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Last post I gave a list of thyroid symptoms. If you missed that, please take a look and
see if you have any. If you have as many
as three or more, chances are high your thyroid is low. Thyroid matters big time! It controls or participates in virtually
every system of your body. Thus the
symptoms can show up in so many seemingly unrelated areas, from stem to stern
so to speak.
So first of all, how
does thyroid get low? I think this is a
better question than what are treatments.
And this answer, like virtually all that relate to “how did I get sick?”
comes back to our old friend chronic inflammation. Our immune system is a one
note song. No matter what goes wrong,
the body’s response is inflammation.
When humans were hunter/gatherers, that worked well. What went wrong was mostly injury or micro
invaders (bacteria and viruses). Inflammation
had something clear cut to do.
If you had a cut, inflammation did its best—pain, redness,
heat and swelling. Meanwhile,
inflammatory chemicals removed damaged tissue and allowed scar tissue to heal
the injury. Or in the case of
microorganisms, there was something to attack, you ran a fever and your immune
system got you well.
Modern life brought a whole host
of other thing that go wrong and it’s not so clear-cut what to attack. If you have a deficiency of some important
nutrient (or several) what is there for the inflammatory chemicals to attack or
remove to allow for healing. If you
breathe noxious air quality or eat lots of sugars—two examples of things that
the body isn’t really designed for—what can the immune system attack? If you bought into the “saturated fat is bad
for you” mantra foist upon us 30 years ago, and used high levels of Omega 6
oils for years with little balance of Omega 3 oils, your immune system is
revved to the inflammatory side (omega 6) without the braking effect of the
anti-inflammatory side(Omega 3.
Under modern conditions we have inflammation cranked into
high gear and no clear object for it to fight.
But fight it must. And so
inflammatory chemicals do their thing—fighting your own organs. Which ones?
It’s different for every individual, depending on genetics, history, environment. If you are inflamed for decades, will you
have a low thyroid, heart disease, cancer, depression, Alheimers, psoriasis, arthritis, allegies, asthma,
wrinkles—or what? But all disease
processes start with chronic inflammation run amok. It’s doing damage somewhere(s) in your
body. The damage is silent and invisible—until
it’s not –then it screams at you.
OK, I got long winded there.
So how doies this relate to low thyroid?
STOP the inflammation!!! Stop the
damage! There are many things to do to
stop inflammation and I will be discussing more of them. But today, for the thyroid, the biggie is
giving it the nutrient it requires. IODINE.
And oh, by the way, getting enough iodine will do a lot of
other good things for you. If the
Japanese with their high intake of iodine are any indication (and they are) you
need iodine in many milligrams, not micrograms.
Don’t neglect selenium. Feed your
thyroid! And if you are low enough to
have hypothyroid symptoms, supplementing with thyroid hormone is great first aid
for all those symptoms that show up when it’s low.
Thyroid tests are iffy.
Not because of the tests but because the “normal range” is not. Many doctors are not up on the new normal
range which for the TSH test should be under 2, preferable under 1. Synthetic hormone is a favorite of many
doctors and most patients report no improvement of symptoms though the tests
improve. Dessicated thyroid gland in
Armour Thyroid, and a few other brands is a big improvement for most. A good book for further reading and real help
is found here:
The author also runs an about.com site for thyroid for lots
more information.
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