Arthur Zankel was a wealthy financier with a 50+ year history of depression. He killed himself July 28, 2005 at the age of 73.
A long article in the Wall Street Journal on January 17, 2006 described told the story of his life and how he lost his battle against depression.
I was touched and disturbed by the story and thought it important to share with you.
If Arthur Zankel with his access to the best in conventional medical care was not saved by the system, who is safe and who can the system really save?
So I went a little deeper into Arthur Zankel’s medical history and started to see something very disturbing.
Could it be that Arthur Zankel was misdiagnosed? What if Arthur Zankel’s depression was caused by hormone imbalances that left untreated allowed him to worsen and eventually led to his suicide?
I know you are thinking: Erika, you always think everything ties back to hormones. That is true, but what if I am right?
Here’s what I believe was a likely scenario; Arthur Zankel had a case of low thyroid that did not show up in conventional blood tests.
His TSH – the ONLY test conventional medicine relies on to make the diagnosis of low thyroid, was just borderline or normal. Regardless of whether he had symptoms of low thyroid- depression, foggy thinking, cold intolerance, hair thinking and loss, constipation, fatigue, conventional doctors do not consider treating the symptoms in the absence of a high TSH.
I have seen hundreds if not thousands of patients in my experience with all the symptoms of low thyroid (depression is high on the list) with normal TSH- blood test.
When I treat the patients’ symptoms with low doses of thyroid supplementation, the symptoms consistently go away and the patients do not become hyperthyroid.
I believe Arthur Zankel may have had a possibly genetic penchant (that could be a medical term) for depression which was exacerbated by a case of sub-clinical hypothyroidism no one picked up.
How about that for a tragedy for those people who loved Arthur but also for those who didn’t treat Arthur!
One more thought I want to leave you with on the topic of Arthur Zankel.
What do you think happened as he got older? Expanding from the premise that he was suffering for many years with low thyroid and worsening depression that was being treated with lots of ineffective antidepressants with terrible side-effects, let’s now add his decreasing testosterone levels to the mix.
With age testosterone levels drop even in the most macho of males and with the drop in testosterone the positive outlook on life goes into a downward spiral too.
Now you can see how and why Arthur Zankel may have come to kill himself.
If you presented this scenario to the top notch conventional doctors who treated him I am sure this is what they would say: Our treatment has prevented Arthur from killing himself years earlier.
What I say is:
Did Arthur Zankel have to kill himself at all?
Where does this story leave hundreds of thousands of men and women taking antidepressants? If just a fraction of them suffer with hormone problems that are best treated with less dangerous and more effective meds why not learn more about it and treat these people accordingly?
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