Perhaps you nod off every now and then. Your skin is dry, your hair lifeless and thinning. You have no appetite but still gain weight. Your reactions are slow and your memory dull. All of these symptoms suggest an underactive thyroid gland, which can be treated to bring you back up to speed.
Early symptoms are so subtle that many cases are missed for years.
Treatment, which is usually quite simple, sometimes leads to miraculous improvement. Your thyroid gland regulates a number of body processes. Thyroid hormones in the blood circulate to all your cells and help maintain the rate at which your body uses calories and how your body adjusts your heart rate, repairs muscles, and regulates temperature and many other functions. The thyroid has to release just the right amount of hormones to keep all these things in balance. When production of thyroid hormone gets too low, the body seems to gear down to slow speed.