Do You Have Brain Fog?  It might be from Low Thyroid, or Low Testosterone!
Channel: BioBalance Healthcast
Date: 2021-12-20

See all the Healthcasts at https://www.biobalancehealth.com/healthcast-blog/
One of the questions I ask my patients about when they first come in for Estradiol and Testosterone pellet replacement is whether they have trouble remembering names of things and places, or if they have difficulty remembering how to get somewhere or if they are just having difficulty thinking through problems that they haven’t had in the past.

The reason I ask this to my new patients is primarily to find out if they have symptoms of low testosterone and low estrogen (in women). It is widely known that replacing testosterone in both sexes and replacing T and estradiol in women can improve recall and speed of mental tasks.  If taken in the first 10 years of loss of these two hormones Taking Testosterone plus or minus Estradiol delay the onset of dementia, especially Alzheimer’s disease.

A new study in Clinical Endocrine News 6/2021 shows that a lack of enough thyroid hormone
Can also cause brain fog.  I always treat low thyroid in my patients as well to make sure they become completely hormonally replaced, to improve their symptoms and prevent future disease.

Just a little information about the thyroid gland.  The thyroid gland is located in the neck right above the collar bone at the base of the neck. It extends a few inches laterally , and is shaped like a butterfly.  When the gland is having difficulty making enough thyroid hormone it enlarges and looks like a thickening of the lower neck or like the neck is getting “fat”.  This is called a “goiter”. 

The hormones made by the thyroid gland are distributed to every cell in the body and are the primary determinant of how many calories you can burn.  Thyroid hormone stimulates the production of heat in the body and that indicates the burning of calories.  The thyroid hormones, T3 and T4, not only make burning calories and making heat possible, but they also make hair and nails grow, and assist in cell turnover (exchanging new cells for old). 

Patients with low thyroid may or may not have a goiter, but generally they are very fatigued, and their hair breaks off and falls out, their skin is extremely dry and they feel cold all the time.
The list of all of the symptoms that can occur from low thyroid are below.

The following are symptoms of hypothyroidism:
• Fatigue, loss of energy, lethargy
• Weight gain
• Decreased appetite
• Cold intolerance
• Dry skin
• Hair loss
• Sleepiness
• Muscle pain, joint pain, weakness in the extremities
• Depression
• Emotional lability, mental impairment
• Forgetfulness, impaired memory, inability to concentrate
• Constipation
• Menstrual disturbances, impaired fertility
• Decreased perspiration
• Paresthesias = nerve entrapment syndromes
• Blurred vision
• Decreased hearing
• Fullness in the throat, hoarseness
• Generalized swelling and bloating

The treatment for hypothyroidism is relatively easy…patients are given an oral thyroid medicine.  The reason many people are walking around with hypothyroidism is partially the fault of the government and the medical community.  40 years ago, the primary necessary component to make thyroid hormone is Iodine, and we used to supplement our foods like bread with iodine.  This kept many Americans who don’t live near the coast (where there is plenty of iodine in the soil and air) supplied with iodine and prevented thyroid disease.  Ever since the government stopped requiring foods to have added iodine, the number of patients with hypothyroidism has rapidly grown and they either don’t get treated because the lab numbers are adjusted to cause fewer people get a diagnosis of hypothyroidism even when they need it, or doctors don’t follow the method of determining dose of Synthroid. Doctors are trained to give the very lowest dose of thyroid possible and not to check the real thyroid hormones (T3 and T4) but to check the TSH which doesn’t tell a doctor the real thyroid hormone level and doesn’t parallel the symptoms a patient is experiencing.