As we have learned in previous post of how toxins and inflammation can derail the health of our brain and triggering depression, today will be something different. We will get to know how our master metabolic gland can cause depression and symptoms as such. And yes, I'm referring to thyroid gland. This very important gland is much more well known amongst women, especially the ones who are suffering from thyroid disorders or diseases.
People of all sorts, from an obese individual who easily feel cold, to hair loss and dry skin classic group of females, and not to mention the ones who have hard time trying to lose weight and maintain it long term. All these common thyroid symptoms are becoming more prevalence amongst the population, especially the last decade or so. You would easily see a 40% bodyfat woman in your workplace or cinema wearing long sleeve sweater, or the same old faces of 'treadmill buddies' in the gym all year round unable to shed off those fats in the body.
Some are 'officially' diagnosed with hypothyroidism, and for others, an autoimmunity condition called Hashimotos Thyroiditis or Graves. Either or, if you are one of these patients, you could say good bye to feeling great. Apart from that, the conventional diagnosis and treatment is way far off from effective or helping the thyroid related condition. For most cases, treatments using pharmaceutical drugs, it create more problems then fixing anything at all.
Today, we will discuss about thyroid, and how its' conditions can mimick the symptoms of depression. As most people know what thyroid gland is and it's functions, let's just call it the master metabolic controller. And yes, for whoever concern about losing bodyfat and looking good, this gland is your best friend. Once you finish reading today's post, you will learn to show care for it much more, then years of thrashing it with chronic stress levels, fluoridated and chlorinated water and substances, sugars, wheat (gluten) and other thyroid destroying compounds.
The thyroid gland is kind of a master gland. It affects just about every single cell in the body. What I like to think about what the thyroid does, in very simple terms, it actually speeds us up or slows us down. If we have an overactive thyroid, our metabolism will be quicker. Our heart rate is going to be faster. We are going to feel a little bit irritable, a little bit edgy. On the other hand, if we have an under-active thyroid, that's going to slow us down. We are going to be digesting slower, our metabolism's going to be slower. We are going to be thinking slower too. We might not be as motivated, we might be more tired. We are not going to feel as excited about life as we normally would have.
The question is, can thyroid be one of the root cause of depression? Basically, an under-active thyroid is associated with symptoms of slowing down. You think about people who maybe have brain fog. People will have symptoms of depression. They will have symptoms of fatigue. Of course, that sounds a lot like depression. Other things that happen is they may not be as motivated as they normally were, so that's apathy. That is another symptom of depression. Often times, thyroid disorders can be misdiagnosed as depression.
Thyroid working too slow or too fast. Now, let's jump a little bit into autoimmune disease for this particular gland. There are two main things that can go wrong with the thyroid. You can either have hyperthyroidism. The most common cause of that is going to be Graves' disease. This is an autoimmune condition. The other spectrum is Hashimoto's, which is the primary reason for having an under-active thyroid. That’s also an autoimmune condition.
People who have Graves disease will be more likely to have anxiety and panic attacks. They might be very, very irritable. Some patients might be even hospitalized for psychotic disorders. With Hashimoto's, in the early stages of it, what's happening is as the immune system begins to attack the thyroid gland, we have an initial transient hyperthyroidism because a lot of the thyroid cells are being dropped into the blood stream. All of these thyroid hormones are going to be too high. Then, all those get cleared out, and then all of a sudden the thyroid is no longer producing enough hormone. Then, you will be hypothyroid or you will have an under-active thyroid. This can mimic the symptoms of bipolar disorder.
In the advanced stages of Hashimoto's, people are going to feel more depressed. But in the early stages they might feel the ups and downs. Some of these patients are on heavy-duty psychotropic medications. They were hospitalized. Where in fact it was their thyroid disorder that was causing this.
The other interesting thing about Hashimoto's is that it's not really necessary to have an impaired function of the thyroid gland. Just having the Hashimoto's antibodies can be associated with feeling unwell and feeling depressed and feeling anxious and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder. People with mental health issues have been found to have greater rates of thyroid antibodies.
The immune system basically makes antibodies to recognize foreign invaders such as bacteria, viruses, different kinds of pathogens of that sort. In autoimmune disease what happens is the immune system mistakenly makes self-antibodies. In the case of thyroid disease, the immune system will start making antibodies to the thyroid gland. Thyroid peroxidase antibodies, thyroglobulin antibodies, are the two main antibodies in Hashimoto's.
What's causing the body to trigger the antibodies? Some of the causes are going to be, if I can put them in the main categories, are food sensitivities, nutrient deficiencies, impaired ability to handle stress, impaired ability to handle toxins, gut permeability or a leaky gut, as well as chronic infections. A very good example would be someone ingesting loads of gluten in almost every meal, causing severe immune reaction and release of antibodies. Cereals for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, pasta or pizza for dinner, that would sum it up for a chaotic immune reaction in terms of dietary factor.
For certain groups of medical professionals, it is known as molecular mimicry. That's one of the leading autoimmune theories, where the immune system recognizes something, a foreign enemy in the body, and kind of takes a snapshot of what that protein structure looks like. Then, basically it will walk around with that little snapshot. It’ll look for cells that look similar. If there's a protein sequence that is found in gluten or on a pathogen, that is similar to that of the thyroid gland, then the immune system will be attacking both.
You must be asking, "Are the doctors just not being trained on this?". Well well, if you are consulting or getting help from conventional medical doctors, good luck to you. One of the things that doctors are trained to do is just do a screening test for thyroid disease, which is known as the TSH test, thyroid stimulating hormone. This is actually a pituitary test. It doesn't measure what's happening in the thyroid gland exactly. It just measures the communication pathway. If everything is normal with you, with your communication pathways, the TSH test, if you have an underactive thyroid, is going to be elevated. For many of the alternative or holistic/clinical practitioners, TSH test is regarded a very ineffective approach and waste of time.
We want to look at thyroid antibodies, because these can be elevated for sometimes decades before you see a change in TSH. They can actually cause a lot of their own set of symptoms, even if you have normal thyroid function. Thyroid peroxidase antibodies, TPO antibodies, and thyroglobulin antibodies are two of the biggest ones that are going to be present in about eighty to ninety percent of people with Hashimoto's.
It would be wise to get levels of free T3 and free T4 checked, which are the thyroid hormones. Those should be somewhere in the upper half of the reference range. Those are going to have slightly different reference ranges depending on the lab that you go through. Sometimes, those numbers can uncover if you have a thyroid disorder before the other numbers can. Also, looking at reverse T3 is another test that sometimes may be implicated in an under-active thyroid where all of the other labs may be normal.
In reality, thyroid disorders are one of the most misdiagnosed of all health conditions. Most patients are not aware that thyroid medications are fluoridated and some of them contain fillers coated with gluten. If you do your own research, you will find out some shocking truths about these drugs.
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