The world is all atwitter with the recent revelation that Oprah Winfrey had gained back much of the weight she had previously lost, in part due to a hypo-active thyroid.
Thyroid disease is incredibly common in women in particular, and especially in women shortly after they have given birth.
My daughter was 28 months old when I was diagnosed with a hyperactive thyroid. I was diagnosed with Graves’ disease, but the doctor said that it was likely spurred by the recent pregnancy. The reason that pregnancy would contribute to thyroid disease in women is because of the hormonal differences caused by pregnancy.
A hyperactive thyroid is one which is overproducing the hormones that instruct your body to operate. In some cases, panic attacks can be caused by a hyperactive thyroid. In general, a hyperactive thyroid makes it hard for the person to sit still. Before my thyroid was under control, I could place a sheet of white paper on my hand and watch it tremble. While there are many different causes of a hyperactive thyroid, it is often misdiagnosed, misunderstood, or simply not recognized at all.
When your thyroid is hyperactive, you will tend to eat more, but not gain weight. You will sleep more, but never feel rested. You may feel agitated and irritable. You may notice texture changes to your skin and hair. If you’ve never had acne, you may start getting it. You may also find that it is more difficult to heal from even the most minor illnesses.
My personal battle with thyroid disease began in October, 1997. As is typical of the fall, I got what I thought was a cold or possibly a sinus infection. When I was in better after a couple of weeks, I went to the doctor. For the next three months, I was on a constant rotating antibiotic roller coaster. I would take a full 10 day treatment of an antibiotic, regain my voice and feel like I could breathe again for a day or maybe two. Then the cold would come back, I’d lose my voice, and it was back to the doctor’s office for me again.
After three months of the highs and lows of this medical roller coaster, my primary care physician began looking for another cause for my illness. After ruling out pneumonia and other heavy-duty lung infections, he began to check the lymph nodes in my throat for signs of swelling and indications of a systemic infection.
It was then that he noticed the enlarged thyroid. The thyroid gland sits near the base of the throat or just under the Adam’s apple in men. Though no one had noticed it, my thyroid was visibly swollen and tender. That was actually fairly unusual. Most of the time, it’s the combinations of symptoms or random blood tests that find a thyroid problem.
My physician ordered the blood tests to confirm what he thought and we began treatment for thyroid disease.
The problem with treating a hyperactive thyroid is that the medication makes you feel worse. With a hyperactive thyroid, because the body is in hyperdrive, you feel incredibly energetic and up for anything. Once it was confirmed that I had Graves’ disease, the doctor explained that the problem with a hyperactive thyroid is the strain it puts on every muscle in the body including your heart. Because it is telling your muscles and all of your other organs to increase your metabolism, is causing them to work overtime and is potentially damaging over the long-term.
So the least invasive manner to try and control this problem is to begin supplementing the hormone produced naturally by the thyroid with a synthetic. The theory in this treatment is that once the body’s natural regulation system registers the larger amount of thyroid hormone, it will tell the thyroid to produce less of the hormone, allowing the body to self regulate. The other reason to do this, as my doctor explained, was because that asked for the thyroid over produces hormones, it is like a fire burning too hot and will eventually burn the gland out.
In addition, when you’re thyroid hormone is out of balance, your bones stop storing calcium correctly, your menstrual cycle becomes erratic and women’s began having trouble getting pregnant, hair and nails become brittle and exhaustion is the name of the day. Other symptoms of thyroid disease can include rapid heartbeats or panic attacks, trembling in the muscles, prolonged illness, and more.
The best way to think about your thyroid is to imagine that it is a traffic control device for all the other hormones in your body. The hormone produced by your thyroid helps guide and control hormone production in every other part of the body. Many doctors say that the most significant sign of thyroid disease is either rapid weight gain in the case of a hypoactive thyroid or rapid weight loss is the thyroid is hyperactive. A hypoactive thyroid is one that is not producing sufficient hormone to keep the body moving at its normal pace.
When supplementing my thyroid hormone production, with a synthetic thyroid hormone failed to control my hyperactive thyroid, I was given two alternate choices for treatment. I chose the less risky of the two. The treatment which I chose involves swallowing a radioactive isotope, which bonds to the hyperactive portions of the thyroid and kills it via radiation.
For women in their childbearing years, this treatment can be dangerous, as there is a small chance that the radiation can damage on fertilized eggs in the ovaries. In addition, during the 24 hours off the actual treatment, it was recommended that I not be near pregnant women or my then three year old daughter is the radiation killing my thyroid might have posed a danger to them.
The other option for treatment is a surgical removal of the thyroid. However, this method of treatment was my endocrinologist’s treatment of last resort as it involves an unsightly scar across the throat, and the surgeon is required to bypass the delicate region of the vocal cords to get to the thyroid.
The objective of the radiation treatment is to kill the hyperactive part of the thyroid and leave the part which is functioning normally alone. Unfortunately, frequently, too much of the thyroid is destroyed and the patient goes from having a hyperactive thyroid to having a hypoactive.
For women with weight control issues, the switch can be devastating. When the thyroid is hyper active, she can eat almost anything and not gain weight. When it switches to hypo, her metabolism is suddenly much slower, but with no corresponding loss of appetite.
In my case, even after the radiation, my thyroid continued to produce excess hormones and “burn hot.” My doctor again attempted to regulate the thyroid hormone production via supplements of the synthetic hormone, and for many years, we were able to keep my thyroid levels within normal range by just adding a minimal dose of the synthetic hormone daily.
Within the last year, the blood test would indicate that my thyroid has stopped overproducing and in fact, appears to be producing almost no hormone on its own. That means my daily thyroid hormone pill has increased in strength.
Many people disregard or make light of problems like Oprah’s, but the simple truth is that thyroid disease can be difficult to manager and difficult to treat. For those of us living with thyroid disease, it means staying alert for signs that the symptoms have returned. It means blood tests every 3 to 6 months to monitor the hormone levels, and it means beginning each morning with a little purple pill.
While Oprah admits in her own words that she used her thyroid battle as an excuse to stop eating healthy and exercising properly, the simple truth is that many people with thyroid disease fight a constant battle to maintain a healthy weight. This is especially true when thyroid hormone levels fluctuate often and extremely between hyperactive and hypoactive.
