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How to Deal with the Pain from An Autoimmune Disease
How to Deal with the Pain from An Autoimmune Disease
By guest blogger, Patrick Bailey
In the wake of the technological revolution in the field of health, science, and technology, some things still remain unclear, such as the cause of autoimmunity. Through the years, scientists are trying to find cures for this debilitating set of diseases but until now it is still vague. While the search for its causes and cures are still ongoing, scientists have found ways to manage its symptoms.
There are approximately 50 million Americans nowadays suffering from an autoimmune disease. The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association reveals that only a small part of this population can name at last one autoimmune disease. It is now the eighth main concern of women. It also shortens eight years from the normal lifespan. Autoimmune diseases cost the US health care $120 billion annually greater than the burden caused by cancer, which is only $70 billion in a year.
Dr. Elliot Rosenstein, one of the pioneers of the Institute for Rheumatic and Autoimmune Diseases at Atlantic Health System’s Overlook Medical Center, said that autoimmune diseases are infamously hard to diagnose and there is no cure for them even if they are recognized.
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Dr. Elliot Rosenstein further says that patients diagnosed with the similar autoimmune disease do not present a similar set of signs and symptoms. Most of the patients suffer from dizziness, low-grade fevers, nausea, fatigue, and weight loss. These symptoms are vague and can be caused by several medical conditions. Rosenstein adds that there is a tendency for these manifestations to overlap. To differentiate patients with lupus from patients with rheumatoid arthritis can be very hard.
What is an Autoimmune Disease?
Our body has an immune system that shields us from infections and diseases. However, if you have an autoimmune disease, this protection transforms as an enemy that assaults by mistake, the healthy cells in our body. This disease can upset various parts of our body. When the immune system becomes overactive, it harms its own tissues. When the immune system is suffering from a deficiency disease, the body becomes susceptible to infections because of its ability to combat invaders is reduced.
Usually, the immune system can differentiate between your own cells and foreign cells. However, when there is an autoimmune disease, it identifies other parts of the body like joints and other organs as foreign. When this happens, the immune system discharges proteins called auto-antibodies to attack the strong cells.
There are various examples of autoimmune diseases; this includes Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus, and Multiple Sclerosis. Other types of autoimmune diseases are Psoriasis, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, Vasculitis, Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy, and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, to name a few.
Treatment of Autoimmune Diseases
If the disease is diagnosed, there are various treatments that are usually administered to patients. The treatment aims to regulate the autoimmune process, lessen the symptoms, and as much as possible help the body to continuously fight the illness. The treatment includes taking several supplements to fill in the lacking substance that the body needs. These are vitamin B12, hormones for thyroid, and insulin. There are times that treatment requires a blood transfusion and physical therapy.
Some patients take medicines to alleviate the abnormal response of the immune system. These are immunosuppressive pills like non-steroidal medicines and steroids. Some disease uses Interleukin suppressants and TNF blockers. However, the majority of the patients use pain relievers to ease their suffering. While these are effective medicines, most of the time, these medications are only used for suppressing the pain and not directly targeting the cause of the illness.
Painkillers and prescription opiates, in the course of time, can also affect the body. Physicians prescribe aspirins and other anti-inflammatory medicines to ease the pain. But stronger immune suppressing pills have grave side effects that could result in more serious problems in the future. The most effective way to combat and treat an autoimmune disease is to know its underlying causes. Knowing the sources can easily heal your body. Here are several ways on how to deal with the pain from autoimmune disease without the painkillers
- Eat Nutritious and Healthy Anti-Inflammatory Food
Change and include anti-inflammatory foods in your diet. This includes taking in food rich in Omega-3, green leafy vegetables, and turmeric. Aside from these, avoid consuming foods that are high in sugar. Include at least nine servings of vegetables and fruits every day. You should also limit saturated fats to at least 10 percent daily. It is also recommended that you eat fish three times a week. You should also avoid eating refined sugars and processed foods. Several studies discovered that eating anti-inflammatory rich food will not only protect you from certain illnesses but will also help you lose weight, stabilize your blood sugar, and increase your metabolism.
- Repair the Gut
The easiest way to start repairing your gut includes consuming anti-inflammatory diet, eradicating gluten, and eating whole food. This is because the majority of the immune system heavily relies on the gut or digestive system. If this gets damaged, your immune system will be left unprotected to foreign opportunistic elements like bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms. Your body will trigger your immune response and will aggravate your enteric nervous system. This will result in a wide array of problems such as mood disorders, allergy, autoimmunity, arthritis, and many more.
- Increase Physical Movement
Regular exercise is a natural anti-inflammatory. You do not necessarily need to enroll in a fitness gym or buy a treadmill to do this. Start by moving around more frequently and use your body more often. Exercise also allows you to sweat out toxins from your body and relieves you of stress
- Practice Relaxation
One of the main factors that aggravate the immune response of the body is stress. It is very important that you include several calming and deep relaxation techniques in your lifestyle to lessen anxiety and stress in your body. There are many ways to relax nowadays; this includes practicing Yoga and getting a massage.
- Get Enough Sleep
Irregular sleep, poor sleeping pattern, and lack of sleep can harm your metabolism. When this happens, you will have cravings for carbohydrates and sugar, which push you to eat more. To reverse inflammation and to achieve good health, getting enough sleep is essential.
Autoimmune diseases, like any other illnesses, can be remedied by a healthy lifestyle. Healthy living is not a trend but rather a way of life. This is the proper way that our lives should be lived. These natural steps suggested above are just simple and practical truths that most of us forget amidst living this busy life.
Thank you for reading. We appreciate all your comments.
Terry Ryan
You Are Not Crazy…It’s Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis by Terry Ryan
I have Hashimoto’s thyroditis
Been there and will always be there. I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. It is an autoimmune disease. Plain and simple. AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE! An autoimmune disease is a syndrome where the body senses an invader and goes on immune attack. In my case, it attacked my thyroid. My autoimmune disease is named after the doctor who discovered the disease. Hashimoto’s is diagnosed by a high TSH (thyroid thyroid-stimulating) lab test and high TPO, thyroid peroxidase . Hence, I am hypothyroid. My thyroid is not producing enough of the thyroid hormone, T4. When that happened, I felt extremely fatigued, suffered with hair loss, aches and pains, DEPRESSION, just to name a few. And what do your doctors, friends and family think after your complaints about symptoms month after month and year after year? That you are crazy. You are not crazy…it’s Hashimoto’s!
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It takes years to develop
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis disease. This happened slowly. My symptoms started showing up one by one. First, I noticed my energy reducing, I started dragging myself through the day. I went to the doctor. He ran lab tests, but everything looked “fine” including my TSH. If it is high…usually over 3, it means you are hypothyroid. The TSH lab test is the standard test that endocrinologists use to determine if you are either hyperthyroid (too much thyroid hormone) or hypothyroid (not enough thyroid). Sort of goes against reasoning. If you have a high TSH reading, this means you are HYPO (I have been as high as), and if you have a zero reading, it means you have too much thyroid hormone and you are HYPER. Why is this?
How it works
The pituitary gland itself is regulated by another gland, known as the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is part of the brain and produces TSH Releasing Hormone (TRH) which tells the pituitary gland to stimulate the thyroid gland (release TSH). The pituitary gland located in the back of your head regulates when the body needs thyroid hormone. When it needs more, it sends a message out to the thyroid that it needs more hormone. When this happens, your TSH goes up, When there is too much hormone, it will do the opposite. By the way, in the beginning I swung back and forth between hyper to hypo. I miss the hyperthyroid times when I had more energy and could lose weight easily. This happens as my thyroid gland was sputtering to a dead stop at producing hormones.
What happened next to me? I said this happened slowly; my decline in health did not happen overnight. It wasn’t one day I woke up and I had all the Hashimoto’s symptoms. No, it crept up on me like a monster stealing my life force. Horrible and insidious.
I lost count of the doctor visits where I plead my case of I DON’T FEEL WELL, only to be dismissed as, I would guess. a hypochondriac, or a overworked and stress out middle-aged woman.
As the days, months and years went on, I felt worse and worse until I was not able to do normal activities, and I even became antisocial. Sound familiar? You are not crazy…it’s Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
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Here are some symptoms associated with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis:
- Anxiety
- Panic attacks
- Weight gain
- Extreme fatigue
- Dry skin
- Headaches
- Sore throat
- Muscle aches and pains
- Temperature sensitivity
- Hair loss
The lost years…
I suffered for many years. I call them the lost years. No doctors helped me. They didn’t have the knowledge or if they couldn’t throw a pill at it, they didn’t know how to treat me. By the time I was diagnosed, my thyroid was a shriveled up gland with nodules. No worries, they weren’t cancerous. I have a ultrasound every year and they are getting smaller.
Yes, I will be on thyroid prescription for the rest of my life and I have tried them all. My greatest results are with the prescription Tirosint. It is expensive but I switched years ago when I learned that Synthroid used gluten as a filler, and I am anti-gluten. Gluten is a no-no if you have an autoimmune disease.
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The good news
The good news is that I no longer suffer with symptoms even though I still and always will have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. I have figured out how to put my Hashimoto’s into remission. Some people call it that, but all I know is that I now have energy and no pain. How did I achieve that? By taking a lot of junk out of my diet. Clean living and eating. My entire life changed…and for the better.
Now I exercise for 3 hours per day, and then come home and run errands, clean house, make dinner, blog, write, read and all the things that go into a normal day. And I am so happy. So happy. I have my life back.
I have written one book on Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and it has a lot of medical information, and maybe too much medical mumbo jumbo. A lot of people have purchased it on Amazon, which surprises me because I do very little promoting. Right now, I am in the process of writing another book which will be available soon.
If you want to be on my mailing list, I send out healthful tips, recipes and updates on when my books will be available, you can sign up here.
I want you to know, that having a normal life is possible when you have Hashimoto’s. I am the proof.
Thanks for reading!
Terry Ryan, Health Blogger, Pickleball Competitor, Mom of 2 adorable chihuahuas, wife, good friend to many people, and Hashimoto’s recover-er.
Terry Ryan
What the Heck is Gluten? by Terry Ryan
Terry Ryan
What the heck is gluten? by Terry Ryan, Health Blogger
Gluten, gluten, gluten. That’s all you hear about if you are on social media sites like FaceBook. It’s bad for you, or it’s not bad for you. What the heck is it?
Gluten is the glue that keeps bread together. It gives it the chewiness that we all have come to know and love. Gluten is a mixture of hundreds of distinct proteins within the same family, although it is primarily made up of two different classes of proteins: gliadin, which gives bread the ability to rise during baking, and glutenin, which is responsible for dough’s elasticity.
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Sounds great doesn’t it? Here comes the problem. Your body may not like this protein. It views it as an invader and send out the attack squad, your immune system, and goes into red alert.
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Who does this affect?
About 18 million people are gluten sensitive. And these are not just celiac disease patients where the villi is destroyed and makes the assimilation of nutrients from the food difficult. I’m referring to the average person who has heartburn or IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). They most probably have a gluten-sensitivity and don’t even know it.
Do you have bloating, cramping and/or diarrhea? You may be gluten sensitive.
Does gluten cause autoimmune disease?
First of all, what is an autoimmune disease?
Autoimmune disease is the body attacking and damaging its own tissues In the case of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which I have, it is an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid. The protein in gluten causes the immune system to go awry and it attacks the thyroid. Thereby destroying the thyroid’s ability to produce thyroid hormones. I’ll be on synthetic hormone replacement for the rest of my life.
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Should people avoid gluten?
I think so. As people say, the bread today is not your great-grandmother’s bread. What is so different? First of all, all the pesticides, herbicides and fungicides sprayed on wheat used by farmers to protect the wheat from insects, and then Roundup is sprayed on the new wheat to force it to mature faster for a quicker harvest, and therefor, more money in the farmer’s pocket. Avoiding wheat for the purpose of just avoiding chemicals is a good reason alone not to eat bread…therefore, gluten. And you may not have an autoimmune disease set off by gluten right now, but it is something that might be destroying your body slowly overtime, so why take the chances.
Giving up gluten has improved my health, eliminated my aches and pains in my joints, and helped me lose weight. It has also helped my friends with other autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis.
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What to do to avoid gluten.
Avoid completely bread, crackers, cookies, and pasta are obvious ways, but did you know that a lot vitamins and prescription drugs use gluten as a filler? I switched my thyroid prescription from Tirosint to Synthroid after I found out that Synthroid had gluten as a filler. Yes, even a little gluten will harm you if you are gluten sensitive. You can’t go half way with being gluten. You should not eat any for best results.
Here are some other hidden gluten:
- Barley (flakes, flour, pearl)
- Breading, bread stuffing
- Brewer’s yeast
- Bulgur
- Durum (type of wheat)
- Farro/faro (also known as spelt or dinkel)
- Graham flour
- Hydrolyzed wheat protein
- Kamut (type of wheat)
- Malt, malt extract, malt syrup, malt flavoring
- Malt vinegar
- Malted milk
- Matzo, matzo meal
- Modified wheat starch
- Oatmeal, oat bran, oat flour, whole oats (unless they are from pure, uncontaminated oats)
- Rye bread and flour
- Seitan (a meat-like food derived from wheat gluten used in many vegetarian dishes)
- Semolina
- Spelt (type of wheat also known as farro, faro, or dinkel)
- Triticale
- Wheat bran
- Wheat flour
- Wheat germ
- Wheat starch
These other ingredients may be less familiar to you, but they also contain gluten:
- Atta (chapati flour)
- Einkorn (type of wheat)
- Emmer (type of wheat)
- Farina
- Fu (a dried gluten product made from wheat and used in some Asian dishes)
Gluten Foods
Double-check the ingredients label on these items, as they’re possible sources of gluten:
- Beer, ale, lager
- Breads
- Broth, soup, soup bases
- Cereals
- Cookies and crackers
- Some chocolates, some chocolate bars, licorice
- Flavored coffees and teas
- Imitation bacon bits, imitation seafoods
- Pastas
- Processed foods
- Salad dressings
- Sausages, hot dogs, deli meats
- Sauces, marinades, gravies
- Seasonings
- Soy sauce
I was shocked to find out that even my hair dye had gluten in it. That’s right, hair dye. For years I have been sensitive to hair dye/hair color. It would last a day and I would have to take Benadryl to control the itching. Then a hairdresser suggested I try putting Sweet N Low (sugar substitute) in the dye mix. That did calm it down a little, but I still had the hives for a day after. After I told my latest hairdresser about my allergy to hair color, he suggested I use a GLUTEN FREE hair dye. What? Gluten is in hair dye? I didn’t think it would work but it did. No more itching or rash.
What other products have gluten in them?
- Shampoo
- Toothpaste
- Lipstick
- Facial Cleansers
- Lotions
- Shaving gels
- Hair spray
- Soap
These products can contain grain and gluten based ingredients that you should be aware of so that if necessary, you can switch to a new product line. Some of the most common terms (yet not obvious) you will see on products include:
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- Wheat germ
- Hydrolyzed wheat protein
- Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
- Avena sativa (oats found commonly in lotions)
- Triticum aestivum (another name for wheat)
Read more at https://www.glutenfreesociety.org/do-your-cosmetics-contain-gluten-or-other-toxins/#ZefIiFXMjCjgbmFA.99
Do I miss bread?
Butternut squash noodles with red sauce
No, not at all. I get along just fine not eating bread or gluten. Last night I made “pasta” with butternut squash noodles (I bought them already spiralized) and used marinara sauce on top with a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Loved it. Now the family prefers it to regular pasta. (And I was trying to keep it for myself.) Instead of crackers I bake rounds of grated Parmesan cheese on parchment paper. Let them cool a little and use them like crackers. I like to add a dab of guacamole on mine. Delicious and guilt free.
Gluten Free Chocolate Cake with whipped cream
I even eat chocolate cake gluten free. I make it with almond flour. And it takes 2 minutes to cook in the microwave. Then I serve it with mounds of whipped cream.
I’m putting together an eBook of my gluten-free recipes so if you want to receive one send me your email to TCRryan@gmail.com. FREE..just spreading the gluten-free love.
Why are so many people AGAINST gluten-free?
Well, it’s big money for the wheat industry. Huge money. Do you think they want to see their sales go down? Plus all the chemical companies that supply the farmers. Money, money, money. My opinion…they shoot themselves in the foot. If they constantly serve us a product that is going to make us SICK what do they think? We are going to keep buying bread and pasta?
Do I get a lot of flack from not eating gluten?
Yes, I do get a lot of evil looks when I tell someone that I don’t eat gluten. Kind of like the same look vegetarians get when they say they don’t eat look. What I say to them…Hey, eat all the gluten you want. Enjoy! I don’t judge people if they want to eat bread or pasta. Oh heck, no! And if you are at my house for dinner, I’ll serve you bread.
Here are some products I use with my gluten-free recipes.
Swerve (Sugar substitute)
Almond Flour
Coconut Flour
Thank you for reading.
Terry Ryan
Who is the Medical Medium?
Who is the Medical Medium and what does he claims causes autoimmune disease? by Terry Ryan, Health Blogger
The medical medium is, Anthony William, the now famous author of the New York Times best selling book, Medical Medium. According to William, he has the miraculous talent of being able to diagnose illnesses in individuals just by being close to them. Previously, he was giving phone consultations for $500.00, but he is now so popular and busy that he has suspended one on one consultations, according to his web site. He does however, have a few great YouTube videos that I would recommend that you watch. Just type in Medical Medium in the search bar.
“Anthony William’s God-given gift for healing is nothing short of miraculous. This landmark book sharing Anthony’s immense knowledge of how to prevent and combat disease will impact the medical community for decades. Don’t wait for this information trickles its way into the mainstream in to 15 years. Buy this book and start getting healthier right now.”
-David James Elliot, Scorpion, Trumbo, Mad Men, CSI:NY
If you want to see the supplements he normally prescribes for people you can click here>>CLICK
The most prominent message that William promotes throughout his book is that autoimmune disease is caused by Epstein Barr Virus (EBV). Many people remember catching the “kissing disease” in high school or college called mononucleosis. Its main symptom was debilitating fatigue. What many people don’t realize is the virus stays in their body in a dormant state, and will SOMETIMES be activated again when people are in a high stress and low immune condition.
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Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), also known as human herpes virus 4, is a member of the herpes virus family. It is one of the most common human viruses. EBV is found all over the world. Most people get infected with EBV at some point in their lives. EBV spreads most commonly through bodily fluids, primarily saliva. According to William, it is the ROOT OF ALL AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES.
Symptoms:
Symptoms of EBV infection can include
- fatigue
- fever
- inflamed throat
- swollen lymph nodes in the neck
- enlarged spleen
- swollen liver
- rash
Not everyone is convinced that EBV is the cause of everyone’s autoimmune diseases. In Isabella Wentz book, The Root Cause, there are 6 main causes.
- Your genes. Family history sets you up. (Not sure I agree with this.)
- Gluten Sensitivity. If you have an autoimmune disease, you most likely have a gluten sensitivity.
- Glutamine and Zinc depletion
- Parasites! (Ugh! Didn’t see that one coming.)
-
Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) Caused by taking too many antibiotics, eating too much junk food.
- Candida (Fungal infection)
And if you read other books…you will get different takes on WHAT CAUSES AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE? Confused? You bet!
Do not ask traditional medicine this question. “What causes autoimmune disease?” They are educated on how to treat a disease and not how to prevent it or the root cause. How do they treat autoimmune disease? They treat the symptoms with medications.
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William has a deep and raspy voice with almost a tinge of somebody who smoked too many cigarettes. He laughs freely and often, and is incredibly passionate about what he preaches. He calls the voice he hears speaking into his ear, Spirit. His first scan (reading from Spirit) was at the age of 4 when he pointed at his grandmother and said, “Lung cancer!” Obviously his family was baffled that a 4 year-old would say lung cancer, but unfortunately for the grandmother, she indeed did have lung cancer diagnosed a few weeks later by a doctor.
For a while, William wanted to turn the voice off that was speaking in his ear, Spirit. He would shimmy up trees trying to get as far away from the voice as he could, but to his dismay, the voice was always to be with him. Eventually, he accepted it as his duty and privilege to be able to diagnose people.
I’ve seen him give health readings on TV to the host of whatever talk show he was on. He told one woman that she didn’t need to worry about the calcium deposit in her breast that was showing up on the mammogram that had her and her doctor concerned. Needless to say, she was relieved, and she had not mentioned any of her health problems or concerns prior to the scan. He also said she had a thyroid problem that needed to be addressed. (Ugh! Who doesn’t????)
On another show, he told the host that she had an inflamed pancreas and she burst out with, “I knew it!” Seems she had been suffering with a pain in the right side of her rib cage, and had already made an appointment with her doctor. He also told her, much to her shock, that she had a kidney stone.
William is not the first medical medium. Edgar Cayce (March 18, 1877 – January 3, 1945) is a historically famous medium who had the talent to diagnose ill people just by looking at them. You can read more about Edgar Cayce, a fascinating person, by clicking on this link. EDGAR CAYCE
Click on the book!
Here is Anthony William’s new cookbook.
William is a proponent of fruit and lots of it. Just like the poor avocado a few years ago, fruit has taken on a bad reputation that it was not good for you. How can something that is made by nature, as long as it isn’t drenched in harmful chemicals or corrupted by GMOs, be bad for you? Yes, fruit contains sugar but your body and brain need the right kind of sugar that fruit contains.
Fruit saved me. When I upped my fruit intake, I was able to energize my body so I was able to return to activities that for a while, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, had prevented me from doing.
Medical Medium, the book, covers a lot of topics towards healing including, medication, menopause, Lyme disease, gut health, essential angels, etc.
I give the book 5 stars just for the reason it answers a lot of questions for me. The book also gives HOPE that there is a way back to health. I always thought my autoimmune disease was brought on by EBV that I came down with after attending the Montreal Boat Show in 1991, and it rears its ugly head every once in a while, usually when I least need it to. Anthony William confirmed my intuition.
You can purchase Medical Medium as an ebook or physical copy. Here are both.
Click here for Medical Medium EBook Click here for Medical Medium Paperback
2 Book set. Click on the picture.
Knowledge is power! Knowledge is being able to heal yourself.
To your health!
Terry Ryan, Health Blogger
It’s More Than Your Thyroid
It’s more than your thyroid!
I read over and over again on Facebook, thyroid patients that go to their endocrinologist and beg for a complete blood work, and not just the standard TSH test. TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) to find out why they, the patient, is not responding to typical thyroid replace therapy. By not responding, I mean they are not feeling any better on thyroid replacement therapy (HRT).
Typical symptoms of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis:
- Fatigue
- Headaches
- Sore throat
- Hair loss
- Weight gain
- Dry skin
- Heat or cold intolerance
I tell people, it feels like I have strep throat all the time. To put it mildly…Hashimoto’s SUCKS!
So what do patients do who have a doctor who won’t run a more extensive list of labs for you? You can find another doctor, or pay for the tests yourself. Simple as that.I usually have my endocrinologist run complete labs once a year, (yes, I go in to his office armed with information). In between that I will have a TSH test done every 4 or 5 months just to see how I am doing.
Only approximately 10% of patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis will feel better on HRT alone. That is the disappointing truth. Why? Because it is, NUMBER ONE, an autoimmune disease! What is an autoimmune disease?
Autoimmune disease affects up to 50 million Americans, according to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA). An autoimmune disease develops when your immune system, which defends your body against disease, decides your healthy cells are foreign. As a result, your immune system attacks healthy cells. Depending on the type, an autoimmune disease can affect one or many different types of body tissue.
There are over 80 autoimmune diseases that affect different areas of your body. For instance: Multiple Sclerosis (MS), causes damage to the myelin coating around the nerve fibers in the central nervous system (CNS) and to the nerve fibers themselves interferes with the transmission of nerve signals between the brain, spinal cord and the rest of the body.
IT MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE.
What is wrong with me?
Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease that has picked your innocent thyroid to attack. It attacks and attacks until the thyroid no longer produces the hormone needed for your body to run efficiently. Hence: you feel constantly tired and you crawl to your doctor for lab work. What is frustrating, is after years of complaining about being fatigued and your doctor prescribes a medicine like Synthroid, you still feel the fatigue but now you have other complaints such as weight gain, hair loss, foggy brain, etc. You doctor scratches his head and declares that your TSH is now in the “normal” range SO IT MUST BE SOMETHING ELSE. Then he leads you out of the examination room.
Patients have burst into tears at this point. They have come to their doctor in hopes of regaining their once vital life back, and instead they are told it basically is in their heads because, after all, blood tests don’t lie. (SCREAM HERE!)
Okay, take a deep breath, There is hope. I have faced this hurdle head on, and innocently I have believed my learned doctor. Well my doctor, or I should say doctors, are obviously not doing the same in depth research that I have had to take on in an attempt to find out WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME? What I found out…it is Hashimoto’s. Screw the blood tests and the supposedly normal TSH. I have an autoimmune disease with a fancy name…HASHIMOTO’S THRYOIDITIS. (Dr. Haruku Hashimoto, in 1912, published a paper on lymphomatus goiter and when published in American papers, renamed Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis.)
When I was first diagnosed 5 years ago, I had never heard of it. Yes, I knew what hypothyroidism was, but the autoimmune disease that was attacking my thyroid was new to me. What set the diagnose apart from just having hypothyroidism is the high antibodies showing up in my lab results.
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The presence of TPO antibodies in your blood suggests that the cause of thyroid disease is an autoimmune disorder, such as Hashimoto’s disease or Graves’ disease. In autoimmune disorders, your immune system makes antibodies that mistakenly attack normal tissue.
My endocrinologist preformed a ultrasound on my thyroid and he said it looked like a typical “beat-up” thyroid caused by Hashimoto’s. If I knew years ago what I know now, I could have stopped the progression of the demise of my thyroid. Now, it has gone past the point of no return and I am on a lifetime of hormone replacement therapy. Oh joy!
So what do you do if your doctor says your TSH is in the normal range and that is all they can do? Pull up your big girl (or boy) panties and it is all up to you! Trust me on this one. I have SEARCHED for the magic pill. There is none. Hashimoto’s patients usually place too much importance on their prescription. It’s all about diet.
Your hormone replacement therapy is extremely important because your body needs thyroid, but it is not how you are going to feel better. It also is not how you are going to lose weight. (I’ve even tried going on the very low side of TSH numbers and didn’t lose a pound. The lower the number, the more thyroid you have in your system,)
What is going to help you is:
- Eliminating gluten, sugar, fluoride, alcohol, junk food.
- Using shampoos and moisturizers that have natural ingredients and no gluten.
- Upping your intake of fresh and organic vegetables and fruit.
- Either having food sensitivity blood tests done or try eliminating foods for a while to see how you feel then gradually adding them back into your diet.
- Coffee is something that is not tolerated well by people with Hashimoto’s.
- Taking D3, selenium, vitamin C, Zinc.
That’s a good start.
Feeling better will not happen overnight.
Sorry to deliver that news but no, this will not happen overnight. It probably will take a good 3 months before you really could resume activities that you could do before being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.
Below are some helpful links. Educating yourself about your disease is a great step toward recovery.
Thanks for reading!
Terry Ryan
http://thyroid.about.com/library/links/blthyroid.htm
http://www.medicinenet.com/hashimotos_thyroiditis/article.htm
http://www.thyroidawareness.com/hashimotos
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