Hypothyroidism is hard to diagnose. Tests for hypothyroidism can be unreliable and this can leave people suffering from the condition struggling to figure out how to deal with hypothyroidism, or doubting whether it is the cause of their ills. Since hypothyroidism affects nearly every aspect of metabolism this can leave people suffering from a wide range of ailments for an unreasonably long time. If only there was a simple way to test for hypothyroidism and things you can do for the illness on your own.
The good news is that there is a simple way to test for hypothyroidism at home. In this excerpt from the book Real Cause, Real Cure by Jacob Teitelbaum, MD and Bill Gottlieb, CHC the authors explain how to test for hypothyroidism at home, and how to start doing something about it.
Hypothyroidism: Millions of Missed Diagnoses
Do these symptoms sound familiar to you?
- You’re tired most of the time—and you have trouble falling asleep.
- Your muscles and joints ache, seemingly for no reason.
- Your mood pendulums between anxiety and depression.
- You’re forgetful and also find it hard to focus.
- Your sex drive can’t even get into first gear.
- You’ve gained a lot of weight and can’t seem to shed it, even when you don’t eat much. •You’re trying to have a baby but can’t.
- Menopause has put your health on pause, with hot flashes so frequent and intense it feels like somebody installed a sauna inside you.
- Your skin and hair are so dry they feel like they were imported from the Sahara.
- You’re so constipated that you’ve started to regard laxatives as dessert.
- Even your feet bother you—cold as bricks in winter, and you always wear socks to bed.
Those are some of the many symptoms of hypothyroidism, an underactive thyroid that doesn’t manufacture enough T4 (the storage form of the thyroid hormone) and/or T3 (the active form). Low production of thyroid hormones can limit the full functioning of just about every part of the body. The disease may also underlie many cases of chronic pain, osteoporosis, miscarriages, and learning disabilities in children born to women with low thyroid. But like most diseases that mainly affect women, hypothyroidism has been dramatically underdiagnosed. My favorite thyroid specialists—Richard L. Shames, MD, and Karilee Shames, RN, PhD, authors of Thyroid Mind Power and Feeling Fat, Fuzzy, or Frazzled?—estimate that 50 million Americans may have low levels of thyroid hormone. The cause of this hidden epidemic? The Shameses think it’s the flood of 80,000-plus artificial chemicals in our environment, many with a molecular structure similar to that of thyroid hormones. The chemicals confuse the immune system, which attacks the thyroid.
Why aren’t thyroid hormone levels as easy to test for and detect as, say, your cholesterol level? A couple of reasons. Doctors don’t routinely think of hypothyroidism when seeing a patient and instead treat (or try to treat) the symptoms of hypothyroidism—the constipation, depression, overweight, whatever. And even if your doctor does test for low thyroid, the test is routinely misinterpreted, with too-low thyroid levels designated “normal.”
Your Thyroid and Your Heart
The obvious symptoms of hypothyroidism—such as fatigue, depression, and overweight—are bad enough. But hypothyroidism can cause more than everyday suffering. It can end your life.
Women with untreated hypothyroidism are more than twice as likely to suffer a heart attack, reported a team of Norwegian researchers in an issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. In their eight-year study of more than 25,000 people, they found that women with somewhat low thyroid levels (considered normal by most doctors) had a 69 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease. “These results indicate that relatively low but clinically normal thyroid function may increase the risk of fatal coronary heart disease,” they wrote.
A 69 percent higher risk means that hypothyroidism could cause more heart attacks in women than smoking, elevated cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes. Another way to look at it: Detecting and treating those cases of hypothyroidism could save 30,000 lives a year—one of which may be yours!
Your Thyroid and Your Heart
The obvious symptoms of hypothyroidism—such as fatigue, depression, and overweight—are bad enough. But hypothyroidism can cause more than everyday suffering. It can end your life.
Women with untreated hypothyroidism are more than twice as likely to suffer a heart attack, reported a team of Norwegian researchers in an issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. In their eight-year study of more than 25,000 people, they found that women with somewhat low thyroid levels (considered normal by most doctors) had a 69 percent higher risk of dying from heart disease. “These results indicate that relatively low but clinically normal thyroid function may increase the risk of fatal coronary heart disease,” they wrote.
A 69 percent higher risk means that hypothyroidism could cause more heart attacks in women than smoking, elevated cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes. Another way to look at it: Detecting and treating those cases of hypothyroidism could save 30,000 lives a year—one of which may be yours!
Some history about this situation: When I was in medical school, doctors diagnosed hypothyroidism by measuring the metabolic rate during a treadmill test. A decade or so late a new, more accurate test used protein-bound iodide (PBI) as a measure of thyroid function. After that, there was the T4-level thyroid test, outdating the PBI test and detecting even more cases of hypothyroidism. That test was followed by the new and improved T7 test. And then the T7 test was replaced by the TSH test. Are we accurate yet? No.
In one of the most recent changes, the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) revised the “normal” range for the TSH test (0.5 to 5.0), stating that anyone with a TSH over 3.0 was hypothyroid. That means over 10 million Americans with ranges from 3.1 to 5.0 had not been treated for hypothyroidism because their lab results had been previously regarded as normal.
Here’s what the press release stated: “…doctors had relied on a normal TSH level ranging from 0.5 to 5.0 to diagnose and treat patients with a thyroid disorder who tested outside the boundaries of that range. Now, AACE encourages doctors to consider treatment for patients who test outside the boundaries of a narrow margin based on a target TSH level of 0.3 to 3.0. AACE believes the new range will result in proper diagnosis for millions of Americans who suffer from a mild thyroid disorder, but have gone untreated until now.
Bravo for the AACE. But apparently that press release wasn’t read by a lot of medical professionals. Most labs (and doctors) still use the old criteria, considering TSH up to 5.5 to be normal—resulting in more than 10 million American women having their low thyroid levels missed by standard testing. And that isn’t the only way hypothyroidism is missed.
Your thyroid also could be underactive because of an underactive hypothalamus, so you can suffer the hypothyroidism and have a normal TSH.
Case in point: Dr. G. R. Skinner, of the United Kingdom, and his colleagues tested thyroid hormone levels of 80 “clinically hypothyroid patients” (people with symptoms of hypothyroidism) and found their TSH was “well within” the normal range. When Dr. Skinner treated those patients with 100 to 120 micrograms a day of thyroid hormone (Synthroid), the large majority of them improved. Ignoring thyroid-caused symptoms in people with “normal” lab results can “condemn many patients to years of hypothyroidism with its pathological complications and poor quality of life,” said Dr. Skinner and his colleagues in the British Medical Journal. Yet another study shows that only three percent of those tested for low thyroid have tests that confirm their hypothyroidism. In other words, the doctor suspected it, tested for it, but didn’t find it.
To me, there is an obvious conclusion: Current thyroid testing misses diagnosing most people who are hypothyroid, which I define as having significant health problems that improve when treated with thyroid hormone. I say: Treat the patient and not the test.
If you have just one or two of the possible symptoms of hypothyroidism—unexplained fatigue, persistent depression, achy muscles and joints, miscarriages, infertility, heavy periods, constipation, easy weight gain, cold intolerance, dry skin, thin hair, and a body temperature that tends to be on the low side of normal—you deserve to be treated for hypothyroidism.
The Armpit Test
If you have several of the symptoms of hypothyroidism and suspect that you have the problem, self-tests using a thermometer can provide more evidence.
One self-test recommended by many holistic physicians is to check your axilla (armpit) temperature for several days in the morning when you wake up. Before you get out of bed, put the thermometer in your armpit. Lie quietly for 10 minutes. If your temperature is under 97.4°F on two repeat measurements, you and your doctor should consider treatment with thyroid hormone, no matter what your blood tests show.
In my own practice, I ask patients with thyroid symptoms to take an oral temperature between 11:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. on two different days. If it’s below 98.1°F on both days, it’s reasonable to treat the person for hypothyroidism.
One caution: Fatigue, anxiety, and muscle pain also can be caused by an overactive thyroid. This problem shouldn’t be diagnosed using just the TSH test. If free T4 is elevated or high-normal, your doctor should consider the possibility that you have an overactive thyroid.
