Ep. 79: Thyroid Health
Welcome back to the Woven Well Podcast!
Have you ever noticed you’re always freezing, no matter the temperature? Or that your hair is thinning, even though you’re not postpartum? Do you have trouble concentrating, or staying asleep? If so, you may be interested in what we have to say about thyroid.
I’ll start with a bit of honesty: understanding thyroid health is tricky. It’s not simply one lab result or one possible root cause. There are lots of variables that can play a role and cause an issue. But it’s worth starting the conversation, even if we can’t finish it today, because thyroid plays a huge role in your overall health and in your fertility.
The thyroid is responsible for your body’s use of its energy through hormone production. And when we think about that — the use of the entire body’s energy! — we start to realize how critical that is. We need energy to live. We need energy to breathe, to blink, to walk, to think. We need energy to digest food and filter out toxins. We need energy to study for an exam and plan weekly meals. We need energy to pump blood throughout our body, and even to create new energy for the body to use!
So if something is off with how our body uses its energy, we’re likely to notice. But not always in major ways. It’s common for thyroid dysfunction symptoms to start off really mild, and to be easily explained away by other life situations. You’re tired because you have young children. You’re losing hair because you’re stressed. You get the picture. And these are just a few of the options. Women experiencing thyroid issues of some kind may have any of the following symptoms, so I’m going to give a list here but know that it doesn’t have to be all of these. They may have some of the following symptoms:
fatigue, muscle weakness, difficulty recovering after exercise, unrested after sleeping, acid reflux or heartburn, poor appetite, constipation, thin eyebrows (especially the outer third), insomnia, anxiety or depression, PMS (that’s not improved by progesterone), feeling cold, dry skin, dry eyes, acne, headaches or migraines, puffiness in the face, fingers or feet, brittle fingernails, thinning hair, sparse eyelashes, brain fog/inability to concentrate/poor memory, difficulty losing weight, heavy long, and/ or irregular periods, and poor immune function.
Wow. That is a lot of options! Those are a lot of potentials there for symptoms you could have with thyroid dysfunction. Because the thyroid plays a role in almost every major organ system in the body, it makes sense that the list of possible symptoms is really long. Someone with a dysfunctional thyroid may only notice a few of these, and it may take years for them to get to a point where they are truly noticeable or bothersome enough that they’re willing to ask a doctor about it. But intentionally listening to the body’s cues can be really helpful in any early diagnosis and accurate treatment.
If you’re experiencing any, or several, of these - go ahead and have your thyroid tested. Any doctor can run a thyroid panel to see how it’s functioning and if there are any clinical signs of dysfunction.
A full thyroid panel measures a lot of things: TSH is a major one that people are familiar with, but there’s also Free T3, Total T3, Free T4, Total T4, TPO Antibodies, Reverse T3, and more - there are a lot of options there. Most of these are types of hormones produced by the Thyroid, while TPO antibodies can signal a possible autoimmune disease, where the body identifies a part of itself as the enemy. In this situation with they thyroid, the body may identify the thyroid as a threat and begin to attack it, producing antibodies for it. So you can see why the full picture that this thyroid panel provides gives better insight than one lab result alone. Not every panel will test every one of these things, but getting as much information as possible can help in figuring out a diagnosis, and then getting to what can be done to support it.
What if your doctor says that they checked your thyroid and all looks normal?
When this happens, I usually encourage a follow up call to get the answers to two questions:
what was it that was considered normal and what was actually tested?
As I mentioned, the thyroid is a complicated organ that requires several important processes just for healthy functioning. Measuring one or two values alone won’t give you the full picture you need in order to rule out all types of thyroid dysfunction. That’s why we recommend having a full thyroid panel tested — to get the best picture possible of what the thyroid is doing. If your doctor only tested your TSH, for instance, it’s worth calling and asking for more testing. Or, if you can be proactive and ask what’s going to be tested before, then you don't have to get two needle sticks. And that’s great, too.
The other question I ask is what was considered normal. That’s because, often, lab results are given a “normal” category simply for falling into range with the majority of results. But do the majority of adults have a healthy functioning thyroid? Eh, I don’t know. Just in women, it’s estimated that 1 in 8 will experience thyroid dysfunction at some point in her life.
You’re not really looking for normal. You’re looking for optimal. If you see TSH values of 2.5, 3.5, 4.5 over three years, they will all come back as technically “normal.” But a discerning eye will see that those values are increasing every year, and something is up with the thyroid. We’d rather address issues quickly, before they become too much of a problem or a health issue, and the way to do that is to measure using those optimal ranges.
A trusted medical professional is the best person to review your results, but I’ll at least share about TSH, since it’s the most commonly tested and the one that you’re most likely to see initially. Normal values for this are said to be something like .8 to 4.8, but optimal values are much tighter, between 1.8 and 2.5. There are even some restorative health doctors that want to see it no higher than 2.0. Actually, I’ll share about TPO antibodies, too, just to say that any result over 15 shows a response by the body to attack the thyroid and it's worth responding to. But there are even doctors who prefer a results of zero for TPO antibodies. There’s a bit of variety there, but you want someone who is looking for those optimal results.
The thyroid is tricky because sometimes an official diagnosis can be limited by a set of criteria, these set of boxes that all need to be checked before a diagnosis can be made. But if you’re working with a great restorative medical professional who is looking at the big picture and listening to your symptoms, they may say that you have a subclinical diagnosis, which means that you have all the signs and symptoms, and maybe even some borderline lab results, that lead them to want to pursue treatment, even though all the boxes aren’t yet ticked.
Now, If your results are truly optimal — you get everything back and everything really does look beautiful — then it may not be the thyroid that’s causing your issues.
But staying aware of your body’s signs and symptoms is extremely beneficial to the process of diagnosing and treating. There are cases of subclinical hypothyroidism, meaning you have all the signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism, but your numbers come back technically “normal” or even borderline. Knowing what’s happening in your body may be what your doctor needs to move forward in treating you.
Now one of the things you may have noticed in the long list of symptoms that I gave earlier is that some of them deal with reproductive health. Heavy, long, or irregular cycles, as well as PMS, can be symptoms related to thyroid dysfunction. But, for those charting their cycles through a fertility awareness method, they may spot even more symptoms. Having a long pre-ovulatory phase (even so long that cycles may stop for a while), a variable post ovulatory phase length (which should normally be fairly consistent), or brown bleeding for more than 2 days at the end of her period may all be attributed to thyroid dysfunction. For those using basal body temperature, they may notice temperatures that never shift above 98 degrees, regardless of the phase of their cycle.
I am most definitely not an expert on thyroid but what I do know is that it can have a huge impact on your overall quality of life, and your reproductive health. It’s a common culprit for issues related to acne, anxiety, headaches, irregular cycles, weight gain or loss, heavy or long periods, and infertility, including miscarriage. So when I hear these things come up, I think of the thyroid as a possibility. It’s important to have these issues investigated to see what they could be telling you about your body’s overall health, and not even just that reproductive concern that you have.
The nice thing about investigating thyroid concerns is that you aren’t limited to reproductive health professionals. There are plenty of naprotechnology health professionals who would see those signs of concern on your chart and want to take a look at your thyroid. But if you’re not near any Napro professionals and you’d like things to be investigated, there are many DOs (doctor of osteopathy), functional medicine doctors, or those trained through other restorative reproductive healthcare avenues who are very qualified to help you diagnose and treat thyroid concerns.
As I mentioned at the beginning, there is so much more that we could cover for thyroid. This just scratched the surface. But I hope it can be a helpful starting place for you as you sort through any symptoms that may be related to thyroid. Brain fog, fatigue, anxiety — these are symptoms that could be thyroid but sometimes it’s not easy to connect those. We think they’re all individual. We may think it’s the reality of being a mom to young kids, or a grad student or night shift nurse. But they could also be related to thyroid dysfunction, and they’re worth investigating.
If this sparks something for you - maybe you notice some of the things we talked about today, or you’re curious about learning how to understand even more about what your body is already telling you - we’d love to help. At Woven Natural Fertility Care, we believe that every woman deserves to understand how her body functions. We believe she deserves to understand when she’s fertile and infertile, and how to listen to her body for signs of health or signs of concern, regardless of whether she wants to get pregnant. We would love to be that guide for you, teaching you how to understand your body, advocate for your health, and be confident in how God made your unique self.
You have two options for doing that. You can attend our next Introductory session, which teaches all about the Creighton system that we teach - a wonderful way to learn to listen to what your body is saying about your reproductive health. Or you can schedule a consultation to meet with Caitlin, share your story, and talk about your next steps for improving your quality of life. You can do both of those things through the links in the show notes.
As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be woven well.