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It's also not fair to say that such an action is inappropriate...after all it could be freely ignored. I have had non-medical professional sources lead me to follow up with actual physicians based on their suggestions and receive a useful diagnosis three separate times in my life. One of them was the very issue mentioned earlier in this thread. Yes, it was a professional who wrote the script for diagnostic testing, read the results and prescribed the treatment. Yet that idea came from someone with inferior formal knowledge of medicine to my own, which is itself very limited. The result was a life-altering benefit, which would at minimum have been delayed considerably had I not listened to the point of following up with a physician.
In another one of those three cases, it was in fact a random on the internet in the truest sense. Someone who watched my Civ 4 videos and sent a PM, whose name I'll never know and face I'll never see. Structured differently than Hygro's PM, but same intention; making a suggestion based on limited data to a person who is potentially 1000+ km away. I considered it, asked someone who knew what they were doing, and had improved quality of life for doing so.
I would be significantly worse off right now had people not similarly reached out.
To be frank, doctors are usually right, but not always. Especially with less common things. Blood work to detect some issues won't find others. I also happen to have some familiarity with thyroid for example. There are objective holes in the understanding of thyroid treatment. The most common diagnostic value for it is TSH, but they also test for T4/T3. Patients going on replacement (hypothyroid) sometimes gain a large amount of weight in a short period of time. Despite that this is *usually* a red flag in medicine, you can find quite a few stories of people online complaining how their previous routine ballooned them since taking a drug that would supposedly make weight loss easier. Their physicians often ask for a lifestyle change. Given 40+ pounds later on same caloric intake for a large number of reported cases I call BS. For MOST medications this is a non-trivial side effect and not okay.
What does the literature say? Comprehensive literature on it doesn't exist, to my knowledge (unless it's been released in the last 12-18 months and I missed it). I have access to paid databases, and I looked extensively (few hundred hours on things related to the topic). I also found mixed data on levothyroxine only vs dessicated. Even more interestingly, I've heard multiple actual physicians tell me that T2 (diiodothyronine) doesn't exist, or doesn't do anything.
That's false. There is SOME literature on it (plenty more than linked, even some old experiments on rats), but there are also crazy bodybuilders who take this stuff. It's TSH suppressive. The lead diagnostic tool for diagnosing the condition can be fooled (is it actually fooled? Literature suggests T2 impacting metabolism differently than T4 converted to T3, but certainly impacting it) by taking something that supposedly doesn't do anything, according to some professional physicians...and there's literature to back that fact.
So as someone experiencing negative symptoms, it's worth it to consider suggestions, to take them up with physicians as ideas to consider. Some, possibly even many will be junk or off base, but as human beings doctors can't consider every possible contingency at all times, especially if they're not subspecialized in the issue. What they can do is utilize their superior training and knowledge to actually act on something that is still causing suffering, possibly finding a solution. Given that I had a major life turnaround, I would not be so quick to look down on random advice, even if you're pretty sure it's wrong this particular time.
