Thyroid Tests

[jasregadoo]

Hi All,

I keep reading here that for many people, the thyroid is involved in rheumatic illnesses. I have new insurance (yay!) that covers doctor visits with only a small co-pay. My old insurance I had to pay the first $5.000 per person of care, so that sucked. Anyway, I have an appointment later this month with an endrochonologist that I saw many years ago for another issue. Several people in my family have Hashimoto’s, so I’m thinking I should be tested for that. Are there other tests that you would recommend, that might point to a connection with my sero-negative inflammatory arthritis? I’m not at all sure that I want to go on thyroid medications, so maybe I’m wasting my time. I’ve had my thyroid levels checked a couple of times over the past few years by my GP, and they were in the normal range, but I’d like to have a specialist look into it a bit, just to be sure.

Thoughts? Has anyone else had good luck with checking thyroid? Any recommendations?

[Maz]

Hi Julie,

The Stop The Thyroid Madness website has a lot of great info and here is a page that outlines the necessary thyroid labs to glean an accurate picture of what is going on with a person’s thyroid in addition to supportive labs that can affect thyroid (e.g. iron panel, B12, Vit D, adrenal function, MTHFR, magnesium, etc). The TSH test is not enough and it’s certainly not adequate for folks with inflammatory autoimmune diseases and where thyroid autoimmunity is a common overlap.

http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/recommended-labwork/

If a person has mild thyroid imbalance, sometimes it can be corrected with taking measures to heal the gut, diet, and supplements. This can be the case, even with Hashimoto’s, which is an autoimmune thyroid disease. There is a very helpful pharmacist who reversed her Hashimoto’s and now blogs great info for others – Dr. Izabella Wentz. She also has a book and is on Facebook:

http://thyroidpharmacist.com/

In more advanced cases, thyroid hormone replacement is essential to correct the imbalance, because thyroid symptoms will mimic rheumatic disease (joint, tendon and muscle pain, fatigue, etc). There have been numerous people who feel they are failing on their conventional meds or AP and keep switching them around or increasing the dose, when it was hypothyroidism all along and they needed the addition of a T3 med to their levothyroxine. The trouble for anyone with a lot of inflammation is that inflammation blocks the conversion of the storage T4 hormone (what is replaced with levothyroxine) to the active T3 hormone (liothyronine), which is what cells actually use for all the body’s metabolic processes. People using corticosteroids (causing elevations in cortisol) also have trouble with conversion and this can mean false readings on thyroid labs.

It is a tricky balance, but you’re very wise to look into this and get a baseline. Early lifestyle corrections (like eliminating gluten, a protein with a molecular structure that looks like thyroid tissue) and supps can go a long way to slowing onset, or as in the case of the pharmacist above, taking measures to hopefully avoid it.

[jasregadoo]

Thank you Maz, I appreciate all of the information!

[Author]

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