But first, some facts:

*Approximately 35% of adults in the USA are heavy enough to be considered 'obese'.

http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

*Approximately 35% of adults, up to 50% over age 60, have a metabolic syndrome.

http://media.jamanetwork.com/news-item/study-finds-high-prevalence-of-metabolic-syndrome-in-u-s/

*Approximately 68% of adults in the USA are deficient in magnesium.

http://www.lifeextension.com/magazine/2005/9/awsi/Page-01

*Approximately 18% of adults in the USA experience some sort of mental illness each year.

https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Mental-Health-By-the-Numbers

*Thyroid issues cause mental illness like symptoms.

https://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/hyperthyroidism

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/06/19/mental-illness-hypothyroidism.aspx

*Fluoride displaces iodine in your body.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3890436/

*The amount of iodine in treated salt is questionable.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/20080201/can-us-shake-iodine-deficiency-risk

*The government admitted we've been getting too much fluoride.

http://fluoridealert.org/news/ap-exclusive-us-says-too-much-fluoride-in-water/

*Fluoride is a poison, and most fluoride used in the US has industrial origins.

http://fluoridealert.org/issues/water/fluoridation-chemicals/

*Anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depressant prescriptions are increasing.

http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/documents/s19032en/s19032en.pdf

https://www.cchrint.org/2015/07/16/antipsychotic-drug-use-still-increasing-among-children-teens/

*Anti-psychotics can cause thyroid issues.

http://www.docguide.com/antipsychotics-significantly-decrease-free-thyroid-hormone-concentrations

Weight is controlled by the thyroid, and magnesium, iodine, and many pharmaceuticals affect how the thyroid functions, which translates into a metabolic syndrome once a certain threshold is crossed. We don't have an epidemic of obesity, nor of metabolic syndrome, nor of mental illness. We have an epidemic of poor diet, magnesium deficiency, fluoride toxicity, and pill pushing doctors combined with a population who isn't aware of these health dangers and that is being led to believe it's 'normal'.

How do I connect these dots?

I started getting shaky when I was 16, back in 1994. I didn't know why, I just dealt with it. Not only because I think males of any age should act like men and not complain, but because there were too many others issues in my life that can be summed up as: my mother was a single parent from the time I was 12.

Flash forward. In 1998, I had a nervous breakdown that was triggered by careless living. I did Yoga, could run a five minute mile, but I wasn't eating right, was drinking too much, and not sleeping enough. I'd been a CNA for most of three years and was in nursing school when this happened, working full-time, going to school full-time, and partying full-time. I was diagnosed with a couple different types of depression that the doctors came up with off the top of their heads. No blood tests, nor any other clinic tests, nor even a physical were done, equaling bullshit diagnoses. They didn't know I was a CNA and going to nursing school. I simply listened to their bullshit, comparing it to what I'd heard doctors tell patients, until they threatened me, saying 'You'll be dead in five years if you don't do what we say'. I laughed, and said 'We'll see'. What did they say? They wanted me to go on lithium. I was well aware of the side effects, even then, and when I confronted them about the side effects they wouldn't tell me and turned it around, saying 'Well tell me what you think they are?'. I smirked, shaking my head, and I would've said a lot more if I hadn't been where I was at the time, which would've started with 'incompetent fucktards' and ended with something about 'malpractice'. However, it directed me away from the real issue and made me believe it wasn't physical. That was probably the worst mistake I've ever made, and I've pulled some real doozies.

Flash forward to 2009. I'd moved back to Kentucky with my family and did yard work on the side. The summer that year was brutal. The symptoms got worse, I couldn't get used to the heat, and my days off from my regular job were spent puking and recovering from the yards I'd done that day. Then I was in a couple wrecks six months apart. Family life deteriorated. The breakup happened on New Year's Eve, 2010. Still, the symptoms got worse. (Heat and stress make thyroid issues worse.) I was diagnosed with a 'personality defect'. Still no tests, nor were any suggested. Through pure determination, I won the custody case in 2012 with all this going on and lost everything else in the process. At that point, I also had the fun of dealing with people, my ex and others, telling me I was crazy. Which, of course, only made things worse. I knew I wasn't crazy, at least not that type of crazy, but I didn't know what was wrong, nor did I feel I could speak to anyone about it because everyone wanted to call me crazy or tell me to take a damn pill. I shut down on the subject and just dealt with it.

By the time 2015 rolled around, the symptoms were very, very bad. I shook so much I could barely write by hand. But I'd identified two sequences. One was a 3-4 day pattern of not eating, not sleeping, and burning out bad. The other was a longer 2-3 month pattern of extreme irritability. This made me realize it was something physical, not mental. I got the blood test results on November 9^th, 2015 after demanding that one be done. The blood test came back perfect but for one thing: my T numbers were through the roof. They were about 15% higher than the highest value that they should have been. My doctor wanted me to get radioactive iodine put in me for cancer tests. I confronted him on my research that told me there were a lot of potential issues in my diet, I questioned the wisdom of using a cancer causing agent to check for cancer, and highlighted the risk of radioactive iodine causing a hypothyroid. He said 'I'm not that kind of doctor', and that 'The cancer risk from the iodine is small', and that 'You can just take a pill if the iodine causes a hypothyroid'. Again, I laughed in a doctor's face.

I ditched the doctor and proceeded to fix things. I did yet more research, much more research, turning to herbs, because those were the medicine of choice on the farm and when antibiotics had failed me in general. I used thyroid drug replace herbs, I put together an anticancer herbal mix (that fixed something unrelated that I wasn't even trying to fix), I ditched all shit food and went to a lean meat, vegetable, and rice diet with only water or lemonade (sweetened with brown sugar only) to drink 90% of the time, supplemented by vitamins and minerals. Doing so damn near killed me itself. For two weeks, I had horrible withdrawal symptoms from the chemicals in the food on top of the thyroid symptoms. I had a heart attack like event four days into the withdrawals that left me sore for a week. One month later, I could barely tell a difference. At the end of the second month, I was shaking less and there were a few seconds at a time when it'd stop. At the end of the third month, I could feel a fog lifting from my mind. At the end of the fourth month, I did shake any for the first time in 22 years.

As I write this, it has been about two months since I've tremored from anything but an adrenaline rush or one of very few energy drinks I have. My mood is more stable than at any other time in my life, as is my energy level. I make my own toothpaste to avoid additional fluoride, supplement with iodine, and maintain the diet and herbal regiment (with modifications) to prevent future issues. Only fluoride toxicity and/or diet could've been the source of the initial problem when I was 16.

There are a huge number of people in this country that are on medications they simply don't need. I've known many of them, some are in my family, and if I'd not had the experience that I had with doctors, I probably would've been one of them myself. Not only are the medications causing illness in the form of side effects, they're masking the issues and letting the real problems get worse while directing people away from real fixes. All because doctors are acting as corner people for pharmaceutical companies, making bullshit diagnoses, and betraying public trust for monetary reward.

Note: None of this is medical advice. I am not a doctor, nor would I want to be. Do extensive research if you self treat and never underestimate the power of herbs. The primary herb, Bugleweed, that brought my thyroid under control is approved for such treatment in Germany.