Thyroid Awareness Week
15th – 21st October 2011

It's also Thyroid UK's 10th Anniversary, and we have some excellent projects this year.

Firstly,
we will be kicking Thyroid Awareness Week off with the launch of our own channel on the Web of Stories website on Saturday, 15th October. The Web of Stories channel will allow people with thyroid disease to view and/or upload stories about their thyroid health.

Thyroid UK knows from its HealthUnlocked Support website that the best kind of support for people with thyroid conditions is to be able to communicate with others and to share their stories:

"HealthUnlocked and Thyroid UK have been a huge support to me. The transition from being healthy (but a bit achy and weary) to someone who has to take pills for the rest of their life is a huge struggle for me. To have somewhere to go to look things up, with people who have taken the same journey, who can reassure me and answer my questions (however silly) has been a huge help."
Apples, HealthUnlocked User

We are now going one step further to support thyroid patients by enabling them to watch videos that other thyroid patients have uploaded, and also to produce a video themselves.

We plan to build a large library of stories from people with different types of thyroid disease and at different stages of their thyroid journey. We hope this collection of stories will become a fantastic resource, not only for thyroid patients and their friends and families, but for nurses, doctors, endocrinologists and other members of the medical profession so that they can see how thyroid disease truly affects our lives.

One new video per day will be uploaded during Thyroid Awareness Week so do watch them and don't forget to upload your own story!

Find out all about our Web of Stories project here

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Secondly,
we have submitted a Government e-petition asking them to fund research into T3 and/or natural desiccated thyroid treatment.

To sign our e-petition go to http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/19000

Please support us by signing this petition.

If we get 100,000 signatures it will be sent to the House of Commons. The Office of the Leader of the House of Commons will then check it to make sure it meets the terms and conditions for e-petitions and the rules of the House of Commons. (To find out how e-petitions work, go here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/how-it-works)

Successful e-petitions will be communicated to the Backbench Business Committee who decide if it will be debated in the House of Commons.

Please sign our e-petition http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/19000

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Thirdly,
we have sourced a laboratory that will test patients for the DIO2 gene which was researched in 2009 –

"Common Variation in the DIO2 Gene Predicts Baseline Psychological Well-Being and Response to Combination Thyroxine Plus Triiodothyronine Therapy in Hypothyroid Patients" by Panicker et al (J Clin Endocrinol Metab 94: 1623–1629, 2009)
http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/94/5/1623.abstract

This test will pick up those patients who have the faulty gene and who may need the addition of T3 to their treatment.

For more information about the the DIO2 gene test, click here

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Finally,
Thyroid UK is holding a 10th Anniversary Conference on Saturday 22nd October at Gilwell Park Conference Centre, Chingford, Essex. We have some fantastic speakers such as Patrick Holford, Dr Barry Durrant-Peatfield and Dr Damien Downing, who will be speaking about the DIO2 gene.

There are still some tickets left for the conference. Click here for more info

We will be keeping you all updated with events at the Conference on the day on Twitter - www.twitter.com/thyroiduk_org
our Facebook Page - http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Thyroid-UK/103981042999801
and on HealthUnlocked - http://thyroiduk.healthunlocked.com/

 

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We think our projects will raise a lot of awareness for thyroid disease and hopefully go towards changing the minds of the medical professionals who feel that levothyroxine is the only treatment for patients with thyroid disease.