The Thyroid gland and its hormones influence almost every cell in your body, and when it doesn’t functioning well, you won’t function well.  It is often difficult to pinpoint what is causing your health problems, but if you consider all of individual symptoms, they may help define a specific issue.  Thyroid disease has a common clinical picture, and certain symptoms help patients and physicians identify possible thyroid dysfunction.  It is important to consider many possible symptoms of thyroid disease before concluding you have a thyroid problem.  One symptom does not usually define a health issue.  For instance, fatigue is one of the most common symptoms of an underactive thyroid or hypothyroidism. However many things cause fatigue.  Although it makes sense to suspect the thyroid as a possible cause of fatigue, it is not wise to make a conclusion based solely upon this one symptom.  You need a little more information to help pinpoint a diagnosis.  Here is a list of the most common symptoms of hypothyroidism.

  • Hair loss (eye brows)
  • Nails brittle
  • Fatigue
  • Cold Intolerance, Cold Hands and Feet.
  • Depression or Anxiety
  • Foggy Thinking, Forgetful
  • Weight Gain or difficulty losing weight
  • Constipation
  • Neck Swelling or discomfort
  • Fertility issues
  • Muscle/joint aches and pains
  • Puffiness around eyes
  • Dry eyes

 An underactive thyroid may not cause every one of these symptoms in every person, but the more symptoms you have, the more likely your health issues are due to hypothyroidism.   One symptom that receives a lot of attention when talking about thyroid disease is body temperature.   An underactive thyroid reduces your basal metabolic rate and thus, can lower your body temperature.   Many people with an underactive thyroid often feel cold when everyone else seems to be perfectly comfortable.   Some health care practitioners use this effect as a diagnostic tool to determine if a patient’s thyroid is underactive.  Patients are instructed to record their under arm body for 7 consecutive mornings.  If their body temperature is consistently low (97.6 or below), they are then thought to have an underactive thyroid.  Some consider this test to be 100% effective in detecting hypothyroidism, but as with most tests in medicine, nothing is 100%.  In fact, this particular test is controversial.  Some people naturally have body temperatures that are considered lower than “normal” and recording a low body temperature in these people says nothing about their thyroid gland.  Patients may also make mistakes while performing the test and the results may falsely indicate a problem.  If you choose to perform this test, simply think of it as part of the entire clinical picture or another piece of the puzzle.  Standard blood tests that look at all of the thyroid hormones should also be performed when investigating the possibility of thyroid disease.  These tests include Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH), free T4, free T3, and Reverse T3.  These too have their faults and may obscure the diagnosis.  Everything from symptoms, test results, physical findings, medical history, and family history should be considered when evaluating a patient’s thyroid function.  All of these contribute to making the diagnosis of an underactive thyroid and developing a treatment plan to address it.