Hello. I’m Dr. Denise Baker. I’m a medical doctor or MD at Longevity Wellness Clinic and today I want to talk to you about thyroid disease.
Thyroid disease is probably the most under-diagnosed disease in women and what’s interesting about thyroid disease is it can have a very long prodrome or a very long period of time where you can have subclinical low thyroid or subclinical high thyroid and have symptoms.
But when you look at that piece of paper, when they flip it over and show you the numbers, the numbers say that you’re OK. But what do you say? What do you know? You know you still have symptoms.
So if you have a question about this and you’ve been told that your thyroid is fine, but you don’t feel fine, please come in. There are a number of things that we do when we talk to you. We talk about your health history, your symptoms. We do a review of all of your body symptoms and your full past history.
But the other thing is the body is very good about giving us some very subtle signs. There are subtle signs of abnormal thyroid function when I examine the face and the skin. There are also subtle symptoms that you may report, you may notice or signs that I may find when I do the exam on your arms and your abdomen and then also when I examine your feet.
So when I’m looking for anything in particular, your body is usually very good about giving me good, early hints about thyroid dysfunction. There are more women than men that have abnormal thyroid function and it’s more common to have thyroid function that is sluggish more so than thyroid function that is too high. But we will deal with both.
What’s interesting is I want to introduce to you the concept of hormones and we will talk about this more at a later time. But your thyroid is controlled by a hormone that goes from your brain to your thyroid gland and its purpose is to say, “Work faster,” or “Work slower.”
In quantitative terms, it’s produce more thyroid stimulant or produce less. So we look at the numbers. We do testing. We find out what the issues are and then we will actually show you the results of the test.
But what’s critical is that you recognize what your symptoms are plus what the test results show and I’m not talking about the average number or the average range that you will see printed on many lab results.
What I’m talking to you about plus your symptoms, I’m going to look at optimal and there are a number of ways that we help support your thyroid function because for most lay people, the thyroid gland is the master gland. It’s what regulates everything.
When you get more educated in the symphony of hormones, you will recognize that it’s not really the total master hormone. But for most of us, that’s what we think about.
Now we want to know. Are you the classic person who says, “Gosh, you know, I’m slow to go. But I’m good when I go. But I drop when I stop.” Now if you said something like that to me, I would know that your hormone function is abnormally slow with relationship to your thyroid.
Other people may notice things like anxiety or shakiness or changes with their heart rate or palpitations. If you notice those things, what’s important is that you report those to us, so we can interpret them in line with our physical exam and also in line with our laboratory evaluation.
So if you have had a problem with thyroid in the past or think you might have a problem with thyroid function now, please give us a call so we can help you walk through the steps of very good care and make sure that we’re using the proper vitamins, the minerals, the nutraceuticals, the supplements and your medications if necessary, to help you stabilize and even out your thyroid function.
I’m Dr. Denise Baker coming to you from Longevity Wellness Clinic. Give us a call. I would love to help you with your thyroid questions.