Hello, health champions today I want to talk about the thyroid, one hormone problem, and how thyroid problems are so much more common than people realize. We will cover ten of the common signs and symptoms that your thyroid might be in trouble and we will talk about the causes and solutions coming right up. And if you want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe to my blogs and so you do not miss anything.
Table of Contents
What is Thyroid Gland?
The thyroid gland is a small flat gland sitting right at the front of the throat.It is responsible for metabolism and it acts kind of like at her most at in your body. It turns the heat up and down and you have 40trillion cells in your body and every one of those cells has thyroid hormone receptors. That means the thermostat of the thyroid determines how much every cell in your body does of whatever that cell does. So if the thyroid slows down everything in your body slows down.
How is It Diagnosed ?
When they diagnose thyroid problems they typically only look at one thing which is TSH and then they look at a range from 0.5 to 5.0 anything in between that is normal. Even though the high number is10 times higher than the low. They do not really differentiate in this range. You are just hypo normal or hyper. So if it is over 5.0 then you are diagnosed with hypothyroid on hormone replacement therapy in the real world. Though there is a few more things to look at.
So instead of just going from 0.5 to 5.0, we look at a more optimal range from one point eight to three point five and the sweet spot is right around 2.5 . Now if you are between 3 & 5 then you are not fully hypothyroid you do not have the label but you are functionally hypothyroid. You have reduced function and then on the other end, this is where things are completely different . This is a hiddenproblem because you would think if this is functional hypothyroid and the orange then this would be functional hyper but both of these are actually functional hypo.
Mechanisms of Thyroid and Must Know Facts
Four different mechanisms here it is very very common and this is because the pituitary that makes thyroid-stimulating hormone is underperforming. So it is just not sending out enough TSH. Now you are still functionally hypothyroid and this happens very often with insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. Because of low-grade systemic inflammation, how common are thyroid problems? Hyperthyroid where it is overactive is kind of rare.
Facts About Thyroid
It is only about 1% but hypothyroid is about tend to 50% of the population where it is underperforming and most commonly it is because of iodine deficiency. There are about 800 million people in the world who live someplace where the soil does not have a lot of iodine and about a quarter of those people are hypothyroid. They have an underperforming thyroid in the United States. There are 13 million people or about 5% of the population who are on medication on hormone replacement and in Canada, a recent study suggested that about 10% of people 1 in 10 have a thyroid problem.
In Germany a study of ninety-six thousand people ages 18 to 65, they did a very sensitive ultrasound study of the thyroid. And they found that 33 percent of the population had abnormal thyroid either because the thyroid was an abnormal size. It was larger swollen or because it had nodules there was some pathological tissue in the thyroids of one in three and then we realized that this was a range of 80 to65 years old. But that this increases dramatically with age. So we do not have exact numbers but probably about 50% or more of people over 50 years old have some kind of thyroid. Let’s run through the signs for quick and then we will talk about most importantly what is causing this and what we can do about it.
Thyroid Symptoms Are:
There are so many Thyroid Symptoms means it affects various different way. Some are as below.
Sensitive to Cold
The first sign is the temperature. If your hypothyroid then you are going to be sensitive to cold. These are people who always wear sweaters. They want extra blankets. They can not stand air-conditioning and they always want to be in the Sun or where there is a heater.
Hyperthyroid is the opposite. These are people sensitive to heat. So they always want the air-conditioned or a fan blowing sign.
Metabolism
Number two of Thyroid Symptoms is metabolism. If you are hypothyroid then you usually see some weight gain and this is despite less appetite. So everything slows down you do not eat as much but despite that, you are gaining weight. Hyperthyroid the opposite. Now you have weight loss but this is despite having a voracious appetite. There does not matter how much you eat you just can not seem to put on any weight sigh.
Changes in Your Hair
Number three changes in your hair. With hypothyroid you get coarse hair and hair loss in hyperthyroid. You get fine brittle hair but you still get hair loss. So both extremes are still a sign that the body is out of balance means is just not working really well.
Bowel Function
Number four has to do with a bowel function. With hypothyroid everything slows down and you get constipation. With hyperthyroid everything speeds up and you get frequent bowel movements and diarrhea.
Moods
The fifth sign has to do with mood. If your thyroids underperforming very often you will have depression, poor focus, and memory problems. Because you are just not making enough energy to support those functions. But with a hyperthyroid, you have other problems even though you are making a lot of energy. Now instead you have agitation and anxiety and you still often have poor focus. You just can not center yourself. Also with hyperthyroid physically, you will often see a tremor like a resting vibration.
Iodine-Deficient
Number six of Thyroid Symptoms is classic i.e iodine-deficient. When we have hypothyroid because of iodine deficiency. There is little iodine available. So the thyroid grows. It has more tissue to be able to absorb every little bit of iodine. It is an attempt to compensate for a lack of iodine. But in this case, there is nothing wrong with the thyroid tissue. It is healthy tissue. It is doing what supposed to it is just up regulating. And it is not pathological tissue however with hyperthyroid. We can also get an enlargement but that is because of tumors and nodules in the thyroid and rarely would we see anything like this grapefruit-size enlargement. This would be benign.
Gorder meaning non-pathological tissue with hyperthyroid and nodules. We will see a slight enlargement but nothing like that.
Skin Changes
Number seven of Thyroid Symptoms is skin changes and hypothyroid we get rough coarse, dry skin with hyperthyroid. We get thin and paper-like skin.
Swollen Puffy Eyes
The eighth sign of Thyroid Symptoms has to do with the eyes and with hypothyroid you get swollen puffy eyes. It is like everything swells and just kind of shuts down. It slows down and shuts down with hyperthyroidism. You often get bulging eyes and one of the classic examples is Marty Feldman was a British actor and they did not need any special effects to make him look like that. And they not sure exactly why it looks like that. But there is some tissue behind the eyes that swells and makes the eyes protrude sign.
Chronic Fatigue
Number nine of Thyroid Symptoms have to do with energy and in hypothyroid we often have chronic fatigue. Simply because there is not enough energy made. However, in hyperthyroid, we can still have a lot of fatigue. Because even though a lot of energy is made it is being used up for the wrong things. Itis being used up just to make heat and make all the tissues burn through energy faster. But we do not have the energy for the things we want. These people even though they are fatigued very often they can not sleep. Because everything is just racing sign.
Slow Heartrate
Number 10 of Thyroid Symptoms changes in heart rate and you guess this. One hypothyroid is going to have a slow heart rate called bradycardia and the hyperthyroid is going to have a very fast heart rate called tachycardia. Bradycardia would be oftentimes in the 50 to 60 range and this is not someone who is not athletically in good shape. And tachycardia can often be a hundred and twenty or even higher. Let’s look at some of the causes.
More About Hashimoto or Autoimmune Disease
If you are hypothyroid the most common reason is iodine deficiency. But if you do not live someplace where there is low iodine then the most common reason is something called Hashimoto’s and here is the problem. Very very few people with Hashimoto’s know that they have it because it is an autoimmune disease. And in the mainstream healthcare model, there is no cure, there is no treatment for autoimmunity. So they just test for TSH and they give you some hormone replacement.
How to Know or Test About Hashimoto?
If you want to find out if you have Hashimoto’s, there are some tests for antibodies. So you can test for top, thyroid peroxidase antibodies or for thyroglobulin antibodies if you are hyperthyroid.
The number one cause is called Graves disease and interestingly enough that is also an autoimmune disease. But it is a different antibody again. So now you are looking for thyroid receptor antibodies and if the hyperthyroid is not on then it is probably a tumor, typically either in the thyroid or in the pituitary. What do they do for treatment hypothyroid is typically iodine or hormone replacement. Either a synthetic or something more natural.
What are some of the problems with these treatments?
If you give iodine to someone who is deficient then great. That is not a problem they are just going to get back to normal. But if you give iodine to someone who has an autoimmune attack on their thyroid. Now very often you are going toup regulate the activity of that thyroid and at the same time, you are going to upregulate the autoimmune response. So even if these autoimmune people are iodine deficient. It is too early that is the wrong time to give them iodine.There is some things that you need to fix first .
Hormone Replacement
The problem with hormone replacement is that it does not address the problem. The problem is autoimmunity. The symptom is a low thyroid hormone. So by giving them more thyroid hormones, we are treating a symptom. But we are allowing the autoimmunity to progress and the issue. Here is that the thyroid is a very very sensitive tissue. It is very often the first tissue in the body to get under autoimmune attack.
But if we do not fix it early, now we have many other tissues in the body like the gut and the joints and the pancreas and the cerebellum and the skin that also get affected. If we just take something to treat the symptom. It is a crutch that is allowing the problem to get worse then. How do they treat the hyperthyroid they do it with anti-thyroid medication. So the thyroid is over-performing. Let’s just do something to suppress it .
Radioactive Iodine
They basically poison it one way or another way to do it is with radioactive iodine. The thyroid will absorb iodine selectively much more than any other tissue in the body. So if that iodine is radioactive, if it is laced with something then you are going to kill off some of those thyroid cells. The problem with either of these is that when you put stress when you poison the tissues then long term you tend to just create more pathological tissue with more nodules and eventually you might have to do a thyroidectomy.
Surgery is Irreversible
Now that is not always the wrong thing to do because these hyperthyroid people can get to a point where they have a thyroid crisis or a hyperthyroid storm. And that is life-threatening. So if they get to that point then they have to take the thyroid out. They may not have any time to play around with the problems. This treatment is the same thing the medication is just a crutch. While the problem is allowed to get worse. The surgery is irreversible if you get to that point. It might be unavoidable. But once they take it out there is no going back and just like the hypothyroid, the vast majority of issues are still autoimmune. So if we fix the autoimmunity early on then we may not ever have to get through any of that.
Leaky Gut
What causes autoimmunity, why would the body start attacking itself. Mostly it has to do with a leaky gut and these are two cells in the intestinal lining. They are held together by different proteins creating tight junctions. But if something attacks or weakens these proteins, then the cells are not being held together so tightly, and then large particles that are not supposed to get through. And now the immune system starts reacting to that.
Leaky gut has many different causes. Primarily it has to do with allergies causing inflammation. It has to do with antibiotics altering the gut flora and causing irritation. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are an enormous contributor to these problems. Sugar allergens lectins things in food that are difficult to break down alcohol stress and processed food. So all of these things that we have an abundance of mostly in the last 50 years that some of these things we might have had earlier on but it is primarily things that is why these autoimmune problems are growing very very quickly. There is no quick easy fix to heal leaky gut but of course, first of all, you want to make sure that you are not doing any of these adverse steps. Take care and it will be corrected, definitely.
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