The thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland in your neck that produces hormones, which play a key role in regulating your heartbeat, breathing, and many other functions.
Spotting thyroid disease early is so important as caught early, treatment can prevent complications. When thyroid disease goes untreated for years, it can lead to a dangerously slow (or fast) heartbeat, an injury that refuses to heal, or unrelenting pain. You may have gained or lost weight for no apparent reason. To help you find early (and some not-so-early) signs of thyroid disease on your skin, hair, and nails, here’s a checklist.
How many of these signs and symptoms do you have?
Skin
☐ Dry, pale, and cool skin
☐ Moist, velvety, and warm skin like a baby’s
☐ Dry skin with deep cracks and scale
☐ Deep, noticeable lines on your palms and soles
☐ Yellowish-orange colour on your palms and soles
☐ Doughy and swollen face, especially on your eyelids, lips, and tongue
☐ Widening nose
☐ Slow-healing wounds
☐ Sweating less (or more) than before
☐ Goitre (swelling in the neck)
☐ Protruding eyes
☐ Flushing on your face and red palms
☐ Darker skin in the creases of your palms, on your gums, or elsewhere in your mouth
☐ Rashes, especially in the creases of your skin
☐ Painless lumps and patches of scaly, discoloured skin, and the affected skin feels hard and waxy
☐ Reddish spots on the skin that come and go
Protruding eyes
When eyes protrude, it’s often a sign of thyroid disease.
Painless lumps and patches of scaly skin feel hard and waxy
Lumps on discoloured skin that feel hard and waxy can be a sign of thyroid disease.
Hair
☐ Thinning (or missing) eyebrows on the outer edge
☐ Coarse, dull, dry, and brittle hair that breaks easily
☐ Soft and fine hair with lots of shedding
☐ Thinning hair or balding patches
☐ Growing more slowly (or quickly)
☐ Dry, itchy scalp and dandruff
☐ Less hair on your legs, arms, and other areas
Nails
☐ Thick, dry, and brittle with visible ridges
☐ Soft, shiny, and easily crumble
☐ Growing more slowly (or quickly)
☐ Peel, crumble, or break easily
☐ Lift up
☐ Curved with swollen fingertip and thickening skin above the nail
Itch
☐ Itchy skin without a rash
☐ Untreatable and itchy hives
Existing skin disease
You have a higher risk of developing thyroid disease if you have one of the following:
☐ Vitiligo
☐ Hives
☐ Alopecia areata (autoimmune disease that causes hair loss)
Hidden thyroid disease:
- Do you have weight problems?
- Do you have carpel tunnel syndrome?
- Are you constantly cold when everyone else is all right with the temperature?
- Do you have a gluten intolerance?
- Are you missing about a third of your eyebrows?
These are possible (not definitive) symptoms which could indicate thyroid problems.
What can you do?
First – you must get a medical opinion. If you already have one, and are not doing that well but want to improve your thyroid problem, perhaps try my Pure Hydrolysed Collagen. I have now close on 100 testimonies of people who have had amazing results with my Pure Hydrolysed Collagen regarding thyroid function alone. Glycine is the main protein building block in collagen, and research shows we are all dismally deficient. Glycine is essential for healthy thyroid function and metabolism as a whole, and collagen is extraordinarily rich in glycine.
So here are 5 ways collagen helps your thyroid:
- Collagen BALANCES other proteins in the body. In hypothyroid patients, tryptophan is converted to serotonin which suppresses thyroid function further (by increasing other thyroid-suppressing hormones like cortisol and estrogen). This is where collagen comes to the rescue – there is NO tryptophan in collagen – that is just one reason it is so beneficial to the thyroid.
- Collagen LOWERS CORTISOL in hypothyroidism, which lowers stress levels. Stress hormones BLOCK conversion of T4 to T3 (the active hormone) in the liver – collagen boosts the liver’s ability to convert T4 to the active T3 form by lowering cortisol.
- Collagen lowers ENDOTOXIN, a thyroid-suppressive substance over-produced by intestinal bacteria – usually found in hypothyroidism. It over-burdens the liver, prevents detoxification of estrogen and cortisol and prevents healthy liver detoxification.
- Collagen boosts THYROID & METABOLIC rate by regulating BLOOD SUGAR. Collagen helps to regulate blood sugar and enables you to metabolise carbs without the need for extra insulin, preventing a rise in blood sugar. Most hypothyroid sufferers are insulin resistant – and they have been shown to have more than 26% less glycine than they need – another reason glycine-rich collagen is helpful to hypothyroid and diabetic patients.
- Lastly, collagen improves the thyroid’s ability to USE T3. Having adequate levels of T3 converted from T4 is not enough – you need to be able to UTILISE this T3. Collagen also helps to restore insulin sensitivity and help you reverse insulin resistance.
My amazing Pure Hydrolysed Collagen Peptide powder comes from grass-fed cows, has no smell, is non-GMO and has an almost undetectable taste. You’ll find it at https://sallyanncreed.co.za/shop.
Disclaimer
You can simply click on the name of each product mentioned above (in bold) and a hyperlink will take you directly to the product for an easy purchase.
Originally published on https://www.facebook.com/SallyAnnCreedSA/ in 2020.
