Today, we’ll start talking about low thyroid. Unfortunately, many people have it. By many I mean 35 to 40 million people, mostly women, in the US alone. These are the people who have been diagnosed with low thyroid and are being treated for it. There are about 35 to 40 million people who also have low thyroid, but they have not been diagnosed, so they are not being treated.
They experience all kinds of symptoms, but their doctors refuse to treat them because their blood tests are “normal”. The patient knows that something is wrong because she does not feel right, but the doctor tells her that it’s all in her head.
We will talk later about how low thyroid is diagnosed by most doctors and how it should be diagnosed and treated. For now, I just want to make a point that there are tens of millions of people with low thyroid and only about half of them are being treated.
Let’s summarize what we have learned so far. Thyroid gland is a tiny organ located at the base of the neck. It makes hormones T3 and T4. To do that, it needs an amino acid tyrosine and a mineral iodine. T3 is the active hormone, it goes inside the cells and turns on the mitochondria that burn fat and carbohydrates to make energy and heat. All the cells of the body run on energy. They need energy to grow, to multiply, to repair, to produce things. You need energy for heart to beat, for lungs to breathe, for intestine to digest and for dozens other things that the cells do.
For the body to have enough energy it must have enough thyroid hormones. There is a very sophisticated mechanism of thyroid regulation that involves not one, but 2 hormones made in the brain, various enzymes, minerals, vitamins and amino acids.
Ideally, there are plenty of hormones stored inside the thyroid glands, there are hormones in the blood, some bound to proteins and some not bound, ready to do the work. All this is done to make sure that every cell has just as much thyroid hormones as it needs because they are essential for normal function of the body. I also talked about how T4 turns into an active T3, what factors help with that and what interferes with that.
As I mentioned, tens of millions of people in US alone don’t have enough thyroid hormones. They have hypothyroidism or low thyroid. When people have low thyroid, their cells do not get enough T3.
Let’s talk about why people develop low thyroid. The #1 cause worldwide is iodine deficiency. Remember, you must have iodine to make thyroid hormones.
The #1 cause of low thyroid in US and other developed countries is the autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis or just Hashimoto’s or many doctors just call it Hashi. It is responsible for about 90% of low thyroid in US and other developed countries.
Hashimoto’s is a disease where your own immune system starts attacking the thyroid gland. In other words, there is nothing wrong with the thyroid, it’s just an innocent victim. The aggressor is your immune system. We’ll have a few lectures on Hashimoto’s to see why it develops and how to deal with it.
Another important cause of hypothyroidism is the treatment of other thyroid conditions. These conditions do not cause low thyroid, but after the treatment thyroid cannot produce enough thyroid hormones.
Some people develop thyroid nodules, thyroid cancer, hyperthyroidism, toxic adenomas and other conditions. In many cases, thyroid gland needs to be removed, either partially or completely, with radiation or surgery. You cannot make enough thyroid hormones without a thyroid gland, so the result is low thyroid. We’ll have a more complete discussion of this in one of the future lectures.
Another risk factor is getting older. Some things get better with age. Unfortunately, human body is not one of them. Most organs and tissues, including the thyroid gland, get weaker and less functional.
Certain medications interfere with thyroid production, certain nutritional deficiencies, some rare problems with hypothalamus or pituitary can also cause low thyroid. Getting pregnant increases the risk. But these all account for only a few percent of the causes. The main cause, as I said, is Hashimoto’s and we’ll have a few lectures about it.
Low thyroid can appear in anybody. This includes infants, babies, teenagers, men and women of any age. But a typical patient is a woman over 30, and the older the woman gets, the higher are the chances. For each man with low thyroid there are 8-9 women.
Because every cell of the body needs thyroid hormones, every cell will suffer if it does not get enough. Every cell and every organ will react differently to low thyroid and will produce different symptoms. That’s why low thyroid has many dozens of symptoms. But some of them are quite common and generally recognized as the main symptoms of low thyroid.
Here they are
1. Low energy, fatigue. This is probably the most common symptoms. A person wakes up tired after a good night sleep. Getting tired easily. Feeling sluggish. Or just not feeling like doing anything. Like you would like to switch the channels on TV, but you don’t feel like reaching for a remote.
2. Feeling colder than others, feeling cold when others feel comfortable. That’s because not only the energy production goes down, but the heat production as well. You find yourself looking for a sweater when everyone else seems comfortable in a T-shirt.
3. Constipation. This happens because of slow bowel activity.
4. Depression, brain fog because of slow brain activity.
5. Weight gain. If you are eating the same number of calories as before, but burning only a fraction of them, they will accumulate in the form of fat.
6. Dry skin, dry coarse hair, hair loss on the head, the body, the outer third of eyebrows.
7. Muscle aches, joint aches, total body aches. Often confused with arthritis or fibromyalgia.
8. Slow heart rate.
If you have a few of these symptoms, there is a good chance that you have low thyroid, whether you are being treated or not. There are dozens of other symptoms, and I’ll go over them in the future lectures, when I describe the effect of low thyroid on different organs. You can download the list of all the symptoms here.
Suppose you have a few of these symptoms, you go to your doctor and say, hey doc, I feel tired, cold, I am gaining weight, I am constipated, and I am losing hair like crazy. Most doctors will think of low thyroid as the cause and will check you for it.
How they check for low thyroid we’ll discuss next time. We’ll talk about what tests doctors do, how they diagnose hypothyroidism and why there are so many people with low thyroid symptoms who are told that they are normal and do not get the treatment they need.
If you know someone who might be interested in low thyroid, please refer them to LowThyroidDoctor.com so they can download this ebook. Also, if you have questions or comments, please email to DrTeplisky@gmail.com.
As an additional bonus, while available, you can get a free, no obligation 30 min phone consultation with me to see if I can help you figure out if you have low thyroid and what I can do to help you. Just book it online or call my office at 718-769-0997.