Sluggish energy or fatigue, low motivation, trouble with your weight, fluid retention, foggy or low mood, hair loss and low hormones are all symptoms that can occur with excessive sensitivity to the cold. If you’ve suspected your thyroid is low, and had it checked, only to come back normal anyway, you may have been on the right track, though with the wrong test.
Having a low body temperature will have you rugged up, making excuses to stay in bed. A number of health risks can lower your body temperature, making it, for some, excruciatingly painful to expose themselves to the elements, the wind, rain and cold water. Your thyroid is a common cause of low body temperature and slow metabolism, though the thyroid doesn’t become imbalanced without a cause, there is usually always another underlying contributing factor.
Hyperthyroidism may cause a range of symptoms easily mistaken for other conditions, such as fatigue, heat intolerance, hyperactivity, irritability, panic attacks, palpitations and insomnia. Weight loss rather than weight gain, tremor, diarrhoea and hair loss may also be a problem.
Your Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) is the most typical and only test your doctor may choose to do to check your thyroid function, and if you have a real and obvious thyroid condition or disease, such as autoimmune Hashimoto’s or Graves’ Disease, this will generally be abnormal, leading to further thyroid testing. However, if your TSH is normal, you could still be suffering with subclinical Hyperthyroidism, Hypothyroidism or Wilson’s Syndrome, which is a mild form of low thyroid function, and can wreak just as much havoc for your body temperature, metabolism, hormone balance, fertility, weight, mood issues and energy levels, and will not be picked up with TSH testing alone.
There are a full range of tests that should be done to fully examine your thyroid health, and without these, this very common condition can go untreated for years. Once you have a correct diagnosis, finding out what to do about it is the next step. Triggers for thyroid disorders can be stress induced, dietary, intolerance, hormonal imbalance or nutritional deficiency, and each individual can vary greatly. Finding these triggers is as simple as organising follow up blood testing over a range of nutrients, foods and body functions to find the cause easily, and is often very quickly resolved.
If your TSH is normal, you could still be suffering with subclinical hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, and could go untreated for years if not fully investigated.
In many cases your thyroid gland will respond to the fluid changes occurring due to a compromised immune system, rather than being the cause of the fluid retention. Intolerance to substances, chemicals and food sensitivities which may be triggered by genetic conditions or stress, can then impact the thyroid as a secondary reaction rather than a primary health conditions.
Iodine deficiency is another aspect of thyroid health that is often overlooked as the cause of sometimes quite complex health risks, and often put down to no cause at all. Being notoriously low in Australian soils, it may be the cause of many more health concerns in men and women. Symptoms of brain fog, poor memory, fatigue, hormone imbalances, infertility either conception or miscarriage, birth defects, hair breaking or falling out, weight issues, fluid retention, depression, anxiety, heart or thyroid disease, insulin resistance, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), lumpy breasts, and more, are increasingly common complaints. It is necessary for all glands to communicate with each other, for your hormones to be balanced.
A spot test is most commonly used to determine levels, however isn’t the most accurate. Testing absorption of iodine rather than what is excreted is better to determine what you may need. Once levels are normalised you’ll feel and function at a much happier, and more productive level in every way. Finding the cause of low iodine is also incredibly important as sometimes it’s not a lack in the diet, but can be attributed to poor absorption, which can come down to any number of other health issues, including gut malabsorption issues, parasite, bacterial infections, stress, food sensitivities, or an underlying disease process causing inflammation.
Suffering with any of these symptoms should not be simply accepted as part of life, but should be considered a clue to a health issue you may not know about, so consider investigating even the smallest of issues, it could change the path of your life forever.
Combining the experience of our practitioners with the advanced testing facility at Advanced Wellness & Behavioural Centre including functional pathology, we may accurately determine almost immediately what is underlying your hormonal imbalance to design a health program unique to you for the most effective and best treatment available for your physical and mental health. This testing regime leaves nothing to the imagination reducing treatment time and financial investment for quick resolution for your health concerns.
