Thyroid

Your thyroid is one of most essential components to maintaining overall health. It acts as the balancer for your metabolism and as an internal temperature control. The thyroid secretes thyroxine and other minerals that are important to your body’s chemical balance. The thyroid works in conjunction with the pituitary gland to perform its duties.

Maintaining this hormone balance is important, and when your thyroid creates too much or not enough of these hormones, you can develop thyroid problems. One of problems is called hyperthyroidism, or overactive thyroid. This occurs when your body is producing too much thyroxine. Too much thryoxine in the body can cause a number of health problems. You may see unexplained weight loss or gain, changes in appetite, mood, sensitivity to light and muscle fatigue. You also may be irritable, anxious and moody. The difficulty with detecting an overactive thyroid is that it can show symptoms that might be associated with other disorders. You may be feeling fatigued and anxious for other reasons, so a doctor’s assessment is important. Further, thyroid problems in women after age 50 are often misdiagnosed as side of effects of pre menopause.

Sometimes, the symptoms are unexplained. For instance, Oprah Winfrey announced publicly in 2007 that she had a thyroid problem. She said that she go between two extremes back and forth where one week she’d have endless energy and not be able to sleep, and the next week she’d want to sleep all the time. She gained unexplained weight and said she just didn’t feel right. In her October 2007 column titled “What I Know for Sure” in O Magazine she wrote, “I craved balance. I was desperate to be somewhere in the middle of hyper and hypo—where, obviously, I’d been my whole life, taking it for granted because I didn’t know any better. We often need a malfunction to appreciate all the things that function.”

As Winfrey wrote, balance is exactly what the thyroid does in the body in terms of your metabolism, reproduction and digestion. Fortunately, if you have an overactive thyroid or other thyroid problems, there are solutions. You may be prescribed radioactive iodine which soaks up excess thryoxine produced by the thyroid. The iodine is soaked by the thyroid causing it to shrink back to normal levels. It slows the thyroid and often has to be taken everyday to keep your thyroid levels in balance. You may also be prescribed beta blockers or other medications.

If your thyroid doesn’t produce enough of the essential hormones, the disorder is called
hypoparathyroidism. In addition to the essential thryoxine, the thyroid also controls the levels of calcium and phosphorus in the body. In the case of hypoparathyroidism, the lack of presence of these two minerals puts the body in jeopardy. To address this issue, a patient will be prescribed hormone replacements and or supplements for the calcium and phosphorous. Hypoparathyroidism is a chronic disorder and medication to remedy the problem will likely have to be taken each day to maintain the healthy chemical balance of the thyroid.

If your thyroid problems persist and they are not addressed by medication or hormone replacement, surgery may be necessary to solve the problem. Depending on the severity of your thyroid problem, part of or your whole thyroid may need to be removed. If part of your thyroid is removed, the remainder of the gland can resume its normal routine and perform its job. If your whole thyroid is removed, like in the case of many thyroid cancer patients, you will need to take daily medication to mimic the thyroid’s chemicals in the body.