Photo Credit: Frank Busch
Welcome to my thyroid blog series. If you’re just tuning in this week we covered why individuals with sluggish thyroids (not always disease, but functioning) may suffer at the change of season (you can read this blog here), and how your thyroid impacts the aging process. This impacts how your hair, skin and nails look as a result (you can find this blog here).
Today I want to address another hot topic of conversation and something that I see incredibly often in the office: elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
In the medical community, statins are prescribed incredibly often. But did you know that you can change the way that your blood work looks through natural medicine?
That’s right, by dealing with underlying cause of cholesterol and triglycerides you can help to aid normal levels.
While your thyroid isn’t the only factor in dealing with cholesterol and triglycerides, it’s a critical step if you want consistency in your blood levels.
So, it goes something like this. Your thyroid is in charge of carbohydrate metabolism. If the thyroid function is sluggish/not up to par, it will burn carbohydrates and never get to burning dietary fats. Thus, excess carbohydrates will be stored in your fat cells as triglycerides, they will also be deposited in blood vessel walls and in general blood circulation.
You might say to yourself, “well, my blood work for my thyroid is looking fine, but I still have elevated cholesterol/triglycerides.” As I mentioned before, it takes about 60-70% function loss for blood work to demonstrate an issue, so you have to go more than just off of your blood work. You can read how I evaluate thyroid in my first blog, here.
If you’re struggling with elevated cholesterol/triglycerides and aren’t sure why and what to do about it, come in and have us evaluate your thyroid. It could be your missing piece of the puzzle!
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.