Friday, August 30, 2013

Thyroid and Menopause


Thyroid hormone secreted by the thyroid gland has many vital functional roles to play in the human body. The thyroid gland secrets two important hormone which in turn helps to regulate the body metabolism. They are thyroxin hormone and triiodithyronine hormone. They are chemically indicated as T3 and T4. T4 is a more stable form of hormone as compared to T3. In depth knowledge about the hormones indicates that both are required ay essential limits to maintain the body metabolic rate.

When the thyroid gland stops to function or starts to dysfunction, the result is the onset of two common thyroid hormone syndromes called hyperthyroidism, which occurs due to undue secretion of the thyroid hormone. Another common syndrome includes the hypothyroidism where the gland secrets very less quantity of the hormone against the required levels. Both the cases are the result of thyroid gland dysfunction.

Unfortunately, as the thyroid gland is the home for the endocrine gland system, any change in the thyroid gland activity might have an over all impact on the activity of the other important glands as well.

Menopause has a direct impact on the activity of the thyroid gland. However vice versa can not hold true. With the onset of menopause, the thyroid gland might have some kind of disturbances in working and secretion of the thyroid hormone. This imbalance of the hormonal level can lead t either hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism. However the symptoms of both the thyroid hormone imbalance and menopause are very similar. One should not confuse one for the other. It however becomes very difficult to distinguish between the two and a misguidance can lead to drastic side effects. It is always better to do a thyroid hormone test before taking medications for the menopause problems.

The relationship between the two exists that during the menopausal stage there is imbalance in the oestrogen and progesterone hormone levels that can in turn have an drastic impact on the thyroid hormone production. Studies also state that, more than 30 to 40% of the women suffer from thyroid hormonal imbalance in their premenopause stage.

The common symptoms of the thyroid problem includes weakness both physically and mentally, forgetfulness, poor memory, depression, exhaustion, sleep disorder, hair loss. Although the symptoms of thyroid disorder and menopause overlap with each other, they can be strongly differentiated with the highlight symptom of menopause which is hot flashes, vaginal dryness in contrary to the thyroid disorders like swelling of the neck, hands, legs and hair loss from the eyebrows and eyelashes. In extreme cases discolouration of hair is also not uncommon.

These disorders can be over come by sufficient dietary supplementation of iodine and iodine rich foods that can drastically improve the condition. Zinc supplementation is also required at the same time to prevent hair loss and poor memory problems. When these symptoms do not subside even upon these treatments, it is better to approach the doctor for any kind of advanced therapy or some simple operations to activate the gland again.

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