Thyroid hormones can affect your body in a variety of ways. The thyroid gland produces thyroid hormones that regulate your body’s metabolic processes. The levels of thyroid hormones can create higher blood pressure, affect your blood calcium levels, and impact blood circulation. Because of this, your thyroid hormone levels and thyroid function can cause undesired symptoms in your body. Traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture for thyroid can be beneficial treatments.
How Do You Know If You Have an Underactive Thyroid or Another Thyroid Problem?
Most people who have a thyroid problem aren’t sure how to effectively manage thyroid issues — which begins with identifying and treating them. While various supplements can support thyroid function, treating thyroid problems requires testing to determine what might be wrong. Your doctor should test certain crucial thyroid hormones, and once you discover what type of hormonal imbalances could be occurring, you can begin treating thyroid disease.
Acupuncture for thyroid management may supplement your doctor’s recommendations for treatment and has been used for thousands of years to increase blood circulation and treat thyroid disease.
- Has it been a while since you remember feeling first-rate?
- Do you wake up wishing you could go straight back to sleep?
- Have you had a tough time losing weight lately?
- Have your sleep, energy levels, and digestion have been “off?”
- Do your blood tests always return normal, and does your doctor tell you nothing is wrong?
- Do you suspect that you should be feeling better than you are?
- Are you having slower mental processes?
- Do you experience heavy menstrual periods?
- Is there a history of thyroid cancer in your family?
- Are you having frequent bowel movements or too few bowel movements?
If you have answered ‘Yes’ to any of these questions, it could be that you have a thyroid issue. As an acupuncturist, I look at your mental health, your body, and your immune system as a whole. If there is one thing that is off (such as your thyroid), I want to address the thyroid and everything else in your body system that is affected by or affects your thyroid.
This holistic approach allows me to help you find symptomatic relief from the fatigue, body aches, weight loss or gain, and menstrual irregularities that your thyroid hormone dysfunction has caused- while also helping to regulate the underlying issue(s) that led to your thyroid hormone problems.
To help you better understand your thyroid problems, I will address the following three things:
- Signs and symptoms common to thyroid imbalance
- Possible reasons why we see so many thyroid issues these days
- Basic acupuncture and Chinese Medicine treatment options
Signs and Symptoms of Hyperthyroidism and Hypothyroidism
You can thank Oprah for making the thyroid a talked-about body part. In 2007, she unveiled her thyroid diagnosis, and people took notice. Finally, a large number of women became aware of this potential problem and started asking their doctors about their thyroid glands.
As with many Oprah-related things, however, the focus on thyroid disease became very narrow, and being diagnosed with hypothyroid became associated only with being overweight. Although the inability to lose weight, or a sudden unexplained weight gain, can certainly be a clue to a thyroid issue, the symptoms traced back to thyroid disorders are many and highly varied. Here are just a few:
Fatigue, infertility, recurrent miscarriage, achy joints, palpitations, chronic sore throat, hypoglycemia (feeling shaky if you don’t eat often), changes in your menstrual cycle, body weight changes, high cholesterol, anxiety, hair and weight loss, or chronic constipation/IBS.
As an acupuncturist, I look at all of your imbalances or discomforts (symptoms), and I find patterns that link them all together. I don’t treat your thyroid by simply saying, ‘Take a thyroid medication.’
I treat YOU, so as you get healthier, your thyroid will also function better. Some of the treatments I recommend may directly affect your thyroid, but always with the goal of improving your overall health.
Hypothyroidism, hyperthyroidism, and other thyroid diseases require a clinical diagnosis to determine whether you are experiencing overactive thyroid (hyperthyroidism) or underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism). Testing for the thyroxine hormone and measuring your body’s production of thyroid hormones through blood tests can help you understand what’s wrong and get you on the path to restoring immune function through traditional medicine and Eastern treatments.
What is the Thyroid Gland?
The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped gland that contributes to thyroid hormone production. An enlarged thyroid gland or another thyroid problem can create one or more of the symptoms described above. The thyroid gland secretes many hormones, and thyroid disorders stem from its irregularities. Additionally, vascular and immunomodulatory factors play a role in whether you have too little or too much thyroid hormone in your body.
By lowering thyroid hormone levels and keeping an eye on the thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), Western medicine can do a great deal to help. However, I believe you should complement it with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
How Common Are Thyroid Disorders?
Thyroid disorders are becoming more and more prevalent in America. Here are some facts courtesy of the American Thyroid Association:
- 1 in 8 women will develop a thyroid disorder.
- Up to 60% of those with thyroid disease are unaware of it.
So why all the thyroid problems? There are likely numerous contributing factors to this seeming epidemic. First, for several decades, chemicals in the form of plastics, pesticides, hormones in our food and water supply, toxic cleaning products, and so on have inundated your body. Current research shows many of these to be hormone disruptors.
Second, many of you live a chronically stressed life. Your adrenals become taxed by stress, and as your adrenals work closely with your thyroid, it is common to see issues in one system cause issues with the other. The price for the standard American way of life may have been your thyroid health.
When you use traditional Chinese medicine to restore hormone balance, you’ll find that it can drastically influence and improve energy levels. Some patients report less pain and improved muscle stiffness because the acupuncture helped restore hormone balance.
How can Acupuncture for Thyroid and Chinese Medicine Help Your Thyroid Gland?
After tracing back possible triggers, such as pregnancy, significant stress, illness, or trauma, and looking at your current antagonists — the things that make you far below par — we map out a custom plan to treat thyroid problems and restore hormonal balance. That plan can include the following:
- Acupuncture will help with symptoms, immune function, stress/relaxation, and hormonal balance, including a balance of vital body chemicals.
- Herbal medicine is another one of the eastern treatments. It creates a strong and safe internal medicine that can support your body as a whole and can treat specific issues. It is also completely customized to you and your body and supplements a nutrient-rich diet.
- Nutrition recommendations will remove problematic foods and introduce healing foods. I promise that you will still eat yummy food!
- Stress-reducing exercises aren’t necessarily intense when it comes to alternative medicine treatments. Examples include meditation, as hormone regulation can also deal with the pituitary gland. (This gland produces cortisol, a stress hormone). Meditation and simple exercises can help you restore thyroid hormone levels.
- My support, which is valuable because I have lots of training, have successfully treated many people with thyroid issues, and I have been where you are — certain that there is a way that I can feel better that does not just involve taking a pill. In other words, you will have the support of a person who has expertise and understanding.
Acupuncture uses very thin needles to access and open up small blood vessels in the body. It’s believed to trigger hormone production and thyroid antibodies and encourage balance in the body.
If you have read this far and you recognize yourself in these symptoms, or if you remember a time when you felt well and would like to feel that way again, head over to my website to delve deeper into the benefits of Chinese Medicine and acupuncture for thyroid health and to schedule your free consultation. Don’t live in Portland? No problem. Contact me to find out how we can work together long-distance.
It is time to take control of your health.
