Hashimoto's---Mary's story

It can be a long journey to good health for some of us.  For others, the roll of the gene dice at birth gets them snake eyes, deuces or another lucky pair.  They get the red carpet roll out with no health problems to speak of through childhood and into adulthood.  No colds, no flus, no bouts of vomiting.  Maybe some sniffles.  Otherwise, health is a given.  They wouldn't understand any other way.

Others of us don't fare so well.  A bad roll sets us up with a cascade of issues, stacked upon one another.  Some work it out in infanthood after colicky days.  Some work it out in toddlerhood.  And in childhood. Some just never work it out.

I fell into the last category.  It was a dominoes situation leading to the end result of feeling crappy all the time and wondering why.  It's boring and melodramatic to talk about one's health problems.  Suffice it to say, I had more colds than the  norm, more stomachaches, more headaches, more strep throats and the list goes on.

Then I entered into early adulthood and the stakes ramped up.  I was at the roulette table of health by this point.  Not the craps table anymore. I was breakdown-able.  My particular Achilles heel was pollen season which left me down for the count after every spring.

I pulled the plug and decided to go hippie.  Delving into natural health with Andrew Weil's Natural Health, Natural Medicine as my bible.  I started off small focusing on the allergies.  There were dips and turns.   Small victories, then relapses.  Along the way, I figured out something was metabolically way off.

And thus I discovered that I had a condition known as Hashimoto's Disease.  It sounded pretty dramatic and brought forth visions in my mind of Japanese warriors and the like. 

In brief, it is an autoimmune disease that causes the thyroid to attack itself by making anti-bodies against thyroid cells.  The thyroid is the master gland of metabolism and responsible for running many other body parts in doing so---such as the heart, for example.  So...when this gland malfunctions, there are a whole host of symptoms that can go on.  Including allergies and susceptibility to illnesses.  After learning about it, I suspected I had had it for a long time.

But it is a chicken and egg scenario.  Did my thyroid fail because of other ill health problems?  I had a lot of strep throats as a child.  I also had mumps at age 12 caused by a faulty vaccine against mumps.  Did this impact on my thyroid cause its problems?  Or, conversely, did all my allergies and illnesses come from the fact that my thyroid had never worked right?

The end result of Hashimoto's is a state of hypothyroidism, meaning the thyroid needs supplemental hormones to function.  On the surface, this sounds easy.  Replacement in kind.  But it's not so easy. I first tried every natural option out there:  natural dessicated porcine hormone, fuccus seaweed, acupuncture and all kinds of herbs.  Once I exhausted all the options, I had to turn to the drug of choice which is called Synthroid. 

My turbulent affair with Synthroid began and I have taken this drug for 14 years.  Sadly, it has not been a good friend to  me.  While it has kept my thyroid marginally functional, I have pumped huge doses into my body with a less than optimal outcome. 

Over the past two years, I have experimented with diet and adrenal support in order to help my thyroid do what it needs to do.  I have been able to get my antibody levels down to nil----meaning I no longer have an active Hashimoto's concern.  Now it is a question of establishing how to supplement the level of hypothyroidism.  So I have been finagling a lesser dose of Synthroid in combination with some natural hormone called Naturethroid.  The trick is to get to a dose that doesn't bother my heart with palpitations but yet enables my body to not be in a hypothyroid state. 

Like most relationships, it's complicated.....