Next, we will explore some typical causes of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. The symptoms in this book all have some things in common. They each have been seen to come on together with some of the other symptoms in a group, and to resolve together with some of the other symptoms with normalization of body temperature patterns.
Patients can usually relate the onset of their symptoms to an identifiable stress (usually within weeks, days or even hours after the precipitating event). With less insidious onsets, the symptoms surface gradually within two months of a particular stress. At other times a precipitating event cannot be identified at all. The stress correlation is much more obvious when the symptoms come on within days, if not hours after the stress. Through these obvious cases, it has been easy to identify typical causes of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. Interestingly, emotional stresses seem to be as prevalent as, if not more prevalent than, physical stresses as causes of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome.
Considering the great flexibility and adaptivity of the female hormonal and physical systems, it is easy to understand why pregnancy and childbirth are the number one causes of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. This same pattern has been seen during other periods of great hormonal system fluctuations, such as menarche (the onset of a young woman’s first menstrual cycle), puberty, administration of birth control pills, hysterectomy, and administration of female hormone replacement therapy for menopause. It is not difficult to imagine how Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome could be precipitated at these times of hormonal changes since changes in the “tensions” can affect the position of the “ring” (overall balance of body functions). When the overall balance of body functions is changing it’s easier for it to be pulled off center. The further out of balance it gets, the more likely the overall balance is to stay out of balance. No wonder childbirth and pregnancy would be the number one causes of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. It’s difficult to imagine a time when there is a greater change in the overall balance of bodily functions. Bringing a child into the world is more than enough to explain how a woman might change in certain respects, never quite being the same. Fortunately, the condition can often be very much improved with the WT3 protocol.
Certainly stressful life-styles can predispose people to developing Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. Being raised in a dysfunctional family can frequently contribute to its development. Too often, patients can trace the onset of their Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome to the time that they were abused physically, emotionally, or sexually as a child in their home. I recall the sad story of one patient in her late thirties or early forties. She could easily trace the onset and persistence of her symptoms to a time when she was in second grade. At that time, she was locked in a safe for a time as a punishment by a strict disciplinarian at school. Needless to say, she was quite frightened and uncomfortable. Not surprisingly, she has been panicky and claustrophobic in elevators and other types of places since then. Such a story certainly sounds psychological in nature, until the persistent symptoms begin to resolve quickly as a group with the administration of the WT3 protocol.
Difficult living conditions brought about by the alcoholism or drug dependence of a person’s parents can also lead to Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. Sadly, patients will sometimes recount the onset of their symptoms to be the time they were raped in their teens, twenties, or thirties. Certain occupations can contribute to patients developing Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome, especially
1. Jobs that involve a great deal of stress, such as certain high pressure sales positions where the person is constantly under the threat of losing his job because of not being able to meet quotas, etc.
2. Jobs that carry a lot of responsibility, especially in terms of being responsible for others, and where one is in a position where he or she is responsible for getting others to produce.
3. Difficult job situations where there is a great deal of discontent, hostility, arguing, and great emotional pressure.
4. Jobs that involve extremely long work hours and poor sleep habits, or that deprive a person of proper exercise and nutrition by encouraging the patient not to eat all day, but to eat one big meal at nighttime right before going to sleep.
5. Certain work-related injuries with heavy equipment, such as back injuries.
6. Emotionally punishing jobs seem to cause problems more often than physically punishing jobs, especially when there is no opportunity to relieve or counteract that stress with proper exercise and nutrition.
7. Of course, large pay cuts or losing one’s income because of being laid off, fired, or losing a business, especially when there are unexpected expenses.
Again, we see that the condition is most commonly caused when one’s resources are perceived by the body to be inadequate for the challenges being presented. This may occur when the resources are significantly decreased (losing a job), or when the challenges are significantly increased (aged parent becoming ill and needing to be nursed back to health).
It is a continuous source of fascination for me to see the varied and unusual circumstances that can precipitate Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. Again, it is easy to identify the precipitating events when the symptoms are related to one another in onset and are very easily related to a significant change in a person’s life, when no other obvious explanation can be identified, and especially when the symptoms resolve together at the same time when the body temperature patterns are normalized with proper thyroid hormone treatment.
As it turns out, tonsillectomy is also a common cause of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. I’m sure all of us have wondered from time to time about the consequences of removing different parts of the body that have been with us since birth (tonsils, appendix, gall bladder, etc.). I have heard many patients say:
“I was fine until I was eight years old and had my tonsils out, and I have never been quite the same since.”
“I was fine until I was eleven years old and had my tonsils out and I have never been quite the same since.”
“I was fine until I was nineteen years old and I had my tonsils out and I have never been quite the same since.”
This is a reproducible presentation with the patients developing classic signs and symptoms that respond well to the WT3 protocol.
Because of the many classic and obvious cases I have seen, I have also been able to see the same pattern of onset in more subtle presentations and cases. One patient I treated in her early fifties, responded well to the WT3 protocol and enjoyed a persistent resolution of her Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome symptoms for ten months, even after thyroid hormone treatment had been weaned. She was fine until one day she was walking down the sidewalk and accidentally bumped her head on a tree limb. She was not severely injured and the incident startled her more than anything else, yet she noticed, especially the next day, the relapsing of some of her symptoms. I am convinced that this small incident caused her symptoms to relapse since she could think of no other unusual circumstances, and since she recognized the symptoms coming on together, and responding together in the same way they did with the first occurrence.
Over the years, having treated thousands of patients with these types of problems, I have certainly been able to see amazingly predictable and reproducible patterns. And I have seen a number of interesting cases. One unusual case is that of a young woman in her early thirties who had been recently married. She identified the onset of her symptoms to be the weekend she and her husband flew up north to stay with her in-laws for the first time. She remembers his family as being quite odd, if not certifiably crazy. Since that fateful trip a year and a half prior to treatment, the patient had not been quite the same.
More long-term living conditions can also contribute, in huge measure, to a patient developing Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. For example, when there are problems in the home that lead to contention, alienation, and decreased cooperation, these problems can lead to arguments, divorce, strained parent/child relations, and Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome.
Doing The Best We Can With What We Have
As mentioned previously, the symptoms of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome (more than 60 of them) are actually symptoms of Multiple Enzyme Dysfunction (MED). The symptoms of MED are most often caused by abnormal body temperature patterns, which can arise from a number of causes. However, we are most concerned with the abnormal body temperature patterns that result from an impairment in the conversion of T4 to T3.
This impairment is perpetuated, in part, by the inhibition of T4 to T3 conversion due to RT3. The treatment of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome has been designed to “reset” the pattern of peripheral conversion by altering, for a time, levels of RT3. This is done in an effort to re-establish normal T4 to T3 conversion patterns, normal body temperature patterns, and to resolve the symptoms of MED.
This approach has proven to be very successful. In many cases, patients are able to be weaned off the medication with their body temperature pattern remaining more normal even after thyroid hormone supplementation has been weaned.
If a patient responds favorably to treatment for a suspected problem, then it is more likely that the patient did in fact, have that problem and that the treatment prescribed was correct. Since so many people respond so well to treatment designed to correct persistently impaired peripheral conversion of T4 to T3, then it is more likely that is their problem, and furthermore, that the treatment is correct. The characteristics that help predict who will respond favorably to the treatment, then, are likely to be characteristic of a medical problem the treatment corrects.
The presence or absence of one or more of the characteristics and patterns of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome discussed in this chapter does not necessarily mean that a patient is or is not suffering from an impairment in the conversion of T4 to T3 or Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. But these characteristics or patterns should instead be considered to be predictive, in that the more characteristics of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome a particular person has, the more likely it is that he is suffering from Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome and the more likely it is that he will respond favorably to treatment. And, as was mentioned earlier, everything in medicine is a therapeutic trial, and nothing in medicine is absolute.
Some people may have characteristic symptoms that are not necessarily caused by low body temperature patterns. Not everyone that has low body temperature patterns has Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome or symptoms consistent with it. However, if a person does have the symptoms of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome and if he has a persistently low body temperature, then the low body temperature pattern is more than enough to explain the patient’s symptoms. So, it is important that we consider carefully what is and is not being said so that the information in this book is not used unwisely. As has been mentioned previously, faulty assumptions and faulty conclusions have caused Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome and probably many other important problems to be overlooked for a long time.
The important point is that this information is incredibly useful and has a tremendous amount of predictive value in alleviating or correcting a great amount of debilitation and suffering in a large percentage of people who are currently unable to find relief.
In each case, the doctor and patient must decide whether or not the patient’s complaints and presentations are or are not inappropriate (decide if the patient is sick). Patients suffering from the symptoms of Multiple Enzyme Dysfunction and their own doctors often agree that their complaints are inappropriate and undesirable to the extent that their doctors often prescribe all manner of symptomatic treatments in an attempt to address those complaints. The characteristics of Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome discussed in this chapter are useful only to the extent that they help in evaluating such complaints. Of course, the more characteristics, the greater the likelihood that the patient will respond well to treatment. The less characteristics, the less chance a patient has of responding to treatment. Always the various alternatives, the pros and cons, probabilities, and likelihoods must be weighed on a case-by-case basis.
Because not all things can be determined exactly does not mean that efforts cannot be made to predict likelihoods based on certain observations. This process is similar to what you might do if someone gave you a birthday present and wanted you to guess what it was. It might be easier to guess if the wrapped present was in front of you, judging by the size you might be able to narrow down the possibilities. Picking up the present to see how heavy it is, and squeezing the wrapping with your hands and fingers may also help you determine its shape. Shaking the present gently, listening for the sound that it makes, or smelling it, may help further characterize the gift. All of these observations are helpful, but can’t always be relied upon completely, as all of us know who have ever received a small gift packed in a large box with a lot of filler paper.
It’s a little like trying to determine the contents of a large black box that we cannot see into. We can shake it, prod it, poke it, smell it, listen to it, cool it, warm it, etc., in an attempt to determine the contents. If one hears a meow, then most of us would have a pretty good guess as to the contents of the box, because there are few things in the world that make such a sound. So based on the suspicion that the animal inside is a cat, then certain things can be done to see if there is a predictable and reproducible response. For example, if the animal inside eats cat food like a cat, knocks a ball of yarn around the box like a cat, leaves droppings like a cat, shreds a scratching post like a cat and sheds hair like a cat, then it is more likely that the animal inside the box is a cat. This information would prove useful if it were important to preserve the contents of the box. One might choose to supply the box with services that would be directed to the proper care and feeding of a cat. So, even though we can’t see exactly what’s inside the black box, a lot of good can be done by doing the best we can with the information that’s available. In this process one might be able to preserve the contents of a lot of boxes that might otherwise be lost.
Just as it may be characteristic for a cat to eat certain things, to behave in a certain way, to make certain noises, to make certain droppings, and to have certain smells, different medical problems and conditions also have characteristics that can aid us in distinguishing one from another and therefore in helping us to direct therapy. The more predictably a condition or complaint behaves, the greater the predictive value its behavior has. As it turns out, Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome is extremely predictable and reproducible in its behavior and responses.
It must be remembered, however, that not all cats will eat certain kinds of cat food, and not everything that will eat cat food is a cat. Not all cats scratch scratching posts, and not everything that scratches a scratching post is a cat. Whereas all cats may have droppings, some animals may have droppings similar to cats. There are, however, few animals that make meow sounds. The point is, that some observations have more predictive values than others. Some observations have less predictive value, but nevertheless, they are important and may add to the overall picture, so that all the observations can be taken together to help us do the best we can with what we have.