Auto-immune Thyroid Disorder - Thyroid Problem Or Immune Problem?
Many Americans family health history is replete with autoimmune disorders such as autoimmune thyroid, diabetes, Parkinson's disease and rheumatoid arthritis. Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, also known as AutoimmuneThyroid, is the most typical cause of hypothyroidism in the United States, and individuals all around the globe suffer from this particular kind of thyroid disease. Simply defined, Hashimoto's Autoimmune Thyroid is the effect of the bodies own immune system becoming dysfunctional and beginning to attack and destroy your own gland. The immune system is destroying the gland, and that could be the reason why the thyroid is generating less hormone. The standard treatment of Autoimmune Thyroid Disease would be to give a synthetic or even natural thyroid hormone replacement, and then alter the dose until the TSH drops below a particular degree. At this point the condition is considered managed well. This sort of approach gives little thought to the patients symptoms, or how the individual is really responding. As soon as the laboratory numbers come back "regular", any remaining thyroid symptoms get attributed to something else. Consider depression that's due to decreased thyroid function. Depression is a possible symptom of hypothyroidism. So if the thyroid panel moves into the standard range, and also the depression remains, you end up at a shrink, or with a prescription for an antidepressant. Are you depressed or still suffering from the original thyroid symptoms? This may be the problem with ignoring the actual issue and giving replacement thyroid hormone. If we had a bucket full of water that was slowly leaking we could consider two strategies. We could attempt to pour water into the top as swiftly, or faster than the water is leaking out. Or the second choice, and obviously the better and wiser long term solution would be to fix the leak while we were keeping the pail full. When Hashimoto's is treated with just a thyroid replacement hormone, it's like putting water to the highest part of the bucket. The immune system is destroying the gland, and generating less thyroid hormone, so we're going to dump thyroid hormone back into the blood stream, but completely discount the leak, which is the immune attack in this instance. How much more thyroid cells will be destroyed if the immune system is not specifically addressed? Modulating and calming the immune system is definitely difficult. It takes the physician to step back and look at the big picture. Immune triggers must be identified and managed in orderly fashion. Then immune system should be 'dissected' and looked at from a practical view in terms of overall immune configuration and in terms of immune dominance. It's this approach that's needed to slow and repair the leak, instead of just dumping water in the best. Clicking Here