Natural Thyroid Replacements

Video Transcript

"Hi! I'm Dr. David Cathcart. I am a family practice physician at Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Missouri, and I've been asked to talk to you today about thyroid disease. There are some natural thyroid replacement hormones on the market. One of the more common is called Armour thyroid. Armour thyroid is actually is like a pig version of thyroid hormone and it's made to a pill and we take, you can take it just like you would a regular thyroid hormone replacement pills. The problem is and the reason why a lot of doctors don't like to use it is that the amount of thyroid that's in this natural thyroid replacement like Armour thyroid is not as, it it's harder to get the same amount on each pill so your thyroid levels tend to fluctuate up and down more often. And also there's some question concern about the bodies of the introduction of essentially pig thyroid hormone in ones body and your own body, developing antibodies against that. So, most doctors would rather use a synthetic version and it seems are always we believe that the synthetic version is less likely to attack by our own immune system and it's a lot easier to regulate the amount of thyroid hormone from pill to pill to pill. So, most doctor would use a regular thyroid hormone which is a combination which is called T3 and T4 as opposed to using the natural thyroid hormone such as Armour thyroid. This is Dr. Cathcart and thanks for letting me talk to you about thyroid disorders."