A normal TSH reading in your blood work, does not mean that your thyroid is functioning properly.
There can be a number of reasons for this, but I want to go through one of the scenarios that I see frequently in my practice. This common scenario is that a patient will come in with a diagnosis of hypothyroidism, so a low or under functioning thyroid. They will bring in their recent blood work and the blood work will show a TSH within normal range. In many cases the only thyroid hormone that measured is TSH, which is an incomplete analysis of the thyroid. And they will still be experiencing symptoms of the low functioning thyroid, such as cold hands and cold feet, hair loss, difficulty losing weight, lower metabolism, constipation. They will be told that their blood work is normal, so everything is fine, the thyroid is functioning well. I want to explain why this may be an inaccurate description of what is going on.
The next question I’ll ask is, were on medication, like Synthroid which is synthetic T4, when this blood work was taken. In most cases, people are saying yes I was taking Synthroid when this blood work was taken.
Now what you need to understand is that TSH, Thyroid Stimulating Hormone, is evaluating how much T4 is in circulation. Now if you are taking synthetic T4, then you are putting a lot of T4 into circulation, then the TSH will shift into normal range. But what has happened, is that you have biochemically manipulated the blood work, but you have not necessarily turned the thyroid on and got that thyroid to actually function properly. Because the next step that the body needs to convert inactive T4 to active T3 and if your body is unable to do that conversion, then we can’t get that thyroid to function properly.
There are a number of different factors that go into the proper functioning of the thyroid and just putting someone onto Synthroid does not necessarily resolve the thyroid problems. I go through this in a lot more detail in my e-course called Balance the Thyroid. If you are interested in learning more about the thyroid, how to balance the thyroid, and all the different aspects that go into effectively allowing the thyroid to function properly, then this course is for you. I was put the link below this video. And if this is an issue that is affecting you, then I encourage you to register for this course and learn how you can effectively help your thyroid to function better.
