The Hidden Cause Of Your Thyroid Condition
The Hidden Cause Of Your Thyroid Condition
Remember when I was talking about cortisol I talked about how the pituitary makes thyroid stimulating hormone and that this is many time the only marker many doctors look at to determine how much medication to give you. One of the factors in the pituitary function is dopamine if dopamine production is off that can affect the TSH production of the pituitary, I think you are starting to get the picture that our bodies are made up of many inter related functions that need to work together, it's a team effort.
The big question is not if your TSH is low in the functional range or the traditional pathological range by why is it low and it could be dopamine. Let's not forget that low dopamine can have its own symptoms like feeling of worthlessness or lake of focus your doctor may have you on other medications for those symptoms like antidepressants or Ritalin. The beauty of functional medicine in getting to the underlying cause of your thyroid problem we will likely correct other underlying problems all at the same time, I think that is really cool and that's why I love this unique approach t thyroid conditions.
So the 4th hidden cause of you thyroid condition could be Dopamine.
Serotonin is a neurotransmitter and serotonin problems can give symptoms like depression, anxiety, it is interesting to note that there can be many causes of thyroid problems just like many causes of depression and sleep disorders so treating any of these by just using the symptom as a guide does not make sense you must be a detective and do many test to find the underlying dysfunction.
With serotonin we may do a number of things, one of which is a neurotransmitter assessment form and a comprehensive metabolic profile.
So if you are having symptoms of anxiety, depression, sleeping disorders, symptoms like PMS and carbohydrate cravings it could be a serotonin problem.
So the 5th hidden cause of you thyroid condition could be serotonin.
Prolactin is another hormone that can affect your pituitary if you remember earlier we talked about how the pituitary makes TSH or thyroid stimulating hormone. So if you have increased prolactin that will suppress the pituitary and suppress the production of TSH.
Remember that as long as your TSH is within the pathological reference range your doctor will not pick this up and that's because he is not trained to look for functional ranges. I want to stress for all of you who love your doctor, he/she is doing the right thing for which they were trained. It's all about training and that is why I have done extensive training in functional medicine and that is what enables me to help people who could not previously be helped.
So what is causing prolactin to be elevated? It could be low dopamine and progesterone. Anything that suppresses dopamine and progesterone function can increase prolactin and suppress TSH this is where the real doctoring comes in do the testing. If you've been told your labs are normal or even if you're on thyroid hormone and its helps why do you need it?
So if prolactin is an issue you could have symptoms such as difficulty getting pregnant and leakage from the breast for men you may have decreased libido since prolactin suppresses testosterone the male sex hormone. And yes we have treated patients for thyroid and in the process they got pregnant once we restored proper prolactin levels, really cool and again why I love doing this type of work.
So the 6th hidden cause of you thyroid condition could be prolactin.
Cytokines are chemicals in the body that are produced in response to stress and or inflammation. If you have high levels of stress and by stress I mean emotional as well as chemical. Many people will say I'm not that stressed but they are and hove no idea how chemically its reeking havoc on their bodies. You can have toxic exposure to chemicals like some of my patients that work in nail salons or dry cleaning facilities, if you have a condition called leaky gut you can have food proteins stressing your immune system. The point is there are many hidden stressors in today's world and if your cytokines are elevated it can suppress thyroid stimulating hormone, sometimes not enough to show up on the pathological lab ranges but enough to show up on the functional ranges.
In order to find out if cytokine elevation is contributing to your thyroid problem you need to do the testing. We look at markers such as interleukin 6 interleukin 10 to evaluate cytokine function. Once again this is not standard testing with your typical thyroid specialist, remember we are looking at function and trying get to the underlying cause of your condition not just trying to figure out how much TSH to give you.
So the 7th hidden cause of you thyroid condition could be cytokines.
Dr. Mark Scott has been studying natural health care for over 20 years, To learn more visit Dr. Scott's Media Page at http://www.mymark.com/drmscott or Click there.
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