Hi there,

I am new to the group but have a feeling I will become an avid member
soon...

I had an incidence of heart palpitations a week ago and I am scheduled
for a stress test, EKG and a haltor monitor end of this week.
Also, I felt very lousy yesterday (feeling pressure inside my body,
and feeling/looking very tired for no reason plus hard to concentrate)
and went to see our company nurse. She suggested that she thought it's
my thyroid that may be causing havoc with me. I don't recall ever
being tested for this but here's why I think she may be right:

About 14 years ago I started getting panick attacks - for no appearant
reason. I was always so strong, happy, energetic and always felt like
a million bucks - until this day... I was put on clonazepam (sp?)
after unsuccessfully trying Valium and it helped. I finally weened
myself off them a couple of months ago and I seem to be fine with
panick attacks but not any of the other symptoms. Since this started
14 years ago I get periods when I feel very tired - look tired (pale -
w/rings around eyes) and have extremely dry skin. I have joint pains
and I also started being very sensitive to hot and cold. If I get
tenonitis, watch out - it will last for a week or two and it feels as
though it spreads around in my body before it finally lets go...
Sometimes while eating (I don't remember what) I get super hot... my
body feels like it is on fire but I don't have a temperature... I
generally feel lousy, sometimes like I am about to die, other times I
feel like a million bucks and walk the 14 floors up to my office in
only 2 mins, 30 sec's. When I feel sick, I would sometimes check my
temperature to see if I have a flu (over 14 years) but everytime, it
reads less than 97 degrees... My wife checks the thermometer and it
reads properly with her. I also donate blood once in a while and was
once, recently turned away due to my temperature being too low... I
never followed it up since I was okay to donate the next day.

At the same time (14 years ago) I also suddenly developed an
intolerance to alcohol and coffee... one cup makes my stomach very
shaky and makes my speech slurry plus blurred vision... my attention
span goes away totally and I can't concentrate and I all of a sudden
sometimes forget who sits beside me until I look... (scary!) and
forget what we're talking about - mid sentence. It's hard to explain
but it seems like a dizzines - overwhelming - high pressure inside.

I also have problems swallowing at times... it hurts in my 'lower
throat' (if there's such a thing)... and particularly when drinking
camomille tea... strange...

When I mentioned some of these things to my Dr. he has been telling me
that all of it is probably caused by tension... I have to agree with
him since I developed an nercvous thing... (the panick attacks I
guess) and kept telling myself over 14 years that it is all attributed
to tension... Sometimes I do get very tense when I have these
incidents or periods and it seems to go away along with me relaxing my
body - when I'm able... or does my body get relaxed as it goes away?
When I feel better - both mentally and physically - it feels as
though nothing ever happened...

I started reading about thyroidism yesterday since I felt very lousy
and since the company nurse told this may be the cause... I saw that
cabbage was not good to eat and I had incidentally eaten almost 1/4
cabbage, raw about 3 hours before I strarted feeling very lousy
yesterday.

I took my temperature this morning before moving around and it was
96.5 degrees. I'm not sure if this is an accurate indication but may
be reason to check things further.

Lastly - If cabbage make me feel very sick, is there anything I can
eat that might make me feel better? So I can verify that the thyroid
might be the problem?

I have almost 50 direct reports (programmers and project managers)
where I work and it gets very hard to get through the day at times -
meeting with people and giving presentations. Luckily, I almost never
get the flu or colds and my immune systems seems to work very well
except when it comes to tenons and my stomach (I also developed severe
heartburn over the past 10 years).

So what do you think?

Regards,
AB

It's good to take magnesium and CoQ-10, which sometimes helps with heart
palpitations. These can be caused by episodes of either hyper or hypo
thyroidism.

The tests don't always tell the truth. Check out Dr. Derry's explanation at
http://thyroid.about.com/library/weekly/blderryb.htm. His description of TSH
fits my family's experience perfectly.

Pressure inside the body? Is that like digestive pressure and bloating? The
thyroid and adrenals work together and it's hard to tell the symptoms apart.
If both are bad, both need to be treated. Not many doctors will treat low
adrenals before a patient reaches the state of adrenal crises when he shows up
in the emergency room.


Could be either hypothyroid or hypoadrenal problem. It also happens in
hyperthyroidism.


Rings around the eyes tend to be adrenal, dry skin and joint pains can be
either adrenal or thyroid. Tendonitis is probably a strain, carpal tunnel has
been related to hypothyroidism, and it's similar if you're not talking about an
injury.

To a degree I go in cycles too. Sometimes it's a struggle to do any work, then
suddenly the struggles gone and I can do my work easily. Haven't figured that
out yet.


Doctors Broda Barnes (deceased), Barry Durrant - Peatfield, Steven Langer,
Dennis E Wilson all felt hypothyroidism could be pretty well diagnosed by
temperature. You would use the more accurate glass thermometer and on waking
in the morning, when your temp is the lowest, take the temp under your arm and
it should be 97.8 - 98.2 or your thyroid is probably not functioning properly.
(Or low adrenals and one of our more technical and very smart members will tell
us there are other things that can cause low body temp, but I wish we'd
diagnosed my wife years earlier than we did and the body temp would have done
it. IN the hospital the nurse was surprised she didn't even have a temperature
with pneumonia.)

I'm betting low adrenals which can cause hypoglcemia. Forgetting what your
saying mid sentence is common with low thyroid. Dizziness is common with
either also. I'm not sure what you mean by high pressure, unless it's
digestive pressure and bloating which went away when my adrenals were treated.


The chamomile causing problems isn't strange if you happen to be allergic to
its relative, ragweed. It's common when your thyroid isn't able to produce
that it gets larger and / or your tongue enlarges and food starts getting stuck
in your upper throat and you might wake up at night choking.

Doctors tend to be morons about good health and like to blame problems on
tension or depression, so they can give you prozac. Panic attacks can be caused
by low thyroid or low adrenals, it doesn't require stress. And panic attacks
probably imply the adrenals or underactive or overactive which impacts the
thyroid, because the proper amount of the adrenal stress hormone cortisol is
necessary in the right amount to convert the T4 your thyroid produces into the
active hormone, T3.


Raw cabbage, broccoli, spinach can all cause goiter, which implies they stop
the thyroid from working adequately, so the thyroid multiplies it's cells so it
can pruduce more hormone.

If these items are causing a problem, stop them and the problems they cause
will go away. You can still eat them cooked. Hypothyroid people need Vitamin
A (which is found in meat, it's not the beta carotene found in vegetables and
people with low thyroid have problems converting the beta carotene to Vitamin
A.) We also need Vitamin C, selenium, and overall good nutrition. Ray Peat, a
biochemist, claimes that coconut oil is good for the thyroid and raises the
body temp. I eat it on popcorn and I can feel beneficial effects.


Some say this can be a sign of a weak immune system, not a healthy one. Having
a cold means you are getting rid of toxins. Until my adrenals were treated,
I had pressure and bloating in my stomach all the time, pain in my chest
diagnosed as costochondritis, rheumatoid arthritis in my hips, and a problem
with annoyingly frequent urination. All went away on Cortef (hydrocortisone
which replaces natural cortisol and is taken in less than normal replacement
doses. Doctors are afraid of this, but in emergencies give people 60 mg of
prednisone, whereas a physiological dosage is considered to be 5 mg of Cortef 4
times daily, which is only equal to 5 mg of Prednisone.)

Skipper

2 things...:

I didn't know that my post would appear as a follow-up to another post
- my apolgies...

secondly:
I do realize of course that many (or any) of my symptoms are not
necessary there due to me being hypothyroid. Some symptoms could
simply be aging ar other things I haven't discovered yet.

Regards,
AB

Welcome AB.

I guess it's acceptable protocol for me to welcome you though I am new also.


I went through all of those about a month before my doctor finally ordered a
blood test for thyroid function. I was having palpitations for quite some
time then had an incidence of extreme tightness in the chest area
accompanied by very rapid heart beat and pain at the base of the throat. The
good news was that I had no indiction of any heart disease at all! I had
pain at the base of my throat like you mentioned during the most rigorous
part of the stress test but no one thought to check my thyroid. The only
reason my doctor did was because the kinesiologist who is treating me for a
back injury suggested it to me. That test came back positive for
hypothyroidism.

I've looked extremely tired with the dark circles, too, for quite awhile.
I'm trying to work up the nerve to ask my doctor about testing for adrenal
funciton.

<edit>


Boy, can I relate. I had to give up my job as an instructor today. I
simply don't have the ability to focus or articulate that I need and felt I
was being unfair to my students. I am just beginning to learn about things
thyroid, too. This is a great group to read and so helpful. I think
something a lot of us go through for quite awhile before diagnosis is a
considerable amount of self-doubt. Am I imagining all this as my doctor
implies? Am I going crazy? I thought it was just aging too. Here's hoping
you'll get good news and something concrete with which to work from your
tests. Get a copy of your lab test results if you have one for thyroid.
There are members of this group who are very adept at helping to decipher
them while you're learning what it all means.

Grace

The rings around your eyes.....have you had your adrenals checked? What
you have mentioned may be thyroid related or thyroid caused, but the rings
around your eyes, make me think adrenals are an issue here as well, and
often the two go hand in hand. Even doctors are not supposed to treat one
without minding the status of the other because they are so interconnected.

Wow, Skipper! Good post.

Pretty much what I had in mind as well, but you went well into the
documentation of your opinion

Having

treated,


problem

(hydrocortisone

replacement

of

Cortef 4

Wow - thank you so much for your very detailed response - and thanks to
everyone else that responded too. I really appreciate it!

To clear up the pressure issue... Yes, I have since this started had very
much bloating, a lot of pressure... also very much gas and indigestion - all
the time. I very often have gas that gets stuck just in the same area I call
the lower throat... This is only a small discomfort though compared to
everything else...

The pressure the pressure I felt two days ago was more something I thought
was blood pressure related. Tests from the company nurse though showed that
my blood pressure was 120 over 88, not very high... I feel my pulse beating
like crazy - not fast (only around 60) but heavy... I can feel it tingling
in my wrists and neck sometimes, but not always. This may be a
psychological condition ... I guess... The best way to describe it may be
that I get the feeling in my head you get when stand up fast after hanging
your head down - except it's like this for hours and it's everywhere from
waste up. If I put my hand on the table you can somtime see one or more of
my fingers make little jerks along with my heart rate. When I start feel
'nervous' i also sometime get unvoluntary movements in my hands, fingers and
arms.

Rings around eyes are not severe - just from lack of sleep maybe. The panick
attack incident 14 years ago started with insomnia. I couldn't, and didn't
sleep for 3 days in a row because I was afraid to go to sleep.

Regards,
AB