It is never just one thing that causes your thyroid dysfunction. When I first started on this journey to heal my thyroid, when I found something on a lab test such as SIBO or gluten sensitivity, I was like, "This is it! I will just do x, y, and z to address whatever it was that had showed up and I would be fixed." I thought I would finally be able to be past all of this. While I greatly improved my health, it was never enough to fully move past all of the symptoms I was dealing with.
Thyroid issues are very complex. Prolonged stress, whether be it emotional, physical or environmental, is often the catalyst for someone to go on and develop some sort of chronic symptom that's stemmed from a dysfunctional thyroid gland. Emotional stress could be coming from your career or your family situation and an environmental stress could be from chronic mold exposure or from a chemical such as glyphosate. Physical stress could be due to the increased demands for thyroid hormone during pregnancy. Although these are just a few examples of stressors/triggers in the body, there are so many that it can become very overwhelming at times to try and pinpoint. Some very common symptoms of early thyroid damage could be anything from frequent headaches, muscles aches, fatigue, weight gain, skin issues, depression, and constipation and are often ignored because they’re not severe enough for you to fully pay attention and investigate. It’s not until these symptoms become a little louder that you may be called to visit your doctor. Unfortunately, many leave empty handed with no explanation to the cause of their symptoms and are told everything is normal. And there is a good chance they were given an antidepressant because their doctor believes they're just depressed. Yea, I've heard this too many times to count. Once the body has been under a significant amount of stress for a prolonged period of time, our immune defenses get weakened, mitochondria get damaged, inflammation takes over from all of the oxidative stress, and we pick up things like bacterial, pathogenic, and viral pathogens if we haven't already that further weaken our immune defenses and create even more inflammation. It’s a vicious cycle. We may start having reactions to foods that we never had before and begin to develop more symptoms before enough damage is done to fully reflect it in the labs. I say this because thyroid dysfunction happens years before it’s reflected in the TSH, the most common thyroid marker that conventional medicine doctors use to check the function of the thyroid gland. It’s for this reason that many cases of thyroid dysfunction get missed. If you want to learn more on this, you can click here. The stress bucket of that individual is now overflowing, and you have someone for example who has multiple chemical toxicities, a gluten intolerance, parasites, multiple nutrient deficiencies, and H. pylori. Removing just one of the above problems will likely not be enough to reverse your thyroid symptoms and optimize your thyroid function. This is why a holistic approach is needed almost every time. True healing is a journey. The journey is not always easy, but I promise it's very much worth it! If you are determined to heal your thyroid dysfunction at the root cause, please schedule a discovery call to learn more. Comments are closed.
|
Hello!I'm Meagan Reynolds- a certified functional medicine practitioner and dietitian located in Nashville, TN. After overcoming my own health challenges with hypothyroidism, I was motivated to create my own practice where I help women reverse their thyroid, gut, and hormonal issues so they can reclaim their health. Archives
July 2024
Categories
All
|