How do thyroid disorders affect the body?
Functional medicine expert Dr. Susan Blum discusses how thyroid disorders affect the body. Watch Dr. Blum's video for information on thyroid health and fighting fatigue.
Transcript
When people lose weight, they sometimes-- it's possible that, you know, when there's a lot of weight loss, it's possible that you have too much thyroid hormone.
And when there's weight gain, it's possible you don't have enough. [MUSIC PLAYING]
So your thyroid gland makes actually several hormones. But the most common one that we look at is T4, which has four iodines in it as a hormone, and T3.
And those are the two main thyroid hormones. The most common-- as a big structural group,
it's good to think of the thyroid as either overactive or underactive. The thyroid hormone is responsible for your metabolism, for generating heat.
It's responsible-- well, it's responsible for many things, but metabolism is the one that most people think about because when people lose weight, they sometimes-- it's possible
that, you know, when there's a lot of weight loss, it's possible that you have too much thyroid hormone. And when there's weight gain, it's possible you don't have enough.
So that's a common thing people will come in and talk to me about. So too much thyroid hormone is called hyperthyroidism.
People can have palpitations and feel their heart racing. And often, the eyes will be very wide. The eyes look like they're--
I don't want to say bugging out. But that's what they-- it's called exophthalmos in a medical terminology. So more commonly than hyperthyroidism though
is hypothyroidism, which is too little thyroid hormone. And people feel sluggish. They feel cold.
Their hair can be falling out. And they-- and gaining weight. And those are really the most common symptoms
that people experience when they have a low-functioning thyroid. And there's a whole list of reasons
why a person could-- in functional medicine, it's more interesting actually to me to know why. So I might come-- somebody might come in,
and I see their thyroid is not functioning. It's either under functioning or it's over functioning. But I want to know why. Do you have toxins in your body like mercury?
Do you have an autoimmune thyroid condition? Is that part of the problem? And then there's a lot of other why's that we have to go deeper to say, well,
why do you have that? And you know, what's causing your immune system to do that? Sometimes, foods can be triggering inflammation in the thyroid gland.
Anything that triggers inflammation in the thyroid gland can cause it not to work right. So we ask a lot of why questions.
thyroid issues
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