Underactive thyroid

08/07/12 08:14 [Sunday]
I believe I mentioned that I go to see my GP every two or three months the original idea (I suspect) being that he could keep an independent eye on my mental state. When I started going to see him in early summer of last year he sent me for a blood test. I suppose he thought he should check out my general health through that means (as well as through what he could see himself and what I reported to him) and indeed nowadays much more so than when my parents were alive - that’s only ten years ago I’m talking about - the overall direction in the NHS (and the much-mentioned Department of Health) is to check over the population’s health on a regular basis instead of merely providing doctors for people to go and complain to. That blood test in June 2011 seemed to show that I had an underactive thyroid, so the GP sent me for a second blood test to verify it. That second blood test showed a normal result for the thyroid.
But cutting to the chase the blood test two or three weeks ago - I’m not sure whether he sent me for this one because it’s a year since the last or whether it was a follow-up because a blood test I had a month or six weeks ago arranged automatically by the GP practice and not the GP himself omitted checking the thyroid, or whether it has more to do with the fact that I may be moving home soon - that blood test two or three weeks ago showed clearer signs of an underactive thyroid than the one last year. So the GP has put me on levothyroxine tablets which he says I will need lifelong. The fact that people with underactive thyroid don’t recover from the condition - and it tends to be a more natural factor as people age anyway - is recognised in the rules for paying for prescriptions: that is those on a régime of thyroxine medication don’t have to pay for their prescriptions whatever their circumstances.
If the thyroid gland is underactive it slows down the metabolism - the thyroid gland being a sort of controller overall of bodily mechanisms of growth and energy conversion - and an underactive thyroid can slow down mental and emotional processes this resulting for example in depression or confused thinking. The way I understand myself this must have been a factor in the mental condition which took me into hospital in 2010 and 2011. I believe my thinking - mediated by the neurotransmitter dopamine - was too much racing and my brain was trying to process information in too close detail, whereas my body (through the thyroid and its production of the thyroxine hormone) was unable to keep up with my brain this exacerbating the condition.
It has struck me that if I share links to other websites then when readers come across the links in future years the target document may not be there. Still I do give this link - see http://www.jennifermoyer.com/2012/the-thyroid-and-mental-health - guessing that readers who are interested, if the link doesn’t work, can search the internet themselves.
I am presently on a very low starting dose of levothyroxine but I have to say I notice I do feel more energetic after about two weeks so far of the treatment. I tend to do less sitting still pondering why things can’t be better than they are. In truth these days - since the lowered dosage of my Risperdal kicked in really, but helped along certainly by my new-found greater physical energy through the thyroxine - I am more active: not in terms of walking more miles (although when I visit Dawn we do more walking than I do in Kingswinford) but in terms of taking a greater interest in life. I have been selling on eBay some of the surplus computer equipment I amassed when I had less sense, and that’s given me a definite structure to follow each time I sell an item, and it is a structure I have had to learn because I had never sold anything on eBay before. So you can see that being more active in the physical universe carries with it the necessity to be more active mentally, and it all helps to combat stillness, inertia and low mood such as I suffered when on the higher dosage of Risperdal.
I will mention anxiety again. Anxiety is usually associated with being restless and trying to do too much. In fact an overactive thyroid can lead to restlessness and anxiety. But anxiety is also commonly juxtaposed with depression and depression has to do with being underactive and living too restricted a life (a prime example being depression if we should call it that in bereavement, after a major source of stimulation has been lost). The anxiety I was suffering last year - caused by the too-high dosage of Risperdal - derived from an underactive intellect through the mechanism of not thinking up ways round problems (and most specifically from not being able to talk to tradesmen I needed to help me at the bungalow: not being able to talk to them because my mind was a blank) and therefore being subject to buffeting by circumstances. This was rather how things used to be for me up to when I left university, when (in my teens) I was what I learned to call schizoid, that is socially avoidant and with my mind going blank when I needed to talk to people about real-world problems. I think the way it worked in terms of dopamine was different in my teenage years - I think it was what I may metaphorise as refraction of dopaminergic neural systems rather than underactivity of dopamine per se - that is so many things came to mind to be said, and most of them very unnatural-sounding and stilted or too intellectual and not a bit relaxed and easy-going, that I remained silent. I’m sure there are many people the same some of whom are teenagers and some of whom it remains with into adult life - and let me say here my belief is that the internet is a great help to such people and it’s a pity we didn’t have the internet when I was at uni.