Dr. Broda Barnes, MD and His Basal Body Temperature Testing for Low Thyroid Function

January 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment

The thyroid gland may be one of the most elusive causes of many chronic health issues seen in my office.This gland is capable of mimicking over 65 major symptoms of illness and disorder in the human body- the proverbial mockingbird of medicine, wouldn’t you say?

Untreated, a weak thyroid affects the metabolism of every cell in your body and mocks your attempts at living out a long and healthy life span. A weak thyroid gland can even create errors in diagnosis and treatment. For instance, treating only your frequent upper respiratory illnesses with antibiotics while missing the underlying cause which may be hypothyroidism, can continue to weaken your body further leading to chronic fatigue, poor sense of well-being and may worsens your ability to think and even remember!

However, there is a very simple way of catching this little gland off guard to help you make the diagnosis more obvious for your doctor.

If we would all just remember to go back to basics once in awhile, and doctors are no exception. If most doctors would dare revisit their roots in medicine, more of them could learn to detect that which is hidden in plain sight. Sometimes, scientists just get so caught up in all of the neat gadgets, gizmos and flashy techy stuff modern technology seems to throws at us from every which way. Be we often find that it takes just a bit of common sense, some old fashioned discipline and even perhaps frank gall to gather up the courage to look back at history as we explore all that we have forgotten or have put aside for the sake of advancement. A sensible, and simplistic approach may be all that is needed here to land this elusive, moving target.

Enter the case of the deceptive thyroid disorder known as the low T3 syndrome. This is NOT your typical hypothyroidism, in fact this diagnosis is usually missed by 98% of all traditional physicians in their rapid scanning of lab tests looking only for those values that are obviously too far outside of the normal reference range.

But we are not talking here about a blatant thyroid shut down. No, we are looking at sub-optimal thyroid deficiencies in my practice. The exact kind of deficiency that causes so many vague symptoms of fatigue, sluggishness of thoughts and that overall yucky feeling I see so much each day in patients with less than optimal physiology. Most doctors are just too busy to mess with these suboptimal levels or less than ideal physiology states, choosing instead to wait for frank disease and a total shut down to start replacement therapies with medications that are way too expensive or worse that leave behind a trail of side effects requiring other medications to calm the wake.

So here’s the formula, it’s called the Barnes Basal Body Temperature Test, developed by Dr. Broda Barnes, MD. who wrote more medical research on the subject than you can imagine and certainly at a time when perhaps we may have all been coming out of training pants and diapers. But it still sets a precedent for clinical significance and potency of diagnosis. It goes like this:

Put an axillary (armpit) thermometer by your bedside at night and make sure that you shake it down to the lowest temperature reading. In the morning and before getting out of bed or moving around, put the thermometer under your armpit for 10 minutes and lie very, very still. Record your readings for at least 3 mornings in a row. The normal readings are 97.8 to 98.2. If yours are lower than this and you have the classic symptoms (which are outside of the scope of this article at the moment), then take all of this information to your doctor to get tested.

If you are a woman that still has menstrual cycles, make sure that you do this when you are not on your cycle as this will affect your temperatures. Do it immediately after your cycle or during the final days of your cycle like on days 3, 4 or 5. Don’t do it in the middle of your cycle or you will get the rising temperatures seen with ovulation which is one of the ways we use to teach women to check for ovulation and thus improve their chances of getting pregnant.

Hope this common sense approach helps. Let me know…

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