Fetbobbas Forum

After becoming interested about the importance of thyroid function for health, I noticed that Dr. John C. Lowe had made important research showing that fibromyalgia and clinical hypothyroidism have dozens of biochemical and physiological similarities. Lowe and Yellin have written an excellent review article on this issue. (Lowe&Yellin 2008, Øverbye 2007, Garrison&Breeding 2003)

One of Lowe’s important findings is that fibromyalgia patients have 30% decreased basal metabolic rate on average. Similar extreme decreases in metabolic rate have also been noted in hypothyroidism and PCOS. Fibromyalgia patients eat much less food than other people, but still they are often overweight because they aren’t able to burn the calories. (Lowe et al. 2006, Ursini et al. 2011, Shaver et al. 2006, Georgopoulos et al. 2009)

In his clinical trials, Lowe has noticed that supraphysiological doses of active thyroid hormone (T3) can be a very effective treatment for fibromyalgia, even in patients with normal thyroid hormone levels. Some patients seem to improve so much that they don’t even meet the diagnostic criteria of fibromyalgia anymore. In my opinion, it’s logical that a lot of good things should happen if you raise the extremely low metabolism to the normal level. (Lowe et al. 1996a, Lowe et al. 1996b, Lowe et al. 1997, Lowe et al. 1998, Friedman et al. 2006)

Up until recently, many physicians thought that the disease was “imaginary” or psychological, but scientists have now revealed that the main source of pain stems from a most unlikely place- excess blood vessels in the hand.

The discovery may lead to new treatments and perhaps even a total cure in the future, bringing relief to as many as 5 million Americans thought to have the disease. To solve the Fibromyalgia mystery, researchers zeroed in on the skin from the hand of one patient who had a lack of the sensory nerve fibers, causing a reduced reaction to pain. They then took skin samples from the hands of Fibromyalgia patients and were surprised to find an extremely excessive amount of a particular type of nerve fiber called arteriole-venule (AV) shunts.

Up until this point scientists had thought that these fibers were only responsible for regulating blood flow, and did not play any role in pain sensation, but now they’ve discovered that there is a direct link between these nerves and the widespread body pain that Fibromyalgia sufferers feel.