Low Thyroid Symptoms but "Normal" Blood Tests - Page 2

[Juvysen]

Wow. just wow. I didn't get tested, but I had started to suspect thyroid issues when I came across adrenal fatigue/insufficiency and it seems to describe my symptoms better so I thought I'd throw that in there.

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by JaneS

I haven't been able to supplement more than a few grams of I, not sure why, the salt detox doesn't clear the horrible fatigue that happens for me. I'm supplementing mag and B vits and a gazillion other things but apparently my detox pathways don't want to work (if that's what's going on with the iodine reactions).

Hmm... Iodine and vit A are both critical for thyroid hormones. There's some island where the prevalence of goiter relates more to vit A status than iodine status. When I get vit A (CLO or liver) I get awful fatigue a day or two later. K2 and potassium both seem to help a LOT. Up for an experiment?

[chlobo]

I'm still not sure what to think about this. I definitely think I have hypoT symptoms now but I wouldn't say that I've had them all my life. Could they have been there but just not a problem. I used to be radiantly healthy, except for digestive issues that turned out to be lactose intolerance. I used to be very athletic and radiantly healthy. Was it just hiding?

Also, my parents genes are a cesspool but other than my mother having her thyroid removed b/c it had a tumor in it I haven't heard of any other familial thyroid issues.

[Purple Sage]

Originally Posted by JaneS

Dr. Lowe's website has good advice for self treater that I can remember but I cannot find the page I was thinking of right now. Lots of info in many places though
http://www.drlowe.com/index.htm

Also read about ferritin, I have seen many mentions that it needs to be above 70 to start preventing hair loss. Is that your only symptom? It could be nutritional if so. GLA (in borage or evening primrose oil) a capsule with every meal can be helpful too.

You are most welcome on the chat thread or you can post your own "About Me" thread in Allergies.

Eta: my blood tests were not "normal" ... Just wanted to clarify since I just realized the title of this thread...uh yeah brain fog

Thanks for the link...I'm going to be spending way too much time researching now.

The hair loss isn't the only symptom - it's just the one that's been really bothering me lately because it's so severe. I also have the mucin arms (and elsewhere), a small goiter, cold hands and feet, muscle aches (this is the other symptom that bothers me the most), brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, and I could go on...

I started taking iron (Solgar's Gentle Iron), magnesium citrate, vitamin D, and eating two Brazil nuts a day, plus trying to eat beef liver at least once a week. I know I need to go completely gluten free for a significant period of time to see if that will help, but I just haven't done it yet.


Back to and thank you so much for sharing all of this information!

[mamafish9]

Yup, longest thread ever and no one else has started posting yet, LOL!!

My big question is (waiting for the Starr book, haven't read it yet - he needs a Kindle version!!), if hypoT 2 is from cells not responding correctly to thyroid, why is the answer more thyroid hormone? (I get that will flood the system and get a response) - but how do you address the actual issue, which is improving response to thyroid hormones?

My DS has a lot of genetics that create clogs like this, and there are ways to use nutrients to improve and/or end run around a lot of those issues. What are the nutrients here that would do that?

Also, based on mucin test, I have one normal child (DD), one hypo child (DS). If it's my mitochondria they both have, what other factors are in play here?

[lil_miss_understood]

Wasn't there something about people increasing thyroid function by optimizing methylation? Is it possible that that's why iodine has a deleterious effect on some people (possibly including Hashi's)?

Also, having thyroid antibodies increases your risk factors for other autoimmune conditions, and confirms that you should indeed remain gluten free. Additionally, having thyroglobulin antibodies (Tgab) increases the likelihood that thyroid nodules will become cancerous. As well, there has been a noted correlation between breast cancer and thyroid abnormalities involving antibodies.
So, yes, there IS a reason to know what "type" of hypoT you are treating.

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by mamafish9

Yup, longest thread ever and no one else has started posting yet, LOL!!

My big question is (waiting for the Starr book, haven't read it yet - he needs a Kindle version!!), if hypoT 2 is from cells not responding correctly to thyroid, why is the answer more thyroid hormone? (I get that will flood the system and get a response) - but how do you address the actual issue, which is improving response to thyroid hormones?

My DS has a lot of genetics that create clogs like this, and there are ways to use nutrients to improve and/or end run around a lot of those issues. What are the nutrients here that would do that?

Also, based on mucin test, I have one normal child (DD), one hypo child (DS). If it's my mitochondria they both have, what other factors are in play here?

This is what's been playing in my head.

What does the thyroid *do*? There are receptors in the nucleus, which trigger DNA transcription aka protein synthesis aka manufacturing enzymes. And there are receptors to stimulate the mitochondria to grow, aka make more ATP and more Na/K pumps.

Where do the issues come from?
If you don't have enough thyroid hormone in the first place, clearly there's a problem.
If you have enough, but it can't get to the receptors due to bum genetics (there are lots of SNPs on the thyroid receptor gene) and/or the receptors being blocked (by T4?), that's a problem.
If you have the wrong ratios (T3 is way more active than T4) cause, say, you're not converting T4 to T3 (selenium deficiency, right?) then that's a problem.
If you have all good lab tests (not lab standards, the tighter ranges we talk about here) but still have symptoms, then Starr is saying that your issue lies in the mitochondria. According to him, you have 'faulty' mitochondrial DNA, due to generations of modern medicine not weeding the bad stuff out. In that case, normal amounts of hormone just don't cut it and you need more hormone than normal to feel normal.
And then there's toxicities. I haven't read that part yet, but for starters, mercury makes you hang on to arsenic and arsenic depletes selenium.
And there are the endocrine disruptors. I haven't read that part much either, about how the different hormones interact.
Finally, your mitochondrial DNA changes over the course of your life. It's conceivable (though probably doubtful for most) that each kid did get a different set of DNA. It's also possible that it's evolving differently for each as they grow. I'm guessing that's the last angle to look at though

So now we're back to what's the root cause.

For me, I'm thinking there's lots of different deficiencies going on, vit A, iodine, selenium... And that it wasn't a big issue pre-dd, but as she nursed I got more and more depleted to the point that I started crashing with mucin arms. I definitely *did* have issues pre-dd, given my mom's history and what dd looked like as a newborn. (and what I looked like as a newborn) The symptoms are just changing now.

So Starr is essentially talking about a mitochondria deficiency and calling it type 2, because thyroid hormone corrects the deficiency. His book is most helpful to me at this point by pointing out a whole 'nother list of hypo symptoms, and talking about it from this different angle is letting me put a bigger thyroid picture together. HIS explanation is that it's primarily bad mtDNA (or toxicities), and so from the DNA standpoint, the long term extra hormone makes sense. But from Susan Owen's notes from the mito conference she went to a few months ago, the way to fix faulty mtDNA is to exercise.

[mamafish9]

Just reading around on the Starr website (and amazon just delivered my book) - it doesn't seem like he goes much past the nutrients to optimize thyroid hormone formation & conversion to active forms. Am I missing something, or does he have stuff on how you improve cellular uptake & utilization?

This seems kind of similar to my DS' issue with magnesium - I could flood his body with magnesium (and did), and he still had low mag symptoms. P5P helped with cellular uptake, getting rid of antimony addressed the primary factor interfering with magnesium. Now I don't have to flood him with magnesium any more, a reasonable dose works.

So I'm thinking - taking thyroid meds is like flooding my son with mag - fine for the short term, but how do you address the uptake & use issues so you don't have to keep up the hormone flood? (I personally don't like "flooding" long term - I have to imagine SOME cells in the body won't be happy about that).

Off to read the book

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by mamafish9

Just reading around on the Starr website (and amazon just delivered my book) - it doesn't seem like he goes much past the nutrients to optimize thyroid hormone formation & conversion to active forms. Am I missing something, or does he have stuff on how you improve cellular uptake & utilization?

This seems kind of similar to my DS' issue with magnesium - I could flood his body with magnesium (and did), and he still had low mag symptoms. P5P helped with cellular uptake, getting rid of antimony addressed the primary factor interfering with magnesium. Now I don't have to flood him with magnesium any more, a reasonable dose works.

So I'm thinking - taking thyroid meds is like flooding my son with mag - fine for the short term, but how do you address the uptake & use issues so you don't have to keep up the hormone flood? (I personally don't like "flooding" long term - I have to imagine SOME cells in the body won't be happy about that).

Off to read the book

Short answer, for your ds: figure out the toxicities/deficiencies and clear them out.

Yeah, he seems to like his hormones and not worry about the rest. He found a solution that works. Like I said, what I'm getting out of the book is diagnosis more than treatment. Still totally valuable.

[mamafish9]

Originally Posted by whoMe

Short answer, for your ds: figure out the toxicities/deficiencies and clear them out.

Yeah, he seems to like his hormones and not worry about the rest. He found a solution that works. Like I said, what I'm getting out of the book is diagnosis more than treatment. Still totally valuable.

Right. If it can be done for methylation, surely it can be done for thyroid function . I'll read to understand the science better, then maybe some of the Yasko stuff will apply.

ETA: Reading the book now. I think he may be right about type 2 hypothyroid - but boy, am I underwhelmed by his "it's been around since the dawn of man and we've screwed up natural selection so now all those people survive" theories. (My grad work is in human evolutionary ecology). Lots of logical fallacies (i.e. we discovered Egyptian mummies show signs of arthritis, and since arthritis and hypothyroid are related, hypothyroid must have been around then too).

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by mamafish9

Right. If it can be done for methylation, surely it can be done for thyroid function . I'll read to understand the science better, then maybe some of the Yasko stuff will apply.

ETA: Reading the book now. I think he may be right about type 2 hypothyroid - but boy, am I underwhelmed by his "it's been around since the dawn of man and we've screwed up natural selection so now all those people survive" theories. (My grad work is in human evolutionary ecology). Lots of logical fallacies (i.e. we discovered Egyptian mummies show signs of arthritis, and since arthritis and hypothyroid are related, hypothyroid must have been around then too).

Yeah, I'm not a fan of that explanation either. Have you heard about the Egyptians and how much gluten they ate?

Dr K has another explanation for thyroid resistance. I forget if it's adrenal or insulin resistance or what. Something more likely than DNA, for sure.

Hmm, I wonder if epigenetics fits in?

OH. Another connection... Pottenger's cats that degenerated on the cooked (low taurine) diet? The diagnosis was hypoT. And they regenerated after a couple of generations. FWIW.

[mamafish9]

Finished more of the book now. I think his mitochondrial DNA stuff and progressively worse inheritance is full of hooey, mostly. More on that tomorrow. I think he has the right issue, wrong mechanism.

A couple small points - DNA repair is a key function of methylation. Betcha this hypo2 stuff is a lot more common in people with MTHF and MTRR mutations.

He totally glosses over how thyroid hormones get into cells. If DNA is faulty, in most cases, just adding more hormone isn't going to fix everything. I think this sounds like a classic cell permeability issue (increase outside concentration, more gets in). I need to learn more about how the thyroid hormones get into cells - any idea how that works, Shannon?

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by mamafish9

He totally glosses over how thyroid hormones get into cells. If DNA is faulty, in most cases, just adding more hormone isn't going to fix everything. I think this sounds like a classic cell permeability issue (increase outside concentration, more gets in). I need to learn more about how the thyroid hormones get into cells - any idea how that works, Shannon?

I'd need to double check books, but I'm pretty sure the thyroid hormones are fat soluble, so they can just pass through the membranes. There's the issue of thyroid binding globulin in the bloodstream, and the issue of the thyroid receptors in the cells.

Do you have dr k's book? He goes into more of the root cause details, and breaks it down more.

And yeah, he's (Starr) just flooding with hormone, as far as I can tell. I really want you (and Jane!) to read the Susan Owens post! It actually does indicate that current mito research says that the DNA really is a big factor.

[mamafish9]

Where do I find the Susan Owens post?

OK, thinking through mechanisms now.

T4 needs to get into cells. That's apparently via both passive & active transport. Passive "leaks" across, and that only requires good membrane fluidity (which can be issues for some people, particularly ACAT/fat digestion & metabolism issues). Active transport goes against the concentration gradient, and that requires help. Taking a guess that for some people, the active transport breaks down, so they are reliant more on just the passive transport. Taking thyroid hormone would help in that case (even if tests are normal) because it would increase the blood concentration of hormone, which would increase passive transport - amount "leaking" into cells).

An abstract I'm using to chase down more info on the transporters:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15727804 So, two basic classes of transporters.

The first one, NTCP, can be kicked into high gear by cAMP, says here. Likely does it both by increasing transport rates (playing with ions) and translocating proteins (sticking more of the transporter proteins in the cell membrane). So hypothesis might be that cAMP is low, so not as many transporter channels in cell membranes. Low cAMP is also implicated in ADHD/autism/Alzheimer's (prefrontal cortex higher order thinking stuff). So need to learn more about that. cAMP is made from ATP - so if mitochondria don't produce enough ATP, one consequence might be less thyroid hormone getting in (which decreases ATP production even further). Yasko has stuff on increasing ATP, must go read. I'm also giving DS straight ATP (for a methylation cycle step) - maybe that would be an interesting supp for this kind of hypothyroid?

Another line of thought that interests me here - these channels depend on sodium concentrations. ACE++ mutations and adrenal fatigue both result in changes to sodium retention. Wondering if early stage adrenal issues result in slowdowns of these sodium dependent transporter channels, so less thyroid hormone gets in... Shannon, any idea if it is na+ concentration inside or outside of the cells that matters for triggering this gate? And would higher concentrations slow down or speed up the gate?

Second kind of transporters, OATP class, example MCT8. Serious defects in MCT8 can cause low muscle tone and no speech. Shannon, can you see this gene in your 23andme test?

Another good overview http://www.biochemsoctrans.org/bst/0...bst0330228.htm

Then T4 has to be converted to T3 in cells - if this isn't working well enough, does that show up on the standard thyroid test? So for those of us with "normal" tests, probably not the problem.

Then T3 needs to bind to receptor sites. This could be where the mitochondrial damage kicks in. DNA repair is a key function of methylation, so guessing that well functioning methylation would help out quite a bit here. Might also be genetic mutations for receptor sites that are hereditary (which makes more sense to me as a mechanism for "hereditary" hypothyroidism than what Starr is proposing)

[chlobo]

Originally Posted by whoMe

For me, I'm thinking there's lots of different deficiencies going on, vit A, iodine, selenium... And that it wasn't a big issue pre-dd, but as she nursed I got more and more depleted to the point that I started crashing with mucin arms. I definitely *did* have issues pre-dd, given my mom's history and what dd looked like as a newborn. (and what I looked like as a newborn) The symptoms are just changing now.

This is me. I did not have a lot of symptoms but since Adam was born, actually in the last year or so, I"ve developed mucin arms.


So Starr is essentially talking about a mitochondria deficiency and calling it type 2, because thyroid hormone corrects the deficiency. His book is most helpful to me at this point by pointing out a whole 'nother list of hypo symptoms, and talking about it from this different angle is letting me put a bigger thyroid picture together. HIS explanation is that it's primarily bad mDNA (or toxicities), and so from the DNA standpoint, the long term extra hormone makes sense. But from Susan Owen's notes from the mito conference she went to a few months ago, the way to fix faulty mDNA is to exercise.

I don't buy the exercise to fix faulty mDNA. I just don't. First off, I'm too tired to exercise. Second, when I do exercise even though I'm tired it just makes me feel worse to the point of crashing. So there has to be something else to fix it besides exercise. But hey, if it works for you then I guess go for it.

See, this is why I don't know where to turn. Although I was coming around to Starr's POV last night when I realized that my mom has osteoprosis and is shrinking, which would be consistent with what he says about hypothyroidism. And thus if she has it, its possible she passed it on to me.

[Theloose]

The post is on sulfurstories and trying low oxalates, or I can pm it. I'll see if I can post it here, that would be helpful!

Originally Posted by chlobo

I don't buy the exercise to fix faulty mDNA. I just don't. First off, I'm too tired to exercise. Second, when I do exercise even though I'm tired it just makes me feel worse to the point of crashing. So there has to be something else to fix it besides exercise. But hey, if it works for you then I guess go for it.

See, this is why I don't know where to turn. Although I was coming around to Starr's POV last night when I realized that my mom has osteoprosis and is shrinking, which would be consistent with what he says about hypothyroidism. And thus if she has it, its possible she passed it on to me.

Exercise making you crash is a classic adrenal problem.
The two things I've seen now, about how to increase the action of your mitochondria are Starr's thyroid hormones, and the Mitochondria Foundation's exercise. It's possible you're just not ready for that, though - this is probably exactly where supporting the thyroid before your adrenals are in decent shape can just make you crash harder. Starr talks about addressing toxicities. I'd keep going down the path your going, and keep this in mind for a later step, and as a cause of this handful of symptoms so you can stop worrying about them.

[chlobo]

Originally Posted by whoMe

The post is on sulfurstories and trying low oxalates (I'll come back with the link), or I can pm it. I'll see if I can post it here, that would be helpful!

Exercise making you crash is a classic adrenal problem.
The two things I've seen now, about how to increase the action of your mitochondria are Starr's thyroid hormones, and the Mitochondria Foundation's exercise. It's possible you're just not ready for that, though - this is probably exactly where supporting the thyroid before your adrenals are in decent shape can just make you crash harder. Starr talks about addressing toxicities. I'd keep going down the path your going, and keep this in mind for a later step, and as a cause of this handful of symptoms so you can stop worrying about them.

I've been trying to fix my adrenals for a while now and it doesn't seem to be working. And right now I'm just plumb worn out. I need a bandaid.

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by chlobo

I've been trying to fix my adrenals for a while now and it doesn't seem to be working. And right now I'm just plumb worn out. I need a bandaid.

I know the feeling
I'd be surprised if you were ready for this bandaid, though. I'd keep focusing on the B12, metals and enzymes for a while. Hey, when you were so sick and ds got to baseline... I wonder if a fast of some sort might actually help you out? Should probably head back to chat or your thread...

[Theloose]

Originally Posted by whoMe

Hmm... Iodine and vit A are both critical for thyroid hormones. There's some island where the prevalence of goiter relates more to vit A status than iodine status. When I get vit A (CLO or liver) I get awful fatigue a day or two later. K2 and potassium both seem to help a LOT. Up for an experiment?

I'm realizing, my hands have been dry and I've been really thirsty like I get after liver. I'm actually really behind on the liver, though. Instead, I've been working on brazil nuts and iodine drops. Is dehydration a common symptom of increasing thyroid hormones??

[lil_miss_understood]

Originally Posted by whoMe

I'm realizing, my hands have been dry and I've been really thirsty like I get after liver. I'm actually really behind on the liver, though. Instead, I've been working on brazil nuts and iodine drops. Is dehydration a common symptom of increasing thyroid hormones??

I think I'm more thirsty when I'm hypo... I seem to recall drinking glass after glass of water when my TSH was 100+ and still being thirsty.
eta: of course, I don't really remember a whole lot from that period of time, and my memories since have been somewhat faulty, so take that with a grain of salt.