Hashimoto's and the Full Thyroid Panel: Why TSH Alone Misses It

From the video captions, as spoken.

Now, Midlife is also the season when Autoimmune reveals itself for a lot of Women. It's when Hashimoto's appears or flares. It's when thyroid antibodies start climbing, right?

So we already covered about estrogen, right? Which in many tissues helps hold inflammation in check. And estrogen's relationship with the immune system runs both ways, which is part of why Women carry so much more Autoimmunity than men do in the first place. 80% of all Autoimmune conditions affect Women, okay? 80% and Midlife is often when it finally shows up. But oftentimes it's misdiagnosed. It's called chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, ME, stress, anxiety, depression, Perimenopause, aging, being a busy Woman.

All right. So many Women are walking around with misdiagnosed and undiagnosed Autoimmune conditions. So why does it matter to name an Autoimmune condition? Because you can do something about it. Now this is also what your endocrinologist is probably not going to tell you. That this is also where your full thyroid panel becomes urgent, getting a full thyroid panel. You see thyroid antibodies can be elevated for years, sometimes a decade or more before your TSH ever moves out of range, which means a Woman can have active Autoimmune thyroid disease with every symptom that we've mentioned, but a perfectly normal TSH.

So if your doctor only orders TSH, which is what usually happens, she gets told that she's fine. Now, she's not fine. And she's early. And early detection is when most of this is workable. Now, why does the thyroid matter this much? You see the thyroid sits like a butterfly right here in your neck. It's beautiful.

Your thyroid sets the pace for every system in your whole body. It's bananas, okay? It's responsible for so much. It's responsible for your metabolism, your body temperature, your energy, your hair, your mood, your heart rate. When thyroid is underperforming, you're going to feel cold when others feel comfortable. Your hair is going to start to get thin and brittle. You're going to gain weight that won't respond and you're going to feel tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix.

You're gonna feel flat and low for no reason that you can name. In my own conversations with functional medicine doctors, several have estimated that somewhere between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3 Midlife Women have a thyroid that is not functioning properly. Okay? I haven't seen one single peer-reviewed number that pins that number exactly but every practitioner I know who runs full thyroid panels tells me some version of the same thing. It is being missed constantly for one reason because your doctor is only ordering TSH.

TSH is a pituitary signal. It is a message from your brain to your thyroid gland. It is not a measurement of your thyroid function, and it's not a measurement of what's reaching your cells. So a full thyroid panel is 6 markers. There's 6 parts to it. Yes, TSH.

Free T3. Free T4. Reverse T3. TPO antibodies and thyroglobulin antibodies, TGAB. Now, Free T4 is your storage hormone. Free T3 is the active hormone, the one that does the work in your cells. Some Women convert T4 to T3 poorly and your TSH will never tell you that.

Now, reverse T3 tells you whether your body is putting the brakes on, which frequently happens under chronic stress, chronic illness, or under eating. The 2 antibodies tell you whether your immune system is attacking the gland itself, which can be true for years before anything else shows up. So when you ask for a thyroid panel, ask for all 6 by name. If you ask for a thyroid test, you'll just get TSH and you'll be told you're fine. This can be drawn any time of the month.