This month I learned stuff from doctors. Good stuff. Stuff I didn't know, and was surprised to learn. That doesn't happen very often.
1 Thyroid stuff
During my annual physical my doc told me my TSH count was too high. This is always the case. TSH is a hormone that your brain creates to tell your thyroid, Hey. You . Go make some thyroid hormone. Then the thyroid makes its hormone, and the TSH drops down to norma
That's why if TSH is high, it means your thyroid is low. I already knew this. I was diagnosed a few years ago with Hashimoto's disease, and I take thyroid hormone supplements, which get raised about twice every year because whenever they test it, my TSH is too high.
What I didn't know was that hashimotos disease, being an auto-immune disease, has flare-ups. These flare-ups mean that thyroid will suddenly create thyroid hormone. When the flare-up is over, more of the thyroid is destroyed, but during the flares, I have more thyroid hormone than I'm supposed to have. Too much thyroid hormone over the short term can result in irritability or anxiety, sleeplessness, rapid heart beat, sensitivity to heat, sweating, tremor, fatigue or muscle weakness, or increased bowel movements.
I. Did. Not. Know. That.
Throughout most of my life I've been a pretty optimistic person, a little nervous from time to time due to trauma in my past, but overall, pretty happy. Then, about the same time as my thyroid started failing, I became depressed, fatigued, couldn't get enough sleep. At the same time, I would have spans of time where I was irritable, had trouble sleeping, etc., etc., etc. I just chalked it up to the obvious fact that I was, indeed, going insane.
So that's thing number 1. ===============================
Thing 2: Dieting stuff.
Thing number 2 had to do with Dr. Drama, who I wrote about before and who has redeemed himself since then by being extremely helpful and nice (though I still think I could arm wrestle him). I was mentioning during rounds that I often had trouble remembering to track my food, and he said, before you eat anything, take a picture of it with your camera phone.
Apparently this advice is already out there but I hadn't seen it. My first thought was, BRILLIANT! So, I'm still sucky at tracking my food, but I have lots of odd pictures on my phone now.
And so this is a sampling from last week:
This week's sampling should be better. Himself the Baboo is out of town doing soldier stuff for 3 weeks, and when I'm alone, I eat fish and greens, which he hates. So we'll see how I eat for 3 weeks.
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