1 in 5 people in the UK have thyroid problems. - Thyroid UK

Thyroid UK

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1 in 5 people in the UK have thyroid problems.

Levojunkie profile image
49 Replies

That's c. 13.5 million people or more!

I'm actually shocked at this number.

What do you think are the reasons for this epidemic?

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Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie
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49 Replies
humanbean profile image
humanbean

Where did you get this number from?

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply tohumanbean

Daily Mail reportage on Thyroid Awareness Week , 12 July 2022Apologies!

SlowDragon profile image
SlowDragonAdministrator

Approx 2 million people in U.K. are on replacement thyroid hormones.

As the population lives longer numbers being diagnosed is increasing

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/287...

it is estimated that the total UK-wide prevalence of hypothyroidism in 2016 is 3.6%; affecting more than 2.3 million individuals including nearly 800 000 individuals aged >70 years.

nice.org.uk/guidance/ng145/...

Hypothyroidism is found in about 2% of the UK population and in more than 5% of those over 60. Women are 5 to 10 times more likely to be affected than men.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toSlowDragon

Thank you for all the information, very helpful.Looks like the Daily Mail article was click-bait and even fear mongering then.

HashiFedUp profile image
HashiFedUp

Diet, lifestyle, vitamin D deficiency, stress and lack of sleep? I think all these issues affect inflammation and associated disease.

DippyDame profile image
DippyDame

We might add endocrine disrupting chemicals....

frontiersin.org/articles/10...

SlowDragon profile image
SlowDragonAdministrator

Low vitamin D is widespread, reduction in magnesium in crops junk food, living longer, endocrine disrupting chemicals etc etc

Magnesium depletion in soil

sciencedirect.com/science/a...

humanbean profile image
humanbean in reply toSlowDragon

Plus plastics in everything can't be doing people any good.

DippyDame profile image
DippyDame in reply tohumanbean

Scary stuff!!

theguardian.com/environment...

knitwitty profile image
knitwitty

In addition to all the above suggestions I have seriously wondered whether the fallout from Chernobyl has had something to do with the rise in thyroid problems.

Mlinde profile image
Mlinde in reply toknitwitty

Chernobyl? We were testing atomic bombs from the 1940s onwards! Hiroshima-Nagasaki! Bikini Atoll.

Bearo profile image
Bearo in reply toMlinde

But the prevailing winds did blow Chernobyl fallout across the uk. I remember we were advised to avoid drinking milk for a few days!

Mlinde profile image
Mlinde in reply toBearo

Yes and I remember as a child, here in the UK in 1957 when there was a nuclear 'accident' at Windscale Nuclear plant, we couldn't drink milk for weeks! Then they changed the name of Windscale, hoping we would forget!

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toMlinde

Oh, good grief, I'm not sure I really knew about that one - bit before my time. We used to spend a lot of summer time on the beaches at Sandy Hills and Moss Yards across from 'Windscale'. No wonder my parents in law used to quip about coming out of the water glowing!! LOL (But, no, it's not funny really...)

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toBearo

Yes, didn't Wales get the worst of the deposits? I don't remember being told about milk...oh dear.

Mlinde profile image
Mlinde in reply toLevojunkie

Well, old enough to remember millions of gallons of milk being poured down (hopefully, or not?) disused coal mines. And the change of name! Winscale to Sellafield!!! Our governments have no shame!

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toMlinde

Governments mainly comprise self-seeking short termists with only some vague collective accountability. I don't suppose that this inclines them to shame. Yet they blame and shame us if we're spotted accidentally dropping a sweetie paper in the High St! Of course, a sweetie paper is so very much more dangerous...

knitwitty profile image
knitwitty in reply toMlinde

All of which were much further away than Chernobyl ! I wasn't being sensationalist I just wondered whether there was an effect from the fallout. I guess we will never know because no one who is privy to that information will actually tell us.

Mlinde profile image
Mlinde in reply toknitwitty

I'm convinced that together with the air, water, food pollution plus the tens of thousands of untested chemicals introduced into the environment, are the main contributors to an entire range diseases, from Autism to the thyroid. We've poisoned the planet and ourselves!

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toMlinde

Sadly, I believe you're right about causes of escalating diseases and disorders. Though mostly we ordinary people have had nothing to do with vast military-industrial experimental/commercial activities. And now the top bananas are telling us we must 'save the world'...! When, really, the same global culprits are carrying on with all their potentially damaging industries and experiments....

Mlinde profile image
Mlinde in reply toLevojunkie

Meanwhile... we consume the 'good life', the corporations make billions out of selling us crap, crap that kills us. And this is how it all ends...

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toMlinde

You put it all so well....maybe what the NHS has predicted this morning to be 'a national humanitarian crisis' this winter will persuade us to spend our diminishing income and savings in wiser ways? Seemingly the Chinese economy is collapsing too, so perhaps the world is starting to avoid their junk.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toknitwitty

I just remembered that I used to buy frozen Alaskan salmon. Then I read an Alaskan newspaper report on increasing levels of Fukishima fall out in Pacific fish landed along the US West coast from north to south. I stopped buying Alaskan fish. No doubt the Pacific is contaminated.

Noodibranks-7 profile image
Noodibranks-7 in reply toknitwitty

I have contemplated that being a child in the 80s and having recent Thyroid cancer may be because of chernobyl ! I mean do we really think they would have told us how bad the spread was!!

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toNoodibranks-7

I'm sad to know that you've been afflicted with that. They should be able to test for isotope signatures in your body to see if they're the same as those from Chernobyl. Has any doctor ever speculated about the cause of the cancer? I recall that the disaster and risks were rather played down at the time.

Noodibranks-7 profile image
Noodibranks-7 in reply toLevojunkie

No, just asked have I been near radiation?! I guess the true answer to that is, I have no idea!

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toNoodibranks-7

So they had an inkling.....As we can see from this thread already, we really don't know what we've been exposed to from radiation and a vast range of other toxins that are used in home and office environments. That's before we step out the door.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toknitwitty

Yes, we never hear about Chernobyl nowadays (or Fukushima). You have to wonder if our policymakers ever learn anything with all this forgetfulness. Would we be told if some UK thyroid problems are attributable to Chernobyl?

helvella profile image
helvellaAdministrator in reply toLevojunkie

There is a vast and continually growing number of papers about Chernobyl/Chornobyl and Fukushima.

This simple search finds over 5,000:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?te...

However, they have become considerably less newsworthy in the sense of appealing to newspaper editors. Hence we often have to seek them out rather than have them presented on plates.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply tohelvella

Wow. Thanks for that link. As ever, media working to gvt agendas.

helvella profile image
helvellaAdministrator in reply toLevojunkie

In this case, I think it is readers not buying papers on the basis of their coverage of these issues. They are not exciting like beach shots of C-list to Z-list celebs, self-driving cars and such like. :-)

One paper has had about a dozen articles which were about, or referred to, Fukushima this year.

Polly91 profile image
Polly91

If you read anything by Dr Broda Barnes who died in the late 80s and was a prolific thyroid researcher and physician he suggests around 60% of the population has low thyroid function. In fact going by his research and thinking that number may be even higher some 35 years later. Basis for his theory is that “us thyroid disorder types” would have been the weaklings who would not have survived serious infections like TB had it not been for the discovery of antibiotics Ie we would not have survived beyond adolescence . So more of us “weaklings” survived and have gone on to have children and passed thyroid disorders or predisposition to these to our offspring .

Also the reasons stated above low vit D, environmental factors , living longer mean more people will have thyroid disorders.

Dr P in his book also reiterates some of the above & suggests blood tests do not reveal all those with low thyroid function so many people who are symptomatic but do not have high TSH slip through the net.

I’m sure we all know people who have the classic signs but because their blood tests are “normal” they put their symptoms down to something else but all along it may well be thyroid function that is the root cause.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toPolly91

Thank you for this information. Very harsh but true that many more children used to die in childhood before antibiotics and better nutrition/living conditions. Still, they lived into adulthood only to be assaulted by all sorts of other toxins and stressors. So, Dr Barnes was indicating that only those with the most serious hypothyroidism are ever treated? Surely we have the knowledge and technology to devise more sensitive tests? And thus prevent conditions escalating...

Jazzw profile image
Jazzw in reply toPolly91

Glad you brought up the writings of Dr P. Didn’t he also say that it was quite likely that a hypothyroidie would be attracted to another hypothyroidie as a mate (shared hobbies being eating cake and watching Netflix 😂)? And then they were likely to have hypothyroid children.

Just to clarify, Dr P didn’t mention cake or Netflix—I’m paraphrasing. 😂

But I think he’s probably right.

Margareta3 profile image
Margareta3

Add also water fluoridation, fluor in toothpaste, tea, etc....

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toMargareta3

Oh, I didn't know about fluoride...something else to avoid...

Jazzw profile image
Jazzw in reply toLevojunkie

Fire retardants too. In everything from sofas to beds. Tend to be bromide compounds I think.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toJazzw

Good grief. It's never ending the ways they find to harm ordinary folk....

1dolly profile image
1dolly

All these people and GPs are still clueless about it 🥲

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply to1dolly

Do GPs know all that much these days? Not being sarky, just recalling GP consults over the last 10-20 years. Lost count of the times they said to go and research it (and the invitations to go back and tell THEM about the condition etc).

Lal1 profile image
Lal1

Hi ,I read somewhere a few years ago that people giving up smoking can have thyroid issues .? Possible with the cost of cigarettes and tobacco these days.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toLal1

That's interesting...I know that nicotine is a brain stimulant, I've read papers where they administer it to some stroke patients for example. So, I wonder if some people are intuitively self-medicating with nicotine via smoking to try and remedy some of the effects of an under-functioning thyroid?

archipoeta profile image
archipoeta

Radiation! Wifi is pulsed radiation, and damages the thyroid in rats. Smart phones give off a huge amount of radiation. Phone companies have not been able to get Public Liability Insurance against health claims related to radiation damage since 1999. Are they interested in telling you this? No more than the tobacco companies were, and there is the same amount of published scientific evidence for the damage caused by wifi and phones as there was for tobacco and asbestos. Turn yours off at night.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toarchipoeta

Though wifi is not clearly dangerous ionising radiation like nuclear energy. Wifi's on the same frequencies as microwaves and some widely used radio frequencies at a much lower level of power. UK gvt has done extensive research into e.g. wifi in schools and has not found any cause for alarm. They continue to monitor the situation. I don't believe all that gvts tell us. But on wifi, a ubiquitous service, I think they'd be lunatics to deliberately lie to us - think of the litigation if they'd been propagating untruths and people were injured...

archipoeta profile image
archipoeta in reply toLevojunkie

Has the UK government done extensive research? I follow the research closely, and I haven't seen any of it. Rather, they blindly accept the advice of ICNIRP, a self-appointing private body, the subject of two EU investigations into ties with the telecom industry, and continue to repeat what this organisation tells them. Think of the litigation? From whom? Can the average member of the public take on Big Telecom? Telecom companies are doing what Big Tobacco and Big Asbestos did - buying their own research, and running media campaigns to discredit any research or scientist that demonstrate the harm ambient radiation does. Big Asbestos lost their Public Liability Insurance for damage to public health in 1913. Yes, 1913. Insurance companies employ scientists and read the scientific press. Think how long the asbestos scandal took to break. Telecom companies have no Public Liability Insurance either. They lost it in 1999.

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toarchipoeta

Yes, tragically, it's true that, shielded by governments around the world, Big Industries have been criminally slow to confess their knowledge of the toxic products they push. Nowadays, I have a hypothesis into which their antihuman, anti-environment activity fits. This is the fundamental problem, not just radiation/drugs/environmental degradation/climate change/whaling...pick your cause of choice, they're all closely linked under the one umbrella.Although I imagine that you've seen it, there is UK research on wifi and allied technologies, for starters:

gov.uk/government/publicati...

gov.uk/government/publicati...

gov.uk/health-and-social-ca...

Question is, what are we going to do about the whole set up that sanctions a huge range of risks to life and our planet?

Kriticat profile image
Kriticat

Where I live in Crete it is openly acknowledged by the doctors and endocrinologists I've seen that the epidemic of thyroid disorders on the island is caused by fallout from chernobyl. I wasn't here then, but was in the lake district which also had a lot of fallout... it seems the winds changed direction dramatically during that period,as they are in opposite directions!

Levojunkie profile image
Levojunkie in reply toKriticat

Oh my goodness, medical people openly identify causal effect of Chernobyl fallout...? Who pays their wages? In the UK, it seems to me that we hear nothing about anything from our medics because they just say and do what the gvt tells them...

Kriticat profile image
Kriticat

Mostly private doctors here, and besides, the Greek government hasn't got a nuclear programme to be ashamed of... not sure they could shut doctors up even if they did, they are very independent and highly respected

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