti-anxiety medication, or a sleep medication.

Another reason that that doctor’s don’t really make the diagnosis is they’re unfamiliar with the common symptoms of hypothyroidism. Now, you may have one, some, or all of these symptoms, but the doctor, doesn’t have enough time to listen to you, and even if he did, he is totally unschooled in treating or diagnosing based upon clinical symptoms and clinical signs.

Signs of Low Thyroid Function and Why Conventional Docs Miss the Diagnosis

Now, what are some of the signs of low thyroid? Puffy skin, being overweight, pale lips, loss of the lateral third of the eyebrows, enlarged tongue, and brittle fingernails. All these are common. Elevated cholesterol is a common feature of hypothyroidism. So, if the doctor is unschooled, he’s untrained, because it wasn’t taught in medical school how to approach an individual who has symptoms of hypothyroidism, and who has the signs of hypothyroidism. If he’s unschooled in that, he’s going to completely overlook it. He’s going to do a blood test, and he’s going to rely strictly on the blood test, and he’s going to miss the diagnosis. In fact, he’s going to make a misdiagnosis. He may say “You have fibromyalgia,” or “You may have depression,” or “You have panic attacks.” All these are symptoms. Something is causing the underlying problem.

Common Cause of Hypothyroidism

Now, what would cause you not to make enough thyroid, or not to adequately assimilate thyroid? A common cause is autoimmune thyroiditis, where you make antibodies to your thyroid gland. They glom under the thyroid. They cause it to become inflamed, and it doesn’t produce adequate amounts of thyroid hormone. Those antibodies from autoimmune thyroiditis can glom onto the thyroid, and disable it from being properly assimilated within the cells.

Beta Blockers Block the Effect of Thyroid Hormone

Another common problem is drugs that people take. Beta blockers for blood pressure block the ability of thyroid to properly have its effect within the cells. As a matter of fact, if somebody is hyperthyroid, they took too much thyroid or they make too much thyroid, and they have all the symptoms of jitteriness, weight loss, sweats, and their heart’s racing, you can give them a beta blocker and within an hour or two hours, those symptoms will resolve because beta blockers block the effect of thyroid hormone at the cellular level. That’s a big problem.

Other Causes of Hypothyroidism

Genetics

It could be a genetically inherited problem. You need to look at your family history. Does your family have a history of thyroid problems that occur?

Fluoride

Some other things that can cause hypothyroidism, and I think the most common cause of hypothyroidism in our country, and I think there’s an epidemic of hypothyroidism, is fluoride in the water. Fluoride in the water, and in the toothpaste, and in other foods, and even in the drugs, the pharmaceutical drugs that they give.

Fluoride poisons the enzyme within your cells that converts the inactive thyroid hormone T4, with four iodine atoms, to T3. It blocks the ability of that enzyme to properly cleave off one of the iodine atoms in order to produce the active thyroid hormone. So, fluoride in the water can cause a problem. That’s why I recommend you drink filtered water. Get reverse osmosis on your sink so you’re drinking water that has no fluoride in it.

Don’t use fluoride toothpaste. Do me a favor. Go look on the side of your Crest or your Colgate or whatever toothpaste you’re using, and there’s a box there that’s a warning that says, “If you ingest,”… First it says don’t give it to kids under six years of age. Second, it says if you ingest the toothpaste that you put on your toothbrush, contact your doctor or poison control. Why is that? Because fluoride is toxic. It poisons the thyroid, the ability of the enzymes in the thyroid gland to produce thyroid hormone, and it blocks the ability to properly convert the inactive thyroid hormone, T4, to the active thyroid hormone, T3.

Imbalance in Female Hormones

Also, in women, when they march through their menstrual life, they get an imbalance in their female hormones called estrogen dominance. They get lower levels of progesterone, which is the hormone of the last half of the month. And estrogen dominance causes the liver to produce a high level of a protein called thyroid binding globulin, which binds thyroid hormones so it can’t properly be assimilated. So, natural progesterone can be very helpful in that.

These are some of the causes of hypothyroidism.  The symptoms and signs are commonly overlooked by the doctors, because they never think about the diagnosis. They don’t know how to treat it if indeed they found on your blood test that you had low thyroid based upon an elevated thyroid stimulating hormone, which is elevated trying to stimulate the thyroid, which is low. If they found that, then they’re going to put you on a synthetic thyroid preparation called Synthroid, or Levoxyl or Levothroid that contains the inactive thyroid hormone T4.

Well, unless your body can perfectly and properly convert the T4 to T3, it doesn’t do any good, and we see thousands of guests here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center who come in who have all the signs and symptoms of low thyroid, who have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, but they’re on the synthetic thyroid. I like to say this: The reason I use the natural, desiccated thyroid, which contains both T4 and T3, is because it works. And I believe in result-based medicine. And after seeing 31,000 guests at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, most of which come here because they have the symptoms of hypothyroidism…when we’ve treated probably more patients here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center than any other center nationwide for the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism using natural, desiccated thyroid.

So, if your doctor says, “We don’t believe in that. It doesn’t work,” guess what? They don’t know how to use it, and they’ve never tried it. It just so happens that the Clinical Endocrinology Society, which opposes the use of natural, desiccated thyroid, and wants you to use synthetic thyroid, primarily Synthroid.  It is because the company that makes Synthroid underwrites the Clinical Endocrinology Society. As a matter of fact, in 2012, that company was awarded the Corporation of the Year because of the money that they gave to the Clinical Endocrinology Society.

Stacey B.: Sounds like a conflict of interest.

Dr. Hotze: Well, let me say this: If something seems amiss, if something seems obvious what you should use, but something else is recommended, you have to follow the money trail. And I believe there’s a money trail there.

So, our talk initially started about fibromyalgia, which is just one catch term, symptom, of a host of different symptoms, which are all related to underlying hypothyroidism. Either the thyroid is not making enough thyroid hormone, or your body is not properly and adequately assimilating adequate thyroid hormone, and converting it to the active hormone T3. So, what we recommend is the use of natural, desiccated thyroid.

Now, if you think you have any of these symptoms, I’d recommend you going to our symptom checker at Hotzehwc.com, and you can do a symptom checker on thyroid and see how you test.  That’d be very revealing.

Stacey B.: It’s a great resource. And another great resource, too, Dr. Hotze, is you wrote an amazing book called Hypothyroidism, Health & Happiness, conveniently located, Dr. Hotze, right behind you. There we are.

Dr. Hotze: I’d highly recommend you getting this book.

Stacey B.: And he’s generously offering it complimentary at no charge. All you have to do is give us a call at 281-698-8698. That’s 281-698-8698. We’d be more than happy to send you a copy as well. As always, it is a privilege having you visit with us today at Dr. Hotze’s Wellness Revolution. Have a blessed day.

Dr. Hotze: Well, let me make one other comment.

Stacey B.: Oh, yes?

Dr. Hotze: What if they want to contact somebody here at the Hotze Health & Wellness Center?

Stacey B.: Well, then they can also give us a call at 281-698-8698. That’s 281-698-8698. We’ll give you a copy of Dr. Hotze’s book and also a complimentary health consultation because you deserve to have a doctor to coach you onto a path of health and wellness naturally.

Dr. Hotze: That’s what I believe. I believe that you need a coach. You need a doctor and a staff of professionals who will coach you onto a path of health and wellness naturally, without using pharmaceutical drugs, so as you mature, you enjoy a better quality of life.

Written By: Steven F. Hotze, M.D.

Steven F. Hotze, M.D., is the founder and CEO of the Hotze Health & Wellness Center, Hotze Vitamins and Physicians Preference Pharmacy International, LLC.

 

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Since 1989, Hotze Health & Wellness Center has helped over 33,000 patients get their lives back using bioidentical hormones that restore hormones to optimal levels, strengthen immune systems, and increase energy levels. Our treatment regimen addresses the root cause of hypothyroidism, adrenal fatigue, menopause, perimenopause, low testosterone, allergies, and candida.

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