Imagine a butterfly the size of your thumbs kicking your butt… You’d never let that happen! You’d overpower that tiny creature with ease. No contest, really! Okay, now imagine having an organ the size of that butterfly take you down… It sits just below your Adam’s apple and regulates your metabolism; ultimately controlling virtually every one of your bodily functions.
Enter: Your Thyroid Gland.
Your thyroid gland is a powerful little guy with a very important job: extracting iodine from the blood and incorporating it into thyroid hormones (T3 and T4). What’s especially unique about thyroid cells is that every other cell depends on the thyroid to manage its metabolism.
Basically, if your thyroid fails to do its job properly, you’re toast! Okay, that statement may be a tad dramatic, but it’s not entirely without base. When your thyroid gland is under-active, it can present some truly life-altering symptoms. When your thyroid is underperforming and thyroid hormone levels are low, your body’s processes start slowing down. When that happens, you may start to physically feel colder, you might become fatigued more easily, you may develop drier skin, or experience chronic constipation. Yikes. Your mind may even be affected as low thyroid levels can cause you to become more forgetful and can even contribute to depression.
So what exactly causes the thyroid to underperform?
That’s sort of a loaded question, because there are many possible reasons your thyroid production might be down, but here are a few:
- Surgical removal of part of or all of the thyroid gland
- Damage to the pituitary gland
- Too much or too little iodine
- Radiation treatment
- Autoimmune disease
Again, those are just a few of the possible causes of thyroid issues. Something else to keep in mind is that thyroid disease runs in families, so if someone in your immediate family has been diagnosed with a thyroid disorder, it’s a good idea to get a blood test for TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone).
Okay, so where do we go from here? We know the symptoms, we know some of the more common causes, but how is the thyroid treated?
Treating thyroid performance issues is more so a matter of managing your thyroid levels so that you’re not reliant on your body’s ability to produce thyroid hormones. The good news is that, in almost every patient, hypothyroidism can be completely controlled. Treatment includes the replacement of the amount of hormone your thyroid can’t make on its own. At Florida Center for Hormones and Wellness we only prescribe our patients natural thyroid. In our opinion, it is important to avoid any of the synthetic options out there as the best way to ensure a smooth, safe, and effective treatment is to use naturally occuring T3 & T4.
