Doctors overprescribing thyroid medicine, could cause health problems

Studies show that doctors may be overprescribing thyroid hormones to older people, causing more health issues in their lives. This is according to the Journal of Internal Medicine.

Only about 2% of people actually have an underactive thyroid that requires treatment. So why are these doctors doing this? Dr. Jack Snitzer of Peninsula Regional Endocrinology says it may just to be satisfy the patient who thinks that they actually have the issue in the first place.

Dr. Snitzer tells 47 ABC, “People come in all the time and say, I read about it I have all the symptoms of hypo-thyroid, I’m tired, I’m cold, I cant lose weight, my hairs thinning, and those again could all be symptoms of stress or depression or aging and so the doctor doesn’t really know what to say. The doc says well I’ll just try you on thyroid medicine, generally there’s no harm if you start low doses of thyroid medicine.”

Dr. Snitzer says patients taking the medicines often will begin to see improvements in their health, but a few weeks later, they are back to not feeling well. Dr. Snitzer says he always tells his patients even if they feel better on thyroid medicine, don’t just assume that the thyroid is the cause of tiredness or not being able to lose weight, you always need to look for other things.