Photo Credit: Matthew Feeney
According to the American Thyroid Association, it is estimated that about 20 million Americans have some form of thyroid disease. Of those 20 million, up to 60% are unaware of their condition. What does that mean to you? Perhaps you have symptoms that you’ve been “just dealing with,” unaware that they could be related to the thyroid.
The good news is that this can be helped. In this series, I’m going to explore some of the common (and lesser known symptoms) and explain how we can alleviate them. We’ll outline different ways that we can evaluate and help the thyroid naturally(read here). These can help you not only identify the dysfunction, but also address it before it becomes a disease.
Today I want to talk about thyroid health and why we feel worse at the change of each season.
Feeling sick when the seasons change
Let’s back up. The role of our thyroid is to regulate the rate of metabolism in our body. Why is metabolism so important?
You need a very close range of metabolism in the body in order for proper physiological mechanisms to occur like digestion, hormone balance, energy production of the whole body (yikes, that’s important), immune system responses, nervous system, etc. Therefore, if your metabolism is not kept in a close range, major processes of your body do not happen. Since this compromises your existence as a living being, all of these mechanisms have to go on AT ALL TIMES.
There are literally thyroid receptors (which take in thyroid hormone) all over the body in order to keep this balance going at all times. At the change of season, when the thermal stress challenges this balance, your thyroid needs to adapt at constant rate to account for all the ups and downs in the temperature. If this conversion doesn’t occur at appropriate rate, we start feeling sick. Therefore, symptoms that get worse at the change of weather, particularly in the fall and spring, are typically associated with thyroid gland being sluggish.
Thus, often times we see patients whose joint aches gets worse, whose immune system drops (more on that later), who get allergies, depression, constipation, fatigue, migraines, elevated cholesterol/triglyceride levels, dry skin, especially at the change of season, could be associated with sluggish thyroid gland (even in the presence of normal blood work) and often feel much better with some thyroid support.
When evaluating the thyroid, I often do the following:
1. Take a thorough history and physical exam. If there is a family predisposition to thyroid disease is it more likely than not that you might be susceptible to thyroid sluggishness (even if its not diagnosed). Physical exam findings are critical, and also reveal important components to underlying issues.
2. Blood work. As I mentioned blood work only demonstrates deficiency or disease at 60-70% dysfunction, meaning that you could be having very real and very uncomfortable issues at 30% without a formal diagnosis. However, blood work is a piece of a puzzle we always consider. The more information that we have, I typically like to see a full thyroid panel including antibody levels to see where the patient is at.
3. Applied Kinesiology muscle testing. Muscle testing, unlike blood work, is about 2% sensitive, meaning that it tests for predispositions and deficiency instead of simply looking at disease. Why is this helpful? It’s helpful in order to help a patient recover and not continue down a path of developing disease. If we can catch patients early in their deficiencies we can often help their bodies heal, instead of letting it go with a “watch and wait” method. With Applied Kinesiology, we’re able to not only identify the deficiency but find nutrition which help to support that system. Which means that you don’t have to continue feeling bad, but can help support your system no matter where you are in the spectrum, leading you to feel much better.
As you can tell you don’t have to continue to be part of that statistic, if you have any commonly known symptoms, especially if your symptoms get worse at the change of season, give us a call or click the button below and come in for an evaluation. You don’t have to keep struggling!
Read more about how your thyroid impacts your cholesterol, how your thyroid can make you feel and look younger, and how to naturally address your thyroid.
If you are interested in further addressing this topic, please feel free to reach out and schedule an appointment. Dr. V is a Chiropractor and Functional Medicine Doctor in Elmhurst, Illinois who evaluates patients from the inside out, focusing on areas including hormone imbalance, digestive health, anxiety/depression, autoimmune disease, and many others.