Skip to main content

mental health mondays :: i'm with the gland [part 2]

your thyroid in action
thyroid is the new heart! thyroid is the endocrine system's "tangerine tango"! [hopefully not a literal statement, for your sake.] what i mean is that thyroid is the new "it" thing, the possible source of all your problems and ailments, head to toe [including how much of a distance there is between your head and your toes]. whatever is wrong with you, chances are that your doctor will want to do some blood tests to determine if your thyroid is to blame. because what medical science has discovered is that your thyroid gland hates you and wants you to suffer.

this really should have been obvious for much longer, just on an intuitive level. a key clue is the placement of the thyroid gland: it's often whimsically described as being a butterfly shaped structure at the base of the throat, surrounded by its very own cartilage, which is what gives you the protuberance known as the "adam's apple" [or, in women, that bump in the centre of your neck]. what does that mean, exactly? that the little bastard is wrapped around your windpipe, ready to choke you out at the least provocation.

and it really doesn't take much to provoke your thyroid gland.

more and more, doctors are discovering that these things are about as stable as an armed grenade in the hands of three year old on a sugar rush. everything upsets this temperamental little butterfly. even treating its problems can be tricky, because the thyroid is incredibly finicky about needing to process substances in perfectly equal dosages. and when madame butterfly isn't happy, she takes it out on you in just about every conceivable place, including your brain.

butterfly wants attention
while the exact mechanism by which thyroid affects mood seems to be a bit of a mystery ["science: it's a guess, but it's an educated guess"], but what we do know is that the thyroid is largely responsible for producing and regulating certain hormones and that hormones are key to understanding shifts in mood. unlike the divisive debate over adrenal fatigue, the link between moods, mental health and the thyroid gland is pretty well established. people with an overactive thyroid are often anxious, excessively moody/ excitable and easily distracted. people with an underactive thyroid are conversely depressed, lethargic and sometimes paranoid. doctors and patients are used to looking for the physical symptoms of thyroid disorders, but madame butterfly, diva that she is, is a fine actress and can do a remarkable impression of a mental disorder with few other symptoms.

unfortunately, in the absence of other clear symptoms, it's pretty tempting for medical professionals to go with the obvious diagnosis. generally, if you see smoke, you should think fire and not elephant stampede, but in some cases, you need to think butterflies. murderous little butterflies who live in your throat.   

interestingly, there are studies indicating that people who don't even have a clinical thyroid problem may benefit from taking low dosages of thyroid medications in conjunction with antidepressants. it's even been suggested that those medications may serve to some extent as a catalyst for drugs like antidepressants, making them work better. of course, the studies aren't exactly definitive on that point, or else every patient who got an antidepressant would go home with a scrip for thyroid meds as well. but there is certainly enough in the studies that have been done to keep interest in the subject piqued. this may be of particular concern to patients who are prescribed lithium over the long term, since lithium does tend to increase your chances of developing hypothyroidism the longer you keep taking it.

so your thyroid is probably trying to kill you. what can you do about it?

as i mentioned above, a lot of doctors are probably going to want to see your blood tests in order to rule out things like thyroid problems if you have depression in conjunction with some other non-specific symptoms. but even if depression is the only symptom, you'd do well to ask your doctor to give you a round of blood tests. specifically, you'll want to make sure that the test will measure the presence of both major thyroid hormones- t3 and t4- since both are crucial indicators of how pleased madame butterfly is with the state of her environs.

once you have those results, you should feel free to ask your doctor questions about what the results mean. medicine quite often involves applying precision to a highly imprecise system and measuring thyroid function is a great example. determining when you have a "thyroid condition" as opposed to a normal, slightly homicidal thyroid, is pretty arbitrary and it certainly doesn't mean that your thyroid issues start only at the point where they become clinical. in fact, you may be able to gently persuade butterfly not to murder you by addressing her displeasure early on.

the key factor to a happy butterfly is iodine. most of us in the western world get plenty of iodine in our diets [particularly since we added it to salt], but if your blood tests show that your thyroid is sluggish- without being clinically deficient- it's worth talking to your doctor about whether or not a boost would help you. likewise, if you have too much iodine in your system, you might want to look at ways to cut back a little. the first step is just to check and see exactly how psychotic your butterfly has gotten while you weren't paying attention.

of course, there's no guarantee that your thyroid is actually the root of your problems. in fact, some research has pointed to the fact that stress, depression and anxiety disorders can cause thyroid problems as well as the other way around. but, of course, whatever has madame butterfly flapping her wings, you'll want to get her settled sooner rather than later.

but here's the real kicker... even if the problem is your thyroid, your problem might not be your thyroid? you see, as much as the butterfly might like to play the diva and pretend that she's the star, she is, in fact, controlled by a shadowy figure, the endocrine puppet master... one gland to rule them all...


as long as you're here, why not read more?


no, i am not dead, nor have i been lying incapacitated in a ditch somewhere. i've mostly been preparing for our imminent, epic move, which is actually not so terribly epic, because we found a place quite close to where we are now. in addition, i've been the beneficiary of an inordinately large amount of paying work, which does, sadly, take precedence over blogging, even though you know i'd always rather be with you.

indeed, with moving expenses and medical expenses looming on the horizon, more than can be accounted for even with the deepest cuts in the lipstick budget, dom and i recently did something that we've not done before: we asked for help. last week, we launched a fundraising campaign on go fund me. it can be difficult to admit that you need a helping hand, but what's been overwhelming for both of us is how quick to respond so many people we know have been once we asked. it's also shocking to see how quickly things added up.

most of all, though, the ex…


just a short time ago, i waxed prosaic about trump supporters who felt betrayed by their candidate pursuing in office the exact things that he said he would. short version: i have no sympathy.

today is a bit different. in the wake of america's bombing of a syrian air strip, in response to a chemical weapons attack by the syrian government, my facebook and twitter feeds were peppered with plaintive shades of "we believed you". these are the people who heard trump say that he wanted the united states to step back and focus on defending its own. indeed, trump did say such things, over and over; america cannot be the policeman of the world. even arch-liberal cynics like me had to admit that this was a refreshing argument to hear from someone outside the paul family, and, could easily have been turned into trump's greatest argument against hillary clinton. [he chose to go another way, which also worked.]

trump also said, repeatedly, that america needed to invest heavily …

long division

after the united states election last year, there were the usual calls for the country to unite behind the new president. that never happens anymore, because, since george w. bush scored a victory in 2004, having launched the country into a war in iraq for no reason, the people on the losing side of a presidential election have been pretty bloody angry about it. democrats hated bush 43. republicans really hated obama. democrats really hate trump.

it didn't help that trump didn't make the typical conciliatory gestures like including a couple of members of the opposite party in his cabinet, or encouraging his party to proceed slowly with contentious legislation. barack obama arguably wasted at least two and as many as six years of his tenure as president trying to play peacemaker before he felt sufficiently safe to just say "screw you guys" and start governing around the ridiculous congress he was forced to deal with. not-giving-a-shit obama was the best president in …