Chest Weakness

[zoey0884]

Hello,

To just dive right in.  I have a weakness feeling that comes and goes felt primarily in the chest area that feels like something just isnt right.  I have been diagnosed with harmless pvcs after a few tests.  Never had a stress test though.  Anyway the weakness comes on whenever it wants to and the time it lasts vary each time.  I dont notice any particular food in my diet that could do this.  Im not taking anything but a multivitamin every now and then when I remember.  I am active when the feeling is not there but its made me anxious about leaving my area because it may happen.  When it does I feel like I should just sit down.  I have never passed out or felt short of breath during this.  Could this be heart related?

I saw my doctor awhile back and he did a blood sugar test (not fasting) which was normal.  He said to eat more mini meals a day which I do now and nothing has changed.  A couple months later the company I work for did them for free and I did fast and the nurse said the sugar was very low even for fasting.  She said I may be anemic.  When I am feeling weakness I dont notice that sugar helps.  Ive tried a candy bar or soda and that Ive noticed it doesnt help.

Another maybe related problem comes with too much exertion in exercise such are running where the heart feels fluttery different from a normal PVC.

If anyone has an inkling on the weakness that would really help me out.

Thanks.

[TheLightSeeker]

30x 60mg  tablets of Armour (natural desiccated thyroid) are about $25.00 USD.

Try to explain to thousands, no correction, millions of heart disease patients on Statins that Armour might do a much better job, should they indeed, be hypothyroid ("functional" hypothyroid despite conventional lab results)without the multitude of side effects and lack of effectiveness. Not any time soon, but eventually, the truth will prevail.

I just think there's too much investment at stake, so much technology in diagnostics, testing, instrumentation in addition to treatments, surgeries, drugs, medical education which have to do with Heart Disease and Cardiology. Trillions of dollars invested, means that
changes are very carefully studied, evaluated, screened
and take place over very long time!
Even if they might be life and cost saving, it matters not!

However, Big  Pharma might be in some trouble  with plummeting statin sales at a rate of about 32% in the last 5 years.
The cholesterol bubble is going to burst. Here's an except from a Nov. 1st Pfizer News Release:

"Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - 6:30am
EDT
Pfizer Inc. announced today the discontinuation of the global clinical development program for bococizumab, its investigational Proprotein Convertase Subtilisin Kexin type 9 inhibitor (PCSK9i). The totality of clinical information now available for bococizumab, taken together with the evolving treatment and market landscape for lipid-lowering agents, indicates that bococizumab is not likely to provide value to patients, physicians, or shareholders. As a result, Pfizer has decided to discontinue the development program, including the two ongoing cardiovascular outcome studies."

Time will tell....

Best wishes,
Niko

[Museamuse]

I have similar symptoms, and they don’t have anything to do with blood sugar. Did you ever figure out what was going on with you?

[TheLightSeeker]

Hi Museamuse.
You have responded to very old post an the poster has not been back here since 2010.
No problem though.

There's a possibility of low thyroid function you  might want to look into.
FYI, it just happens to be a predominant  factor in heart disease, not that many doctors will openly agree with this, lol!

The following is from an  earlier comment of mine on this forum (copied and pasted)

"In 1950, Dr. Broda Barnes began a long-term study to determine if proper treatment of hypothyroidism would prevent heart attacks.
In 1948, The National Heart Institute began the famous Framingham Study, officially named, “The Heart Disease Epidemiology Study” to determine why heart attacks were rapidly reaching epidemic proportions.
Dr. Barnes intended his work to parallel the Framingham Study.

After 22 years of ongoing study, in 1972, Dr. Barnes published the results of his work in a book, Heart Attack Rareness in Thyroid-Treated Patients documenting his work with 1,569 patients.

The Framingham Study would have predicted 72 of Dr. Barnes’ patients should have suffered heart attacks. Only 4 occurred!
And those four patients were on low dose—none of the patients on higher doses of thyroid hormone (NDT) had a heart attack.
At least 30 of Dr. Barnes’ patients who quit the study and discontinued thyroid hormones suffered fatal heart attacks within 6 years of stopping their thyroid hormones.
In 1976, four years later, Dr. Barnes published his book, Solved: The Riddle of Heart Attacks.

I suggest you read the aforementioned books and studies carefully and draw your own conclusions.

To me it is quite clear.  But to the majority of Medical Professionals and scientists, it is perhaps as clear as ...
mud, or at least they make it appear as such :(

So much for technology,  testing, controlling cholesterol
and lifestyle risk factors. etc.
should we continue ignoring Hypothyroidism's (type 1 and 2) role in Heart disease! "

IDN, but definitely there's very little
profit to be made if hypothyroidism is treated with Natural Desiccated Thyroid (which comes from pigs' thyroid glands and would cost very little) and it reduces Heart Disease to the extremely low rate according to Dr. Broda's study.
This alone would put Cardiology almost out of business!!!
If I were a heart disease or a hypothyroid patient I would make it a top priority in my life to be properly diagnosed ( the majority of medical thyroid tests are flawed and miss
hypothyroidism most of the time!)
and treated with NDT.

Here's another kicker.
The golden standard in the past
for thyroid testing was Basal Temperature testing, done by the patient using a glass thermometer!
No cost involved, so again no financial incentives for pharmaceuticals and labs to keep it.

When the first artificial thyroid supplement was invented, the same mfg invented the modern thyroid tests (which are very flawed, unless you do additional tests Free T3, Free T4 and Reverse T3)

Sorry, I can "talk' forever, lol!
BTW, I'm a medical bookworm , researcher and  medical study buff


If you want more comments, you can try posting your own question here with a catchy title and make sure you include all pertinent details.

Best wishes,
Niko

[2210485]

Niko stop pushing things that are misleading.

In medicine there are always overlaps of patients..

For example... A massive percentage of patients with peripheral artery disease also have coronary artery disease.

However a smaller percentage of patients with coronary artery disease also have pad.

Likewise.. Yes, it is factual that thyroid dysfunction has been identified as a risk factor for atherosclerosis. Likewise a significant percentage of patients with thyroid issues also have atherosclerosis..

However.. A much smaller percentage of patients with cad also have thyroid dysfunction..

Specifically its around 11% of patients with heart disease also have some degree of thyroid dysfunction. This is statistically significant enough to identify hypothyroidism as a risk factor but not enough to identify it as a primary contributer, or else a higher percentage would be effected. So yes.. If you have hypothyroidism you should be worried about your heart.. And if you have a heart problem, a thyroid check isnt a bad idea.. But i think your post is misleading when you say things like this information "puts cardiology out of business"

Furthermore.. Correlation is not causation.. This is a fundemental principle of science.. Just because you can identify a statistical trend doesnt necessarily mean one causes the other..

People buy more ice cream in Arizona.. Therefore being born in arizona makes people eat ice cream..

But the reason arizonans eat more ice cream is not necessarily due to their birth place.. Its due to the heat.. If you take an arizonan and put them in michigan in january their ice cream consumption will decrease.

However you have all these 'holistic medicine' experts that take advantage of peoples ignorance to this.. They take a bunch of practically insignificant and often outdated studies and use them,inapropriately as 'proof' that a patients potentially LIFE THREATENING disease is actually because they dont eat enough kale or whatever the heck else.

Then they pitch them some sort of non fda approved as seen on tv kale supplement that doesnt do a dang thing to help them.

As for your study from the 70's.. Heres one thats more recent.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994013/

[TheLightSeeker]

The more recent study you mention is just terribly flawed/biased and designed to suit special interest groups.

Abbott  is the maker of Synthroid -synthetic Thyroxine (T4)- (synthetic Thyroxine was  the 2nd best selling drug in 2011 in the U.S.).
They were also the ones supplying the testing kits in this study!!!
The issue with this is that Synthroid contains only T4, a thyroid hormone
which needs to be converted into T3 and then  the bioavailable T3 (free T3) has to be absorbed into the cellular system, where it's used.

Here's the major flaw: The testing only included T4 and TSH tests,
which can only indicate serum levels
of circulating thyroid hormones.

Why would anyone care what serum levels of thyroid hormones are, when it does not indicate with any degree of certainty at all that they co-relate to actual thyroid function!

In a more global perspective, these
tests (T4 and TSH) have now become the standard tests, which unfortunately miss more times than not, because of Hypothyroidism type 2 (Thyroid hormone resistance).

The other issue is that Reverse T3,
a  reversing or reducing thyroid hormone as the name implies, as well as Free T3  (bioavailable T3) are not  normally tested
Patients are   advised often
erroneously , that their thyroid is fine
based only on circulating levels of TSH and T4..
The other issue is with treatment.
Synthetic T4, Synthroid or Levothyroxine, or other brand
is only T4 not a complete thyroid hormone like Natural Desiccated
Thyroid which contains all 4 thyroid homones T1, T2, T3 and T4

Reverse T3 gets converted from T4 exclusively, so doctors following guidelines and protocol,may be doing a huge disservice to their patients, contributing further to their thyroid issues.

I  also have some ethical concerns  with the ECS (they are also named in the study) leadership as the  current President has been involved in some controversial papers, he authored or co-authored in the past.
A recent presidential candidate had to withdraw because of being charged with fraud and professional misconduct.

In addition, I would not expect any Cardiology society to accept the notion that effectively diagnosing correcting low thyroid function would result in lowered heart disease and related mortality .
It would be like shooting themselves on the foot!

I did not ever imply that people should never get tested for atherosclerosis or other heart disease related issues!

All good!

Cheers,
Niko

[2210485]

Perhaps i misinterpreted your tone niko.

Ima come out the gate for transparency here and say.. I friggen love abbot/st jude... They make great equipment, thats extremely user friendly.

As i said i dont deny there is a connection between thyroid function and increased mortality.

It was sounding like you were suggesting that liver function, genetics, diet/lifestyle etc.. All of the things we work with in cardiology was a bunch of bogus, and that thyroid function is public enemy #1. It further sounded like the implication is that theres some sort of big cover up to keep patients from being aware of the root cause of their illness. I dont feel like such a thing is factual, we are certainly aware that cad is a multisystem disease that is dependent on a broad array of risk factors.

However the focus is of course going to be on those things that we identify as the leading causes, genes and livers. However its certainly reasonable to incorporate a full spectrum of thyroid testing when screening patients and we should be open to that.

I would argue genetics is public enemy #1. The day we get a stronger understanding of genetics is when well better understand the dynamics of cad.

[2210485]

To further elaborate i dont see how a cardiology society wouldnt want to correct an issue that raises someones risk.

The goal is to reduce heart disease and physicians are pretty committed to that task.

When it comes to finances theres alot less to be gained then you'd think. Outpatient management and proper risk stratification is actually more profitable. Physicians and drug companies both have alot to gain from keeping patients healthy enough to stay out of the cath lab.

Additionally lets not forget that regardless of any outpatient lifestyle suggestions we make theres still a dedicated population of individuals who are going to smoke, and drink and eat garbage.. Im sure abbot.. Which also sells pacemakers and icds at up to $30,000 per unit btw... Will still make money.

If there was evidence pointing to the thyroid as some sort of miraculous source of cardiovascular disease they'd be making pills to put patients on for the rest of their lives, taking routine labs and scheduling infinite followups that they can bill insurance companies for.

As for your comment on cost of thyroid hormone supplementation and pigs.. You should know..

Cost of production has little to do with what winds up being charged to the patient.. We literally charge thousands of dollars for pieces of plastic.. Shoot even other porcine derived compounds are big money makers.. Look at heparin. If a pill will solve the problem, the pill will inevitably carry a higher profit margin in the long term. Lipitor is derived from penicillin for petes sake.. Im pretty sure i have some growing on a piece of fruit somewhere in my fridge right now and its literally one of the most profitable drugs in the usa..

From the perspective of the physicoan charging an insurance company $1000 for a routine (20 minute) office visit is way better financially then letting someone get sick for 5 years so i can sell them a $1200 stent delivery system lol. Not to mention you can fit dozens of patients into an office visit, but youd be lucky to do 4 caths in a day.

I just dont see sufficient motivation for the scientific community to want to cover anything up.

It's that whole 'acknowledgement would be shooting themselves in the foot bit' that i cant wrap my head around.

[mikiscupcake]

I don't quite think this is what you're asking for but I hope that it at least helps a bit.

I'm a 21 year old active female and I've been having kind of the same problems.  I lost a lot of weight at one time so it's given me blood sugar problems and I'm also quite anemic.  Whenever it feels like your sugar is getting low stuff like candy and sugary sodas are only a very temporary fix.  You need something to sustain you.  Natural sugars and carbs are the way to go.  Apples, as cheesy as it sounds, and granola will be your best friends.  They're easy to carry around in a small lunchbox or something and last a while.  Don't replace meals with these but as in between snacks are just wonderful to keep you going until you can get a full meal in.

[zoey0884]

I am a 24 year old active male.  If that helps.