it's Hannah here from Chore With Me and in today's heart declutter we are going to
be continuing on with my story of my autoimmune disorder I know that talking
about a thyroid probably isn't the most exciting thing that's gonna be happening
today but seriously stick around and you will
learn something about your thyroid especially if you have hyperthyroidism
or Graves disease I think you're gonna find this video super helpful if you
missed the first video go ahead and click the link that appears on the
screen right now to go watch that video first or grab it down in the description
box so today I want to talk a little bit about what the function of the thyroid
gland actually is so we're gonna go back to anatomy and physiology class for just
a little bit and I am a terrible artist and so I found these pictures online and
I'm going to explain a little bit about what the thyroid gland actually does
let's first talk a little bit about the location of the thyroid it is located
right below the Adam's apple or the windpipe which is right here it has two
lobes and people often say it kind of looks like a butterfly which you could
see that shape right there the lobes surround of the trachea and then it
weighs usually between 20 to 60 grams and it's about two inches long so it's a
pretty tiny little thing but it can wreak some serious havoc on your body if
it is not working properly so its job is to create a thyroid hormone and those
hormones are going to be what help regulate our metabolism our growth and
our development so let's get a little more acquainted with our hypothalamus so
the hypothalamus is located at the base of the brain and it's responsible for
the activity of the pituitary which is its little friend right down here so
let's just give that a little bit of color there's our little hypothalamus
now it basically helps make sure that the body stays in a stable condition or
homeostasis as it's very often referred to and it releases trh and that is the
short form for thyrotropin-releasing hormone it is going to release our trh
once the thyroid releases trh that is going to stimulate the release of
thyroid stimulating hormone from the pituitary gland so they work
hand-in-hand
so we get a little bit of that the pituitary gland is also located in the
brain it's kind of known as the master gland of the body it's about the size of
the pea and it just sits right inside there and its job is gonna be to produce
a variety of hormones now these hormones travel throughout the entire body and
they stimulate other glands like the thyroid gland so in essence the
pituitary gland is regulating how much hormone the thyroid actually produces so
it does this by releasing the TSH as we stated and then the TSH is going to
stimulate the thyroid gland to start producing its set of hormones so the
thyroid gland has receptors for the TSH so let's draw in a couple of little
receptors here let's just say those are our little receptors again I'm not
artistic I don't have a clue what receptors actually look like
but in my mind this is how they look so that TSH that's produced is then going
to go ahead pop down here and bind with those receptors and now is where tyro
globulin comes into play cyril globulin is an inactive hormone that is produced
by the thyroid gland so let's just write that in here and let's fancy up our
thyroid gland a little because you know it is the star of the show so let's just
outline this a little bit so thyroid globulin needs to take in and absorb
iodine which is found in our food in order to produce thyroxine thyroxine is
the hormone of the thyroid let's draw in a little iodine here so iodine is found
largely in our food and it's incredibly important for the thyroid hormone
production so if you don't have enough iodine in your body your body is
actually unable to make thyroglobulin so what happens is the thyroid is looking
for iodine to absorb so it's gonna go searching all over the place for this
little iodine here and if it does not find iodine it keeps getting the whole
thyroid keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger in search of iodine and that
is what actually can cause people to develop gorras so basically it's a
swelling of the thyroid gland in search of iodine
but for our sake we're going to say we get plenty of iodine so the thyroid
globulin is going to find its iodine it's going to absorb it it is going to
split and your end result is going to be t3 and t4 which are actually known as
thyroxine now t4 is mainly inactive and it's basically converted into t3 it is
our active thyroid hormone so I feel like it deserves a little colour Oh
what's wrong with that guy so we'll give t3 a little color yeah let's give t4 a
little color too so the thyroid gland is going to circulate t3 and t4 into the
bloodstream so as these guys circulate in the bloodstream they have several
jobs okay so I was running off the page there a little bit so I just whited that
out and we're just gonna come down here and do it this way
like I said clearly I am NOT very artistic or good with measurements so
anyway as I was saying these hormones are control the rate at which cells and
organs are gonna turn nutrients into energy so they're going to help with
energy they also help control our oxygen consumption so we know that the red
blood cells are what get oxygen into our bodies so they're necessary for oxygen
as well it helps with clear thinking and they also are going to help regulate our
blood pressure and our heart rate when we talk about metabolism and body
function we think of all of these things right here so essentially these hormones
are helping our bodies with homeostasis and homeostasis is basically just
referring to our body being in a stable place so as these hormones are
circulating in our bloodstream they actually give feedback back to the
pituitary glands so we're just gonna draw this little arrow up here and they
are still communicating with the pituitary gland the pituitary gland is
able to sense if more thyroxine is needed by the body and if it does it
actually is going to go ahead and release more TSH
which then starts the entire process all over again if there is plenty of the of
these hormones within your bloodstream it
will not be releasing as much TSH this entire process is actually called the
negative feedback loop this is ideally how our body should work but sometimes
things get a little jumbled up and this isn't exactly what happens so how does
having Graves disease change this whole process that we just talked about
well Graves disease is an autoimmune disorder that results in the
overproduction of thyroid hormones also known as hyperthyroidism my body is
essentially attacking itself or working against itself so this whole negative
feedback loop system is not functioning properly
there are several reasons why these dysfunctions can happen they can be
genetic they can be environmental factors they can be stress it sounds
like the jury is still out a little bit on this no one seems to be a hundred
percent sure why exactly the dysfunction happens my body was producing way too
much t3 and t4 when I started getting my blood testing done my t3 and t4 levels
were extremely high but my TSH levels way up here were actually incredibly
incredibly low so there are different interventions that doctors use I was put
on methimazole it's a medication that tries to stop the thyroid from producing
all of these extra hormones right here now this is what I treatment can get
really involved and complicated because there are multiple structures that are
involved it's not just the thyroid gland also the pituitary gland the
hypothalamus are environmental factors that we talked about that could be
causing it when your body doesn't function at its optimal physiology there
are going to be some obvious signs and symptoms like the ones I talked about in
my previous video I had increased blood pressure and heart rate which I remember
very distinctly very high resting heart rate I believe at one point my resting
heart rate was 200 beats per minute probably the average person's resting
heart rate for someone that is healthy should be probably around 60 beats per
minute and mine was 200 so yeah I felt like I was constantly running a marathon
and then you can also get the eyes bulging so the eyes start to bulge
because pressure is building up behind the eyes you also are going to have
increase in body temperature you also lose weight and that makes sense because
your heart is beating so fast and it's beating like that all the time that it's
like your body's in a constant state a very high excitement and high energy so
decrease in weight and just kind of an overall restlessness and I would say
that's probably even more than being irritable I was very restless when I was
first experiencing all of these symptoms right here I have my TSH levels checked
and they were very low which is very indicative of a thyroid dysfunction and
in my case specifically grades disease and hyperthyroidism the job of a thyroid
hormones right here that clear thinking the regulating that heart rate and blood
pressure and getting that oxygen to where it's supposed to go these are now
very dysfunctional I was experiencing all of these things and it was time for
a bit of an intervention and that's coming up in my next video