Thyroid, Depression and Mental Health

It’s a common scenario for hypothyroid patients, especially when you are undiagnosed due to your doctor’s over-reliance on a faulty TSH range, or treated with thyroxine T4-only medications: You go to the doctor; you complain about your depression, or your anxiety, or your emotional swings, or your inability to concentrate, and onto your doctor’s favorite anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, lithium, or bi-polar med you go—beginning with the freebies on the shelf from his friendly and suited pharmaceutical rep. Sound familiar??

But the problem with this scenario is that your depression or anxiety or other mental health problem is not a unique and unrelated illness. It’s most likely due to having a low free T3, the active thyroid hormone, and/or adrenal insufficiency. And this is especially common for patients treated with Synthroid, Levoxyl, Eltoxine, Levothyroxine and other T4-only medications.

And this problem is not limited to depression. Low thyroid hormones, and the common occurrence of sluggish, poorly functioning adrenals, can play a role in a variety of emotional and behavioral symptoms and disturbances, including anxiety, excessive fear, mood swings like bi-polar, rage, irritability, paranoid schizophrenia, confusion, dementia, obsessive/compulsive disorders, and mental aberrations.

So if your physician or psychiatrist failed to check your thyroid function with the correct lab tests (free T3 and free T4, plus antibodies), and your adrenal function with a 24 hour adrenal saliva test, and instead prescribed his or her favorite band-aid psychotrophic medication, you are left with medications that can include unneeded fluoride, that can clash with your other meds, that can make your hypothyroid worse, or can leave you with classic side effects…besides the cost.

… Thyroid hormones thyroxine (T4, as the storage hormone) and triiodothyronine (T3, as the converted and direct active hormone) not only play a part in the health of your metabolic endocrine, nervous and immune system, they in turn have an important role in the health and optimal functioning of your brain, including your cognitive function, mood, ability to concentrate, memory, attention span, and emotions. On her website, Christiane Northrup, MD states that T3 “is actually a bona fide neurotransmitter that regulates the action of serotonin, norepinephrine, and GABA (gamma aminobutyric acid), an inhibitory neurotransmitter that is important for quelling anxiety.” She also states that “If you don’t have enough T3, or if its action is blocked, an entire cascade of neurotransmitter abnormalities may ensue and can lead to mood and energy changes, including depression.” …

He feels that up to one-half of depression is due to unrecognized hypothyroidism….

In addition to low T3 levels causing psychiatric and psychological disorders, low cortisol levels can be an additional culprit—even when you feel you are adequately treated for your thyroid. …

What’s the solution?

If you recognize any of the mental health issues mentioned above–or even have friends or family members who have been trying to point these out to you—find a doctor who will test your free T3, plus antibodies. If you find your free T3 below mid-range, or if you have an autoimmune attack going on against your thyroid (which will make labs useless since you vascillate between hypo and hyper), you need to discuss the addition of Cytomel (synthetic T3) to your current thyroxine medication. There is a growing body of doctors and researchers who are using T3 as an adjunct to anti-depressive therapy, since improving your T3 levels can raise brain levels of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine to the optimal level they need to be.

Even better, according the experience of many, is switching to desiccated thyroid, which gives you the entire complement your own thyroid would be giving you—T4, T3, T2, T1 and calcitonin.via Stop The Thyroid Madness » Thyroid, Depression and Mental Health.

Green Tree at it again

Update: 4/20/2010:

I sent Green Tree a letter telling them that they are mistaken, and that according to my qualified Real Estate Finance Attorneys, I do not, under California law, owe them $58,636 because the first and the 2nd (a HELOC) were purchase money debt.  After a difficult series of FAX hurdles, I started calling them every day until I finally was able to get my letter “uploaded to their system.”  The team at Green Tree reviewed my information and I was told today that as of tomorrow morning, they will send a letter granting me a full release.

Previous post:

Serveral months after my short sale in California, GreenTree has started collection calls again.  They’ve called three times in the last hour. I talked to them the first time. They say that they will continue to attempt to collect on my HELOC unless my attorney to sends them a cease and desist letter. Such a letter, I read elsewhere, is certain to lead to a lawsuit. Looks like I’ll have to take this to court to verify that my attorney is correct about the HELOC being non-recourse purchase money debt.

I want to make sure that when I win GreenTree pays all the court costs and for my lost time and missed work. And, if they break any CA collection rules, they can also pay for damages. (See http://ag.ca.gov/consumers/general/collection_agencies10.php ). Summary from rottentomatoes:

Debt collection rules
Collectors can only call 8am to 9 p.m., in your time zone.
They cannot harass by calling repeatedly.
Collectors cannot use obscene, profane or abusive language.
They cannot threaten violence for failure to pay.
Collectors cannot call you at work if they know your employer does not allow it.
You have a right to dispute the debt within 30 days of written notification.
Debt collection is regulated by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which forbids harassing consumers. Companies can be fined $16,000 per incident.

Lasers to beam energy to Earth from space

It sounds more like a scheme dreamed up by a James Bond villain attempting to destroy the Earth than a technology that could help provide a solution to the planet’s dwindling energy supplies.

Engineers plan to put satellites into orbit around the planet that can gather energy from the sun, concentrate it into powerful laser beams and transmit the energy back to the Earth where it can be used to generate electricity.

While harvesting solar energy in space has been discussed by scientists for more than 30 years, engineers at EADS Astrium, Europe’s largest space company, now believe the technology is available to allow them to start building a working prototype.

They hope to have a small demonstrator of a full sized space-based power station, capable of beaming back 10-20kW of power, ready for launch in the next five years.

Using a network of these solar power stations it would be possible to provide energy on demand 24 hours a day – something that is not possible with solar power on the planet’s surface which can only produce energy during the hours of sunlight.

“There is a global need for increased energy generation that does not have an environmental impact,” explained Matthew Perren, head of innovation at Astrium’s headquarters in Paris.

“The real advantage of space solar power is that it can provide power on demand as we can essentially point the laser beam where ever we like on the earth below the orbit.

“Looking to the future we envisage large power stations in space that are capable of transmitting energy to any point in the planet on demand.”

Space-based solar power, although more expensive than using solar panels on Earth, is attractive because of its capability to provide a clean, inexhaustible power supply around the clock.

Much of the power of the sun is filtered out by the Earth’s atmosphere while clouds and the inability to produce power at night have all limited the use of solar power as an energy source.

In space, however, the sun’s rays are far more powerful and even with a relatively inefficient conversion process, could still produce large amounts of power. Most importantly, satellites can be positioned so they are exposed to sunlight for far longer than sites on Earth.

The space power stations would be launched into a geostationary orbit, which means they remain above the same point above the planet, around 22,300 miles above the surface.

With solar panels more than 50 metres across, they would be able to gather large amounts of energy from the sun which would then be converted into a infrared laser beam to be transmitted back to Earth.

One of the key uses of the technology could be to power a new generation of large electric vehicles such as cargo ships and tankers. The satellites could be made to move the laser beam to track the ships as they move across the ocean, providing a constant energy supply.

Scientists at Astrium have already begun work on developing the technology needed to turn a laser beam into movable source of electricity. They have managed to use lasers in the laboratory to power toy cars.

Astrium hopes to work with international space agencies, governments and power companies to develop a network of space based power stations that will eventually be capable of supplying enough energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes.

But it is not the only firm working in the field. In September Japan announced a $21 billion plan to send solar panel equipped satellite into space that could beam enough power back to Earth to supply 300,000 homes.

California has also made a deal with a company called Solaren to design satellites that would beam power back down from solar powered satellites.

But Astrium claims that its approach of using infrared lasers will make the system safer than other proposals which have suggested using microwaves to transmit the energy. If misdirected, microwaves could cause widespread damage, effectively cooking anything in their path.

Such schemes are reminiscent of far fetched plots in James Bond movies such as Die Another Day, where villain Gustav Graves builds a space based laser that he can control as a weapon, and Diamonds are Forever, where Ernst Stavro Blofeld attempts to hold the world to ransom with a laser in space.

Astrium, however, insist that the infrared laser, which is typically used in laser guidance systems for the military, will be safe. As it is beyond the visible spectrum of the human eye, it would also not be harmful to eyesight should anyone look into the beam.

Mr Perren said: “We are concentrating on developing something that is safe. While the laser beam will have some heat in it, we intend for it to be safe for people to walk through unaffected.

“Much of the technology we need has already been tried and tested in existing satellites and spacecraft, but there are technical difficulties that still need to be overcome such as improving the efficiency of converting the energy and increasing the power of the laser we can build.

“It is important to remember that we are not looking to take the place of power stations on Earth, but to provide another piece of the puzzle in finding alternative energy sources.”

via Lasers to beam energy to Earth from space – Telegraph.

This would be a great idea if we weren’t such a deceptive war-loving animal.  Too tempting for someone to use it as a weapon.  How could it be made safe?

Slime design mimics Tokyo’s rail system

What could human engineers possibly learn from the lowly slime mold? Reliable, cost-efficient network construction, apparently: a recent experiment suggests that Physarum polycephalum, a gelatinous fungus-like mold, might actually lead the way to improved technological systems, such as more robust computer and mobile communication networks.

This revelation comes after a team of Japanese and British researchers observed that the slime mold connected itself to scattered food sources in a design that was nearly identical to Tokyo’s rail system.

The related report will be published by the journal Science on 22 January.

Atsushi Tero from Hokkaido University in Japan, along with colleagues elsewhere in Japan and the United Kingdom, placed oat flakes on a wet surface in locations that corresponded to the cities surrounding Tokyo, and allowed the Physarum polycephalum mold to grow outwards from the center. They watched the slime mold self-organize, spread out, and form a network that was comparable in efficiency, reliability, and cost to the real-world infrastructure of Tokyo’s train network.

“Some organisms grow in the form of an interconnected network as part of their normal foraging strategy to discover and exploit new resources,” Tero writes in the report. “Physarum is a large, single-celled amoeboid organism that forages for patchily distributed food sources… [It] can find the shortest path through a maze or connect different arrays of food sources in an efficient manner with low total length yet short average minimum distance between pairs of food sources, with a high degree of fault tolerance to accidental disconnection.”

The researchers knew that capturing the essence of this biological system in simple rules could be useful to inform the construction of self-organizing and cost-efficient networks in the real world. They captured the core mechanisms needed by the slime mold to connect its food sources in an efficient manner and incorporated them into a mathematical model. …

via Slime design mimics Tokyo’s rail system.

117 Russians in Hospital After Drinking Holy Water

More than 100 Russian Orthodox believers have been hospitalized after drinking holy water during Epiphany celebrations in the eastern city of Irkutsk, an official said Monday.

A total of 117 people, including 48 children, were in the hospital complaining of acute intestinal pain after drinking water from wells in and around a local church last week, said Vladimir Salovarov, a spokesman for the Irkutsk Investigative Committee.

Salovarov said 204 people required some medical treatment after consuming the water, the source of which was a stagnant lake. He said, however, that it was too early to say what caused the illness.

Many Russians consider any water obtained on Epiphany — which they celebrate on Jan. 19 — to be holy.

The water is typically bottled for consumption later. Tap water in most of Russia is undrinkable.

via 117 Russians in Hospital After Drinking Holy Water – ABC News.

Toubstone: Lilly E. Gray – “Victim of the Beast 666″

The legend, a synopsis: In the Salt Lake City Cemetery, there is a gravestone for a woman named Lilly E. Gray with an inscription that reads, “VICTIM OF THE BEAST 666.” Many people have attempted to research this stone and Lilly, but strangely always hit a brick wall, as there is no information aside from her obituary, which states only that she died in a local hospital from natural causes.

Within the sublime Salt Lake City Cemetery, there is indeed a gravestone which has aroused interest and curiosity over the years, and has recently, with the advent of the internet, become the object of intrigue and fascination, amateur and oftentimes apathetic sleuthery. The stone is modest- a small, flat marker; the inscription is anything but: “VICTIM OF THE BEAST 666″

Cemetery legends abound. These stories, more often than not, especially when pertaining to specific gravestones and their inhabitants, tend to take on the attributes of the urban legend, mirroring societal fears, horror, and capitalizing on mystery; they usually have an associated thread of religious intrigue, including ‘devil worship’. The legends also tend to arise from the most benign origins.

Part of the fascination with the Lilly E. Gray mystery could be due to its “legend in reverse” quality. The impetus is its blatant-ness, its in-your-face refence to satan, then an unravelling reveals “nothing”. The strange lack of any story associated with Lily Gray’s gravestone is its biggest mystery and also the not very festive centerpiece its own developing, unique legend. The stone’s astonishing, provocative inscription begs for interpretation and meaning; where are all the suppositions? They are few, certainly. There are a couple websites that allude to the use of stone’s image within a report by investigators of satanic ritual abuse hysteria.

via World of Mystery: Salt Lake City Legend: Lilly E. Gray – “Victim of the Beast 666″.

I think it is a typo. In 1958 the United States detonated seventy-seven atomic tests, more than any other year prior or since (officially). It should has said, Victim of the BLAST …. no, here is a better explanation: Her crazy husband did it. This is from Richelle Hawks who lives in Salt Lake City:

… Behold: Elmer L. Gray’s Criminal Pardons Application is now available online via the Utah State Archives. What a character. Reading his answers in the form questionnaire, a definite sense of his personality can be detected, which includes sarcasm (“Woodrowe Lamb, a bum,”) irony, and exaggeration. He seems quite eccentric, and probably more than a bit cantankerous.

In the document, he has typed a line that has an affinity with and shares a spirit with the one on Lilly’s stone. On the line that asks for “Address of parents,” Mr. Gray has written, “Booth dead. Died of grief when kidnapers murdered my Wife.” Later, he refers to his arresting officers and prison officials as “Democrat officials,” and “kidnapers.”

So, whatever the real circumstances concerning these family deaths, it can be concluded that Elmer Gray blamed the law for the death of his previous wife and clearly considered her a victim. (Remember, Lilly was a subsequent wife-they married in 1950, three years after this document was filed.)

Elmer Gray’s view of the government and law is clear-a criminal, evil organization hell-bent on kidnapping, imprisoning and murdering innocent citizens without cause or provocation.

With all the conspiracy, anti-government, sentiments of victimization within, it is difficult and perhaps foolish not to come to one conclusion-that Elmer L. Gray was responsible for placing the outrageous phrase, “Victim of the Beast 666″ on his second wife Lilly’s gravestone, and that it refers simply to the government, law enforcement and officials, with whom he likely tangled with his entire adult life*, and the dynamics and beliefs based on his experiences.

So, after reading the Criminal Pardons Application, and considering his references to victimhood and murder at the hands of the law; also that he was Lilly’s only known survivor, who likely made all her funeral arrangements, including ordering her stone-what are the chances that the inscription has nothing to do with his extreme belief system? – ufodigest

Live pigs blown up in government terrorism experiments

Live pigs are being blown up as part of a series of government terrorism experiments at Porton Down, the government’s secret military research laboratory.

Eighteen pigs wrapped in protective Kevlar blankets were blasted in a bid to help scientists understand more about the effects of bomb blasts on victims.

The animals were placed less than three yards from an explosive. Before being blown up, tubes were inserted into their blood vessels and bladders, and their spleens were removed.

A wire was also put into a major abdominal blood vessel to ensure the vessel became lacerated in the explosion.

The Kevlar blankets were used to protect the animals from minor bomb debris and the animals were anaesthetised throughout.

Scientists wanted to find out how long the animals survived when more than a third of their blood had drained from their bodies.

Medics hope the experiments will help British soldiers in Afghanistan as well as casualties of terror attacks like the July 2005 bombing of the London Underground and a double-decker bus.

In particular these results should help them understand how to control haemorrhaging in bomb blast victims.

But Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes, questioned the use of live animals in military experiments.

Talking to the Sunday Times he said: “These are revolting and unnecessary experiments. Sadly, we are too familiar with the effects of terrorism. It is perfectly possible to find out things we don’t know without blowing up pigs to find out.” …

No pigs survived the experiments.

via Live pigs blown up in government terrorism experiments – Telegraph.

Pigs are smarter than dogs. That’s why I stopped eating them years ago, despite loving the taste of bacon and smoked ham. If we could grow authentic healthy pig meat in a lab without it being part of an animal, I’d probably eat it once a week. Anyway, pigs are very smart:

In the current issue of Animal Behaviour, researchers present evidence that domestic pigs can quickly learn how mirrors work and will use their understanding of reflected images to scope out their surroundings and find their food. The researchers cannot yet say whether the animals realize that the eyes in the mirror are their own, or whether pigs might rank with apes, dolphins and other species that have passed the famed “mirror self-recognition test” thought to be a marker of self-awareness and advanced intelligence.  … – NYTimes

This is unbelievably cruel and unnecessary. Is there no ethics committee?

If the researchers at Porton Down would instead blow themselves up, they’d learn from the experience and they’d definitely save lives. I’m kidding about that, but there ARE plenty of human casualties right now that could be studied. If the Downers choose not to blow themselves up, they might instead just go examine some unfortunate soldiers who can be found with these types of major injuries in military hospitals.