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The Power of your Metabolism

PROBLEMS WITH THE THYROID GLAND SYSTEM

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 production of 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:

If your doctor suspects that you have hypothyroidism, he or she has you do a 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. Knowing the levels of each hormone 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 more than 10 years, I have to agree with these experts that the thyroid hormone laboratory tests are 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 titled his best seller book “Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness”.  

It is also important to know that many people that have high cholesterol in reality have a problem with their thyroid that they don’t know about.  Before the thyroid tests existed that could measure the levels of T4, T3 and TSH in the blood, doctors knew that a person had thyroid problems if they found that their cholesterol was too high and they knew the person didn’t have a diet high in cholesterol.  Having high cholesterol could be the clear indicator of the deficient functioning of the thyroid gland.

One of the main signs of hypothyroidism is its tendency to cause weight problems and obesity. People with hypothyroidism find it almost impossible to lose weight because their metabolism is extremely slow since it is their thyroid gland that controls their metabolism.  If there is little production of the T3 hormone there will be very little movement at the cellular level and the person will have a slow metabolism. What’s more, there are people whose laboratory tests reflect “normal” levels of the T3 hormone and yet they have an extremely slow metabolism because, for some reason, their T3 hormone isn’t completely active and it is as if it were a defective T3 hormone.

The true energizing action of the T3 hormone happens at the cellular level. The laboratory test measures the amounts of T4 and T3 hormones in the blood but yet it is not in the blood where the T3 hormone has its energizing effect, it is at the body’s cells. Presently there are no tests that can measure the effect that the T3 hormone has on your cells.  As a result, the laboratory tests that measure the thyroid hormones in your blood can be of help because they provide a sort of “estimate”, but they don’t always reflect the truth in all cases. Many people that have extremely slow metabolisms are having problems with the proper functioning of their thyroid hormones. However, their thyroid laboratory tests are reflecting that “everything is ok”, while the person continues feeling depressed, having insomnia, experiencing weakness, being overweight and with all of the other potential signs of hypothyroidism.

Oddly enough, hypothyroidism affects 8 women for every 1 man that has this condition.  In other words, it is a condition that primarily affects women.  Women with hypothyroidism feel weak, tired, overweight, depressed and sometimes have lost interest in sex.  It is a condition that causes many divorces and the saddest part is that in many cases these people go on without knowing that they have a thyroid problem. In his book “Hypothyroidism: The Unsuspected Illness”, Dr. Broda O. Barnes estimates that about half of the people who suffer from hypothyroidism have not had their condition detected by the traditional laboratory tests that doctors use.  So, these people keep on feeling fat, depressed, and weak while their doctor tells them “everything is fine with your thyroid”.

In the years that I’ve worked with thousands of women that wanted to lose weight and restore their metabolism I have had to learn to detect the “subclinical hypothyroidism” that laboratory tests don’t detect.   I had the luck of discovering the information that Doctor Broda Barnes and Doctor Denis Wilson published in each of their books covering this subject.  These two doctors, more than being just doctors, have been brilliant researchers that knew to look past laboratory tests.  Both of these doctors cared genuinely about their patients and they both gave more credibility to their patient’s symptoms and complaints than to the laboratory test results.  In this crazy whirlwind that we call life, it isn’t always easy to find a doctor that really listens and observes his or her patients.  Economic pressures and time constraints that have been imposed on our doctors by health insurance companies have certainly made us lose part of the quality and time for communication that should exist between the doctor and his patient.  As a result, many of our doctors have lost the ability and willingness to have a conversation with their patient to see if the thyroid laboratory test results, in reality, coincide with the symptoms that their patient has.  So, they have stopped observing the patient and have substituted it with interpreting what the laboratory analysis says.

According to doctors Broda Barnes and Denis Wilson, approximately 50% of laboratory tests that detect problems with the thyroid gland system give what they call a “false negative”.  A “false negative” means that it is “false that there are no problems with the thyroid when in reality there are”. Thus, many people who have problems with their thyroid never find out about it.

The thyroid laboratory tests are not reliable. Dr. Barnes was aware that diagnosing thyroid disease by the currently popular blood tests was seriously flawed, missing most of the persons who really are hypothyroid. This is a real disgrace since most people who are hypothyroid are told that “everything is ok with your thyroid hormones” while at the same time being affected by a multitude of hypothyroid symptoms and while also having a “slow metabolism”. 

The thyroid gland controls the metabolism.  When there are problems or defects with the functioning of this gland, the metabolism is affected.  Also, when any of these processes that allow your hormones to reach the cells in your body to stimulate and speed up the metabolism fails, a chaos is created in your body and that is what is called a “slow metabolism”. The thyroid gland is very sensitive to stress.  In fact, stress affects this gland the most.  The majority of women who have problems with their thyroid start to have problems with it right after some highly emotional or painful traumatic event. Some examples are after going through a bad divorce or after a painful and stressful childbirth.  An automobile accident or losing a loved one can also cause thyroid problems.  All in all, it is a gland that is seriously affected by stress.

On the other hand, the thyroid gland has specific needs for certain nutrients, vitamins and minerals that, if lacking, will impede its production of hormones. In order to function adequately, the thyroid cannot have any deficiencies of any of the following substances:  iodine, zinc, magnesium, copper, manganese, selenium and the amino acid L-Tyrosine.  If your body has a shortage of any of these needed substances, the thyroid could be affected and it could be a cause of hypothyroidism with the resulting “slow metabolism”. 

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.