Dr. Suzann Wang: Hi welcome back. Thanks for joining me. Today we are going to continue our discussion about thyroid supplementation, thyroid medication and thyroid cacting in particular. And I thought I got in some information about the adrenal testing, because most doctors don't know how to do adrenal testing. So I thought I would like, you know, so that you could ask your doctor for him.
So yesterday we had talked about thyroid and adrenals and like some people are very sensitive to thyroid medication. This is really a problem with people who have sensitivity with adrenals or adrenals as well. I saw some people who have chemical sensitivity, that not to be ruled out by just. For most people if you have a sensitivity to or bad reaction to a thyroid medication, ensure your doctor checked out your adrenal and find out what your adrenals are doing.
So thyroid medication especially centroid which is the most common synthetic thyroid hormone that's supplemented or given as a medication. For many people this is a response to get after testing you for something called thyroid stimulating hormone. The TSH, the higher the number is, the less your thyroid is functioning. Generally in my practice I like to keep it below about 2.5, 2.0 and the lower it is, generally the better as it doesn't get too low and when you are ending up with a hyper thyroid situation or when your thyroid is working too much.
So most people don't understand the measurement of TSH is. TSH is measurement of the pituitary. The pituitary gland is here is in your brain in some place and it is the masculine master glands and it tells your thyroid how fast or how hard to work. So the slower your thyroid is, the more thyroid stimulating hormone is going to be produced by your pituitary, which is why the higher the TSH is one your measurement of your thyroid hormone, the bigger problem; you have with your thyroid.
So most people don't test for the full thyroid panel; the TSH is a good measurement in some cases and then your doctor says, okay your thyroid, your TSH say is 2.0 and your are fine and but you are still feeling petite and have constipation and dry skin and dry hair and dry nails and fatigue and all that and weight gain. And you are wondering whether it is really true that there is something wrong with me. It's just my in my head or just some other possibility.
So a lot of people should know that your doctor should also test you for free T4 , your free T3 which is activated thyroid hormone that your cells use and something that rarely medical doctors do is which is to check for reverse T3. Those should all be done at the same time as the panel, I feel because they can fluctuate throughout the day and throughout the week. And so if you do them all at once you get a better idea how everything is doing in relationship to each other.
So the reason for checking your reverse T3 is that the activated form that your cells use is T3. Reverse T3 is a mirror image of T3 molecule and that is counted in the total T3 count. And this is important because the reverse T3 doesn't use, utilized by the cell. It's kind of like an impostor. And so it's not used and so your measurement of total T3 is not fully accurate if you are looking at your reverse T3. Sometimes your body will make a lot of reverse T3. So your body is not using it and your thyroid hormone appropriately and so therefore you are still feeling tired of the teeth or weight gain or all that prevails.
Metabolism that you call and all those symptoms that you got. So measure your doctor test for all of those things. Often times reverse T3 high reverse T3 indicates a problem with slaney and deficiency. You should check for mineral stats, then things like that. Finally checking for your adrenal should be done by saliva. Salvery testing throughout the day as well as we use in our office mainly because you get a sense sometimes if you do a overall cortisol test say in the morning, some people are fine in the morning but their problem is at night or in the late afternoon, so that we can pinpoint them more accurately how treatment for that.
If you are waking up in the middle of the night, you could follow and we can -- the night and cannot fall back to sleep. That's sort of insomnia is almost always in adrenal problems. So if you have that make sure that your adrenals are checked. Also symptoms of low blood sugar, needing to eat very frequently or feeling like you are petite cold or tired, if you don't eat or if you are at the -- or sweaty and those are all indications of low blood sugar and that usually has to do with adrenal weaknesses well. Also standing up quickly and having, wouldn't we stand up quickly as it is related to adrenal fatigue? These are all common symptoms. So make sure your doctor checks for that.
So I think that's it that I can think of for right now. And if you have any questions please post comments on my blog and I would be more than happy to answer them as I can as I address these issues. Some people have, since video blogging is so easy for me, I have adopted it and so I going to add. Tomorrow we are going to be talking about other possible causes of fatigue related to, fatigue often my patients have fatigue. And often thankfully only most doctors only think about thyroid or adrenals. Well they usually think of thyroids. But there are a lot of viral causes and other causes and so just be aware for those of you who are chronically fatigue.
Okay thanks for joining me and I will see you tomorrow, bye.
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