All humans have a gland that is located in the neck that is shaped like a butterfly with its wings open. This gland is called the thyroid gland and its hormones control your metabolism as well as your body temperature. Without going into technical details, we can say that this gland produces a hormone that within medicine is called T4. This hormone, T4, is not an active hormone, but more of a storage hormone. It is called T4 because it is made up of 4 atoms. The body, through the action of an enzyme called deiodinase, converts the hormone T4 into the T3 hormone, which is an active hormone, not a storage one. The T3 hormone is the one that really increases the metabolism and increases the temperature of the body. It is the active hormone.
The T4 hormone would be the equivalent of having petroleum and the T3 would be like having the active and useable product of petroleum, gasoline
There is another hormone that plays a role in this called TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone). This is the hormone that the brain produces to request from the thyroid gland a higher production of T4 hormone. The TSH hormone is a “messenger” hormone that carries the brain’s orders to the thyroid to tell it to produce more T4, as well as T3, to sustain both the metabolism and the body’s temperature. When the brain detects too little activity from the T3 hormone in the cells, it then produces more TSH in order to stimulate the thyroid gland to produce more T4 hormone that can later be converted into the active hormone, T3. It is a system where the brain constantly monitors the amount of T3 available and orders the thyroid gland to produce more T4 through its messenger hormone TSH.
People that have problems with their thyroid gland suffer from a condition called hypothyroidism, which is a very common condition and for which there exist various medications, like Synthroid® and other brands.
When a person suffers from hypothyroidism they can experience one or several of the following symptoms:
High cholesterol
Difficulty losing weight
Hair loss
Digestive problems
Depression
Dry skin
Constipation
Water retention
Coldness in extremities
Constantly feeling tired
Frequent infections
Memory loss
Lack of interest in sex
Insomnia
If your doctor suspects that you have hypothyroidism, he or she has you do some laboratory test to measure the quantities of T4, T3 and TSH in your blood. There are levels that are considered “normal” for each one of these hormones and knowing the levels of each allows the doctor to determine which medication will be necessary to correct the situation. Unfortunately, the tests are not infallible and some experts say that nearly 50% of these tests fail to detect thyroid problems.
Having worked with thousands of overweight and obese people for the past 10 years, I have to agree with these experts that the thyroid hormones laboratory test is not fail proof. I have known thousands of people that have all the hypothyroid symptoms and yet their lab tests say they are not hypothyroid. The fact that hypothyroidism doesn’t always show in the lab tests is the reason why Dr. Broda Barnes called his best seller book “Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness”.
If you suffer from a slow metabolism, and you also have several of the symptoms of hypothyroidism that were listed before, you might suspect that there are problems with your thyroid gland. The laboratory tests that exist are of some help, but they are not always 100% correct in detecting a hypothyroid condition.
