Friday, February 22, 2008

Headaches, thyroid, and mercury

My headaches went to an all-time low yesterday afternoon, so this morning I started doing a little more research in the area of headache/migraine association with thyroid conditions. I found quite a few websites, this one being one of them:
http://headaches.about.com/od/comorbidconditions/a/thyroid_comorb.htm

I've come to the conclusion that my headaches are actually migraines, sitting just behind my eyes and acting like a sinus headache. I read an article also today that mentioned this occurrence as being a common problem for thyroid dysfunction.

I just want to mention again that mercury is involved in all of this.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Mistakes doctors make when addressing the thyroid...

I decided to do a little more reading on thyroids, since it seems my meds aren't doing what they're supposed to. I came across these articles, which were very helpful.
http://thyroid.about.com/cs/doctors/a/10mistakes.htm
http://thyroid.about.com/od/thyroiddrugstreatments/Thyroid_Drugs_Various_Treatments_for_Thyroid_Conditions.htm

This morning I started tweaking when I take some of my nutritional things, including anything that has calcium in it, which actually was still in a lot of things I take even though I changed taking the actual calcium to at night. I also hadn't realized that iron can make a difference in thyroid absorption, so I will need to take a look at that as well.

I'm actually feeling pretty cruddy today. I've been feeling really off-balanced and dizzy over the last couple of days, and the headaches and fatigue have been something else. I'm wishing the dentist's office would call and say that they had an opening sooner than mid-March for me to get in for two of my crowns. I'm getting really anxious to get these last five crowns taken care of. It seems like waiting any longer could be a huge detriment to whether or not I can get healed, considering what I've read about with the adrenals being affected. The sooner the detoxing can begin the better chance of my adrenals and thyroid becoming normal again. I also am very frustrated with feeling so terrible for so long. It would be nice to know that the amalgam is gone and I can start having some control over the healing process. Right now I feel it's like a maintenance program...keep me feeling bad enough to bring me down, but not bad enough to cause problems that aren't reversible (i.e. autoimmune disease, cancer, etc.).

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Mercury again...

Here's another website I found on mercury and its effects on the body.
http://www.westonaprice.org/envtoxins/troubledwaters.html

This picture says it all.

Monday, February 18, 2008

An interesting website...

I just wanted to slip these websites in here today: http://www.coconutdiet.com/thyroid_health.htm
http://www.drmarinajohnson.com/Articles/Hypothyroidism/tabid/181/Default.aspx

On the one about coconut oil, I'm not sure I agree with it - but the rest of it seems to make tons of sense, and I thought it might be helpful to "my" readers who have thyroid issues.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Stable...

I have been on Armour thyroid now for a week. The first three days I had taken a portion of my calcium with the med every morning without realizing that calcium blocks it from the thyroid gland, so I changed it to taking all of my calcium at night. This hasn't made a huge difference yet in my energy level, but I am starting to feel a little more stable emotional-wise...I didn't realize that I was feeling as emotional as I was. I knew that I'd felt more anxious over the last 6-8 months, but I was attributing it to the infected tooth that I had pulled in October and figured it would eventually go away. What didn't make sense to me was why I was still feeling anxious recently when I didn't see any need to be. This makes sense now that the thyroid could be causing it, not that I won't get anxious again, I just feel "different", as if the anxiety is not going to happen as often if at all. I was never an anxious person before this last summer, so to have these feelings come on was rather frustrating and sometimes very frightening. I thought I was losing my mind.

I am finding yet that I still have headaches and muscle weakness and achiness in my arms and legs. The most frustrating of all though, is that I'm still feeling off-balance almost constantly and have frequent dizzy spells. Dr. S didn't want me taking the vitamin D just yet (why I'm not sure), but I did some linking research on vitamin D and some of these symptoms and found a little correlation. I also know that these symptoms could be still part of the big picture of mercury toxicity causing my body not to use vitamins and minerals properly, and I do know that I am still anemic and have a zinc deficiency to go along with the vitamin D deficiency. The combination of all of these could be attributing to the problems, but until I can get the rest of the amalgam out and detoxify I probably won't be able to fix them. I just wish things would move along a little faster in the dental revision department. If it weren't for the infected tooth fiasco, I'd probably be done by now and on my way to recovery. What can you do though, when the timing isn't in our hands? I must sit back and wait and be patient.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Some Results...

Yesterday I went and got my test results from the nurse practitioner I saw about a week and a half ago. The results of the thyroid test did not show my thyroid as bad as we believed it to be, but bad enough to warrant a low dose of thyroid replacement. The test results also showed that I was extremely deficient in vitamin D, so I was put on a high dose of that as well and will be rechecked in 3 months.

I do have a couple of theories about this - mind you they are just theories, but with all of the reading I've done I really believe it's plausible.

Theory #1: Mercury toxicity in my body is causing a false-positive reading for my thyroid levels. What I mean is, the mercury that's running around my body wreaking havoc has done damage to my thyroid, but not enough to cause the blood not to be carrying around enough of the hormone for it to think it's well. It's like I explained in a post several months ago about the battery and the toy: this particular toy (the thyroid gland) needs a battery (thyroid hormone) to work. The battery is not able to be placed properly in the toy however, because the "fake" battery mercury has slipped into its place, blocking it. Now the toy knows there's something there, but this "dead" battery won't do its job. My theory is that the T4 and T3 and TSH tests I had done were showing inaccuracies because the mercury is in the way, pretending to be a hormone. My symptoms highly indicate my thyroid has stopped working properly, but the tests show that there are only minimal problems. What will be interesting to see is how much the thyroid meds help now and what it will be like after I have the rest of my amalgam removed and start detoxing.

Theory #2: has to do with the adrenals. The more and more I read up on the adrenals and symptoms of adrenal fatigue, the more I'm positive that the thyroid and the adrenals function together and have both been stressed by the mercury running around my body. I talked briefly with my doctor about my adrenals at my last visit with him, and Dr. S said that my adrenals are malfunctioning, he's just not sure what went first - the adrenals or the thyroid. If you try to heal one without healing the other, you won't get very far. I didn't realize it until I looked up a lot of what Dr. S has me taking, but we are addressing the adrenals, so I'm thankful for that.

Theory #3: Vitamin D. Obviously I knew I was going to be very low, just didn't know how low. I don't eat dairy to get the fortified Vitamin D (lactose intolerance), and I don't spend a lot of time outside (extremely cold temps due to winter, and living in the Northern Hemisphere). Vitamin D is made by the sun on your skin, and not really anywhere else. No food can give you enough to supply what your body needs, and it can't make it by itself. My theory here is that due to my inability to be outside in the sun due to where I live is huge. Even in the summer months I don't spend a lot of time outside, so I may have always been deficient and didn't know it. I'm not sure I can blame mercury on this at all, other than to say if I didn't have all these other health problems going on, I'd probably spend a lot more time outdoors with my kids (who I might add are probably deficient in Vitamin D as well!). The nurse yesterday said a doctor once told her that people who live in the Northern hemisphere could run around
in the sun naked for 3-5 hours every day for the rest of their lives and still not get enough vitamin D. Can anyone say a month long Caribbean cruise?