Everyone is busy.
We all have periods of juggling a million things at once. And a bit of stress is actually healthy, our body needs it.
The problem a lot of people face is that their threshold for stress is altered. People who aren’t in the same boat as them simply can’t fathom why their response to daily life is so different. It is actually really isolating to be in this boat!
Stress and fatigue are often a sign of suboptimal thyroid function that isn’t picked up in standard pathology testing.
So if you have been living with fatigue and stress, read on!
The Importance of Thyroid Hormone For Your Mitochondria
Mitochondria (pictured) are the battery inside our cells. The number of mitochondria in a cell varies. For instance, red blood cells have no mitochondria, whereas liver cells can have more than 2000!
Each mitochondria produces energy in the form of Adenosine triphosphate, which is also known as ATP.
ATP is important for our energy, but also for neurotransmission, muscle contraction, cardiac function, platelet function, vasodilatation and liver glycogen metabolism.
People with a hypothyroid condition will have problems with the production of ATP which affects all the other factors as well. This is why many symptoms are related to thyroid hormones, such as heart palpitations, muscle cramps, detoxification issues etc.
If you have any of these issues listed below, it is wise to get a thorough evaluation, as standard testing will not catch early changes.
- Fatigue – sluggishness, hard to get going
- Sleep issues – waking through the night, takes more than 15 minutes to get to sleep, or struggling with insomnia
- Thinning hair, excess hair loss or brittle hair
- Dry skin
- Muscle aches and pains
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Low libido
- Infertility
- Irregular menses
- Weight changes – either lost weight without trying, or putting on weight, or can’t lose it with trying
If you have pre-diagnosed medical issues, then a collaborative approach to your health can alleviate side effects of medications and mitigate symptoms by addressing key nutrient deficiencies and supporting the body with more individualised diet approaches.
Why it is your thyroid
Let’s use a car analogy 🙂
When the thyroid is running at 50k/hour, but we ask our body to run at 100k/hr, the way it does that is by making more adrenal hormones to compensate for the slower thyroid.
If you overdo it for too long driving the adrenal hormones hard, eventually cortisol can’t produce at the rate you want. Fatigue around mid-afternoon kicks in, you might notice some weight around the middle, and even sleep issues can start to present.
If cortisol levels are too low to accommodate your needs, the body will send you sugar, carb, salt and/or coffee cravings to try and get you energy.
At this point, you will also probably find that you have fat deposits around the middle which are really stubborn – just where we hate it most!
So now you have a sub-optimal thyroid, adrenal fatigue, stress dysfunction, AND blood sugar imbalances.
This all started years before with a sub-optimal thyroid! You need to support this and all the other systems to get back to balance, reclaim your vitality, and lose weight. Just working on one of those systems probably isn’t going to give good results – and this is exactly why we run thorough diagnostic packages that cover all these hormones. That way we don’t miss the true reason for your fatigue or weight gain, and we can treat it correctly to get you better in the fastest time possible!
Testimonial from one of our patients this week:
“It’s been amazing to feel alive again and understand what was happening with my thyroid levels and iodine. The team at TLR Clinic have given me the tools and treatment I needed to be in better health and the support to continue on a healthier path.”
We would love to chat with you and help you feel the best you possibly can!
Book a call and one of our thyroid experts will give you a call in a confidential FREE 15 minute consult valued at $97.