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Graves
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are incredibly important in helping control the body’s metabolism and helping govern such key functions as energy levels, sleep, the rate at which we utilize oxygen, and even emotional well-being, which means, in turn, that when the thyroid gland malfunctions, your ability to work, your ability to sleep, your ability to exercise, your ability to control your weight, your ability to control your moods and emotions, even in the worst cases, your ability to live, become impaired.
.....Thyroid gland malfunction (not to be confused, of course, with Janet Jacksons’ wardrobe malfunction) has two faces.
.....The most well-known is what’s called hypothyroidism, when the thyroid gland puts out too little thyroid hormone, leading to sluggish metabolism and all its consequences (slow pulse rate, constipation, feeling cold, having dry skin, and all sorts of other symptoms from the body simply “slowing down”), although many people (perhaps even most, especially post-menopausal women) with hypothyroidism have only what’s called subclinical hypothyroidism, meaning their condition presents with only subtle symptoms, so those people rarely discover that their thyroid function is low unless they get their thyroid levels tested for some reason.
.....The reason hypothyroidism mat |
.....When I started to tell my cynical-beyond-his-years son, he of the 14-year-long graduate school program (“Hey, what’s the rush, man? There are no jobs out there anyway,” which are the exact words that I, aka the parent who pays, never want to hear), that I was writing an article about Graves’ disease, this young know-it-all smirked and said, “A perfect name for a doctor, dude, cuz it gets rid of all the suspense about where it all ends right off the top, man.”
.....“Actually,” I patiently replied (well, not that patiently), “Graves is the name of a guy, and he didn’t kill his patients, you jerk. At least I don’t think he did. It’s just that he was the first guy . . . ”, at which point my son mumbled, “Whatever, dude, I’m outta here,” and he ran from the room, so as usual, my son missed the rest of my sparkling details about this fascinating condition, but, hey, don’t you readers make the same mistake as my son, but rather sit for a couple of minutes because Graves’ disease is really a fascinating health problem......
.....Graves’ disease is what’s known as an autoimmune disorder that results in an over-active thyroid gland, a definition that immediately brings up some obvious and pressing questions such as what is the thyroid gland, what happens when that gland becomes |
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overactive, and especially, I think, what is an auto-immune disorder?
.....So, to start, the thyroid gland is that little organ that sits in the front part of your neck (just below the
larynx or voice box) and that secretes thyroid hormones. Note that the thyroid secretes “hormones” (in the plural) and not a hormone (in the singular), a point that I really want to emphasize because most people (and many doctors) still function under the assumption that the thyroid secretes only one hormone, which is called T4.
In fact, equally important to T4, the thyroid also secretes T3, and it’s that balance of T4 and T3 that
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