Symptoms Checklist & Record Keeping
A person suffering with a thyroid condition can display a variety of symptoms associated with many organ systems throughout the body. This indicates that the body is struggling to function normally due to changes in chemical and metabolic processes. Sometimes determining whether you are experiencing underactive and overactive symptoms can be difficult, as many signs and symptoms of thyroid disease can overlap and be confusing. It is therefore vital for your doctor to make a careful assessment of clinical presentation and support these findings with thorough and regular blood testing. A Full Thyroid Function Test (TFT) should always include TSH, free T4, and free T3 to provide a clearer picture of your thyroid status, along with an initial urinary iodine and thyroid autoantibodies test to shed some light on the possible causative factors involved in your thyroid dysfunction.
Whether you are diagnosed, or suspected of having, hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism, carefully monitoring your symptoms will help you and your doctor understand your condition more thoroughly, and help in assessing your progress throughout any treatment protocol. It is wise to be aware of both underactive and overactive symptoms, so as to avoid being under-medicated or over-medicated.
When treating Hypothyroidism, under-medicating will not resolve your hypothyroid symptoms, and over-medicating with too much thyroid hormone replacement will result in hyperthyroid symptoms, which is associated with an overstimulated metabolism. If overactive symptoms appear, a simple reduction in dose should restore metabolism to normal.
When treating Hyperthyroidism to reduce thyroid hormone production, it is not unusual to swing the opposite way, and treatment may leave you with an underactive metabolism and hypothyroid symptoms. The objective should always be, to find your optimal dose which renders you as asymptomatic, or as symptom free as possible. It is therefore important to be aware of the signs and symptoms of both overactivity and underactivity of the thyroid gland, so that normal bodily functions can be restored. The aim of any thyroid treatment should be to return your thyroid hormone levels to their natural setpoint, either through nutrition, diet and supplementation, and/or through conventional thyroid treatment protocols.
A Thyroid Function Test (TFT) should be performed approximately 4 to 6 weeks after any change in medications and dosage. Serum thyroid hormone levels should be regularly assessed alongside any changes in clinical symptomology.
Signs and Symptoms Checklists
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Review, print, and assess your thyroid condition with this comprehensive table of common signs and symptoms of Hypothyroidism and Hyperthyroidism.
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Rate your symptoms according to how they affect your life:
0 - None 1 - Mild 2 - Moderate 3 - Severe
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Record your corresponding thyroid function test results.
The checklists of symptoms will shed light on how thyroid dysfunction is affecting your life. It will aid you and your doctor in monitoring your responses to treatments, and in determining optimal thyroid hormone levels that render you as symptom free as possible.