There is a tendency to blame a feeling of constant tiredness on age. While that could be possible in some cases, in general it usually has an underlying health problem.
The feeling of losing your ‘mojo’ and not having the energy, mental belief and willingness to be able to get through the day is difficult to live with. Even more difficult is how to explain it to those around you, to your close family, work colleagues, even yourself. I can really understand this, as a few years ago it happened to me. I couldn’t work out why I had lost the energy to even walk up a hill, never mind carry a bag of shopping home.
When you have been an energetic person and suddenly you have no petrol in the tank (so to speak), it is difficult to try to explain to people why you are feeling like this. I finally found out what my problems were. Many people don’t. Or more importantly, they are misdiagnosed.
Personally, I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, which is a slow-running thyroid. This is common and usually difficult to predict. I was astounded. I have discussed thyroid issues and how they can be misunderstood and also mistreated in the past.
However, today I’d like to discuss the true underlying health problem which can, in some cases, contribute to an underactive thyroid. Despite any medication, the thyroid will never see an improvement unless this different health issue is addressed.
At the moment there is a huge controversy blowing up about how underactive thyroid problems are treated. To learn more about this, look at www.tpauk.com. The medical profession still relies on blood tests that don’t give them the full picture about a person’s thyroid, only the levels of thyroid hormone circulating in the blood. These tests also cannot tell how much thyroid hormone the body is able to use or how much is necessary to ensure good health.
A Surrey-based GP, Barry Durrant-Peatfield, spent 40 years successfully treating thousands of patients with thyroid problems by ignoring the standard blood tests and instead taking a patient’s full history to include such things as diet, lifestyle, allergies, micronutrient status and other environmental influences, as well as stress and trauma events in the patient’s life.
When you have been an energetic person and suddenly you have no petrol in the tank, it is difficult to explain why you’re feeling like this
To diagnose a thyroid problem, Peatfield relied on a simple, non-invasive test developed by thyroid expert Broda Barnes 30 years ago.
Barnes, who believed that many people have subtle thyroid disorders that don’t show up on any blood test, came up with a simple, accurate test for both hypo and hyperthyroid conditions that can be done at home. The test involves recording your basal body temperature (BBT), the body’s lowest temperature during its waking day. This is invariably when you wake up and before getting out of bed in the morning.
The test entails simply placing a thermometer under the armpit for 10 minutes first thing in the morning, for several days and recording the results. A normal reading ranges from 36.6˚C to 36.8˚C. Anything markedly below this could mean an underactive thyroid, anything markedly higher suggests an overactive thyroid. Of course, a practitioner will also consider, and exclude, other causes of a low BBT, as the armpit test is no substitute for a careful and complete history-taking procedure.
Peatfield feels that this test has been ignored or derided by many practitioners and authorities. The GP’s other innovation was to recognise that the thyroid works in tandem with the adrenal glands and to treat them both with natural glandular extract rather than the synthetic medication generally prescribed. Again, there is much more regarding this controversy at www.tpauk.com. My intention is to look at the adrenal gland issue and how it affects energy levels.
It is useful but not always possible to confirm adrenal weakness by blood tests. These tests measure cortisol output. However, cortisol levels are extraordinarily variable, depending on the time of day and amount of stress present when the actual test is taken. A test which is an invaluable measurement, although not always appreciated by practitioners, is the Salivary Adrenal Stress Index (ASI).
Over 24 hours, amounts of the two chief adrenal cortex hormones, cortisol and DHEA are measured in saliva samples. The levels reached throughout the day provide valuable information on the amount of stress the adrenals are under, as well as their response. There are other tests. However, I can speak from personal experience of the ASI test and how it successfully identified that my adrenal glands were practically not working.
Poor adrenal response is responsible for tiredness and many other symptoms that could be attributed to other conditions. In 1855 Thomas Addison described a disease where the patient became chronically ill with lethargy, loss of appetite, low blood pressure, low blood sugar, poor immune response to mild illnesses and a risk of sudden collapse or death when subjected to illness, injury or shock. He subsequently discovered during a post-mortem that the adrenal glands were taken over by tuberculosis bacilli and were no longer working. In the present day, the adrenals are more likely to be damaged by other processes. Next week I’ll explain how lifestyle changes can make a huge difference.
kathryn@maltanet.net