location: Mechanicsville, MD
Your Question: Dear Dr. Roby,
I have stumbled upon your website in an attempt to find out what is causing my problems. I have been sick for years, most likely starting from early childhood. It has, however, really caught up worse now. I am 52 and have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Thryoiditis. For years before dealing with many different doctors and specialists in search of answers yeilding nothing. My adrenals have essentially quit on me. not just fatigue it seems. A sonogram of my thyroid revealed a cyst. I have cysts throughout my body. I use natural progesterone cream and am also on Levothyroxine to manage my thyroid. I also use cortisol cream and adrenal support supplements.
For years, anytime I would come down with any sort of infection, I would go into adrenal crisis and be rushed off to the ER. After being pumped full of IV fluids I would feel better…nothing was ever revealed about anything else, they would send me on my way. I stay in some form pf dehydration all the time. I could drink 12 glasses of water a day and still be dehydrated. In Oct 08, my own menstrual cycle set off adrenal crisis and also then it seemed I stayed in crisis mode until I keyed in that it was my adrenals and so I started
using the cream and supplements. This has stabilized me but the moment I go off this protocol I go into crisis within 24 hours. This happened after being on the thyroid meds for 8 months. I was hoping fixing the thyroid would also address my adrenals. It apparently has not. Now for the last 2 years, my hair has been falling out, breaking off with thin patches; my weight has increased even though my diet has not changed; I am retaining water (edema) and I look about 6 months pregnant.
It seems it is mostly my nightime levels of cortisol are the lowest. I can feel badly, then if I “cream up” within mintues I feel better. Since using the cream, I sleep thorughout the night mostly, but it is a crap shoot as to how I will feel the next day. So, I do feel something else is going on.
I started doing things for my health back in 2001 and saw phenominal improvements. Since then, I have had setbacks (9/11, the anthrax scare, the DC sniper events) all attributing to my decline. I have never fully recovered, yet when I attempt something new that I have discovered, it works for a short time. I see improvement, I feel hope, then after a few days, I suffer some form of setback again and lose hope again. This also happened with starting the thyroid meds. I saw my hair stop falling out and stop breaking, but it only lasted a for about 2 weeks, then back to square one.
There is SO MUCH more to my background that I should share with you, but I don’t have the time to type all of it in. The above is the most recent within 2 years of my health history.
I am scheduled to see another endocrinologist but I am not expecting much since I have been this route before. I believe I have more than one autoimmune disease…yet only the Hashimoto’s has been diagnosed. I am sure now that all of these cysts I have in various places all over my body, some external, some internal are a direct symtpom of something
going on. I suffer from exhausitng fatigue along with muscle pain if I even climb the stairs. Then the next day, I have all kinds of energy and can do heavy yard work without skipping a beat as if I am in the best of health. Somedays I can wake up feeling fine, then it can turn on a dime and I spiral down.
Your thoughts about all of this would be greatly appreciated and if you require more info or have any more questions, please let me know. I cannot stand being like this anymore. i feel I am dying a slow living death and this not only affects me, but also my family too. Anytime I feel badly, they are in a panic as to whether I will be okay or not. I cannot stand what it does to them. I would be okay with leaving this world right now if it wasn’t for them, so my writing to you is for them, not me.
Thanks,
Sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. But let’s just try make up for it now.
The very first thing that I want you to do, is go back on the website, and take advantage of the free download that Dr. Roby is offering of the first chapter of his new book, “Maybe It Is All In Your Head … And You Are NOT Crazy!”. This chapter will introduce you to the role that hormones play in our live, in general, and will give you a great amount of insight on what is happening in your own body with your own hormones, why it is happening, and what can be done about it. You will certainly know more than most doctors you’ve ever been to when you are finished reading it. If you have more questions, just email them to me.
Randomly, I want to remind you that plain water is a natural diuretic, and if you drink too much of it, will cause dehydration and an imbalance in your electrolytes. We suggest that you should also drink a couple of Club Sodas (6 oz. bottles) everyday, to avoid this.
Edema. If you are having an allergic reaction, to anything, you will be over producing mucus, and you will have soft tissue swelling. Your brain is soft tissue. Depending on where the swelling is most pronounced in your brain, will determine which part of the body is going to swell the most, as well. Your body swells, and you can feel really awful. But keep in mind, that it is just an allergic reaction. Sometimes, taking an OTC antihistamine, will do you more good than anything else. A reaction doesn’t mean that you are sick, it just means that you r body is hypersensitive.
Adrenals. Your adrenals are fatigued because you are too low on cortisol (almost anyone born in 1941 forward was born that way), which is supposed to help provide the energy to get through allergy, and fend off minor infections. You are forced to use adrenaline, the really big emergency hormone, for the energy to do everything. This is not good for you, over long periods of time, as you have discovered.
Dr. Roby has been researching this subject for years, and has found, that it has been published in various medical journals, dating back to 1921. It just so happened that the earlier research did not go far enough to explain the phenomena. He took it several steps forward, and today, is able to demonstrate what had been left out.
We think, for example, that auto immune disorders and diseases, are simply a constellation of what we call the “symptoms of hormone imbalance”, and are given a name by traditional medicine. I’ve been right where you are. Diagnosed with multiple autoimmune disorders, treated with vicious drugs, which I really would not take, and informed that I was dying. Nothing traditional worked for me, because they were looking for disease, as they are trained to do, and I didn’t have one. Just an imbalance, which they couldn’t recognize. Then I found Dr. Roby, and was (miraculously, I suppose) cured of the incurable, within 10 seconds of the first testing procedure that he did. If he could do that, who was right? Since I can do the same thing, using his methods, am I a miracle worker? Or is Dr. Roby correct? They do not recognize (although it’s getting better) hormonal issues, and are taught next to nothing about them in medical school.
Your symptoms are classic in our clinics. We see them over and over, every day. All indications from your email, are that you have, at the least, a hormone imbalance, and perhaps, a true allergy to one or more, of your own hormones. I’m sure that we can help you, but you would have to come here for the first visit, and an annual retesting. By law, Texas doctors are not allowed to diagnose, treat, or prescribe for any patient they have not seen in person. After the first visit, almost everything can be handled by phone or email. Our phone number is: 800-842-6349, if you need information on making an appointment, or about the practice..
When you go back to the website, try and read the sections on Allergies. Hormone, food and airbornes. They all work together for you, or against you. We can help you to help your body to work the way it should. It starts, with the low cortisol, involves, almost always, progesterone, and adrenaline. We can fix it. If you have to have a diagnosis, hormone imbalance/allergy, is the one to hope for. Easy to diagnose, easy to fix and keep fixed.
One of the best, and the only really safe way to handle your adrenaline, is what we call LDS. Looong, Slooow Dissstance walking. We all do it here. 1 hour, every morning, of slow walking, on a treadmill. Treadmills are relatively cheap here, so most of us have one at home. We don’t want you to be breathless, tired or sweaty. Keep your pulse rate at 90 or below. Then do the same thing again, at night, just before going to bed. This night time walk is for the purpose of dissipating the adrenaline build up of the day. Allows you to get to the 4th level of sleep, which is where the ‘relax and repair’ of the ravages that have occurred because of the adrenaline, are fixed, while you sleep.
Please let me know if I have not answered your questions, or if I can be of more help.
Best regards,
Dorothy Dreux
Roby Institute