Liver function and low thyroid or Exercise and Dieting can make you ill!

Exercise junkie or perhaps a life long dieter, do you really know what you are doing to your body?
Your GP is questioning your liver function and you are worried you may have liver damage, its more likely to be your thyroid starting to play up. So get them both checked out!

Just as my thyroid was packing in, I noticed I was gaining weight. I also went through a bad life experience and didn’t feel like eating. I went exercising to lose the weight and I dropped a lot of weight really quickly. I thought I was taking control of the only area of my life that at that time I had any control over. In fact my thyroid was already playing up and the signs were there…

Trouble conceiving. An early menopause. Pain in my joints. Becoming more forgetful. Vision altering.
Losing my eyebrows and hair on my legs!
Floaters in my eyes, those annoying bits that confuse your vision.

I’ve been asked by a few people about low liver function and thyroid and they are inter-connected. The answer is a huge yes and so many things we do could be affecting our health.

• Your thyroid produces a pro – hormone T4 (it’s not active in your body) and it gets transported to your liver where it is turned into T3, T2 and T1.
• If your thyroid is not producing enough T4, then not enough is getting to your liver for the conversion into the hormones that your body needs to work correctly.
• The liver then realises that something is wrong and goes into an energy-saving mode by reducing your metabolic rate.
  You may feel cold or think you have a low heart rate and as I was told, ‘wow your heart rate is slow, you must be an athlete’. Actually I was going into thyroid failure.
• Thyroid illness mimics Liver illness with symptoms such as pain, fatigue, swelling of the face such as eyelids and also coma.
• When your Liver gets impacted it may also affect your body’s ability to bind thyroid hormones to your cells, which is where they need to be. They are inactive in your blood (which is why blood tests really tell us nothing at all!) and only work when attached to cells. The liver problem may stop this process.

A complex relationship exists between the thyroid gland and the liver in both health and disease. A multi-system approach to treating patients with diseases affecting either organ is vital to avoid missing subtle but clinically relevant abnormalities. This is something that we all need to know in our work towards better thyroid health.

A vitamin which is vital for this is Selenium.

Exercise is often mentioned as a good way of getting over the laziness associated with thyroid patients. It is because our thyroids are out of sync with our body that we cannot do things, I for one was trying my best to keep going. I was not a giving in type of person and yet I still fell gravely ill.
Now there is compelling evidence that suggests that, if exercise-related energy expenditure exceeds calories consumed, a low T3 syndrome may be induced.
In female athletes, four days of low energy availability reduced T3, free T3, increased reverse T3, and slightly increased T4.
For those who seriously increase their exercise levels, whilst perhaps not knowing that their thyroid is under pressure, or those who crash diet then you could easily be opening yourself up to having long-term severe thyroid issues.
For those who have no thyroid problem, then exercising sensibly whilst eating a diet that contains enough calories will prevent damage.
The question is,

Do you know if your thyroid is in trouble,
or will it be too late for you to prevent long term illness?

I’ve now found out that in Spain you cannot buy T3 (Liothyronine- Cytomel). There must be many people over here with thyroid problems who just never get back their quality of life. If the Doctors do not know that more help is available then it is a huge issue. I want to see if I can do anything about this.