This month, I wanted to share my answer to an email question I received.
I am a healthy 60-year-old women. The only medication I take is Synthroid. I suffer from constant fatigue and was hopeful that the Synthroid would help, but it hasn’t. My doctor tells me my blood levels look fine, but I am still so tired all the time. How would you help me?
Obviously, I need to know much more detail about you to appropriately answer this question, but I’ll do my best. If you’re 60 years old, you’re most likely post-menopausal since most women go through menopause between 48 and 52. The reason I bring that up is because when your post-menopausal, you’re much more likely to have hormonal imbalances, due to low estrogen and progesterone. I found that many times thyroid abnormalities have a lot to do with sex hormone abnormalities, especially in women. Therefore, it’s possible your low energy is caused by low levels the sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone. To check this, I would recommend you do a saliva test, which measures hormone levels in your cells, and is more reliable than bloodwork.
If your sex hormones are not the cause of your low energy and thyroid abnormalities, cortisol or insulin could be the culprit. Cortisol is a stress hormone that can be more complicated to correct, while insulin is more easily correctable and has a lot to do with our eating and activity behaviors. Both can affect thyroid function. I have also found that sometimes the thyroid is off because of nutritional things such as iodine, selenium, other minerals, vitamin D, and believe it or not sometimes an amino acid called tyrosine so I would want to look at those levels as well with blood testing.
Then you mentioned your thyroid tests look normal but what do you mean by that? Are the right tests being done? Your TSH, which is the stimulatory hormone released from the pituitary gland to stimulate the thyroid gland, should be on the lower end of the range if you are on the appropriate thyroid replacement medication. You also want to check your free T3 and free T4, the actual active hormones in the bloodstream that enter cells and interact with the DNA in the mitochondria. These should both be in the upper end of the range. Reverse T3 levels should also be tested. Reverse T3 slows down metabolism and acts like an anti-thyroid hormone, it is what animals produce when they are ready to go into hibernation. As a result, if you have high reverse T3 levels that may also be contributing to your fatigue. Blood spot testing is essential for making sure that your intracellular levels of T3 and T4 are appropriate, because just like sex hormones, they move in the bloodstream but work within the cell. Meaning that blood test levels might look OK, but your tissue levels measured by blood spot testing can reveal a problem.
In conclusion, an in-depth approach utilizing saliva hormone testing, blood spot testing, regular blood testing and perhaps heavy metal and nutrient testing would be the key to figuring out what is causing your thyroid dysfunction. Once we figure out the cause, we can work together to fix the problem and restore your energy levels.
Don’t forget, this month’s special! There is still time to take advantage of this great deal before the end of the month!
