This surprised me as I really wasn’t aware of it. I’m in the middle of writing the new Hormone Plan (or whatever it turns out to be – 10,000 words so far!) and I keep being reminded of really important stuff, noting it down diligently in my practice notes – which are becoming VERY LARGE!
Did you know that being hypothyroid, specifically primary hypothyroid, high TSH, can be behind ANY hormone problem you could name? I know! Who knew? Well, I hadn’t clocked it fully, that’s for sure. In fertility, of course, because that’s pretty well known, but not really otherwise, I confess.
You just are not going to get hormones balanced for menstrual, menopausal, pubertal, andropausal (male menopause) or fertility if your TSH is high. Here’s a quote from Dr Kharrazian:
Simply put: every single hormone imbalance that a
male or female can have can be caused by hypothyroidism, or to say it differently:
you have to always rule out hypothyroidism like high TSH, the actual full-blown
real hypothyroidism anytime you see a male or female at any age with
any kind of endocrine disorder. Thyroid hormones directly impact the entire
endocrine system…
… and they impact the metabolic rate of testes and ovaries. So,
any states of hypothyroidism is going to cause everything to fail.
Ooh, blimey! So, once the thyroid output is low, it drags every other hormone production down with it. Happily, it’s pretty easy to test to rule it in or out, and that’s the first thing I will be doing from now on with any suspected hormone issue. You can ask your GP or see the thyroid tests here.
Dr K gave us a load of case studies too to illustrate the problem – there are several ways low thyroid hormones can affect us, these are just a couple:
In men: if they are actually hypothyroid and their T4, T3 levels are
Kharrazian Institute
down, they’re not going to be able to get their lytic cells [in the testes] to respond to LH. They’re gonna have immediate breakdown of the testicular barrier, you need thyroid hormones to maintain that barrier. They’re gonna have immediate impaired metabolism and fat mass development and… their
whole testosterone production is down.
In women: when you look at any
type of dysmenorrhea (painful periods), any kind of abnormal menstrual cycles, infertility, miscarriages, you’ve got to look at hypothyroidism. Thyroid hormones are necessary for FSH release. They’re necessary for the receptors on the ovarian tissue to respond to FSH, they’re critical for LH releases. So, if a female has hypothyroidism, all types of female menstrual irregularities are possible.
1) TSH is not a thyroid hormone but a pituitary marker and as such should not be used to diagnose thyroid function at all beyond a possible first indication of a thyroid trouble IF it registers high. This has been repetedly emphasised by the late dr John Midgley who actually developed the whole TSH testing.
2) Although the high value of TSH can inidcate hormonal imbalances it also fluctuates quite a lot during the day and when the test is done matters quite a lot.
3) For a lot of patients a lot of symptoms can appear years before there is any elevation of TSH, especially in autoimmune Hashimoto’s thyroditis and they can be debilitating well before TSH actually goes over the range which in itself is inflated. Optimal TSH is usually around 0.5-2 with most healthy people feeling best around 1.
4) The most important thyroid hormone which should be routinely tested (but isn’t) and which has a lot more bearing on all hormonal function is FT3 and this is the hormone which actually does the job in the body. If you want to look at hormonal balance, you really need the FULL thyroid panel with FT3 and antibodies. High TSH often comes much too late into the hormal imbalances game to stop the disregulation happening or progressing.
Thanks Ada. Helpful and thank you for commenting for us. I absolutely agree – if I were actually looking for thyroid problems – see my Thyroid Factsheet here – TSH doesn’t really help us does it?! https://purehealthclinic.co.uk/health-a-z/thyroid-problems/. However, here, I am looking specifically to see if the TSH is rising as a clue to pituitary function, in part, to see if the body generally is slowing down function as high serum TSH will then go on, down various pathways, to affect pretty much every other hormone, so it’s a sort of early warning system or a check for low hormone output specifically. Interested in what time of day you think it should be done though??