What Is The Optimal TSH Level? - Dr. Martin Rutherford

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what is the optimal TSH level? I don't think anybody knows. I really don't, but here's the back story on that. When I got into this, so there's a medical lab range and it's better known as a pathological lab range. So most of the medical ranges that you see on your lab test in Labcorp or wherever you go are medical, pathological ranges. Meaning by the time those ranges really become positive on your test, and positive means it's not a good thing, there's a lot of damage that's already taken done. Now we're at the end point and it's showing up on that range. Now it's let's take his medicine or something like that.

But when we first started out in chronic conditions, and chronic pain, and chronic gut problems and realized that Hashimoto's was an issue and autoimmunity was an issue, and that the ranges, everybody was told that their lab tests were normal for everything, not just thyroids but everything. Then there were biochemists who started to shrink the ranges down. So back then the optimal range in the functional world. So the functional world was we wanted to know about dysfunction. The patient would come in, they'd have all of the symptoms of a disease, of a condition, whether it was insulin resistance or whether it was SIBO or whether it was Hashimoto's or whatever it was, but yet all their lab tests were normal.

So we wanted to know what was going on with the organs that caused those symptoms because dysfunction precedes going into pathology. Eventually you're going to get into the pathological ones. So the biochemist that we followed made... The pathological range for Hashimoto's was 0.45, 0.45 to 4.5 and that's the range for thyroid stimulating hormone. I just said Hashimoto's, but I meant to say thyroid stimulating hormone. So that's still the range for them.

Now in the functional world, we've used ranges that started from 1.8 to three, which is a very narrow range for your TSH. This was 20 years ago. As time has gone on, that range has changed from by observing different research projects, by just observing hundreds, thousands of physicians observing that range went to one to three. So currently I am using the range one to three. 1.8 seemed a little tight and I thought that when we were using it and then it was suggested we use one to three and I feel like I'm getting a better grip on what's going on with that thyroid patient using that range.

As I say, the real backstory on this is that ranges have changed forever. I could go into cholesterol. When I was in school, high cholesterol was 275 and it keeps coming down and coming down. There are some people who are irrationally now saying it should be under 100, in my opinion. Some people will tell you it's 150 and other people will still stick to it should be under 200 and so on and so forth. So it depends on the doctor that you go to. But these ranges keep changing and changing. Ranges will change from lab to lab. You'll go into one lab and the range will be one thing and you go into another lab because they use the average of the patients who come into that lab. So the ranges, they have always been ballpark figures.

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