When you think about someone with Thyroid Disease, do you think of them being overweight from an underactive thyroid? ‘Skinny’ from an overactive thyroid? Middle-aged and female?
Maybe you think they look and behave ‘normal’, because the disease isn’t one that’s well-recognised. Therefore it can’t be difficult to live with.
January is Thyroid Awareness Month, the aim being to encourage more people to become aware of the symptoms and question their doctor if they believe there’s a chance they have it.
It’s a lot more common than you think, but plenty of people don’t realise they have it. Instead, doctors misdiagnose and prescribe medicines to treat the many symptoms, not the actual cause – a dysfunctioning (or not at all functioning) thyroid!
Muscle aches and pains? Fibromyalgia. Tired a lot and feeling down? Depression. Sudden weight gain? Eat less and exercise more. Tight, dry skin? Eczema.
And even after being diagnosed, doctors measure your progress on hypothyroidism medications by an out-dated TSH ‘test’, refusing to consider that the medication seen as a “one size fits all” helps a reported 7% of its users with total relief. Just 7%. And going by TSH alone isn’t accurate anyway.
With it being the awareness month of thyroid conditions, I wanted to show that anyone can have an overactive, underactive or no thyroid at all, no matter what shape, size, colour and age they are. I wanted to give a voice to the many, many people who live with it worldwide, especially those where their doctors don’t give a care about their on-going symptoms and treating them with what medicine works for them.
#IAmTheFaceOfThyroidDisease
You can order your own tests own to check thyroid function. Find a link for those in the UK here and a worldwide link here.
You can click on the hyperlinks in the above post to learn more and see references to information given.
Do you have a thyroid condition? Let me know in the comments section below.
See also:
The book Be Your Own Thyroid Advocate: When You’re Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired, which discusses how I went from a poor quality of life with Hashimoto’s and Hypothyroidism, to thriving and no longer having my thyroid condition get in the way of my day to day.
No Comments