Part 1 of Thyroid Problems – Hypothyroidism

The Thyroid is a small, butterfly shaped gland in the front of your throat. It plays many significant roles in the body. The thyroid is a big factor in hormonal health.  It manufactures thyroid hormone which stimulates each and every cell of the body. We need this metabolic stimulation for healthy digestion, detoxification, ovulation, energy and body fat maintenance. The most common of the thyroid disorders is hypothyroidism or under active thyroid.

Hypothyroidism is when the thyroid either does make enough hormone, there is poor conversion of non active hormone (T4) to the active hormone (T3) or when the body is not effectively using thyroid hormone.  While hypothyroidism can happen at any age, in any gender it is most common in middle-aged Women.  Even though hypothyroidism is very common (it is thought to affect at least 1 in 10 Women) it is under-diagnosed. This is due to the fact many doctors rely on a single blood test to diagnose. In my local health district for example there is the only one test that is generally ordered. Generally other tests will only be ordered only if this test comes back out of range.  This test is known as TSH – Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. TSH is a hormone that is produced by your pituitary to stimulate the thyroid to produce thyroid hormone.   If the thyroid does not produce enough hormone, a message is sent from the thyroid, to the pituitary to create more TSH. High TSH is therefore related to low thyroid activity.

Unfortunately TSH is never going to give us a complete picture of what is going on with the thyroid.  TSH can be helpful to tell whether the thyroid is producing enough thyroid hormone, but as mentioned this is only one of the causes of hypothyroidism. It is also important to note that TSH can be artificially suppressed by factors such as chronic stress and inflammation.  Another issue is that the TSH level where you would get a hypothyroid diagnosis, is thought to be basically double where it should be. There are a whole lot of Women walking around having been told their thyroids are fine when they are not.

So How do you know if your thyroid is not optimal?

Let’s start with the symptoms. Symptoms of under active thyroid include:

• Fatigue
• Irregular periods
• Heavy periods
• Infertility
• Hair loss
• Dry skin
• Cracked heels
• Fluid retention
• High cholesterol on blood tests
• Feeling cold all the time
• Digestive problems including SIBO
• Brain fog
• Depression
• Lines on neck (this can be from swelling of the thyroid)

Of course many of these symptoms can be from other causes but if you suffer from the majority of these symptoms it is worth investigating the thyroid. This is especially true if there is any history of thyroid issues in your family.

In the next blog we will talk about other ways you can tell if your thyroid is not optimal and start to look at what you can do about it nutritionally.