What Your Doctor May Not Be Telling You About Your Thyroid

For such a small gland, the thyroid is pretty complex.  If your thyroid isn't functioning properly, you could be experiencing a lot of different symptoms.

If your body is producing too much thyroid hormone, in otherwards you are hyperthyroid, you could be experiencing irritability, anxiety, racing heart, hair loss, weight loss, and hyperactivity for example.

If you're producing too little thyroid hormone, you are hypothyroid.  You could be experiencing fatigue, depression, hair loss, feeling cold, weakness, weight gain, and/or trouble losing weight.

Many of the symptoms of hyperthyroid and hypothyroid overlap, so it's important to run the labs to know how your thyroid is functioning.  

So how do you determine if your thyroid is functioning properly?  

First of all, you'll need to run a full thyroid panel which includes total and free T3 and T4, TSH, reverse T3, TPO, and TBG.  I'm willing to bet your doctor probably doesn't run a full panel.  In order to get a complete picture of how the thyroid is functioning though, a full panel is necessary.  Some doctors only test TSH, which only gives you a small window into what's going on.  

Another thing is doctors use a fairly wide range when looking at thyroid hormone levels.  It's best to look at an optimal range since you can be in the "normal" range, but still not feel well.    

It's really important to reduce stress and make some lifestyle changes if you are hyperthyroid.  The reason for this is because cortisol dysfunction effects the thyroid. 

With hypothyroidism, as is the case with other imbalances, it's important to address the body as a whole and support things like sex hormones, adrenals, mitochondria, neurotransmitters, and detox pathways along with your thyroid.  Often times, once all those other things are supported the thyroid starts functioning properly.

If you're on artificial T4 medicine (Levothyroxine), your medication may be bringing your TSH levels down as it's intended, however many people can't convert the artificial drug into free T3, so your free T3 levels might be low, and your doctor may not even realize the lack of conversion if they're not running a full thyroid panel.

Frequently, the brain increases TSH levels, signaling the thyroid to produce more hormones; however, it is unable to do so due to a lack of necessary building blocks required for hormone production.

As mentioned above, it's important to take a whole-body approach.  Many factors can contribute to the thyroid not functioning properly.  Some of these factors are:

Diet

Stress

Exercise

Sleep

Toxins/chemicals

It's important to eat healthy and not eat much processed foods and sugar; work on lifestyle changes like reducing stress, getting enough sleep, exercising; and reducing toxins and chemicals in foods, the environment, and personal care products.  All these things effect the functioning of our thyroid and our health in general.

In addition to managing lifestyle factors, it is crucial to run the essential tests to identify any nutritional deficiencies and imbalances, as well as to determine the necessary detox support, providing your body with the tools it needs for healing. To learn about the essential tests, read my blog post titled 6 Functional Labs That Get to the Root Causes.

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