Welcome to the Official Web Site of Thyroid Patient Advocacy

Dr Barry Durrant-Peatfield

Dr Peatfield qualified at Guy's Hospital in 1960 and worked for two years in the Croydon Hospitals before entering general practice. Increasing disenchantment with the NHS decided him to enter private practice where he at once felt drawn to the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid problems. Much impressed by the work of Dr Broda Barnes in the USA, he visited the Barnes Foundation and returned to the UK determined to improve the lot of patients with thyroid illness.

His emphasis on the use of clinical diagnosis, both of thyroid and adrenal problems, and a holistic approach using non-synthetic treatment, enjoyed a great deal of success but brought him into conflict with establishment medicine. He finally decided to retire from active medical practice to study nutrition, write and lecture. He wrote The Great Thyroid Scandal and How to Survive it (now revised as Your Thyroid and How to Keep it Healthy) for the general reader: to give people a deeper understanding of both thyroid and adrenal illness and enable them to play a knowledgeable part in the management of their treatment.

Dr Durrant-Peatfield now lectures and holds nutritional clinics specialising in metabolic health throughout the UK. He is patron and a medical adviser of Thyroid Patient Advocacy-UK.

Dr Peatfield's clinic schedule and new clinic relocation information.

Dr. Jacob Teitelbaum

Dr. Teitelbaum is a board certified internist and director of the Annapolis Center for Effective CFS/Fibromyalgia Therapies. Having suffered with and overcome these illnesses in 1975, he spent the next twenty-five years creating, researching, and teaching about effective therapies. His office is in Annapolis, Maryland (410-573-5389). He is the senior author of the landmark study "Effective Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia -- a Placebo-controlled Study". He lectures internationally. He is also the author of the best-selling book From Fatigued to Fantastic! , Three Steps to Happiness! Healing through Joy, and the recently released Pain Free 1-2-3- A Proven Program to Get YOU Pain Free!

His web site can be found at: www.Vitality101.com.

Listen to the interview "Take Back Your Health" with Dr Teitelbaum on US radio station WBAI.

Dr. Gordon Skinner

Dr. Gordon Skinner, a distinctly Scottish man and dedicated doctor loved by his patients, has chosen a road seldom travelled by medical doctors. He advocates common sense hand-in-hand with mainstream medical science. Some ten years ago he was asked by colleagues to see patients who were deemed to have myalgic encephalopathy or chronic fatigue syndrome or post viral syndrome or post viral fatigue on account of his interest in virus disease. He noted that a number of these patients had clinical features of hypothyroidism but had 'normal' levels of thyroid hormones which would lead most workers in the field to reject a diagnosis of hypothyroidism.

Dr Skinner has since treated and returned to health many patients who were clinically hypothyroid but had normal thyroid chemistry and has reported these results in a preliminary paper entitled "Clinical response to thyroxine sodium in clinically hypothyroid but biochemically euthyroid patients".

A second issue concerns use of a porcine thyroid extract (Armour Thyroid) which was used extensively in the United Kingdom until introduction of synthetic hormones but was removed from the British National Formulary for reasons which remain unclear.

He is disappointed that many doctors have little enthusiasm or will to examine this critical shortfall in patient care which in part motivated his book Diagnosis and Management of Hypothyroidism.

Visit Dr Skinner's Web site.

Dr. Theodora Mantzourani

Dr Theodora Mantzourani, MD,BSc,MRCGP,WOSAAM currently practices general medicine privately in Harley Street, London after many years of training in London and Surrey NHS hospitals.

She is a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners (London) and is completing a MSc in Nutritional Medicine at the University of Surrey. Her mission is to improve patient outcomes through prevention, early assessment and comprehensive management of complex, chronic disease. To this end, she employs a combination of conventional and functional approaches  to health and disease and constantly updates her knowledge by participating in national and international workshops and congresses (RCGP, WOSAAM, IFM, etc).

Dr Mantzourami is particularly interested in weight management and body composition/body sculpting, nutritional medicine, preventative medicine and anti-aging treatments. She is particularly interested in obesity and obesity-related disease, such as insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. She specialises in medically supervised diets for "difficult " cases of  overweight or obese patients who have tried everything but cannot lose weight. Body sculpting through individualised dietary manipulation and supplementation is also something that she does successfully.

As for the formal medical guidelines, she firmly believes that the term "guideline" is self-explanatory; they only serve as guides but they are not meant to be a substitute for clinical judgement; extensive medical training as physicians as well as their continuing medical education through courses/seminars and  journals and, above all, their constant, daily clinical challenges,  only serve one single purpose: the best possible clinical outcome with maximum patient satisfaction and  the least adverse effects!

Her motto is "back to basics" — back to the patient's life story, and the processes wherein disease originates, and back to the desire of healthcare practitioners to make people well, not just manage symptoms.

For more information about Dr Mantzourani, see our December newsletter.

Dr Mantzourani's clinic is located at 10 Harley Street, London W1G 9PF. She can be reached on Tel  020 7467 1510  and by mobile on 07963337082.