Small But Mighty: A Thyroid Life

The thyroid is small.
The thyroid, despite it's littleness, is great enough to be named Thyroid, for He holds a great power. ...

The title of this blog is 'Small But Mighty', and that title is placed with meaning.

The video below compares small things, all of which are mighty in one way or another. The thyroid is one of them.

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Small Things

I saw it so clearly, and then I fell asleep. 

How to Tell When Your Thyroid is Going Down_Spot the Symptoms Before You Get Too Low    

Hello,

I'd like to write a post on this blog with this title:
"The weird, the wonderful, the embarrassing, and the oddly hilarious symptoms of thyroid disease. 
 I'll probably split it into hypo and hyperthyroidism. Some symptoms I've added in myself and some I've taken from other sites. Here's the simple bits of what I've got so far:

• Raised prolactin
• Digestion issues
• Illegible handwriting
• Internal itching of ears
• Constantly forgetting what you were about to say - you're in an interview: "um, what was the question?"
• Resembling a drunk in your day-to-day life: clumsiness and stupidity
• Sweating like you've ran miles
• Losing hair or having too much hair - caused by hormonal imbalances. 

Can anyone add to this list? Feel free to add hyper, hypo, grave's and hashi's and quote as you please - leave your name if you want me to add it to the post. 

Thanks :)

Here's an interesting one: Thyroid Disease is misdiagnosed - yes - as Alzheimer's disease. Did you know that? 


I guess it makes sense - the memory difficulties and all; Blank is such a common irritance for those with thyroid disease.


Here's the quote from wrongdiagnosis.com:

Alzheimer's disease over-diagnosed: The well-known disease of Alzheimer's disease is often over-diagnosed. Patients tend to assume that any memory loss or forgetulness symptom might be Alzheimer's, whereas there are many other less severe possibilities. Some level of memory decline is normal with aging, and even a slight loss of acuity may be noticed in the 30's and 40's. Other conditions can also lead a person to show greater forgetfulness. For example, depression and depressive disorders can cause a person to have reduced concentration and thereby poorer memory retention.

 In a way I think this excerpt points out the problems of being over-aware of a condition: we are so aware of Alzheimer's that we think it's staring us in the fact when actually it's something completely different that's waging wars with someone's body.

For those who are more prone to panicking, it is easy to panic and 'assume' that a friend or relative has Alzheimer's when what they actually have may be much more simple, or much more easy to treat, at least.

There is of course nothing wrong with being over-aware of a condition: awareness is what is needed, after all, if people are ever going to get themselves to a doctor and be diagnosed. But maybe we need to make sure that we don't automatically assume things; that instead we are still open to think "well it might be something else..." and, equally, that we are aware of thyroid disease so that, should we ever have to look at ourselves or at someone else and say "I think you might have..." we will be able to compare the two conditions and better understand the situation.

Thyroid disease is misdiagnosed. Fact.

Thyroid disease is also undiagnosed. Fact.

It is undiagnosed in over 13 million people in the US - that's 1 in 20. 


That statistic puts thyroid disease at number 10 in a list of 30 commonly undiagnosed conditions. Not at the top, right. But look what's above it:
Toxoplasmosis (an infection caused by parasites from cats) comes up as number 1. Most people do not have symptoms of this and it is listed as a "rare disease."

Directly above thyroid disorders, at number 9, is migraines. Easy to miss if you don't have it strongly, but very well known - even my spell-checker could pick it up!


Diabetes, Parkinson's Disease and Celiac Disease all appear lower in the list than thyroid disease. 




Let's do something about this. Let's do something about this now. 

I've changed the design on the blog and it would be great to hear what people think - if it's better or worse than the old one and what changes could be made?

Also, on Everyday Health I'm blogging about more personal stuff - an awful lot about changes, and therefore how the thyroid produces those changes. For those who might enjoy reading about that more than the article-style presented on this blog, or to see the posts, click here.

A recent post I wrote is called 'Ah, but haven't I learnt so much from my neck!' and this one goes through some of the things which stand out the most at the moment about what I've learnt from the Small But Mighty gland sitting in my neck.

Today I asked the gym instructor what he knows about people with underactive thyroids. Now I won't embarrass him, just in case he ever finds this page - he knew what was necessary for him to know in his job, put it that way, so I didn't add to his knowledge. I asked him what his advice is for people recovering from being underactive who are trying to get fitter and lose weight. These are his tips:

• The best time to exercise is in the morning - kicking your metabolism up at this time means that it will be higher throughout the rest of the day, and that means that your body will deal more effectively with food. It is better than exercising late at night because you are not going to eat anything and are going to sleep soon.
  
• My personal opinion: good point, fair enough. But recently I've found that the morning is the worse time to exercise for me - I am just useless and my stomach hasn't woken up yet. If I were to switch my gym time to the morning I would have to work twice as long just to allow for warming-up time. Also, I am working at the moment, and the same point for when I was at school - how do I allow for extra time at the gym when, even if I were to get up earlier, the gym wouldn't even be open yet? I could maybe try getting up and going out for a run, or even a walk if I could manage it...it may be worth a try...but would it make me late for work?? Plus, I have to eat little and often anyway, so I would be eating something at night.
  
• The other thing you could do is to exercise in short successions - a half hour in the morning and a half hour late afternoon (the two best times to exercise). A half hour of vigorous exercise is enough to get your metabolism going, and spreading it out throughout the day equals a constantly raised metabolism. 
• My personal opinion