Thyroid Function

There are a few other issues that are important to factor into your plan. Sometimes your metabolism doesn’t heat up because your thyroid levels are low or are imbalanced. Often many of us hope that out thyroid is low so all we have to do is take a pill and watch the weight drop off. I had a tubby, depressed dog with very low thyroid. The vet prescribed medication and six weeks later she was a different pooch. She lost eight pounds. Her coat was sleek and full and her energy was streaming. We all yearn for such a magic pill! We hope it will be as simple as the thyroid being off, so we can take pills and get fixed. And you know as well as I do, there is no quick fix. However, it is always important to check your thyroid if you have some of the symptoms.

Many Layers to Thyroid

I read a lot and soon discovered that the world of thyroid is confusing, complicated and contradictory. It is surely hard to make informed, clear decisions about your own thyroid health because so much of it is so hard to understand. This section will outline the basics for you. If you want a very in-depth and substantive discussion, read Arem’s The Thyroid Solution. It is clear, well written and substantive.

In this discussion, I simply want to introduce you to some of the issues. At the most basic level, the thyroid gland produces thyroid hormones that control many of the functions of the body. If it isn’t working properly and your thyroid levels are low (called hypothyroidism), you can become depressed, gain weight, feel sensitive to cold, have dry skin and lose hair, to name just a few. There is a great deal of disagreement about whether these things are attributed to low thyroid. My approach is to simply work with the different voices to try to sort out what is right for you. I find that looking at a “pattern” of symptoms is helpful. If you discover that you have many of these symptoms and have not had your thyroid checked, it is an option to explore.

Weight Gain and Depression

The two symptoms that many of us are most concerned about are weight gain and depression. We can be doing “everything right” and not be losing weight or feeling bleak. When we are not doing anything, we assume that we just have to do it “right” and things will work. If we are working a diligent and committed program and we aren’t losing weight and we still feel the darkness walking with us, then it’s thyroid diagnosis time. First of all, go through this list of the symptoms of low thyroid function and see if they fit your profile:

Dry hair or skin
Increasing menstrual flow
Brittle nails
Cold intolerance
Fatigue
Constipation
Dry Eyes
Shortness of breath when exercising
Weight gain disproportionate to diet

Many if us have had our thyroids tested only to be told that the lab values are “normal.” This makes things even worse. Often the lab report is given with one more medical message of “If you would just…. (Insert whatever is the particular choice of your health care person), you could lose the weight.” The hopelessness of this position is something that many of us, including me, have gone through.

How The Thyroid Works

I am going to show you how the thyroid system works, where things can go wrong and how to work with your Doctor to discover if thyroid function is a part of your problem. There are a number of actors, a number of costumes and a number of scripts in the thyroid story. It is very complex. Medline lists more than 85,000 citations on thyroid issues. Because of this, people generally choose a particular part of the story that is understandable to them. I am convinced that we need to understand the whole picture. It is important to see the interconnections. If you are trying to solve things by only working with one piece of the story, you will stay unbalanced. It is just like the sugar sensitive story. If you only do blood sugar and not serotonin, and not beta-endorphin, you won’t get balanced.

Thyroid is the same way. Now I surely don’t have all the answers for you. Nor am I an expert on thyroid. But I can help you ask the right questions and I can show you how to see the pieces more easily.

Here are the players:

TRH – This is thyroid releasing hormone. It is made in the hypothalamus and has two primary jobs. It starts the process of making iodine and then after the thyroid gland does its thing, TRH tells the glad to squirt the release of the hormone into the blood.

TSH – This is thyroid stimulating hormone. It monitors how much thyroid is circulating in the blood and then instructs the thyroid gland to make more or less depending on the levels. If you thyroid gland is producing too little, your level of TSH goes up. An elevated level of TSH would tell us that your thyroid “production” is low. TSH needs iodine, selenium and zinc to do its job.

T4 and T3 are the two actual hormones made by the thyroid gland. Thyroid hormones are made when the body combines some molecules of iodine with some molecules of the amino acid tyrosine to make hormone. Yah gotta have the iodine and the amino acid for it to work. If you live in an area where there is little iodine available, or if you have few foods that contain iodine, your thyroid will struggle to make the hormone. When it struggles for a long time, you thyroid gland gets bigger, a condition called a goiter.

Your body converts T4 to T3 by the action of a specific enzyme. Usually your body will have thirty times more T4 than T3, but it is the T3 that acts most dramatically on the cellular level. If the enzyme doesn’t work properly, your body won’t be converting T4 properly. There has been some discussion that toxins in your life may interfere with the conversion process. Either T3 is not produced adequately or something called reverse T3 is made. And reverse T3 doesn’t do the job at the cellular level.

Your body needs adequate T3 at the cellular level. Certain cells, called mitochondria, burn oxygen for energy. If they don’t burn properly, you don’t have energy and you don’t create the heat that burns fat. If T3 isn’t getting to the mitochondria, you will be tired and fat. It is also interesting that the highest percentage of mitochondria are found in brown fat cells – the place in our fat responsible for turning up the thermostat when we are cold.

Receptor Functioning

Thyroid is a hormone that works by going and sitting in a receptor site. The action of hormones is very much like the action of the neurotransmitters you are so familiar with. When the thyroid sits in the receptor, its message is sent to the cells. There are a number of things that can interfere with the thyroid working at the receptor site. Some drugs interfere with the action (steroids, barbiturates, beta-blockers, and cholesterol lowering drugs and birth control pills). So your thyroid system might be working fine but the hormone can’t get into the cell to do its job.

Sometimes during menopause, estrogen levels spike up (the infamous power surge). Too much estrogen can block thyroid absorption. This is why many women’s metabolism can slow down at menopause.

There are also some foods that interfere with thyroid production. Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, turnips and broccoli can do this. Now, this does NOT mean you should avoid these foods. But if you are eating HUGE amounts of them, you will want to be aware of this effect and a factor it in.

Thyroiditis

Finally, your body may decide it doesn’t like its own thyroid and start eating it up. This is an autoimmune disorder called thyroiditis. If your body is eating its own thyroid, there won’t be enough to do the job. Your tests will appear normal because everything is being produced properly. Unless you test for the markers of the thyroiditis called antibodies, you may think that your thyroid is “normal” and not understand why you feel so badly. Increasing your levels of omega 3 fatty acids can help with auto immune reactions.

Let’s go back over the variables that are operating in this story. As you read them, you will see how complex the system is. And, more difficult, is the fact that it is almost impossible to pinpoint exactly where a problem may lie.

Here are the questions for an accurate thyroid diagnosis:

Does your system have what it needs to make thyroid hormones? [Tyrosine,, Iodine, Zinc, Selenium and Vitamin A]
Is the iodine and tyrosine being taken up properly to make the hormone?
Does the TRH/TSH feedback loop work? Is it in balance? Are the TRH/TSH levels appropriate for your system?
Is the thyroid gland producing what it is supposed to?
Is the T4 converting to T3 properly?
Is the thyroid binding properly? Is anything going on to interfere with the binding?
Is the T3 working at the mitochondria level to demand increased oxygen consumption?
Is the thyroid hormone available for use or are thyroid antibodies eating it?

What to do?

If you feel that low thyroid or thyroid imbalance may be affecting you, Start by asking your doctor to order a thyroid panel. Be sure to insist that the panel include the thyroid antibody test.

Because the thyroid hormone regulates metabolism, your body temperature can be an indication of low levels of thyroid function. Get a basal thermometer at the drug store and measure your body temp every morning for a week. A basal thermometer is a special kind of thermometer that allows you to see more of the normal range of body temperature. It doesn’t work for measuring fever since it is calibrated to measure from 96 to 99 degrees only. Shake it down the night before. Then put the thermometer under your arm for ten minutes before you get up in the morning (you can go back to sleep). The basal thermometer will show your temp much more clearly than a regular thermometer.

Record what your temp is on a graph so you can see the fluctuations. If your basal resting temperature in under 97, it is possible that your thyroid is not working properly. When you ask your doctor to test your thyroid, she may only test the TSH levels. If they come back normal, your doctor may tell you that you do not have a thyroid problem. If your temperature is low, insist that more complete tests be done.

As you attempt to sort this out, you may find yourself in an interesting position with your doctor. He may tell you that your T4 levels are normal and to stop worrying about it. Or on the other end of the scale, she may have you measure your basal temperature, find that it is low, and then prescribe thyroid supplementation without any further diagnostic tests. Either one of these is incomplete. Your job is to become more and more informed. Read The Thyroid Solution and learn the questions to ask. Get more information so you can understand the meaning of your tests and you can be in charge of your own healing.