Why is it possible to have normal thyroid test results when you have all the symptoms of low thyroid function? Functional hypothyroidism refers to a condition when the thyroid is producing a NORMAL amount of thyroid hormone but other hormone imbalances BLOCK the thyroid molecules from functioning properly in the body. Dr. Marcantel explains.
Transcript:
Hi, I’m Dr. Tina Marcantel. Today I want to talk about functional hypothyroidism.
So, I get quite a number of calls from people that have watched our videos online and read our articles about hypothyroidism, and they connect with the symptoms of hypothyroidism. And they call and they want an appointment. Well, there are some people that have normal lab tests. I do a whole gamut of tests to check for hypothyroidism; everything looks great and they do not have hypothyroidism, but they are exhibiting symptoms of hypothyroidism. So that’s where we come to these words of “functional hypothyroidism.”
And what is it? Because all the hormones are interrelated with one another, what happens is when we’re under a lot of stress, we can be releasing a lot of stress hormones, cortisol, in particular, and if there’s too much cortisol that’s being released what happens is that it acts as a block to prevent thyroid molecules from getting out of the blood into the cell over here. So it acts like a block when there’s too much stress, too much cortisol stress hormone being released. And it will appear that all the labs look okay, but the person is exhibiting hypothyroidism.
So what we do is we work with the adrenal glands, we work with decreasing the stress and decreasing the cortisol. We have supplements to help support the adrenal glands to decrease the cortisol. And then the thyroid is able to be more active after we reduce the cortisol levels.
The other thing is there’s something call estrogen dominance. And we can see this in people in their thirties, forties, fifties, even in their sixties, where they have too much estrogen in relation to their progesterone. And what that does, again, too much estrogen acts as a block.
Here’s the thyroid molecule again. It’s trying to get out of the blood into the cell to become active and increase metabolism, increase energy. Okay? And what happens is you have a block from too much estrogen and you’re not seeing that conversion into the active form of the thyroid and feeling good with energy and everything.
So we look at reducing the estrogen dominance. We have great supplements for that. And we get that balanced. And when you get other hormones balanced it just balances out the thyroid, and a person may not need thyroid medication at all.
