Hello, Once again it’s your girl Destiny Dardar. Dr. Bryan over at One Wellness Place wrote a great article on a healthy thyroid – Here are some excerpts….
Your thyroid is a tiny butter fly gland that is located in the front of the neck, just below the Adams apple. This gland makes and stores hormones that are essential for the proper function of every cell in the human body.
They thyroid gland helps regulate your heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, and how quickly you convert the food you eat into energy. Your thyroid gland also controls your metabolism.
As you can imagine a thyroid gland that is operating at below optimal levels can really have serious consequences throughout the body. Low levels of thyroid can result in symptoms such as:
- Fatigue Constipation
- Feeling cold all the time Dry Skin
- Weight Gain Pain / Stiffness in the joints
- Thinning Hair Weak nails (breaking of finger nails)
- Depression Irregular menstrual cycles
Your physician can easily diagnose hypothyroidism (low thyroid) with a simple blood test, but sometimes the most common thyroid hormones may appear normal on a blood test despite you experiencing many of the above symptoms.
For years the health of the thyroid gland was assessed using two tests: TSH and T4.
TSH (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone)
This is the hormone that stimulates your body produces to make the “actual”thyroid hormone. It is elevated in hypothyroidism (low thyroid) because your body recognizes that you do not have enough thyroid hormone and therefore it is making more TSH in an effort to stimulate your body to make more thyroid hormone
T4 (Thyroxine) – This is one of your actual thyroid hormones, although this is not the thyroid hormone that does the actual work it is the thyroid hormone that is most often measured. It is actually a pro hormone that is converted into the active thyroid hormone T3.
While these two tests often times will diagnose the majority of people with low thyroid many people will go un diagnosed when only these two tests are performed.
Other thyroid tests that may be useful include: T3 and Reverse T3.
T3 (Triiodothyronine)
This is the true active form of your thyroid hormone. T4 must be converted into T3 before it can perform the many functions throughout the body.
For years we assumed that all people convert T4 to T3 in an effective manner. We are now finding that this just isn’t true. Many people do not convert T4 to T3 which results in low levels of T3, THE ACTIVE HORMONE. – This means that while your T4 and TSH levels can be normal your T3 levels can still be low and you can still be experiencing a variety of symptoms.
Things that can reduce your conversion of T4 to T3 include: stress, nutritional deficiencies (zinc, selenium, chromium), and heavy metals.
Reverse T3
In addition to T4 converting to T3 it can also convert into something called reverse T3. This is a natural process and it typically occurs when the body is trying to conserve energy. In fact this occurs about 20% of the time. This reverse T3 is in active and does not help the body they way T3 does.
Things that can increase your conversion of T4 to Reverse T3 include: stress, illness (both chronic & acute), nutritional deficiencies (iron & B12), and heavy metals.
There are natural ways to boost your thyroid and help you feel great again!
- Selenium Plus (Douglas Labs): Excellent source of highly absorbable selenium which is a powerful anti oxidant and needed for conversion of T4 to T3.
- Zinc Chelate (Douglas Labs): Excellent source of zinc which is a powerful anti oxidant and needed for conversion of T4 to T3.
- One Wellness Place Ashwaganda (Indian Ginseng): herbal supplement from India that has been shown to help people adapt to stress and provide energy. It also helps with the conversion of T4 to T3.
Detoxify your liver
- Milk Thistle: is a powerful antioxidant that has been shown to help detoxify the liver. The liver is primary organ where the conversion of T4 to T3 takes place. A liver that is filled with toxins will not efficiently produce active thyroid hormones.
– See more at:
Thanks Dr. Bryan W. Scott
destinydardar 