The shape shifting hormone. The “great mimicker”. Thyroid.

They call thyroid the “great mimicker”. That is because when thyroid is off, it can look like just about anything. Autoimmune disease, joint pain, muscle pain, headaches, fatigue, memory issues, concentration issues, anxiety, depression, dry skin, easy bruising, brittle nails, hair loss, low B12, heavy menstrual flows, bad menstrual cramps, miscarriages. To name only a few.

There is one particularly interesting symptom of low thyroid that I tend to see so often. But this question is never asked by most physicians, “Do you have itchy ears“? Itchy ears is a very common symptom of low thyroid.

So many children now have significant thyroid problems. In children, a common symptom of low thyroid is recurrent infections. How many children do you know that have had multiple ear infections, strep throats, sinus infections etc…? If this many children got these types of recurrent infections before the invention of life saving antibiotics, almost no child before the 1950’s would have lived long enough to become an adult.

It has been estimated, that perhaps up to 40% of Americans have an undiagnosed low thyroid problem. Hypothyroid. Low thyroid. One theory as to why so many people have thyroid issues today actually has to do with children and childhood infections.

Before antibiotics were invented, children who got infections unfortunately died. Fortunately, with antibiotics being available, children don’t die of infections hardly at all. But because of this, children who are getting recurrent infections due to being hypothyroid, grow up into adulthood and pass genes onto their children making them hypothyroid also. Their children get more infections but survive childhood thanks to antibiotics and then pass these same genes onto the next generation once again.

This is the “epigenetics” that we have touched on in previous blog posts. Which genes in our DNA are turned on and which ones are turned off. We want to have all our “good” genes turned on and all our “bad” genes turned off. It is not so much what genes you have so much as which ones are turned on and which ones are turned off. Epigenetics.

An incredibly easy way to get a sense of whether thyroid problems are an issue is simply to look at how many symptoms a person has of low thyroid. I put together a list called “The signs and symptoms of low thyroid”. I basically took about everything that can happen when your thyroid is low, based on the scientific literature, and made a list. It is two pages long!

When you see two pages of symptoms that can occur when your thyroid is low, you will probably say, “I can see why they call thyroid the great mimicker now”. I simply have people circle all the symptoms that apply to them on this long list. The more things you circle, the more you can feel confident that the thyroid is a big player in why you are not feeling your best. But when thyroid issues are fixed, look at all the things that will get better.

Sometimes fixing the thyroid is as simple as fixing Cortisol. The “stress hormone” we discussed in the last blog post. Or often times, the thyroid stops producing adequate amounts of thyroid hormone when you have an autoimmune thyroid problem starting. The immune system has started to make antibodies which attack the thyroid. This will overtime cause the thyroid to stop producing adequate amounts of thyroid hormone. If this occurs for a long enough period of time, eventually someone might be diagnosed with the autoimmune thyroid disease Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. But usually, no one thinks to check thyroid antibody levels despite it only taking a simple blood test. These antibodies are the TPO and thyroglobulin antibodies.

I can’t tell you how often I see people who have already been diagnosed with low thyroid but nobody has ever thought to check to see if the immune system is attacking the thyroid. If this autoimmune process is the reason why the thyroid has stopped making enough thyroid hormone in the first place.

Or a person has had stomach and bowel issues for awhile. Because of this, they are unable to digest their food well and absorb the vitamins and minerals into their system. Or, the gut issues were bad enough that they were started on an acid blocking medicine that then completely guarantees that you will not absorb enough nutrients from your food. The body needs some very specific vitamins and minerals from the food you eat to make thyroid hormones. Without them, low thyroid issues occur.

Or you have no stomach and bowel issues but you don’t chew your food well. Maybe this is due to eating on the run. Maybe it is due to not being mindful as you sit and eat. Thus swallowing the food after only a couple chews. Maybe you have a dry mouth due to medications or a chronic disease. Without saliva to chemically break down food and your chewing to mechanically break down food, food is presented to the stomach in a form that it cannot deal with. Your stomach might be fine but it needs the saliva and teeth to do their work so it can do it’s work. Then the pancreas and gall bladder can’t do their work either.

Or a person has every symptom you could possibly imagine of low thyroid. They are put on a thyroid medicine like “Synthroid” or “Levothyroxine” but it doesn’t work. The same reasons why people don’t get much improvement with using thyroid medicines such as these, is the same reason the immune system has started to attack the thyroid in the first place giving someone an autoimmune thyroid issue.

Thyroid is such a central mechanism in the body that without it, the body simply cannot heal. Multiple symptoms start occurring and more occur as time goes on. And because of all that is occurring due to the low thyroid, people start to develop autoimmune diseases.  Whether it is an actual autoimmune disease of the thyroid such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and Grave’s disease or any other one you can think of.

In an upcoming blog post, we will discuss the appropriate testing and interpretation of the results that needs to occur in order to actually find the thyroid problem when it exists. With as many as 40% of Americans (but this really applies to everyone no matter which country you live in) having an undiagnosed thyroid problem, you can imagine that appropriate testing and interpretation is not usually happening. Thus the “We checked your thyroid and it looks fine”. When it is actually not “fine” at all.