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Relationships Suffer

Relationships Suffer

When too much emphasis is placed on medical knowledge and tests that are incorrectly considered to be conclusive, relationships suffer.

Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome is most easily recognized when it disappears quickly and easily with proper thyroid hormone treatment. As I mentioned, for patients and their families who have been through the experience, it is easy to recognize the condition in other people. Many of them describe it as if blinders have been removed from their eyes and they are able to see it almost all around them. Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome is not difficult to recognize, and when people become aware of the condition, it will be, together with the body temperature, one of the first things to come to mind, rather than the last. While not everyone has Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, I would say that almost everyone knows someone whose life is being greatly affected. People have been blinded to the existence of this condition because of over-reliance on indirect and therefore inconclusive measurements (thyroid hormone blood tests with large numbers of false negative results for DTSF). This blindness often leads harsh and unfounded criticism of those suffering Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome .

Of course, one of the biggest ramifications to which this problem can contribute is divorce. It is very common for patients with Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome to have their marriages end in divorce because it is hard for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome sufferers to live with other people. And it is hard for other people to live with them because of their physiological predisposition to be short suffering, irritable, and difficult to please. One of the saddest and most ironic aspects of this problem is that they often inadvertently alienate the people they love the most and, who are the only people that are really in a good position to be of support to them.

As we have discussed, Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome is characterized by a person being stuck in the conservation mode, which is a physiological state in which the body feels that it does not have sufficient resources to meet its challenges. Of course, in such a situation it would helpful to be able to obtain more resources and/or reduce the challenges for a time. However, when the resources are down it is easy to be irritable, frustrated, and selfish. This may further decrease available resources by alienating those in a position to help, for example; parents, spouses, children, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. If this process continues too long, it may lead to an even larger drop in available resources such as being fired, getting a divorce, or alienating parents and children, which only adds to the predicament. It would then be even more difficult for them to leave the conservation mode and enter back into the productivity mode.

Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome sufferers may have terrific difficulty with their sex drives which can further impair marital relations. The spouse may become insecure about his or her own desirability when the patient’s sex drive drops off dramatically, especially during difficult marital times. This problem can be hard to address, especially when the patients themselves can’t explain it adequately, maybe not even to themselves. They begin to wonder what could be wrong with their sex drive and why they don’t feel the way they used to towards their spouses. This can result in further difficulties in a family, which can lead to further complaints of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, thereby stating a vicious cycle that frequently ends in divorce. It seems that the incidence of divorce in Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome sufferers is much higher than that of the normal population, especially in those patients in which the condition has been long-standing. It is sad because when patients’ resources are down and they are feeling inexplicably overwhelmed, confused, and tired, they and their families may strike out in frustration, saying things to each other that are difficult to take back.

Patients often relate to me that they are putting up fronts at work and at home in an attempt to keep their problem from being easily noticed by others. This is true especially of executives in high pressure positions who have to work up schemes and methods to disguise their impairment and shortcomings at work. They live in fear that their employer, subordinates, or clients might discover their impairment and their inability to remember, concentrate, or function properly at work.

The fatigue of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, unlike the fatigue resulting from other causes, can frequently be overcome for short periods of time. It’s not as if the patients have absolutely no resources. It’s just that their resources are easily depleted. They can put on fronts at work, being able to function behind the façade of being halfway normal. Then if they don’t fall asleep on the road, they might collapse in a heap once they are home and be worthless for the rest of the night. They can muster their resources for a time, but when they are gone, they are gone. In the worst cases, their disability is so severe that it can’t be overcome and they simply can’t function at normal levels, making their disability obvious to all.

Interestingly, Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome sufferers are sometimes over-achievers. Because they push themselves so hard to overcome the feeling of fatigue, they can develop strong determination and frequently end up accomplishing a lot, even though it is difficult. If the condition is long-standing, the sufferer may have an unsteady job history being unable to function well in the work place.

I remember one person who was having an extremely difficult time passing her real estate license exam. Although she had previously been an excellent student and adept at taking tests, since she had developed Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, she found it very difficult to study. She found herself reading the same page over and over and unable to remember what she had read. She had the opportunity to take the test only three times and had failed the exam on her first two attempts. With treatment, her body temperature was normalized with a gratifying resolution of her symptoms and she was once again able to retain what she read. She was happy to report that she had passed the third and final try without difficulty. It is staggering to wonder how many other people’s test scores and lives are being affected by their body temperature patterns.

Typical Treatment Received By Medical Field
Let us now explore briefly how Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome sufferers have been typically handled by medical doctors. They will usually come to the doctor complaining of their worst symptom or possibly a combination of the worst two symptoms (again, either being unaware that more symptoms are related or out of fear of being considered a hypochondriac). If they are not severe, but only bad enough to bring the patient to the office because he or she is not feeling well, they may be told that there is no need for alarm, that it may simply be a matter of getting older, and that they may need to learn to live with the symptoms. If the patient does recount enough of the symptoms or if they are severe enough, the doctor might order routine multichemistry blood tests. Such tests generally check for 24 to 26 blood chemistry values including sodium, potassium, glucose, cholesterol, triglycerides, liver enzymes, kidney function tests, and others. With this screening, he may also order a complete blood count or CBC. The blood chemistry tests and CBC tests look primarily for evidence of any obvious abnormalities that could explain the patient’s complaints, such as kidney impairment, liver derangement, anemia, leukemia, electrolyte abnormalities, diabetes, infection, and other possible explanations for the patient’s complaints. Thyroid blood tests are frequently not tested on a screening (routine) basis. When they are tested, they are frequently normal, even in patients who are suffering from DTSF.

If the person’s description of their own problem does not lead the doctor to think of any specific problem and if the blood tests show no significant abnormality, the physician will often conclude that there is nothing significantly wrong with the patient and that they should get more exercise, more sleep, start eating better, and stop certain bad habits, such as excessive alcohol consumption, or smoking. If the patient’s complaints are specific enough and reminiscent enough of thyroid hormone deficiency, the physician may think to order thyroid blood tests. However, if these blood tests come back within normal limits, the physician will frequently incorrectly conclude that this necessarily means that the thyroid system is functioning adequately, and the patient might be given the same instructions as above.

If the symptoms are so severe and debilitating that the patient and doctor would consider the above advice to be obviously insufficient, if not ludicrous, and, if it appears to both the patient and the physician that there is definitely something seriously wrong; then the patient may be sent to a hospital, and/or multiple specialists in an attempt to isolate the problem. The patient may be referred from their family practitioner to an internal medicine specialist who may perform extensive blood tests looking for some other possible explanations for the complaints. Patients are often referred to neurologists, gastroenterologists, gynecologists, ENT (ear, nose and throat), infectious disease, endocrinologists, and psychiatrists. In some cases patients are given virtually every test in the book (brain scan, EEG, liver spleen scan, all manner of blood tests, thyroid scan, gall bladder scan, chest x-ray, upper GI, lower GI, etc.). Their bills can run in the tens of thousands of dollars in less than a month. At the end of all the tests and evaluations, there is often still no clear diagnosis. There is no treatment recommended and the patients are discharged from the hospital with all the currently known health problems being pretty well ruled out as causes of the symptoms. These evaluations aren’t always confined to a one month period of time. It may take place over a period of many years in a lifelong search to feel well.

With careful history taking, physical exams and laboratory tests (to rule out other obvious causes), such patients can often be recognized as having classic presentations for Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. Although it is not extremely expensive, there is a test that is very useful in helping to predict the likelihood of such a patient responding favorably and quickly to normalization of body temperatures (with Wilson’s T3 Therapy). That test is body temperature measurements. Although the evaluation does not take weeks or tens of thousands of dollars, the findings can be more than enough to explain a long list of annoying and even debilitating complaints.