[DianneW]

in reply to: Newly Diagnosed #1072360

"Christy" wrote:

I’m trying to take each new day as it comes! /quote]

Christy,

That’s the best anyone can do, and really the secret to making it through.

Stick around and let us know how you’re doing.

[DianneW]

in reply to: thyroid storm vs. panic attack #1072062

Emily, I love that about your "rational mind" vs. your "Graves’ mind" and also the image of you checking your pulse. I think I checked my pulse constantly for the first five years after my Graves’ and I still do it more often than most people do.

Of course now, my pulse is too slow (usually under 60) even though I’m supposedly euthyroid. Go figure.

[DianneW]

in reply to: graves is a psychosomatic disease #1072110

Kam,

I hope you and your wife will consider joining us in Charlotte this October for the patient and family Conference. We have support groups for family members that help you process issues like this.

I understand how rough it must be for you. I know how awful I was to the person I broke up with before I knew I had Graves’, and I know how avoidant I was with my family for several years until I was feeling better. It was a really good thing (for my husband) that I waited to get married again for a few years until I was stable.

Yes, GD has psychological manifestations and it’s rough on families and marriages. Divorce isn’t uncommon. Sometimes it’s the patient who initiates it though, only realizing later that the feelings came from the hyperthyroidism. I’ve had husbands of Graves’ patients write to me asking what happened to their wives, and would they ever be who they were before and come home? It’s heart-breaking, especially when kids are involved. The book, "The Thyroid Solution", by Ridha Arem discusses this subject extensively.

Don’t hesitate to get couples counseling with someone who understands what chronic illness can do to a marriage. You can come out of this with a marriage that’s stronger than ever if you want to work at it.

Best wishes,

[DianneW]

in reply to: Graves disease in Males #1073321

Dear Aravindh,

Another comment on your blood pressure problem: Remember that your body has been through an extreme insult being hyperthyroid, and that has caused your heart to function abnormally for however many months you have been hyperthyroid. The cells of your heart muscle have actually deteriorated and can’t function normally even once your levels become normal. It takes many months with normal thyroid levels to reverse this damage. This is the reason our doctors are continually telling us to be patient.

I remember having heart palpitations for the first year or two after my levels were entirely normal, and I wondered if they would ever stop. But I haven’t had one for years now, and I don’t know now when they stopped.

It’s too early to worry that the blood pressure elevation will be permanent. Your levels are only now normalizing, which is the first part of the journey back to good health. The second part is taking time to heal. Be good to yourself: try to get enough rest, eat well, exercise, have balance in all things. If work is causing too much stress, find a way to release the stress out of your body through exercise and meditation, or whatever works for you.

Do you take your Tapazole with food (to help with nausea)?

Best wishes, Dianne

[DianneW]

in reply to: Update on my son #1072034

Hi Amy–that’s wonderful news! I’m sorry to hear Zack still has nausea, but as you said, there’s still hope that will go away in time as his levels are stable for an extended period of time. He hasn’t had that happen for who knows how long! He still has some months of adjustment ahead, but we can hope the worst is truly behind him! I know you need a break from this! Give him our best wishes!

Dianne

[DianneW]

in reply to: Autoimmune Disorders #1073365

Julesef,

Has your endo ever checked your Free T3, or does he always just check your TSH?

I felt like you did and wasn’t able to feel better until I got on a replacement hormone with both T4 and T3 in it (Armour Thyroid). The downside to this is that any replacement hormone containing T3 really needs to be split into 3 daily doses in order to be kept even in the bloodstream or the patient will be hyperthyroid right after taking the pill and hypothyroid when it wears off, for the rest of the day. Taking it every 8 hours will keep it fairly evenly dosed in the bloodstream.

Not all doctors will prescribe Armour Thyroid or other replacement drugs containing T3, and most patients don’t need this. It should be reserved for the minority of patients who don’t feel well on T4 drugs, after adjusting the dose.

Try what Ski said, and if that doesn’t help then ask your doctor about testing your Free T3. He would then have a good idea whether you would benefit from a drug containing T3. However, a lot of doctors simply won’t do this, and if yours is one of them you would have to ask around to find one who will.

Best wishes,

[DianneW]

in reply to: Graves triggered by quitting smoking? #1072083

Micky, whether or not anyone in your family has GD, you have to have the genetic predisposition or it’s impossible to get it.

When I was diagnosed with GD I didn’t know of anyone in my family who had ever been diagnosed with a thyroid problem of any kind (and I have a pretty big family which includes 33 first cousins), let alone Graves’ Disease; but in the 13 years since my diagnosis there have been other thyroid diagnoses including one other case of GD in a first cousin. My daughter and a sister now both have Hashimotos thyroiditis (hypothyroidism), as did my father and his sister (my aunt) before they died, and two first cousins on the other side of the family.

So check with other family members to see if they have low thyroid function. It’s actually more common in families of Graves’ Disease patients to find family members with low thyroid function than with Graves’ Disease, but it’s all autoimmune thyroid disease and shares genetics and overlapping antibody profiles. If you don’t have a large family it’s less likely you’ll find any one.

Also, separating out what caused GD is a really difficult thing. You say you believe stress caused yours, and you talk about buying a house and being promoted to a stressful job. I think most people would agree that these are events most of us have experienced in our lives, even to a severely stressful degree. (I know I have.) If you randomly happened to get Graves’ Disease when you were going through these things, of course the stress you experienced would be even worse, so you’d think the stress brought on the GD whether or not it did. I’m not saying that I know the answer. I’m just trying to show why it is that people with Graves’ are bound to attribute their Graves’ to stress, no matter whether that caused it or not. We always have stressful things going on, and they’re going to feel worse when we’re hyperthyroid.

I can sit down and write down events for the last 25 years that could have triggered my Graves’ Disease, if it was stressful events that triggered it. But I could do the same with any of my friends who doesn’t have Graves’ Disease. Life is a series of stressful events and then we die. (There’s a shorter way to say that.)

Just some things to consider. I’m not saying I have the answers.

[DianneW]

in reply to: graves is a psychosomatic disease #1072107

Billy, cause and effect can be really difficult to sort out. You may have had hyperthyroidism longer than you even know, and it could have been affecting your behavior and possibly even have been a factor in the breakup. That isn’t unusual. It certainly could have been part of the cause of your depression, and no doubt your weight loss. It may take time to sort out what caused what. When you’ve been truly well for a period of time and had time to put everything in perspective, you might have a better idea about all of that.

I went through a breakup before I was diagnosed with Graves’ Disease and at the time I had no idea many of my emotions that led to how I felt about that person when we were still together were caused by my physical health. It was complicated, but my personality is so different than it was for a number of years. Who knows how long I was like that? I definitely had GD well before the breakup, which I understand now that I know what the symptoms are and know what it feels like to be well, but being hyperthyroid magnified all the emotions everyone experiences when going through the grief process that every breakup entails.

What you experience emotionally while hyperthyroid was most likely a result of over-stimulation of your brain by thyroid hormone. You’re correct in thinking there’s a connection, but it’s not your mind causing the physical manifestations as it would be in a psychosomatic disease; it’s completely the other way around.

Usually counseling doesn’t do the most good while patients are still hyperthyroid. What helps the most is to bring down thyroid levels, and then counseling can help for any problems that the patient still needs help with. That’s not to say that there aren’t situations where counseling is a good idea; I don’t mean that. My point is that the mental and emotional problems we are having while hyperthyroid have a real physical cause that is treatable and for the most part has nothing to do with what’s going on in our lives. Graves’ is like your body and brain are a big gas engine and the accelerator is stuck to the floor but the gear shift is stuck in neutral. You’re burning fuel like crazy and making a lot of noise, but going nowhere.

You may have to take a lot of pills at first to keep your thyroid levels down, but in time the number it takes to control your levels are reduced, and you can often drop the beta-blockers and end up taking just a few pills a day, if the number of pills is a big issue to you. I realize that no one likes to have a life-long disease at the age of 25, but I promise you it’s no more fun to have it in your 40’s or 50’s, which arrive much sooner than you think (remember someday that I told you this)!

What I hope you’ll do is to take very good care of yourself so that you can have the best health possible for the rest of your life, and if you do, this disease won’t have to be such a big bother. Just make sure you keep monitoring your levels when you should and don’t ignore symptoms, even if you have to get help from others. It’s important not to ever have a repeat of your last experience.

Best wishes to you,

[DianneW]

in reply to: blood pressure #1072044

Yes, I think many people have changes in their blood pressure that normalize when thyroid levels do. Hyperthyroidism changes the way the heart beats and that can affect blood pressure as well. Are you taking beta blockers?

[DianneW]

in reply to: thyroid storm vs. panic attack #1072054

I’ve heard lots of people say they had a thyroid storm, but if you are alive and haven’t been in the hospital emergency room for saving treatment, then you haven’t had a thyroid storm. A thyroid storm is an extreme emergency, and people die from it sometimes even when they are given emergency treatment.

What people sometimes confuse with thyroid storm is a spell of really high thyroid levels that is anxiety-provoking and which causes rapid heart beat and palpitations; perhaps even a raised temperature. Probably many people with high thyroid levels have experienced this, and it’s scary and unpleasant. I went through some spells like this following my RAI and frankly, wondered if I might die one evening. I called the doctor who was on call for my endo, who told me it couldn’t be my thyroid because I didn’t have a thyroid anymore because I’d had RAI (but I was still hyper at that point). And he was a doctor, so what did I know about it? So he wouldn’t listen to what I said, and I was left without help. I lived to tell about it though, obviously.

So as bad as they feel, episodes like that aren’t thyroid storms, though people often think they are. We have a few people on this board who’ve had actual thyroid storms (Billyb, Hyperm, for example). So can those of you who’ve had a T.S. tell us how you knew you needed to seek emergency treatment? What was the difference between the spell like I described and the one you had?

[DianneW]

in reply to: Susceptible to other things?? #1072069

When my dog was hypOthyroid, my vet told me that being in that state made her susceptible to infections (such as urinary tract and skin infections), and I know that when my thyroid was out of balance either way (hypO or hypER) I seemed to catch more colds and flu than I do now that I’ve been stable for a number of years. I will ask my endocrinologist if what my vet said about the dogs also applies to people, and I think it would be a good question to write down to ask the experts at the conference this year as well. (I have a list going.)

[DianneW]

in reply to: graves is a psychosomatic disease #1072103

That is how I believe I developed this condition.Psychosomatic is a mind and body connection, its how your psychology can manifest as sickness in your body.we all know that stress can cause illness.Graves can be brought on by traumatic experiences,break ups,divorces, a stressful childhood ect… so don’t let doctors throw meds at you maybe counseling and researching your personal past will uncover the source of your graves

Billy,

I forgot to add that even if your Graves’ Disease WAS triggered by something traumatic that happened to you, that doesn’t mean that you can cure it by psychological counseling. It’s still a very real physical disease and it’s not going to go away unless you treat it. You will need the doctors to "throw some meds at you", in other words—meaning either antithyroid drugs, radioactive iodine, or a thyroidectomy.

You are seeking treatment so you don’t have another thyroid storm, correct?

[DianneW]

in reply to: Graves triggered by quitting smoking? #1072078

It’s known that smokers are more likely to get Graves’ Disease in the first place than non-smokers are. So the chances are good that you’d have had it anyway, especially with the strong family history. My GD was diagnosed after I quit smoking but I’m quite sure in retrospect that I had it off and on for many years even before that.

In any case, it’s very good that you did quit smoking because you significantly reduce your chances of getting a bad case of the eye disease.

[DianneW]

in reply to: graves is a psychosomatic disease #1072102

The research on whether Graves’ can be brought on by stress is actually conflicting. Some indicates that it might be and other research indicates that it’s not. It’s known that when people have hyperthyroidism they are hypersensitive to stress, and many people have Graves’ for a long time before they realize it, so it’s possible that people associate the beginnings of their Graves’ Disease with stress simply because they were feeling so much stress at the beginning of the disease. Also, when we’re hyperthyroid the adrenal response is hypersensitive, but additional adrenal hormones behave like prednisone and in theory should help autoimmunity if they were to have any affect on the disease. But that hypersensitive adrenal response will make us feel especially stressed. I remember feeling like my life was in danger every time a dog barked, and from there I became angry. Constantly living with that kind of emotion was pure hell.

Stressful life events are something most people are constantly experiencing. They’re part of being a human being. So many people I know have been through so much more stress than I have, but I’m the one who got Graves’ Disease.

The actual research on the triggers of Graves’ Disease focuses on the genetic susceptibility and the environmental triggers for those who have the genetic defect. According to my understanding, stress isn’t necessarily at the top of the list of what is being looked at for potential triggers.

Severe emotional trauma may be a trigger for Graves’ Disease in some people, but I seriously doubt that simple every day stress is a cause. I believe research is uncovering evidence that there are many different triggers for all the autoimmune disease, including Graves’ Disease.

This is not to say that our mind has no effect on our physical health, because our mind is part of our body and can’t be separated out. Neither can we say that the state of our mind is something separate from the health of the body. Mental disorders are often real organic diseases, and those of us with Graves’ Disease should understand as well as anyone how much changes in physical function affect the mind.

Approaching wellness from all angles (physical, emotional, spiritual) is a reasonable choice, to my way of thinking.

[DianneW]

in reply to: My story Graves and the thyroid storm #1072121

That does indeed sound traumatic! When did this happen–is this just recent? Have you made a decision on how to treat your hyperthyroidism? How about your eyes, are they affected?

I’ve known others who have been through what you have and now have normal heart function. I hope yours also is able to fully recover. Talk with your doctor about that possibility. The most important thing now of course is to keep your thyroid levels down so that can’t happen again, and so your body can heal.

Please keep us informed on how you are doing. We’re here to help!

[Author]

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