Originally published February 4 2005
An underactive or overactive thyroid can cause a variety of health problems, so check your thyroid
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The thyroid gland is involved in almost every bodily process, which makes a thyroid test almost a necessity. A hyperthyroid person may have a rapid heartbeat, hand tremors, sweatiness, anxiety, weak muscles, and may eventually lead to osteoporosis. A hypothyroid person may have fatigue, slower mental processes, or rough, dry, thick skin. If you have noticed any of these problems, have your doctor perform a thyroid test.
For such a small gland, the thyroid in the neck can cause a lot of problems.
That's because the thyroid gland releases hormones that affect almost all of your body's functions.
The most common thyroid diseases occur when the thyroid gland releases either too little or too much thyroid hormone.
Even though a simple test can be given to figure out how much thyroid hormone you are producing, many people do not realize that their thyroid gland is responsible for symptoms such as fatigue, if they have an underactive thyroid, or a rapid heartbeat, if they have an overactive thyroid.
Some people may even have subclinical thyroid disease, where they have subtle symptoms that are very rarely properly diagnosed.
Below, Carlos R. Hamilton, Jr., MD, president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists and the executive vice president of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, discusses the diagnosis and treatment of thyroid disease.
The body needs it to allow cells to consume oxygen and generate energy within the cells.
Tissues that tend to use more oxygen tend to be affected more, so the central nervous system, the heart, the bones, the skin and the muscles are all very significantly affected by either too much or too little thyroid hormone.
Grave's disease is the common cause of hyperthyroidism, though it may also be caused by thyroid nodules and thyroid inflammation.
These symptoms are rather nonspecific, so it is a very good idea for the physician to test the thyroid, and that is very easily done by a simple blood test called the TSH test.
TSH stands for thyroid-stimulating hormone, and it is a hormone produced by the pituitary gland.
When I highly suspect someone has a thyroid problem, I might do a TSH test and a test to measure blood levels of the thyroid hormone with a T3 (triiodothyronine) and a T4 (thyroxine) test.
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