What Is Hypothyroidism And What You Can Do About It

I will try to keep this list brief, but in all honestly, there are over 100 well known symptoms of hypothyroidism known so far, and most of them are seemingly totally unrelated to this very disease.

When I figured out on my own that I probably suffer from hypothyroidism, I had at least 10 very different symptoms, which all by themselves don't mean much, but when they all happen around the same time, well, let's just say I don't believe in such strange coincidences.

Here are some of the most occurring symptoms that hypothyroidism patients suffered from at one time or another - or at the same time. I will start with mine, although I only experienced about the first 10-12 or so:

• Feeling extremely cold, having cold hands and feet at all times
• Constipation and difficult bowel movement
• Strong hair loss
• Brain fog (that's a big one)
• Slow depression settling in
• Lack of interest about pretty much anything - people can even call you lazy
• Dry hair
• Slower hair re-growth (one good thing if you're shaving or epilating!!)
• Can't concentrate on something for a long time
• Strange moods and very quickly changing moods
• Muscle pain
• Exhaustion and tiredness, and not only physically speaking
• Can't stand on your feet for a long period of time, you always need to sit down
• Weight loss (thankfully I didn't have to go through this one)
• Tinnitus
• Lack of appetite or extreme hunger
• Carpal tunnel syndromme
• Varicose veins
• IBS
• Strong headaches and migraines

and the list can go on.

Can you see how each of these symptoms can on their own seem very harmless?

None of the symptoms alone point to hypothyroidism, but when you have at the very same time cold feet and hands, you're feeling all the time cold when others around you don't (I hate winters because of this!), you have bowel movement problems and your hair is falling out while your skin is extremely dry, any doctor worth his or her salt can at least order a series of blood tests to at least rule out this strange disease.

And if they don't, you should do it on your own, and below I will tell you exactly which blood tests you need to do - a 'general' set of blood tests is not enough.

If your doctor believes you have hypothyroidism, he or she might order 1 or 2 blood tests - unless the doctor is exceptionally good and knows their stuff really well.

The main blood tests ordered by the medical practitioners are usually TSH and either TT4 or FT4.

TSH is called the Thyroid Stimulating Hormone and it's the standard labwork test done for diagnosing hypothyroidism (and that's oh so wrong!)

FT4 is the T4 hormone that is unbound, that is actually available to your body

And usually the buck stops there.

The problem with these tests is that they usually tell dearly little about your actual condition. If you are at your doctor you need to ask him the following additional tests (and yes, sometimes we do end up paying for them from our own pockets, especially when the docs don't want to order them for us):

FT3 - free, unbound T3 hormone (much more important than FT4 even)

Reverse T3 - sadly in Europe this test is not much available, so I couldn't have it in the lab

Thyroid antibodies to rule out (or diagnose) Hashimoto's disease - which is usually the main cause of hypothyroidism. The two antibodies are anti-TPO and TgAb and if you also want to check that you don't have Grave's disease, also ask for TSI.

Adrenal cortisol test with the 24 hour saliva test (not blood test, that is nearly not so effective as the saliva test)

The 4 iron tests: Ferritin, % Saturation, TIBC and serum iron. Usually doctors order Ferritin and serum irom, but you should insist on all 4.

B12 (don't ask me how I know, my B12 levels were at 48, where the mininum should be at 450 at least - let's just say that hypothyroidism left untreated can cause strong B12 deficiency  which can be extremely dangerous to the body)

Vitamin D3 (I was also slightly deficient, so now I'm supplementing, more in winter than in summer)

For a true picture of your thyroid activity these tests are a must. Once I had all done (except for RT3), my doctor had a much better picture of my health and what we had to fix. And yes, he initially only ordered TSH, FT3 and FT3 and the rest I ordered on my own. And the doc was glad I did!

The two I've learned of are synthetic T3 also called Liothyronine and NDT (natural dessicated thyroid made of thyroid from pigs).

Getting access to NDT is extremely difficult and many doctors don't even prescribe it, so instead I talked to my endocrinologist and told him that T4 simply doesn't work, my symptoms are all there, and I don't care about right lab works if I'm still feeling very ill.

So we agreed to give synthetic T3 a try.

And let's just say my life has changed completely.

The only difficulty with taking this pill is that it took time for me (even my doctor couldn't help me with this one) on how to properly dose it. The T4 works throughout the whole day, but the T3 has a rather short action, so it basically 'dies out' within a few hours.

So currently I'm taking 25 mcg T3 split in 2: half pill in the morning around 8 am and the other half at around 1 pm. It took me a while to find the right dosage and with T3 you really have to give it time to work, you can't just up or down the dosage before keeping at it at least a few weeks.

Sadly for many the struggle is much longer until they find their optimal dose. So if you're still searching for yours, don't give up, just keep upping every quarter pill (around 6 or so cmg) every few weeks until you feel well without strong heart palpitations, irritability and hot flushes, which might be an indication that you're overmedicating and you're getting a bit hyper(thyroid).