The Lies As A Women You Have Been Told About Thyroid Issues
(and what to do to fix it)
It’s VERY common that women either feel they struggle with thyroid issues, or have been diagnosed with a disease of the thyroid like hashimoto’s.
With a symptom list as long as your arm, its easy to see why so many women believe they have thyroid issues.
Symptoms include…
- tiredness
- being sensitive to cold
- weight gain
- constipation
- depression
- slow movements and thoughts
- muscle aches and weakness
- muscle cramps
- dry and scaly skin
- brittle hair and nails
- loss of libido (sex drive)
- pain, numbness and a tingling sensation in the hand and fingers (carpal tunnel syndrome)
- irregular periods or heavy periods
Yet, the sad reality is most women are at a complete loss of how to manage these symptoms other than take thyroid medications.
So I wanted to give a bit of insight of what you might not have been told and I will break this down into a few areas.
1. Those with no formal diagnosis of thyroid issue.
2.Those with a diagnosed thyroid condition.
So lets start…
If you are like the thousands of women that struggle with some of the above symptoms but the doctors tell you that your thyroid numbers are NORMAL, you might want to consider the following.
Conventional medicine will very often only test via blood, TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) and T4 (inactive hormone).
If these numbers come up in range then they tell you that your thyroid is not the issue. That strictly isn’t true.
Full panels of thyroid would also include markers like T3, reverse T3, globulin counts etc. These give us a much better idea of not just ion you can make thyroid hormone but can you convert it and use it.
Thus, a full work up is something you might want to consider to get an opinion.
Unaddressed antibodies – Many women I have worked with have no idea that they have autoimmune to their thyroid and this is contributing to the symptoms.
There are 3 levels of autoimmune and sadly, conventional medicine only acts when they can diagnose a disease.
The problem is there are 2 stages before this, silent autoimmune and reactive, thus its possible you could be falling into a sub clinical area where you have symptoms but not enough tissue damage to give you medication.
In some cases it could take years to get a diagnosis, even though you could be healing it now.
Excess stress – When you are emotionally, mentally and / or physically stressed, you impair pathways that are essential for thyroid function.
High stress means more cortisol and adrenaline, these both can have a potent effect on your bodies ability to not only produce thyroid hormones but use them.
Silent Infections – Many do not the pieces of the puzzle together, thus they end up on endless supplements to try and get the thyroid to work. In reality, if you have gut infections, chronic inflammation or silent infections, you’ll always be swimming up stream and struggle to progress.
Now, if you have a diagnosed condition and still struggle with symptoms then there are some key areas you have to address.
What effect is your thyroid having on other areas of the body?
Many do not realise that when the thyroid is out, many other areas of the body are out, specifically the BRAIN.
When the thyroid doesn’t function well, you struggle to make hormones and neurotransmitters work effectively, this ends up with brain fog, poor memory to name but 2 things.
Over time, brain inflammation can progress and this leads to the thyroid becoming even more impaired.
Are you 100% Gluten free?
If not, you are holding yourself back. There is a term in science called molecular mimicry. With thyroid disease you have already lost tolerance of the tissue, combine that with the gliadin in gluten and you have a recipe for the body attacking itself. As the gliadin in gluten mimics the thyroid gland.
Do you have stable blood glucose levels?
Many women I work with have fluctuating blood glucose levels, getting anxious and irritable if meals are missed and fatigue easily after meals.
When you have poor blood glucose management, you don’t just crash in the afternoon, you also stimulate inflammatory signalling in the form of TH-17. This is bad news for people with autoimmune conditions.
Do you sleep through the night?
If you don’t sleep through the night, its unlikely you are hitting the right levels of deep and REM sleep, these are needed for restorative processes in the body.
I know many think you should wake for a week between 3am – 5am but that’s not true. This is due to poor blood glucose levels.
The above are just some questions for you to answer and explore if you want to improve your health. Over the years we have worked with countless people with undiagnosed and diagnosed thyroid issues.
Every time we find that the above areas haven’t been addressed.
So, for you to start leaving those symptoms behind, you have to decide to start taking control of your own health.
This blog post isn’t exhaustive in things that are missed and what to do, its just a start point of things to consider right now.
Of course, if you would like help solving your thyroid issues, let me know and I’m happy to see if it’s a good fit.
Right now I have space for a couple of 1-2-1 consulting days to do testing and full assessment and create life long change plans.
