Alicia and Dawn Eden have both blogged about Prevention’s little screed attacking the growing number of doctors, pharmacists, and other health professionals who, disgusted at the idea of participating in silent abortions, are declining to prescribe, or fill prescriptions for, the Pill. Kevin Miller points out that the Pill is far from being the silver bullet in women’s health care — it’s more like the lazy doctor’s band-aid: “As my physician acquaintances ask, where is the article’s mention of women who take OCPs only because of “pro-Pill” doctors’ ignorance, negligence, deceit, and/or pressure? of what “anti-Pill” doctors do provide to women?”
I know for myself that in the eight years I’ve been seeking treatment for my own hormone disorders, the only real treatment I’ve ever gotten has been from NFP-only doctors. Of the secular set, I think my favorite was the endocrinologist who cheerfully said, “Well, if you want to get pregnant, we can do IVF, and if you don’t, we’ll put you on the Pill.” I wish I had had the presence of mind to stand up and stalk out of the office. My second favorite is probably the nice doctor from Georgetown “In the Catholic Jesuit tradition” University Hospital who told me that I needed to just get used to having cycles lasting forty to fifty days, and not to worry until they got to sixty days long, in which case she would give me a pill to force a new cycle.
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Eek! I had the same thing from a nurse when discussing what I thought was a thyroid problem. When the test came out “within normal limits”, I said, well that doesn’t explain the basal temperature of 96.3, the 50+ day periods, and the hair falling out. She said that I ought to go on the pill after I delivered the baby. I’m going to have to get a second opinion about all of this. The baby is now a year old, my hair has returned to it’s pre-child loss patterns, and my temperature’s hanging around 96 again. Weird cycles are still expected since I’m nursing but I was quite bathered when no explanation could be found for them before I was pregnant.
I’ve been hearing that a lot of thyroid problems get missed by the conventional test. Have you read Marilyn Shannon’s book, Fertility, Cycles, and Nutrition? I know she talks about thyroid conditions. There is also a saliva test that is supposed to be much more accurate in detecting thyroid conditions.
Isn’t it astonishing how many problems get treated according to lab results and not according to clinical presentation? “You can’t be sick, your labs are okay.”
Hopefully we’ll be hearing from Alicia on this thread.
it’s just another sign of the end times, iffin’ y’all ask me.
Isn’t it astonishing how many problems get treated according to lab results and not according to clinical presentation? “You can’t be sick, your labs are okay.”
A little OT, but sometimes I think that happens the other way around too. Lab results and other numerical sorts of indicators taken out of context. I would think there has to be something arbitrary about where the precise “normal/abnormal” cutoff is and that if you’re near the borderline you need to look at the whole picture, but that too often doesn’t happen.
Treating the numbers and not the patient is quite common, and is a function of managed care. The problem with the thyroid issue is that if you treat for underactive thryoid that doesn’t exist, you can create osteoporosis and other problems. I have trouble with self-diagnoses of low thyroid. that is a personal foible. However, most providers only test one parameter of thyroid function (TSH) but that doesn’t always pick up the problems. Also, cortisol and insulin abnormalities can cause many of the same symptoms.
I do recommend following Marilyn Shannon’s dietary interventions as a beginning point.
We’re looking for an NFP doctor when we move (last doctor asked EVERY visit during DW’s pregnancy ‘what method of birth control do you plan on using post-partum’ which was ALWAYS responded to with ‘Natural Family Planning’).