You and Your Thyroid
Your thyroid is going to play a major role in your overall health. More and more people are coming to realize that.
Whether it’s for your energy, your mood, your weight, or to prevent the onset of chronic diseases. (Read: How to prevent an underactive thyroid from causing diabetes)
Testing is important because you need to give yourself a sense of where your thyroid health is. If you don’t know, how can you be sure you are doing the right thing?
It’s not always clear who has thyroid disease, and who does not, so testing is going to give us a foundational understanding of where you stand with risk and with treatment.
When it comes to the thyroid range of health, I think it is important to distinguish between “normal” and “optimal”.
When we think about testing, it is not an automatic process. It comes down to who is reading and analyzing your tests:
- Normal – Classifying your thyroid as “normal” does not always mean that your health is where it needs to be. It just means that it is meeting the bottom-line expectations or acceptability.
- Optimal – Instead, we should be aiming for “optimal” – which is always where your thyroid health should be (it is also a narrower approach). We will continue with this in mind.