Yet thyroid disease is easily treated if people know they have it. The bow tie-shaped gland in the front of your neck, just below the Adam's apple, causes an amazing variety of health problems because it produces hormones that regulate metabolism and stimulate almost every type of tissue in the body. For unknown reasons, it can become overactive and speed up certain body functions, or become underactive and slow body functions. The heart beats fast, sometimes irregularly. Blood pressure rises.
Patients sweat easily, feel nervous, sleep poorly.
They lose weight without trying, become depressed and confused, develop vision problems or bulging eyes. Either condition sometimes enlarges the thyroid, so the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists recommends checking your neck. But you don't have to feel a bump in your neck to have a thyroid problem, stresses Dr. Terry Davies of New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine, editor of the journal Thyroid and a proponent of better TSH testing. Overt thyroid disease raises people's risk of heart disease, bone-thinning osteoporosis and infertility. The call for more testing comes amid concern that mild, even asymptomatic, thyroid failure could be risky.