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Q:

The monitoring form let me know exactly how I was doing on each dose I tried. I think I appreciate your monitoring form because I'm a financial advisor and I use monitoring of financial data and graphing every day for my clients. It's the only way I can clearly show them how their investments are performing. With the monitoring and graphing, I know they're able to make decisions that are more profitable for them. Will you consider posting your monitoring form to your website so that others can use it? I know you're big on patients treating themselves, and I think they'll do the best job if they can use the form. It sure worked for me.

Dr. Lowe: Thanks for the suggestion. I agree with you: patients are far more likely to get satisfactory results if they use the monitoring form. Along with this Q&A, we're posting a blank monitoring form for readers to individualize for themselves.

For those of you who haven't used a monitoring form, I'll make some comments about how to use it. When most patients consult with me long distance, especially if they're going to use Thyro-Gold, I individualize a form for them and email it to them. They print out as many copies of the form as they want. They then use a separate form each morning that they monitor their progress. (To learn what I ask patients to monitor, please read the Aug.3, 2009 Q&A.)

When you look at the form, you'll see that at the top are spaces where you can record the outcome of your physiological measurements. (The physiological measures are your basal temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, and fasting weight). The form also contains symptom severity scales. On each of these scales, you can estimate the intensity of your most troublesome symptoms.

The first symptoms severity scale is devoted to "Low sense of well-being." It's a good idea to include this as a symptom. But you'll also need to label some of the other severity scales, one scale for each of your predominant hypothyroid symptoms. As you approach your effective Thyro-Gold dose, you should see your estimated severity of the symptoms decreasing on successive monitoring forms.

The importance in keeping a record of the severity of your symptoms is this: When the typical patient has been doing well for weeks, but then he or she suddenly has a bad day, he or she tends to mentally reflect back over the good weeks and misperceive them as just as bad, as like this isolated bad day. The patient then feels compelled to change his or her Thyro-Gold dosage. But looking back over the monitoring forms can correct the misperception. So the patient stops him- or herself from saying, "I'm just not getting any better at all, so I need to radically change my Thyro-Gold dosage!" Instead, he or she says, "Obviously I've been steadily doing better on this dose for weeks. For some reason, today is an  exception. I'd best stay on the same dosage so that I keep this good trend going."

The monitoring form is free to download and print. It’s a gift from Tammy and me. We sincerely hope you’ll use it to systematically guide yourself to satisfactory improvement. Far better than just winging it, and certainly better than using your irrelevant TSH levels,  it can help you find the Thyro-Gold dosage that's just right for you.

A Monitoring Form for
Recording Your Measurements
from drlowe@drlowe.com

Franconia Ltd