That said, I want to emphasize that his statements about using T3 alone are balderdash. I simply don’t understand how he could publicly express such nonsense.

Dr. Blanchard refers to Dr. Denis Wilson’s book containing "glowing testimonials" about T3 therapy. I will give you a testimonial of my own, but first let me make something clear: In my book The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia, I document that some of Dr. Wilson’s beliefs are so contrary to scientific evidence that they are simply nutty—as nutty as Dr. Blanchard’s beliefs about T3 therapy. Except for Dr. Wilson’s advocacy of T3 therapy, I adamantly disagree with many of his views. On the other hand, my own testimonial about T3 could fit right into his book.

My testimonial about using T3 alone makes Dr. Blanchard patently wrong or me psychotically deluded. He wrote in his answer to Annie that he doesn’t think anyone is well served by using T3 alone. Despite that, we have a massive research literature on patients with thyroid hormone resistance. That literature shows that most of the patients are served well by no thyroid hormone therapy other than T3 alone. If Dr. Blanchard questions this, he should read my extensive chapter in The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia on the science and treatment of thyroid hormone resistance.

Here, though, I’ll say that T3 alone has served me very well for twenty-three years. My father and some of his siblings committed suicide, and I’m convinced that their deaths were from depression due to thyroid hormone resistance. He took his own life at age twenty-eight only three years after T3 was discovered, so the hormone wasn’t available clinically to avert his early demise. I have been more fortunate. Unlike my father, I had the help of a wise psychiatrist and the research conducted by psychiatric investigators in the 1970s. That research showed the effectiveness of T3 therapy in relieving many patients’ depression. Because of my long-term use of T3 alone, I’ve long been free from the desire to exterminate myself—a desire that dominated half my thoughts from my earliest memories as a boy until I began using T3 alone.

Is Dr. Blanchard right and I psychotically out of touch with reality? Have I not been "well served by using T3 only"? I’ll put it this way: Before my use of T3, I was crippled at doing math, as well as most other intellectual tasks. Since using T3 alone, my major past time has been the highly technical practice of mathematical logic. In this practice, I reduce arguments to symbolic notation using quantifiers and analyze them for validity using rules of inference. I do this in a quantificational language that would take most highly intelligent people years to learn, as it did me. Dr. Blanchard would undoubtedly argue that my long use of T3 has impaired my mental faculties. But the truth is, T3 has given me a razor-sharp mind; I know this from the brief times I’ve been off T3. Each time, the familiar thick mental fog ensheaths me again, causing me to back away from my dry erase boards, unable to quantitatively express and analyze arguments. In view of this personal history, I humbly contend that it is Dr. Blanchard who is wrong.

I want to repeat a statement he made in his reply to Annie: "The patient feels better for a few months but then they [sic] crash. I guarantee that no one can take only T3 for very long." [Italics mine.] As a thyroid hormone resistance researcher, I have for many years followed patients who have used T3 alone, some for up to seventeen years. And, of course, I’ve followed myself for a full twenty three. Have we "crashed," as Dr. Blanchard claims we inevitably will? Absolutely not! My follow-up of long-term T3 users shows that most are healthier than people in general. And this is true of myself now within two weeks of the age of sixty-two.

Dr. Blanchard’s "guarantee that no one can take only T3 for very long" is as concretely false as the claim that the earth is flat. At the time he made his should-be-embarrassing statements about T3, he apparently hadn’t bothered to read the scientific literature that proves him wrong. But that’s okay; I always stand ready to show him that my long-term use of T3 alone has not in the least hampered my health and vigor. I’m always ready to arm wrestle him or take him on in a long race up the side of any mountain. However, rather than arm wrestling or racing, he would do better to study The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia, or at least the T3 literature in PubMed. If he did, he would probably revise his beliefs about the use of T3. By doing so, he would far better serve the interests of patients like you.

At any rate, I hope you don’t let Dr. Blanchard’s mistaken beliefs instill you with fear. And I sincerely wish you the very best with the extraordinary health you’re likely to enjoy, as I have, through your continued use of T3 alone.

We recently posted a notice on drlowe.com that the 3rd printing of The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia is now available for shipping. Afterward, we received numerous emails from readers saying they had heard the book is on hypothyroidism and thyroid hormone resistance. Why the name "fibromyalgia" in the title, they then asked. Is the book only for fibromyalgia patients and their doctors?

My reply is this: In the book, I comprehensively cover both the basic science and clinical aspects of hypothyroidism and thyroid hormone resistance. And I use fibromyalgia as the clinical condition that can result from both. My study of fibromyalgia led me to the understanding that its symptoms, signs, and objective abnormalities are underlain by a deficiency of or resistance to thyroid hormone. Because of this, it was easiest for me to explain basic and clinical thyroidology through fibromyalgia. However, in section three of the 1260-page book, I explain how too little thyroid hormone regulation causes a wide variety of symptoms, such as fatigue, depression, cognitive dysfunction, pain, and dry skin and mucous membranes.

The book, therefore, is a comprehensive coverage of the field of thyroidology, no matter what a patient's predominate symptom. I hope this explains the confusion over the title.