Why is stress so debilitating for hypothyroid people?

[Tikamu]

I have just started a new job, only 3 days per week, & am totally exhausted the rest of the week. Can someone explain how stress affects the thyroid gland please?

[kezza999]

When you are under a lot of stress your body produces cortisol. High levels of cortisol interfere with the conversion of t4 to t3,resulting in increased hypothyroid symptoms.

[tegz]

Stress firstly affects the Adrenal glands which flag 'Fight or Flight' and get depleted in function in long term stress.

The Thyroid is the powerhouse of cells in the body and brain [firstly] in order to support your bodys' reactions.

If the Thyroid becomes damaged in autoimmune illness, or less functional for any reason, then the body can't respond well -so you eventually feel 'flaked out' though still stressed if in original situation.Then some sleep!

Depression is an easy get out for GPs to quote- but it's not the same thing and sufferers know it.

GPs are depressing far too often- with their lack of knowledge and ongoing care about 'Roidies!.

Thanks to those GPs who do 'get it', though -and at least listen and refer onwards to an Endo for help.

[marmaris in reply to tegz]

Hi tegz I can relate to this, do you mind me asking what Roidies is please?

[Stourie in reply to marmaris]

People with thyroid problems

[T3sortedme]

How long have you been in the new job?

[Tikamu in reply to T3sortedme]

Only 2 weeks!

[T3sortedme in reply to T3sortedme]

It will take quite a while to adjust. At least you are only trying 3 days, not 5. I do 4 mornings a week but low stress. (I played with young children yesterday for 30-40 mins, playing tig and chasing them, being climbed over etc. Today I am wiped out completely. I just did too much in my enthusiasm as I felt so good. I won't change anything; just rest and wait while my body chemistry adjusts back). You will find out with time how much you can cope with as you settle in the job. You may need to shorten the working day for a while. I would wait a month before considering increasing the dose but it might need that if you are using up extra energy every day. It's very difficult to cope with and frustrating! It's taken 3 years to get where I am now!

[vajra]

There's been quite a few posts about recently T on various aspects of the stress situation, high cortisol and the like - and how it interacts with thyroid. A quick search should throw these up.

Part of the problem can be that in addition to the above it seems that if we've previously been exposed to high levels of stress long term that we can develop trained (or 'learned) and exaggerated stress responses. So that very moderate subsequent pressures can trigger over the top physical and mental stress responses.

The term sometimes used for this is 're-programming of the HPA axis'. The latter is the hypothalmus/brain/pituitary/adrenal axis - the main elements in the system that controls adrenal output in response to perceived stress.

Another big variable seems to be that depending on heredity and/or foetal and early life conditions we can end up with more or less robust coping mechanisms.

High levels of maternal stress during pregnancy for example seem to trigger premature birth. This situation kicks the development of the endocrine system of the foetus overdrive to maximise the possibility of survival - and actually triggers the premature birth. The unfortunate aspect of this scenario is that the child is likely left with lifetime developmental shortcomings in the various endocrine and stress coping systems the development of which was accelerated.

Which in turn worsens the response to whatever stress the child is exposed to when growing up - which with modern life being what it is probably amounts to a continuation of the highly stressful environment that caused the mother's problem in the first place. Problematical relationships, financial problems, lifestyle issues and the like may not only continue to adulthood - but the behaviour patterns leading to these may well also be passed on to the child.

These phenomena are well recognised, and have been verified by research (i posted links to papers on this and some broader aspects of stress and cortisol in recent months), but seem to receive little or no recognition by general medicine or society.

The result is that no matter what our coping ability we get lobbed into work and social situations on a one size fits all basis - and are expected to perform.

It's hard not to think that the common refusal to recognise this sort of disability, and the associated catch all medical diagnosis of depression (which quite often gets used in a manner that suggests malingering and/or weakness - much like the catch all of 'nerves' from years gone by) owes more to a societal culture that has long and often tended to look down on and seek to eliminate what it perceives as 'weakness' than to any practical view. That's a society that still often regards the kick ass 'buck up, pull yourself together and get you s***t together mate' response as the most appropriate....

It's sad for example how often family, friends and marital partners (even if its not voiced) de-facto take this view - how often this sort of illness leads to relationship problems. My wife has been great, but e.g. i've had a lifetime of great difficulty with a family and parents that were so consumed by their ambitions (for me) that even after many years of serious illness they still couldn't recognise the reality of my situation. ..

Yet the basic reality for those of us experiencing problems of this sort is that there is absolutely no option but to back off as necessary to take the pressure off ourselves as required to enable recovery and re-programming of our stress responses. It's not like it's something that's just being imagined - it has a very real physical basis...

This can be extremely hard to achieve given not just finanical pressures and the above, but also our inability to accept that we can't have it all. Not to mention the reality that our mind state can of itself be more than enough to generate the stress that keeps us ill - it's just as important to keep our minds in good shape through meditation and the like as it is to take physical exercise and to eat well....

ian

[Tikamu in reply to vajra]

Thank you Ian. Sadly, I can relate to pretty much all of the above. I am trying to treat myself with compassion, but as a bit of a perfectionist my default mode tends to be more along the beating myself up mode!

[tegz]

Sad that you parents misconstrued your life so, Ian. People close can often make our situation worse and because we are fighters we also HATE to say 'NO!'

Sometimes we have too, though.The body is trying to tell us something ,after all.

Sharing on here is great as it is low level in demands, helps others and removes the' lone trail' feeling

I've found it has taken years of rest and low stress to get my body even turning in the right direction

[vajra]

Ta guys. I just wish i knew years ago what i know now - it'd have helped so much. Gaining a reality based and 'holistic' overview is so important. When we see this stuff in context we're far less likely to beat up on ourselves.

Buddhist teaching deals with it so well - there's a US based Tibetan Buddhist nun named Pema Chodron who has a truly useful and very practically applicable series of books on the whole business of compassion for ourselves out there. amazon.co.uk/Pema-Chodron/e... She's a US lady, and went through some very difficult times before becoming a nun.

It's so important to get enough altitude on this stuff. The key is not just getting to the point where we can see not only our own situation in perspective, and understand the (often well intentioned but unwise) motivations of others - but also get to where we can let go and become as though (at one level) none of it ever happened.

The parents have both been dead for some years Tegz, and the rest of the family are disenaged enough that issues don't much arise. It's all well understood and hopefully i've managed to drop the baggage off my own back - very important not to turn our history into a stick to beat ourselves with. It never happened....

I'm a bit of a perfectionist myself Tikamu. It's potentially an aspect of our own make up, but viewed another way is perhaps a conditioned/habitual response to an upbringing where error of any sort brought immediate and unpleasant consequences too....

ian