Our Old Friend, Thyroid

By far, the most common complaint we hear from clients is fatigue.  Does this sound like you? No matter how much sleep you get, there is never really a time during the day when you feel energetic.  Except for maybe that half hour after your cup of coffee or energy drink, then… crash!

Low thyroid levels are a chief cause of chronic fatigue.  In addition to the sluggishness, clients usually report problems losing weight, cold hands and feet, thinning hair, dry skin, and memory problems, to name a few.  Your thyroid gland is the pace car for metabolism throughout the body, and it throttles you up on the fuel of thyroid hormone.

But you may say, “My doctor tested my thyroid, and said my levels are normal.”

We hear that every day, and yet we know we are looking at a perfect picture of hypothyroidism — usually before even looking at the results of the lab test. How can this be?  Because, chances are, your doctor is looking at the wrong thyroid hormone levels.  For decades doctors have routinely used TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) to measure thyroid function.  TSH is the messenger hormone that is sent out in the bloodstream from the master control center (the pituitary gland in the brain) to tell the thyroid gland to kick up production.  The reasoning is simple:  if the TSH is high, the pituitary must have detected low thyroid, and so, we prescribe thyroid medication, right?

That tired, old approach doesn’t work well.  There are actually two circulating thyroid hormones in the body, T4 and T3.  Measuring just TSH can miss a lot of things.  We believe it best to measure those working thyroid hormones.  A normal thyroid gland releases about 80% T4 and 20% T3.  Because T3 does about 90% of the workload, its level needs to be watched carefully.  Fortunately it’s about 4 times more potent than T4, but you can still run into problems and not feel well even when lab test say you’re “normal.”  This is probably the most common thing we treat, because it can be so tricky.