Wellness

[Bird mama]

Sarahpanda, I sincerely wish your daughter the best.

[sarahpanda]

Bird mama: Thank you so much for the best wishes. She's going for a second opinion tomorrow but I think she's already accepted the fact that she's going to have to have it done. My heart aches for her, she's put in so much effort losing this weight. All prayers greatly appreciated !

[JudiL]

So many great replies. I also have Hashimoto's Disease (autoimmune disease where your body attacks your thyroid). I still have mine but I would like to throw it out! Gah! However, every single person who I have talked to says that it is better to have a lousy thyroid than none at all.

I did not do well on natural thyroid replacement and I am on synthetic. I did great on Levoxyl until they took it off the market last year, so now I am on Tirosint. It is a T4 drug with no fillers. I also take T3 (Cytomel), which is extremely important for my thyroid maintenance. So many doctors don't look at T3 production and only believe in looking at TSH and T4. It is REALLY IMPORTANT that your doctor go to a very good endocrinologist who knows what the #$%^&*( he/she is talking about. Otherwise, she will suffer for the rest of her life with trying to balance it.

My Hashimoto's is the result of celiac disease which was never diagnosed until my 50's. Throughout my life, my body was attacking my thyroid due to celiac. Hitting perimenopause put me into a downward spiral until I finally found an alternative doctor who was knowledgeable. Now the only way for me to stay balanced is to stay on a strict autoimmune protocol diet (I cheat all the time). GLUTEN is a NO-NO for anyone with thyroid problems. STAY AWAY FROM IT. I also cannot have dairy and egg whites. And NO SOY. SOY is awful for anyone with thyroid disease.

Tell your daughter to go to the website http://thyroid.about.com and do her research before doing ANYTHING else.

[Bird mama]

On 9/14/2014 bunsnpigs said:

So many great replies. I also have Hashimoto's Disease (autoimmune disease where your body attacks your thyroid). I still have mine but I would like to throw it out! Gah! However, every single person who I have talked to says that it is better to have a lousy thyroid than none at all.

Bunsnpigs, I almost wrote what you did about wishing the thyroid was just out already but I didn't want to make light of that type of surgery. I honestly think the thyroid function in my body could be mimicked more effectively with prescriptions if the thyroid was just out of my body. Because it's auto-immune related it's not easy managing it when you never know how much the body will be attacking the thyroid today.

[violann]

On 9/14/2014 sarahpanda said:

Bird mama: Thank you so much for the best wishes. She's going for a second opinion tomorrow but I think she's already accepted the fact that she's going to have to have it done. My heart aches for her, she's put in so much effort losing this weight. All prayers greatly appreciated !

Hi sarahpanda! I'm concerned about your concern, and I'll tell you why- as a lifelong loser/regained, I have FINALLY learned that losing weight and keeping it off should NOT take a lot of effort. If it does, I think the chances for long term weight management are much more difficult than figuring out why you gained the weight and eliminating relapse factors. I read "war stories" about current and formerly morbidly obese people pretty often, and through doing so, I've developed a pretty strong sense that I really PREFER being on program than off. Whatever my thyroid status is at a given moment, that doesn't change. I hope that your DD has had encouragement from her weight loss resources to think along the same lines. All my best to her!