You might think all the “Eureka!” moments have been used up, that sea-change moments from a single person are the stuff of long-dead Thomas Edisons. Surely, in a world as complex as ours, great leaps forward arrive via committee and in increments too small to warrant headlines ”“ a byte added to a chip already bulging with bytes; a barometric-pressure gauge for a phone that photographs, tracks position and plays Buddy Holly on demand.
The antidote to such an understandable attitude lives in Larchmont and practices medicine in Manhattan. Her card says simply, “Endocrinology.” But make no mistake, Dr. Susan Thys-Jacobs is a medical pioneer of the highest order.
Like great discoverers and innovators of the past, she had a light-bulb moment and has followed through on it. Her particular genius was to discover the life-altering powers of the humble: calcium and vitamin D.
To recognize the import of Thys-Jacobs”™ work requires a bit of history and a willingness to move beyond the often buffoonish take on her specialty: premenstrual syndrome, or PMS.
A conversation with Thys-Jacobs reveals just how rooted in misunderstanding and downright malevolence PMS is. Hippocrates ”“ he of the Hippocratic Oath ”“ blamed it on agitated blood. The first-century historian Pliny said of a woman under its sway: “Her very look will dim the brightness of mirrors.” PMS treatment reached a medical nadir in 1872 with the introduction of “Battey”™s operation,” the systematic removal of healthy ovaries for dubious symptoms like nymphomania, masturbation and the catchall “cases of insanity.”
“PMS doesn”™t have to exist,” Thys-Jacobs says in her Manhattan office. (Thys rhymes with rice.) “There”™s a reason it exists. It”™s a connection to a physical message.” It”™s a message that can even inhibit reproduction, she says. “The body is trumpeting that the body is calcium deficient. This is not a psychological disorder. And it”™s not natural.”
Early in the 1980s, Thys-Jacobs was the first person to notice the symptoms of low calcium levels ”“ hypocalcemia ”“ mirrored PMS. Hypocalcemic patients suffer fatigue, anxiety, depression, muscle cramps and neuromuscular irritability, among other maladies. Like an operatic heroine ”“ pertinent given her passion for opera ”“ she began a one-woman crusade to see if she was right.
Thys-Jacobs was at the time working at Manhattan”™s Metropolitan Hospital. Putting the scientific training she garnered at Georgetown and Columbia University medical schools to work, she began her own study on a shoestring budget.
She prevailed upon 33 Metropolitan Hospital staffers to participate in a six-month experiment using 13,000 donated over-the-counter calcium supplements. No woman knew if she was getting the calcium or a placebo. At three months, the placebo takers and the calcium takers switched places, creating a control group from her relatively small sampling.
“With simple calcium, we had a 50 percent reduction in symptoms in 70 percent of the subjects,” Thys-Jacobs says of that early study. “This was so interesting: pain, depression, irritability, water retention ”“ it worked globally. It made me think maybe my theory was correct.”
Â
Build a better mousetrap, as they say, and the world will beat a path to your door. And that”™s what happened to Thys-Jacobs. Her bare-basics first study garnered attention. It was followed by a $1 million study and then, in 2000, by a $2 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health. Of course, as every quart of milk confirms, you should add vitamin D to the calcium mix to promote absorption and she did, eventually making a leap to 90 percent-plus reduction in symptoms. “It was as good as antidepressants, antianxieties and birth control pills,” she says of her work, which has been published in the world”™s most prestigious medical journals.
Another light-bulb moment for Thys-Jacobs came this year while she was out to dinner with her husband, Manhattan anesthesiologist Dr. Daniel Thys. She had acquired several patents as the result of her work, but was having difficulty finding a company to produce and market a product. “A gentleman at the next table ”“ this big, friendly Irish guy ”“ said, ”˜Why don”™t you do it yourself? Form your own product. Create your own company.”™”
Dannmarie L.L.C. was born at that moment, named for her husband, “because I’m crazy about him.”
Dannmarie”™s products are called Premcal, Thys-Jacobs says, “a combination nutriceutical based on my research with calcium and vitamin D.” (Varieties include chewtabs and gluten-free.) The Larchmont-based company markets Premcal without prescription on the Web at www.premcal.com, or via phone at (877) 425-8767. Technicalities on the Web site indicate Premcal”™s chemical nuances are beyond your fridge-fresh glass of milk, although Thys-Jacobs affirms milk, too, is helpful in the fight against PMS.
While women are saying “bravo” to Thys-Jacobs and her work ”“ hundreds so far, according to her Web site ”“ she and her husband can be found offering similar sentiments at the opera. They go “at least two or three times a month” to either the New York City Opera or the Metropolitan Opera.
Time spent with Thys-Jacobs is so remarkably instructive in part due to her expressiveness. While talking of her medical work, the age “50-plus”” physician is infectiously animated.
She drives home points karate-chopping the air and conducting a symphony with her hands to accompany her enthusiasm. There”™s an unmistakable physicality to her delivery that draws a person into her world. You get the impression PMS ”“ scourge of history on a monthly basis ”“ never stood a chance against this dynamo of 100-percent real-deal brilliance. Yes, hers is a world of “gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists” and “arrested follicular development,” but a listener is somehow transported there on the wings of her delivery. Punching the air for emphasis may be her secret, although any empirical analysis of time spent with her would have to note her undeniable charm.
She loves bel canto opera, which showcases singing and cites Mozart”™s “Don Giovanni” as a favorite she has seen “10 or 15 times.” Another must-hear composer is Vincenzo Bellini, whose “Norma”” is a favorite of her husband. The couple recently saw Christoph Willibald Gluck”™s “Iphigenie en Tauride,” which she describes in no small detail. Without blowing the ending, it”™s safe to say “Iphigenie” offers a smorgasbord of all the top-notch ”˜cides: king, husband, daughter, brother ”“ everybody faces the blade. “Of course, it”™s one of these big operatic knives,” she says of a pivotal filicide, clasping an imagined two-foot dagger above her desk.
Â
“If we could possibly own a co-op or a condo over the Metropolitan Opera House, we would buy it,” she says, displaying no fear whatsoever of two-foot daggers.
“And how do I bring all this together?” she asks, the duties of a busy doctor beckoning. “I”™m looking for the bel canto in the menstrual cycle ”“ to go from these highs and lows to a steady, even line: to make it the equivalent of beautiful singing.”
Â
