Thyroid :The Blacksheep of the Endocrine Family

The thyroid is probably the most abused gland by the medical profession. Many people are taking thyroid medication when their real problem is an imbalance in their metabolism. Are you a little sluggish, a little over-weight and a little depressed: could it be the thyroid gland? So you go to the doctor and your T4 is a little on the low side and you get a prescription of Synthroid. Soon you feel a slight increase in energy, a few pounds drop off and everything is back to "normal." It is like cranking up the idle on your car to avoid doing a real tune-up. This is the usual scenario, but the true cause was most likely overlooked and the thyroid just grows weaker. With the deplorable health typical in America today, almost anyone can take a thyroid-stimulating drug and feel some better...for a while. Someone under long-term cortisone use, or women on birth control pills, or a higher than necessary dosage of pre-menopausal estrogen, will show some degree of thyroid insufficiency. Calcium tends to inhibit thyroid activity as well as cabbage family foods, heavy doses of iodine; and chlorine, bromine and fluorine found in public water.

Someone that appears to have an insufficient thyroid (hypothyroid) most commonly has lost efficiency in energy production with oxygen. This person probably has inefficient metabolism with fats and therefore over-dependant on carbohydrates. This pattern is particularly common among women who tend to be fatigued, overweight, with somewhat elevated cholesterol, and low body temperature. This clinical picture causes the temptation to diagnose and treat as hypothyroid but the thyroid is no more under active than any other gland or organ of the body. In other words, all aspects of this person's physiology are under-functioning because of the systemic lack of proper energy production.

A true hypothyroid condition can be confirmed with a blood test showing increased TSH levels. This person will frequently have anemia with elevated cholesterol and triglycerides. Also there is an emotional component to all who have a thyroid insufficiency and that is apathy. If you are worried about all the things you need to do but cannot, then the thyroid is probably not your problem. If it were the thyroid then you would not even know about the things you need to do or even care. In the above situation a thyroid medication may be necessary for a while. But again it is important to support the other metabolic systems from getting compromised due to the insufficient thyroid.

Within the endocrine family the function of the thyroid is intimately related to the pituitary and adrenal glands, they work together. Despite this fact, the thyroid is most often blamed because it is also the easiest to single out and stimulate with a pill, instead of examining one's lifestyle. Everyone knows (if your willing to examine deeper) that the "black sheep" is just the product of other underlying dysfunctions within a family. Health problems develop over time from a lifestyle that compromises the body's physiology forcing adaptations in order to survive. A particular organ will not just decide to stop functioning, but it will malfunction when the metabolic systems that support it are out of balance. Far too often a health care provider will focus on a particular organ to direct therapy without considering the more fundamental imbalance. How many times have you heard, you need to do a liver cleanse, you have adrenal exhaustion or your thyroid is weak? This may be indeed a condition your body is exhibiting but the problem was not with that single body part but rather an imbalance to whole system.

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