So last week I began an article on thyroid.  It was in regards to an Oprah segment about thyroid and Dr Oz’s recommended ways of assessing and the follow up emails I received on it.

Due to limited space and my tendency to keep on writing I left off with a very effective home assessment using a basal thermometer (if you didn’t catch that article just email me at Robert@scriptspharmacyonline.com and I will forward it to you), but still had more to say.

Now I would like to continue on describing what a comprehensive thyroid panel would consist of if you were to further investigate thyroid issues with your health care practitioner.

There are two primary thyroid hormones, thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyroinine (T3).  A comprehensive thyroid panel should include both Free T4 and Free T3.  You see, T4 is 80% of the thyroid glands production, so obviously it would make sense to check this.

Most T4 converts to T3, or should as least, and T3 is five times more active than T4, thus T3 is of high importance as well.

TSH is known as Thyroid Stimulating Hormone.  TSH is made in your pituitary gland to direct your body to make more thyroid hormone.  For instance, if your body, in its infinite wisdom is monitoring its own thyroid levels and sees that they are low, than it will kick up TSH to stimulate more thyroid hormone production.

Conversely, if you were put on a thyroid medication and the dose were too high, than the body should read this and in response decrease TSH thus slowing production of thyroid hormone.

Reverse T3 is another assessment your practitioner can use to understand the body’s response to monitoring its own thyroid levels.  Look at it this way; I mentioned that T3 is the most active thyroid hormone.  If we were to use rising T3 levels as a metaphor to pressing down on the gas peddle of a car, than a rising reverse T3 level would be putting on the brakes so to speak.

Thyroid antibodies are crucial because if one has rising thyroid antibodies, this can actually prevent thyroid hormone from attaching to thyroid receptors.  You can have symptoms of decreased thyroid function even if your thyroid blood levels are adequate.  Thyroid antibodies can be elevated due to trauma, poor function or gut health, inflammation and thyroid degeneration.

So as I mentioned, T4 converts to T3.  One can actually have adequate T4 and TSH levels (the two common measurements of thyroid health) while T3 is actually low due to an inefficiency of converting T4 to T3.

There are many reasons for a suppressed conversion of T4 to T3; Nutritional deficiencies such as iodine, selenium, and zinc, medications such as estrogen, lithium, birth control pills and beta blockers, diets that are too low in protein or too low in carbohydrates, stress, high cortisol levels, chronic illness and decreased kidney or liver function.

Tune in next week, Oprah has me busy now with here episodes on Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 12:29 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.