DrKrupka.com

Dr. Krupka (00:01):

So I just had a situation with a patient. I thought I'd discuss it since we recently did a couple of thyroid hormone related videos. Had a patient call in today. We were going over some of her thyroid results. She deals with another practitioner to get her thyroid hormone prescribed. She takes NP thyroid, which is kind of a mix of T4 and T3. So there was a misunderstanding on the part of her practitioner, and it's a good example of what can happen if you don't understand what the different numbers mean.  I'm just going to go over it with you real quick. Because she's taking thyroid hormone, her TSH is very low. Remember, TSH is how you ask for thyroid hormone. If you're taking pretty much everything you need for thyroid hormone, your pituitary doesn't have a reason to ask you to make more, right?

(00:56):

So your TSH is going to go very low. It's perfectly normal. We expect it. In fact, in cases where someone's had thyroid cancer, they'll give them enough T4 that...

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Autoimmune thyroid problems to some degree autoimmune problems in general, but I'm going to kind of try to keep it to Hashimoto's on this video. But how do they develop? What goes wrong? Can you do anything about it other than just replace hormone? Can you reverse it? Can you get back off thyroid hormone once you've been taking it? Let's tackle those issues in today's video. So I did a video previously about Hashimoto's. What is it? How you test for it? What are the criteria for diagnosing it? I'll put a link to that onto this one, but otherwise, just go back through my blog. You'll find it. It should be posted very close to when I'm posting this one. The intention is to post that one in the following week, post this one, so it shouldn't be hard to find, but assuming you remember all that or you took notes or you've just watched it.

(00:51):

Let's talk about how something like Hashimoto's would develop Hashimoto's. Again, quick reminder, it's antibodies to the thy...

(00:02):

Hypothyroidism, TPO antibodies, some lab numbers kind of criteria for diagnosis and the physiology of making thyroid hormone. Let's talk about that today. I've had some questions lately. I realize I haven't done one of these videos in quite a while, so let's knock this out. Hashimoto's is going to be a name used for the condition of having antibodies toward your thyroid. I'm going to get a little more specific with you, but I think in common terms, I think we've come to the point where if you have an autoimmune thyroid condition, they're just going to call it. I think that's probably fine. I don't think getting super specific about that really makes much of a difference. You'll see why I say that in a minute. So if you have an autoimmune attack on your thyroid, it's going to be called Hashimoto's. Now, let's go through how you make thyroid hormone so that we kind of have the same terminology as I talk about testing and diagnosing.

(01:00):

So you have a gland kind of tucked...

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I wanted to take a few minutes, it's the end of the day here, and excuse the bare walls behind me, I'm in my new office, and we haven't had time to quite finish settling yet. First video from the new office so I guess that's a milestone.

                                           I've had a couple patients come in the past, probably two weeks, where they've had ... well, the patients haven't necessarily had questions about a full thyroid panel, but their other doctors have had questions about, why are we ordering all this lab work? Why would want all this lab work? What are you trying to prove? What are you looking for? What's the relevance of this?

                                           So I wanted to take a few minutes and do a video. I've done thyroid videos in the past, several of them, but I think it's about time I've done another one. So, that's what I'm doing here today.

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