Is Your Thyroid to Blame for Your Fatigue?

When you go to your doctor because of fatigue, you will often get some blood work, among others the TSH, the thyroid stimulating hormone.

What is TSH?

The TSH is released by your pituitary gland (on the underside of the brain) and is stimulating the thyroid gland to product more thyroid hormones (T3 and T4).

Under normal circumstances, this is a perfect feedback loop and tightly regulated. If you need more thyroid hormones for energy, the brain releases more TSH and vice versa.

That’s the reason that if your TSH is high, you most likely suffer from low thyroid function (Hypothyroidism)

So you have been “diagnosed” with hypothyroidism – now what?

Today’s medical standards give little hope for people with hypothyroidism. For those of you with thyroid issues who have gone through the healthcare system, your experience may have gone something like this:

1. Feelings of chronic fatigue and weight gain.
2. The healthcare “expert” tests only for TSH (hormone released from your pituitary gland to tell your thyroid to work harder) and maybe T4 (the primary inactive hormone your thyroid produces).
3. Your TSH level is high.
4. A lifetime of synthetic T4 (Levothyroxine) is prescribed with periodic TSH level checks in order to tweak your Levothyroxine.
5. You still may or may not feel better

With all the knowledge we have on the complex interactions of the thyroid on the body and the body on the thyroid, it is unfortunate the above pattern remains typical.

And often, your doctor may say that you don’t need tests besides TSH… If you are not happy with this answer, here is a resource to get all the tests for your thyroid done yourself!

What really could be going on with your thyroid?

1. Iodine deficiency

In this modern world, many people turn to sea salt or pink Himalayan salt for the better taste and higher trace mineral content. They don’t think about that regular table salt is iodized to prevent thyroid dysfunction.

If you don’t eat dulse, seaweed and seafood a lot, you may need iodine replacement.  I recommend Thyroid Pro, a supplement that beautifully supports thyroid function in many ways and also supplies the iodine you need.

Would you like to get instructions for a simple at-home-test to find out if you may be iodine-deficient? Email me!  I’ll be happy to send you the instructions!

2. AUTOIMMUNITY can stop the TSH from working…

Most people with hypothyroidism don’t have a “thyroid problem”, they really have an immune system problem.

Situations can happen where the immune system mistakes the thyroid gland for a foreign invader (like bacteria or viruses). Over time (and not necessarily with symptoms) this can lead to thyroid gland damage and thus hypothyroidism.

These thyroid antibodies (TPO and TGA) can exist for many years before the onset of symptoms (when standard medicine is usually introduced) and can have genetic sensitivity. If you have elevated levels of these antibodies (Hashimoto’s Disease), it is important to get all family members tested early, before the onset of symptoms so that preventative action can be taken and maybe interventions done.

Hashimoto’s is well known in online communities but what is not readily known is people who test negative for TPO and TGA could still have antibodies to T3 and T4 themselves. This may be the case if you can not tolerate replacement hormone therapy, neither natural nor pharmaceutical.

Get the test for Thyroid function and antibodies here:

for Canada

for the USA

3. Toxins can interfere with your thyroid function

Other chemical substances (e.g. chlorine and fluoride in drinking water) can interfere with your thyroid being able to utilize iodine in your diet or from supplements.

Other chemicals can do it, too.

There are about 85,000 man-made chemicals in use in the North America. Each year we are exposed to hundreds of new chemicals, many of them being thyroid disrupting chemicals. The key way these chemicals disrupt the thyroid system is by taking the place where active T3 should go on our cells so the T3’s message is never received.

This may not been seen in standard lab results.  That is why testing for environmental chemicals is crucial in getting to the root case of thyroid disease.

Contact me to find out what’s going on in your case!

4. Your gut doesn’t work properly

The health of our gut greatly influences our overall health, including the thyroid gland and its function.

Since we could write an entire book on the gut/thyroid connection, I want to make one very important point: only 20% of the T4 the thyroid gland produces becomes active T3 that the body can use to run cellular metabolism correctly. Another 20% of the T4 gets converted into inactive T3 sulfate and T3 acetic acid. These two can act as hormone backup only in the presence of a healthy gut. T3 sulfate and T3 acetic acid are made into active T3 by healthy gut flora.

Having gut symptoms such as bloating, diarrhea, constipation can be a sign of an unhealthy gut, however, it is very common to have an unbalanced gut and have no symptoms at all .

As important as it is to use mainstream healthcare providers to investigate “grammy award winning” diseases such as thyroid cancer, understanding and finding underlying triggers and promoters of thyroid dysfunction is way out of their league. Did they discuss any of the above with you? Probably not.

Would you like help figuring things out?

Schedule your FREE health consultation and I will help you get all the tests you require!