Hypothyroidism, Thyroid Disease
I would like to give a big thank you to Dr. Mark Hyman, Medical Director at Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, for permission to transcribe his podcast interview with Dr. Drew Ramsey, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University.
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According to Dr. Ben Lynch, “Genes can be “born dirty” or merely “act dirty” in response to your environment, diet, or lifestyle—causing lifelong, life-threatening, and chronic health problems, including cardiovascular disease, hormone problems, autoimmune disorders, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, obesity, cancer, and diabetes.” And I just had to talk to him and find out more. [Read more…]
It is one thing to read articles about hypothyroidism symptoms online but quite another to hear the symptoms straight from real people. These are real people, like you and me, struggling with a collection of symptoms so hard to pinpoint that they baffle doctors in every country of the world. While we don’t know one another personally, the truth is that we are connected, just the same, in a particularly powerful way. We are living in the trenches together fighting a battle against this thing called hypothyroidism.
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A frantic email. A son. His mother. A psychotic episode at work. An involuntary admittance to a psychiatric unit. No prior history of mental health issues. Her severe hypothyroidism diagnosis months before. Is there a connection? Came the plea. Psychiatrists insisted no. But then the discovery of Hypothyroid Mom online. “Please, please help my mother,” he wrote.
Fear rippled through my veins. An urgent need to help this woman and the countless others. All being overcome by their brains, or so it may seem.
Connection, he asked. Where do I begin? [Read more…]
Queen Victoria (1819-1901)
Queen Victoria’s court physician Sir William Withey Gull is credited as the first person to record the clinical features of hypothyroidism in adults in his 1873 seminal paper.[1] [Read more…]
A Hypothyroid Mom reader named Jenny contacted me with her story of postpartum thyroiditis and it felt so familiar. I have lived through postpartum thyroiditis after the birth of both my sons. At a time when a mother is expected to be filled with joy at the miracle of her babies, women with postpartum thyroiditis struggle feeling alone, often misdiagnosed with postnatal depression or anxiety, all while their thyroid is left unaddressed but wreaking havoc on the mother’s mind and body. But no one really wants to hear that. We are hushed and dismissed or carelessly misdiagnosed with mental health issues.
It is well known in the medical world that there are 3 times in a woman’s life when she is most vulnerable to develop a thyroid condition or worsen an existing one, known as the 3 Ps: Puberty, Pregnancy/Postpartum, and Perimenopause. With over 700 million people with thyroid issues worldwide, and over half unaware of their condition, postpartum thyroiditis is more common than anyone can imagine, yet thyroid testing is not part of routine screening at a woman’s first prenatal visit when she is newly pregnant (and it should be!) nor at the first postnatal checkup around six weeks after giving birth (and it should be!) .
Jenny wrote,
“I write to you Hypothyroid Mom not to complain or grumble, but to raise awareness. To be a silent friend so that other women can read and feel someone understands. During my harder days, I felt so alone.” [Read more…]
