For most with autoimmune thyroid issues, the treatment entirely ignores autoimmunity and solely focuses on hormone levels. Which can leave us almost forgetting there are medicines which are used in some autoimmune diseases. This trial should remind us. And make us ask if some of the psychological/psychiatric/mental health issues which some suffer could have an autoimmune cause.
Has anyone been tested for Anti NMDAR IgG antibodies?
Note: I am not equating psychotic disorders with anything else.
Call for psychosis treatment overhaul after evidence of autoimmune trigger
Patients to be treated with medicines used for arthritis and lupus in relaunch of pioneering UK trial
One of the UK’s leading psychiatrists is calling for an overhaul of the diagnosis and treatment of psychotic disorders following evidence that a small but significant fraction of cases could be triggered by an autoimmune response.
Speaking before the relaunch of a groundbreaking trial in which psychosis patients are being treated with medicines normally reserved for autoimmune conditions such as arthritis and lupus, Prof Belinda Lennox, the head of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, said she hoped the work would pave the way for new, more targeted approaches to treating conditions such as schizophrenia. This could include some patients being given immunotherapies to treat psychotic symptoms.
I’m very interested in this post. Thank you for posting. My elder sister has had thyroid cancer. I have Hashimotos. My younger sister has a psychotic disorder. For a few years now since I myself had a really bad time with my thyroid levels and treatment got a diagnosis of the Di02 gene fault. My elder sister also did the test and was negative. Not all siblings have the fault apparently. Now I’m on T3 my life is so much better. However, my younger sister won’t do the test all down to her mental health state really. I have read that thyroid issues can cause mental health disorders. I’m convinced my younger sisters issues are related but I can’t prove this. She is out of reach to all family members due to her illness. I wish I could help her some way. I’m not sure if her Dr has ever tested her thyroid functions. It does concern me that it could be all down to her thyroid.
Fascinating and what many of us ‘psychos’ suspected all along. The fact that Covid was also a precipitator of psychosis is one massive clue too difficult to ignore.
I read in either Marion Gluck's book or Kathryn Dalton's book ( can't remember which...My Mum seems to think it is Kathryn Dalton's book), that some Women in a Psychiatric inpatient were found to be hypothyroid. I have also read that T3 has been used to treatment people having psychiatric experiences.
T3 is also used in notable doses as an adjunct in treatment-resistant depression. If I remember correctly, blood levels of T3 aren’t monitored and dosing is based on protocol and symptoms. Find that fascinating, including the dosing considering the way T3 is withheld or so preciously dosed for actual thyroid treatment
Very interesting. As stated in my bio I suffered three days of psychosis in 2015.
Datis Kharrizian in his 2013 book 'Why isn't my Brain Working?' investigates neurological autoimmune disease, and claims like any brain disease, it starts years earlier than the investigative findings, similar to Hashimotos. The enteric nervous system in the digestive (aka the second brain) is bidirectional within the brain-gut axis, through the vagus nerve communication loop. Therefore, what we eat has a direct impact on our brain and most with gluten intolerance can identify with the accompanying brain fog or head aches.
Neurological autoimmunity is serious because lost/damaged brain cells are permanent (although the brain has remarkable powers for neuro plasticity) and can change us in numerous ways. The two major responses that negatively stimulate /suppress the neuro immune system are TH-3 and TH-17 (this is one of driving forces behind Hashi). Neurological tissue antibodies can cause diverse symptoms such as cognitive dysfunction or non-pain syndromes such as weakness, numbness or double vision. GAD antibodies (glutamic acid decarboxylase) are most prevalent effecting GABA responsible for calming the nervous system. They are linked to OCD, facial tics, motion sickness, etc. Feelings of peripheral nerve tingling can be attacks on the nervous system
More messenger proteins and immune cells and their (dys)function are being identified all the time. Immune suppressant drugs have their place but it’s a shame more credence isn’t applied to a more preventative disease model that works alongside aiming to improve the ‘auto’ antibodies status, eg nutrition & diet, natural anti inflammatories such as turmeric, resveratrol and vit D, consideration of chemical tolerance - mercury, bisphenol A, etc, and lifestyle changes.
On a slightly different note, I’m just reading a book called The XX Brain by Dr Lisa Mosconi, that shows research demonstrating the decline in women brains is ‘mostly’ due to the decline of oestrogen and it's brain protective properties. Women are far more likely to suffer anxiety, depression, migraines, brain injuries, strokes and Alzheimers which are worsening in both numbers and degree. I suffered a stroke in 2021 and have brain injury.
The gut and brain health you mention concerns me greatly - especially when depression in young people is mentioned. My first thought is always - 'what are they eating ?' Low B12 Iron etc is never mentioned - no joined up thinking.
Hope your recovery is being helped by the arrival of brighter days🌞 Do you still ride your bike ?
Enjoy ! Glad you are recovering well. Am afraid my Jenga bricks are slipping - or is it a kinked hosepipe syndrome ?🥲 Floor yoga now 🧘♀️ Standing and walking is a pain. Seeing spine surgeon soon to discuss recent MRI and a way forward. Keep up the good work - inspiring for us all 🌻
Thanks for that, The XX Brain sounds interesting (I already have Dr K's), but I'd thought that progesterone was more brain and neuro-protective than oestrogen. All about balance, and how well (or otherwise) you metabolise no doubt. Best wishes
Wow. Thank you for posting this. It is definitely relevant. I often wonder how much of what Hashi’s (and Graves) patients suffer through is autoimmunity rather than just thyroid dysfunction.
I was diagnosed with Hashi’s at the age of 19 about 12 years before my thyroid levels fell into the range of subclinical hypo (based on what doctors were telling me at least - no idea what results actually showed besides a normal TSH and presumably in-range t4) and that diagnostic testing was done due to sudden eyelid ptosis severe enough that my mom paid to get me eyelid surgery at that time. I struggled with depression/anxiety/ADD (and some type of obsessiveness) on and off in those 12 years (and before) but otherwise was doing fine, no other overt symptoms of being hypo and never felt like I wasn’t well. It seems like it was the autoimmunity that caused the ptosis, and who knows, perhaps contributes to my mental health struggles.
Also, how I’ve felt over the years since going hypo hasn’t always correlated with thyroid (or key nutrient) levels, and have gone through unexplained monthslong phases of feeling very ill, like having the flu but without the fever, in one case following a period of antibodies shooting up (tho perhaps coincidental).
The topic of autoimmunity as a whole doesn’t get enough attention in the medical field, and seems to gets almost no attention when it’s organ-specific vs systemic.
Schizophrenia has been found to be associated with some vitamin deficiencies. I'm not sure about my facts - it's quite a while since I read about this, but people diagnosed with schizophrenia may be able to reduce the severity of their symptoms if they repair their vitamins deficiencies.
There have been suggestions that nutrient deficiencies in the mother when a baby is in the womb may prime the child to developing schizophrenia in later life.
There have also been suggestions that dosing the child of a nutrient-deficient mother before the child develops schizophrenia could prevent it starting at all.
I'm a bit dubious about this making much difference to medical practice in my lifetime, in the sense that many doctors consider nutrients to be unimportant unless the patient is frankly deficient, and they are reluctant to test patients anyway. If that patient is planning to conceive or is already pregnant doctors are most likely to care about folate/folic acid but not much else.
I suspect that the powers-that-be may consider that having a few poor people (who are most likely to have nutrient deficiencies) develop schizophrenia would be a lot cheaper overall, when compared to the costs of testing and treating children throughout the first 18 years of life, and women for the length of time they have periods.
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Some links on schizophrenia and nutrients deficiencies.
Failure to ensure good nutrition in pregnancy is one of the biggest failings of medicine.
Agreed - they have got as far as folic acid. Mostly.
But even fundamentals like iron are notoriously badly handled. "Here's some ferrous sulphate." is about the best anyone can expect. Yet so many cannot tolerate that - especially while pregnant. And you don't have the time to try A, then B, then C,... (Though obviously best if every woman has iron tested and any deficiency identified and appropriately treated. Thus both ensuring the health of many for their own sakes and in a good state if they become pregnant.)
If we don't start life well, what chance of being well throughout?
Will read this thoroughly later,but just wanted to say that ,when in desperation I went to a Psychiatrist ,he ,almost immediately prescribed Thyroxine and was fully aware of the tsh Hysteresis phenomenom flowing Hashi HypER , AND said that ,in psych world ,thyroxine is a common addition to psychiatric meds ,for anxiety/ depression .Also look at the Shrinks With Sneakers site on YouTube, where the lovely American psych does a talk on using t3 in psychiatry .
Yep, generations of family members with ADHD and ADD and thyroid symptoms.
Like draws like (perhaps because there is more understanding therefore, tolerance) and unfortunately, the offspring can end up with double the genetic tendencies.
But the hyperthyroid do have the ability to work extremely hard before burn out.
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autoimmune and Hashimotos 
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