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Hildreth on Health: Significance of balanced thyroid function, Part II
By Dr. Dewall Hildreth, D.O.
The role and importance played by the thyroid is unparalleled. Its boss is a balance between the hypothalamus and the pituitary, both located in the central brain area.
Both are well-protected from trauma but not protected from poor or imbalanced nutrition. What makes the thyroid so important is its control of metabolism including heart rate and blood output, systemic circulation, lipid metabolism including cholesterol and its fractionations, nutritional assimilation and storage, and mineral and electrolyte metabolism. All of our sexual and reproductive mechanisms are governed by thyroid influence.
There is a much higher percentage of female sufferers from hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism than men. However, both are affected, but many times react different in women than in men. Women will express symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia while men will experience more cardiovascular problems and possibly diabetes partly because of a lipid dysfunction with accelerated arteriosclerotic disease. More on both of these later.
Let’s go into the probable causes of so much thyroid dysfunction as we get older. Why is it such a beautifully hidden disease process? Most of our aging related hypothyroidism originates secondary to an autoimmune process. Most of the dysfunctions center around a chronic thyroiditis which reflects as a hypothyroid state, with a chance of thyroid toxicity which expresses as a hyperthyroid state.
Autoimmune process is a form of immune dysfunction in which the immune system produces antibodies against one’s own body tissues.
The antibodies attack the thyroid tissue and destroy it creating a suppressed thyroid output. We develop many forms of autoimmune activity as we age in most cases probably secondary to some deep-seated form of chronic infection creating an immune dysfunction.
Suppressed thyroid output alters cellular metabolism resulting in lowered cellular metabolic activity.
Altered cellular metabolism, particularly suppressed activity, alters the output of many of the other hormone glands including the pancreas and liver, thus affecting insulin and insulin output and the susceptibility toward diabetes. Fat metabolism is altered by the liver influencing cholesterol and its lipid fractionations.
Altered cholesterol metabolism including HDL and LDL, the good and the bad cholesterols, accelerates fat oxidation which results in atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis.
All cellular metabolism is suppressed resulting in poor healing on the inside of the body and on the outer skin surface and hair. Such symptoms as brittle nails, dry skin, loss of and dry, brittle hair, cold hands and feet, elevated cholesterol with secondary hypertension and fatigue are common. Sometimes low blood pressure along with a slower heart beat is noted. Mental changes may be reflected as in the ability to concentrate, poor memory, depression, and irritability and nervousness. The changes noted can all be related to sluggish cellular function and metabolism.
It is not uncommon for the medical arena to discuss the symptoms that a patient is experiencing and attempt to correct or support that part of the body with drugs that appear appropriate for those complaints. Many times it appears that he/she may not have the time or find it difficult to connect the groups of complaints that the patient is experiencing to one particular underlying cause.
A greater percentage of the older female population experience groups of complaints that can be traced back to possible thyroid deficiencies. They appear to experience a greater degree of discomfort and physical body changes because of the increased complexity of hormonal regulations and end organ functions.
The thyroid is one of the only all-tissue regulators of the body that can go awry very gradually and insidiously. Most of the symptoms that I have just listed can be related to a suppression of cellular metabolism.
One other symptom that I neglected to mention that can be related to a suppressed sluggish cellular metabolism is obesity. In the future, I will discuss the relationship between thyroid function and the sex hormones which include estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and also the hormones put out by the adrenal glands which include DHEA and cortisol.
I want to finish off this article discussing two major increasing problems that have plagued us knowingly for more than 100 years, and possibly long before that, and it appears that these two major complaints are increasing in number and severity.
Both of these groups of symptoms are very real, recognized by the medical establishment, and appear to be the result of altered autoimmune complications. The two major problems are fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.
There are multiple research studies and clinical observations that connect both of these syndromes to hypothyroid conditions.
The underlying causes of each of these conditions have been well addressed by the medical establishment. The association between hypothyroidism and fibromyalgia was reported in the medical literature over 100 years ago.
A lecture to the International Surgical Congress in 1914 reported that a patient with fibromyalgia improved with thyroid treatment.
Physiologically the relationship between chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and hypothyroid states has good research support. David Brownstein, M.D., a noted researcher and endocrinologist, states that in his practice he has found that the prevalence of hypothyroidism in fibromyalgia patients reaches as high as 80 percent.
I am not sure that just treating the fibromyalgia with symptomatic drugs is the answer. I think we have to go deeper and sometimes go beyond just a thyroid blood test and look at the whole patient.
Here’s to your good health until next time.
Contact Green Valley Dr. DeWall J. Hildreth at 625-1101 or cnhcgv@yahoo.com. Dr. Hildreth specializes in hormone balancing and musclo-skeletal degeneration. He practices with Continental Natural Health Clinic at 210 W. Continental Rd., Suite 130. His column appears biweekly in the Green Valley News.
Both are well-protected from trauma but not protected from poor or imbalanced nutrition. What makes the thyroid so important is its control of metabolism including heart rate and blood output, systemic circulation, lipid metabolism including cholesterol and its fractionations, nutritional assimilation and storage, and mineral and electrolyte metabolism. All of our sexual and reproductive mechanisms are governed by thyroid influence.
There is a much higher percentage of female sufferers from hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism than men. However, both are affected, but many times react different in women than in men. Women will express symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia while men will experience more cardiovascular problems and possibly diabetes partly because of a lipid dysfunction with accelerated arteriosclerotic disease. More on both of these later.
Let’s go into the probable causes of so much thyroid dysfunction as we get older. Why is it such a beautifully hidden disease process? Most of our aging related hypothyroidism originates secondary to an autoimmune process. Most of the dysfunctions center around a chronic thyroiditis which reflects as a hypothyroid state, with a chance of thyroid toxicity which expresses as a hyperthyroid state.
Autoimmune process is a form of immune dysfunction in which the immune system produces antibodies against one’s own body tissues.
The antibodies attack the thyroid tissue and destroy it creating a suppressed thyroid output. We develop many forms of autoimmune activity as we age in most cases probably secondary to some deep-seated form of chronic infection creating an immune dysfunction.
Suppressed thyroid output alters cellular metabolism resulting in lowered cellular metabolic activity.
Altered cellular metabolism, particularly suppressed activity, alters the output of many of the other hormone glands including the pancreas and liver, thus affecting insulin and insulin output and the susceptibility toward diabetes. Fat metabolism is altered by the liver influencing cholesterol and its lipid fractionations.
Altered cholesterol metabolism including HDL and LDL, the good and the bad cholesterols, accelerates fat oxidation which results in atherosclerosis and arteriosclerosis.
All cellular metabolism is suppressed resulting in poor healing on the inside of the body and on the outer skin surface and hair. Such symptoms as brittle nails, dry skin, loss of and dry, brittle hair, cold hands and feet, elevated cholesterol with secondary hypertension and fatigue are common. Sometimes low blood pressure along with a slower heart beat is noted. Mental changes may be reflected as in the ability to concentrate, poor memory, depression, and irritability and nervousness. The changes noted can all be related to sluggish cellular function and metabolism.
It is not uncommon for the medical arena to discuss the symptoms that a patient is experiencing and attempt to correct or support that part of the body with drugs that appear appropriate for those complaints. Many times it appears that he/she may not have the time or find it difficult to connect the groups of complaints that the patient is experiencing to one particular underlying cause.
A greater percentage of the older female population experience groups of complaints that can be traced back to possible thyroid deficiencies. They appear to experience a greater degree of discomfort and physical body changes because of the increased complexity of hormonal regulations and end organ functions.
The thyroid is one of the only all-tissue regulators of the body that can go awry very gradually and insidiously. Most of the symptoms that I have just listed can be related to a suppression of cellular metabolism.
One other symptom that I neglected to mention that can be related to a suppressed sluggish cellular metabolism is obesity. In the future, I will discuss the relationship between thyroid function and the sex hormones which include estrogen, progesterone and testosterone, and also the hormones put out by the adrenal glands which include DHEA and cortisol.
I want to finish off this article discussing two major increasing problems that have plagued us knowingly for more than 100 years, and possibly long before that, and it appears that these two major complaints are increasing in number and severity.
Both of these groups of symptoms are very real, recognized by the medical establishment, and appear to be the result of altered autoimmune complications. The two major problems are fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.
There are multiple research studies and clinical observations that connect both of these syndromes to hypothyroid conditions.
The underlying causes of each of these conditions have been well addressed by the medical establishment. The association between hypothyroidism and fibromyalgia was reported in the medical literature over 100 years ago.
A lecture to the International Surgical Congress in 1914 reported that a patient with fibromyalgia improved with thyroid treatment.
Physiologically the relationship between chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia and hypothyroid states has good research support. David Brownstein, M.D., a noted researcher and endocrinologist, states that in his practice he has found that the prevalence of hypothyroidism in fibromyalgia patients reaches as high as 80 percent.
I am not sure that just treating the fibromyalgia with symptomatic drugs is the answer. I think we have to go deeper and sometimes go beyond just a thyroid blood test and look at the whole patient.
Here’s to your good health until next time.
Contact Green Valley Dr. DeWall J. Hildreth at 625-1101 or cnhcgv@yahoo.com. Dr. Hildreth specializes in hormone balancing and musclo-skeletal degeneration. He practices with Continental Natural Health Clinic at 210 W. Continental Rd., Suite 130. His column appears biweekly in the Green Valley News.
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