While an underactive thyroid is not known to end your life, it is known make your life seem slow. Thyroid hormone gives every cell in your body that extra little umph when needed. When you have low thyroid hormone, that lack of extra umph makes those cells under perform.
Symptoms of thyroid problems can be seen from head to toe. Some people with low thyroid hormone have cold feet as a symptom, while others with an underactive thyroid have thin, straw-like hair.
So here is a short version of my checklist to see if you have symptoms of thyroid problems:
- Always feeling cold, or may need extra cloths to stay warm
- Thinning hair, balding or straw-like hair
- Aching in muscles and joints that had no physical trauma to explain it
- Eating a reasonable amount of calories, but still gain weight or can't lose weight
- Feelings of depression or anxiety
- Mental sluggishness or brain fog
- Chronic problems with infection, like a sinus infection, vaginal infection or ear infection
- Muscle weakness, especially in the back, hips and shoulders
- Feeling fatigued, tired or exhausted even without doing physical exercise
- Soreness in throat or neck
- Constipation or decreased bowel function
- Infertility, miscarriages and low libido or sex drive
- High cholesterol, heart flutters or low or high blood pressure
- Poor digestion or heart burn
- Increase in water weight or water retention
- History of some other autoimmune disorder
- Family history of thyroid problems
- Family history of autoimmune disorders
If you have 3 or more of the above, you may be one of the millions who suffer from an underactive thyroid.
If you continue reading pages in this thyroid blog, you will see that symptoms of thyroid problems are just as or even more important in diagnosing low thyroid hormone than thyroid lab analysis. Check out this post on how testing thyroid hormone levels can be very inaccurate.
1 comments:
I appreciate your blog. I hope lots of people find it helpful. I've got Graves Disease and because I feel that it's been taken too lightly in my case, I've started a blog about my experiences with it. I no longer have a thyroid, but what started when I did and continues to this day is urticaria. I've studied quite a bit online finding links between the two. I have urticaria with elevated TSH and at no other time. My endocrinologist doesn't believe me, but I believe it is undeniable. I think situations like these cause people undue suffering. So many common symptoms of Graves are misdiagnosed and take away from people's lives. I had urticaria unnecessarily for almost two years before I made the connection. Unfortunately, I think that this may happen frequently. My early twenties were stolen from me because of it.
So, thanks for bringing attention to thyroid disorders which can affect so much! I wish more doctors did.
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