Quitting smoking and thyroid

[Ari3]

Hi there again I have a question I have stopped smoking and have broken in spots badly five weeks now …I just wanted to ask you will it help my thyroid if I have high tpo and hypothyroidism.What are benefits by quitting will my heal improve ?

[SlowDragon Administrator]

Quit smoking is obviously good for your overall health

It can affect thyroid. Important to test thyroid levels more frequently for 2 years after quitting

verywellhealth.com/cigarett...

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...

These results suggest that smokers attempting to quit should be monitored closely for changes in thyroid function.

[Ari3 in reply to SlowDragon]

So it means it can make my antibodies higher if I stop smoking is that correct and that I might need to increase my medication ?

[MissGrace]

Well done for quitting - as an ex-smoker, I know how hard it can be. Give it time and you will feel better in every way - and somewhat richer. 👍

[Ari3 in reply to MissGrace]

Did u notice improvement in thyroid or tpo ? Thank you ever so much it’s a big step after 20 years

[MissGrace in reply to Ari3]

I’d love to say yes - but my thyroid didn’t self-destruct until after I quit. I’m sure smoking wouldn’t have helped though. 🤸🏿‍♀️🥛

[TSH110]

Smoking can suppress thyroid disease as I understand it so it may not be great for that but in every other way it is a very good thing to do for your overall health. I was a 60 a day smoker 😱 I felt loads better immediately but one thing I did notice was how much I ached all over. I read that nicotine has quite decent analgesic qualities. I’d never go back to it. Oddly for years after I’d dream I was boasting to others about stopping but would sneak off and have a crafty fag like a total fraud! In reality I have never touched smoking since. It must have been a subconscious warning to not go back to it. It’s nice not stinking like an ash tray 😉 I just wonder sometimes how you can put poison into your body every day for years and not expect it to be injurious to health, even more amazing is that ones body puts up with it for so long before really suffering and if you stop in time it puts it all right again - incredible!

[Ari3 in reply to TSH110]

Thanks for the comment .Iam so proud of you and well done for this !!!!just wanted to ask you as you mentioned it can suppress thyroid disease what does it mean ? Did you feel anything in that sense yourself ? Any improvements in labs or thyroid itself ?

[TSH110]

I think I probably had started with my atropic autoimmune thyroiditis before I stopped smoking but intially I was quite hyper looking back but thought it was normal. I didn’t get a diagnosis for 22 years after quitting the ciggies, so it’s hard to say if it was keeping things in check or not. The decline was so gradual almost imperceptible. I had long periods of feeling like I was as high as a kite, really elated and easily moved to tears by things like beautiful scenery. I didn’t know if that is something others get if they are a bit hyper but it was strange looking back. I certainly don’t feel like that now taking NDT. It could have been other hormones I suppose.I did wonder if I had manic depression when I was younger as I did have all that crazy energy then I’d get really depressed. They were strong mood swings related to the menstrual cycle. That has all stopped now. The depression persisted on Levothyroxine but stopped almost immediately on taking NDT. How smoking or not smoking affected it all is hard to determine. I have a close relative who I think has all the signs of the same problem but they smoke and I I think it could be keeping it at bay. They have found nodules on the thyroid and I thought the TSH reading they got was too high to be normal it was just over 3. A few people here have said it galloped away when they stopped smoking. I am still glad I knocked it on the head. I smoked so much I was on auto pilot, one after another after another. I even woke up in the night to have a fag! I might as well have not been smoking it was all so subconscious! I read The Easy Way to Stop Smoking by Allan Carr and he gave me the key to help me quit.

[TSH110]

This is abstract quite interesting:pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/245...

What I had is more closely related to Graves’ disease than Hashimotos and I think I had thyroid eye disease (never diagnosed) and it may have come back my eyes are not at all right. Two close relative had primary thyroid non Hodgkin’s lymphoma (very rare) and neither of them smoked. That abstract says smoking might have a protective effect against thyroid cancer. It seems to reduce antibodies and the TSH yet increase the thyroid hormones, who’d have thought that?