Why Does Winter Make My Thyroid Problems Worse?

If common sense rules, then would it not make sense to gain a couple extra pounds of fat for insulation for the winter months? So why are people looking to blame the cold air on their thyroid problems?

Is there even any truth behind this kind of thinking?

There is some evidence that people with thyroid problems will suffer more as their thyroid gland is asked to perform in overdrive. Since your thyroid controls your metabolism, it plays a role in keeping you warm in colder climates. Some of these people already have either a weak gland, or a breakdown in the conversion and utilization of the hormone to a usable form. With this extra load, more problems may spring up.

Could it be that people with thyroid problems should all move to Florida to avoid the weight gain, hair loss, nerve damage, aches and pains? Problem solved, right?

This would be one way of changing their environment to help aide their thyroid in healing. But we should really look at that solution a little different than just an ends to a means, such as:

1. Since we acknowledge that we can make changes in our environment to make changes to our health of our thyroid, then we should look to make other/better changes
2. We can treat our thyroid with things beyond drugs and surgery
3. We can use our body as a barometer as to how well or poor things we are doing affect our thyroid health

Now we can develop a strategy that allows us to take preventative measures, eliminate all things that are harmful for our thyroid and form habits that are thyroid friendly.

Underactive Thyroid: How Many Symptoms of Thyroid Problems Do You Have?

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:

1. Always feeling cold, or may need extra cloths to stay warm
2. Thinning hair, balding or straw-like hair
3. Aching in muscles and joints that had no physical trauma to explain it
4. Eating a reasonable amount of calories, but still gain weight or can't lose weight
5. Feelings of depression or anxiety
6. Mental sluggishness or brain fog
7. Chronic problems with infection, like a sinus infection, vaginal infection or ear infection
8. Muscle weakness, especially in the back, hips and shoulders
9. Feeling fatigued, tired or exhausted even without doing physical exercise
10. Soreness in throat or neck
11. Constipation or decreased bowel function
12. Infertility, miscarriages and low libido or sex drive
13. High cholesterol, heart flutters or low or high blood pressure
14. Poor digestion or heart burn
15. Increase in water weight or water retention
16. History of some other autoimmune disorder
17. Family history of thyroid problems
18. 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.

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Symptoms of Thyroid Problems: The Ultimate Yardstick

What's really important when it comes to diagnosing thyroid problems? Is it the symptoms of thyroid problems, family history and physical presentation, or should more weight be given to TSH, T3, T4?

Before we answer that, let's look at both the patients and the doctor's points of view.

In order for a patient to tell their doctor about their symptoms of thyroid problems, the doctor has to actually spend time with them, as well as actually listen to them.

Well, the #1 problem people have with their doctor is that they do neither, and doctors know it.

So if you go to the doctor and s/he doesn't listen, it must not be important, right?

A patient may subconsciously be persuaded to feel that maybe it isn't that important and take the doctor's word or their actions as reasonable.

What about the doctor. They have to listen to people tell them all their problems all day long. Some are very real, some are blown out of proportion and some are just lies (for money, drugs, sympathy, etc).

Doctors are actually trained that people are liars, so they rely heavily on lab testing (because lab test never lie, right?).

So we end up with both parties feeling that maybe the lab work is the way to go. Not good.

This has huge implications for those with symptoms of thyroid problems. A huge problem of under diagnosis exist for those with thyroid problems when a doctor relies on abnormal or normal TSH as the only marker for thyroid problems. Truth be told, these labs are very inaccurate and serve better as secondary markers for the diagnosis of thyroid problems.

What are far superior ways to assess thyroid problems?

1. symptoms of thyroid problems such as: unexplained weight gain, unmanageable hair or hair loss, depression, fatigue, chronic pain, always being cold, neuropathy, etc.? These are all things that point the finger at thyroid problems.
2. Are these problems common in your family (especially your mother)?
3. Is your body temperature low upon waking?
4. If you do an iodine test, does it show that you are deficient?

To properly make a diagnosis of thyroid problems, you need to leave no stone unturned. Since this hormone affects the rate that every cells works, it can have a wide range of problems (that are not always present). No wonder it's referred to as the "Great Mimicker."

Once the diagnosis is made, it is again the symptoms of thyroid problems and physical presentation that are the ultimate marker of improvement. Lab test are still unreliable and should serve as secondary markers (they do still have a purpose, don't get me wrong).

So here the challenge: changing our current way of thinking. Lab testing is modern, its sexy. Patient history and physical presentation is old school, its blah. Don't be swayed, go with what really works.

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Hypothyroid: Why is Weight Loss So Damn Hard?

If you have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism, you likely have heard the following from your doctor when discussing your weight?

• "Get off the couch and exercise"


• "No more pigging out"

It's easy to pass the buck. Assuming that an overweight person is that way because they are lazy is a mistake.

It is also very easy to give the poor advice of exercise more and eat less. While some need to do just that, for others it will actually make matters worse.

So why is it that someone that is diagnosed with hypothyroidism have such problems losing weight?

A person diagnosed with hypothyroidism (and many more who are not) has a problem with either their thyroid gland or thyroid hormone. Either way the result is symptoms of thyroid problems due to a slowed metabolism. If your metabolism is abnormally low, less calories will be burned at rest. This results in more energy to be stored on your body (AKA fat).

This is not the end of it. There are also contributory factors that can work as either the primary problem, or work synergistically to really mess things up.

Excess estrogen is a perfect example of this. As I explained in a previous post about symptoms of thyroid problems due to excessive estrogen, your body stores estrogen in fat cells. The more fat cells you have, the more estrogen can be bound. Excessive estrogen also binds to thyroid hormone and makes it useless, which further slows down your metabolism, which makes you gain more at cells, which binds more estrogen, which can bind to more thyroid hormone...you get the point.

This process can spiral out of control till it gets to the point where everything seems to fail. Whether a doctor has told you that you have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism or not, you have to address the hypothyroid issue or you will continue to ask yourself, "Why is Weight Loss So Damn Hard?"

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Is High Estrogen Levels Smothering your Thyroid?

Do you know someone that either knows that they have thyroid problems or unknowingly has symptoms of thyroid problems that lives their life similar to this?

1. Currently takes or has taken in the past birth control pills (synthetic estrogen intake)
2. Tries to eat "healthy" by eating soy and drinking bottled water (soy acts like estrogen and has isoflavones that can lower thyroid function and the plastics in bottles have estrogen-like chemicals that are released into the fluid, especially when heated)
3. Eats tons of meat because they are on some diet (the animals are fed things like soy, so they have excessive estrogen like chemicals stored in their tissues)
4. Even with their best effort, they can't seem to lose excess weight (estrogen is stored in fat cells. With extra body fat, that amount can really add up)

Besides #1, this can describe some men as well as females (well I guess some males too). All of the above can lead to excessive exposure to estrogen or estrogen-like chemicals which can cause thyroid problems.

Here's the facts: excess estrogen can increase TBG (thyroid binding globulin). Like the name implies, the thyroid hormone gets bound, changes its shape and can no longer be used by the body.

Translation = estrogen and estrogen-like chemicals can cause symptoms of thyroid problems.

This is just another example of how our world can influence our thyroid and thyroid hormone levels. You may even try to be doing good, but may be following some misguided advice.

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