Tired Thyroid: From Hyper To Hypo To Healing – Breaking The TSH Rule by thyroid patient advocate Barbara S. Lougheed is a comprehensive and thorough read. This book combines Barbara’s personal story of issues with hypothyroidism treatment, with case studies from others, too.
With almost thirty chapters, it showcases the many topics linked to thyroid disease that she has painstakingly researched over the years.
I may reference back to this book and what I’ve learned from it throughout my blog posts.
Tired Thyroid is a hefty book and not a light read, although not in a bad way. A useful reference book with endless amounts of sources and references, it’s useful to thyroid patients and doctors alike. Built so that you can use it to work with your doctor as there are references to hand, it includes topics such as adrenal dysfunction, skin complaints, blood tests, Graves’, high altitude sickness (which I’ve not seen covered in any other thyroid book), hair loss, insulin resistance, the Reverse T3 debate, why TSH is such an unreliable test, how to dose thyroid medication more effectively, the most comprehensive chapter on iodine I’ve seen in a thyroid book and much more. The ‘end of chapter conclusions’ and round ups are particularly useful, especially if you find it difficult to absorb more technical information, perhaps due to thyroid fatigue or brain fog.
An interesting read, it is a compilation of articles and reports from various medical sources as well as other thyroid patients’ personal stories. Barbara agrees with myself in that all thyroid patients are individual and the approach they need to regain their health with hypothyroidism is often individual too. She doesn’t promote one type of thyroid treatment/medication, but instead supports that different people do better on different types. We just have to figure out what that is for us, which she did for herself and recounts in the book.
She isn’t afraid to go against the grain with her writing either, breaking down a lot of the other ‘rules’ about thyroid medication, dosing and tests seen on other popular thyroid forums. She covers how a lot of this advice given to her at the start of her own journey didn’t help her and, at times, actually made her health worse.
I felt that an index would be a very useful addition to the book, as it is after all a reference book. Some parts also became a little repetitive, but I feel this was probably intentional as the author wrote the book so that others could skip straight to the bits they needed and ignore the bits they didn’t, if they wish. So covering some material already mentioned in a previous chapter they may not have read was necessary for completeness.
This book could easily feel overwhelming for someone who is more of a ‘beginner’ to the thyroid world – quite advanced ideas are explored, so it may be one you work up to after reading a few others. However, those already technically minded will likely find it a fascinating read. It took me a while to finish as I read a few pages at a time. It wasn’t one I could read huge chunks of in each go due to the need to really focus on the material.
Overall, I found this book to be a thought-provoking and impressive read. Although not a doctor but instead a thyroid patient, Barbara has clearly dedicated a lot of time to researching and helping other thyroid patients and she knows her stuff.
You can get a copy of this book from Amazon here.
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