Symptoms of Autoimmune Thyroid Disease

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Doctor David Cathcart. I am a family practice physician in Heartland Regional Medical Center in St. Joseph, Missouri. And I've been asked to talk to you today about thyroid disease. The thyroid gland sits in roughly this portion of your neck and its job is to regulate thyroid hormone in your body. And your thyroid hormone has to be, a certain amount has to be put out by your thyroid gland in order for your body to function properly. I like to think of it as essentially the gasoline of the body. If you have too much thyroid hormone floating around then your body tends to get very active or very hyper. Your heart tends to race, you get sweaty and you lose weight. Whereas if it's under-active or if your thyroid hormone is too low, you tend to get lethargic or tired and sleepy and you ten to gain weight and your skin gets dry. So but typically what happens when someone has autoimmune thyroid disease, by autoimmune I mean that your own immune system is part of the problem. If your thyroid starts to attack your thyroid, and your thyroid starts to go crazy and it starts spitting out way too much thyroid hormone. So, and when that happens then people's heart will start racing, they start to lose weight, and this happens over a course of months or maybe even years. They'll tend to get very nervous, they'll get hot and sweaty, they may have diarrhea. So that's typical of the symptoms of autoimmune thyroid disease. This is Doctor Cathcart and thanks for letting me talk to you about thyroid disorders."