Thyroid Function
DISCOVER MORE ABOUT BALANCING HORMONES
Supporting You in Optimising Thyroid Function
If you are struggling with your weight, mood, menstrual irregularities, feeling cold and losing your hair, you may want to consider your thyroid function.
The thyroid gland is one of the glands that is part of the body’s hormone system. It is situated in the front of the neck and is butterfly shaped. It has several important roles in the body, the largest of which is to release hormones that regulate metabolism – the way your body uses energy.
The thyroid’s hormones regulate vital body functions including breathing, heart rate, body weight, menstrual cycles, bone health, body temperature and more.
Our team of thyroid specialists can help to support you with personalised thyroid treatments to help you reach optimal thyroid health.
Signs & Symptoms of Thyroid Dysfunction
Thyroid imbalances can be divided into either under-function, known as hypothyroidism or over-function, known as hyperthyroidism.
HYPOTHYROIDISM – UNDERACTIVE THYROID
- Constipation
- Cold intolerance/ low body temperature
- Depression
- Dry, coarse or thick skin
- Excessive fatigue
- Goitre – enlarged, swollen and lumpy thyroid
- Hair loss
- Headaches (including migraines)
- Infertility and impotence
- Low sex drive
- Menstrual/ menopausal problems
- Unexplained weight gain or difficulty losing weight
HYPERTHYROIDISM – OVERACTIVE THYROID
- Anxiety
- Breathlessness
- Diarrhoea
- Hair loss
- Hyperactivity
- Insomnia
- Increased perspiration, intolerance to heat
- Menstrual irregularities
- Palpitations
- Protruding eyes
- Vitiligo
- Weight loss
Thyroid Specialists & Thyroid Treatment
FACTORS THAT AFFECT THYROID FUNCTION
There are a multitude of factors that can affect thyroid function, including your nutritional intake and your ability to digest and absorb those nutrients. In addition, factors such as stress, external toxins, medications and infections can each influence your thyroid. Our team of thyroid specialists can help to identify your contributing factors, and create a nutrition and lifestyle plan to help address them and restore thyroid health.
THYROID FUNCTION SPECIALISTS
Thyroid imbalances can be addressed with medication; please discuss this with your GP.
However, don’t discount the critical role that both nutrition and lifestyle can play in optimising thyroid function and thyroid treatment.
Our expert team of thyroid specialists will ask you a variety of questions to understand your experience of thyroid imbalance as well as with the aim of identifying the root cause of your thyroid symptoms.
Our team of both thyroid dietitians and thyroid nutritionists will create a personalised nutrition and lifestyle plan to support any nutritional deficiencies and to help restore balance to your thyroid function. Here are a few examples of how our thyroid function specialists may introduce thyroid treatments to support you:
- Micronutrient Building Blocks: Thyroid hormones are built from protein (tyrosine) and iodine, so these dietary building blocks are crucial. Minerals, such as selenium, copper and zinc provide essential co-factors for enzymatic conversions of thyroid hormones. Additional nutrients such vitamin E, B vitamins, C, D and iron also contribute to proper thyroid function. Exercise helps to stimulate thyroid gland secretion and can help improve cellular sensitivity to thyroid hormones.
- Stress Response: Our adrenal function (our stress response) and our thyroid function are inextricably linked, a little like two wheels of a bicycle. So managing stress levels is important to support thyroid health.
- Functional Testing: Conventional thyroid tests often only test your TSH levels. However, this misses out crucial information to be able to support your thyroid effectively. We offer private thyroid testing to provide detailed information on your thyroid hormones, such as your ability to convert to the active thyroid hormone T3, or the inactive thyroid hormone rT3, as well as checking for autoimmune thyroid antibodies. This allows for a more effective thyroid treatment plan.
- Toxins & Halides: Our team of thyroid experts will also take into consideration the many external factors such as toxins (including pesticides, mercury, cadmium and lead) and halides (including fluoride (found in some toothpastes) and chloride (e.g. from swimming pools) which can negatively impact thyroid function and iodine production.
HASHIMOTOS AND GRAVES DISEASE
Hashimotos and Graves disease are autoimmune thyroid conditions. Autoimmune diseases occur when your body’s natural immune system mistakes your own cells for foreign cells, and launches an attack on your cells.
Our team of Hashimoto’s specialists and Grave’s Disease experts can adapt the thyroid treatment to support the autommine aspect of thyroid disease. Our thyroid specialists will work to help identify and reduce your individual triggers, which also creates a personalised and nourishing diet to help to calm the immune system and reduce autoimmune antibodies.
Our thyroid experts will also assess a multitude of other factors that may be contributing to your Hashimotos or Graves disease such as stress exposure and management, digestive health and sleep health. Together creating a well-rounded and functional approach to your thyroid treatment.
Functional Testing
Thyroid imbalances can be complex and difficult to interpret. Thyroid tests offered by standard GP practices usually include just TSH and T4, providing information on only part of the thyroid pathway.
T3 is the active thyroid hormone and offers critical information on thyroid function. Thyroid antibodies such as Thyroid Peroxidase and Thyroglobulin antibodies allow assessment of the extent of an autoimmune process such as Hashimoto’s or Graves disease.
We offer several different functional testing options, including comprehensive thyroid panels with private laboratories to gain deeper insight into any current imbalances of thyroid dysfunction and to further inform our thyroid treatments.
When necessary we work with a specialised medical team to provide targeted medical support alongside our nutrition and lifestyle interventions.
Thyroid imbalances are complex and wide-ranging. A full thyroid test can help to give an insight into symptoms including:
- Fatigue
- Constipation
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Headaches
- Skin Issues
- Hormone Imbalances
- Weight Gain
- Fluid Retention
- Reduced Libido
- Skin Problems
- Poor Concentration
- Cold Sensitivity
- Musculoskeletal Pains
What Can You Test For?
- TSH
- Thyroxine (T4)
- T3 Uptake
- Reverse T3 (rT3)
- Thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO)
- Thyroglobulin Antibodies (TgAb)
- fT4
- fT3
WHAT SAMPLE DO YOU NEED?
A blood draw is required for a full thyroid panel to be performed.
Sample Report
BOOK A CALL WITH OUR FRIENDLY ASSESSMENT TEAM
Please check Our Fees page before booking a call.
Choose a day and time that works for you.
Tell us what is going on for you.
Let us explain how we can help.
FAQs
Everyone is different, and the number of consultations can depend on the length of time you have had symptoms, how motivated you are for change, and how regularly you want your sessions. On average we recommend an initial consultation and 2 to 3 follow-up sessions over a 3 month period. Many of our clients choose one of our Online Health Packages.
Definitely not! Functional testing is an additional option for a more detailed assessment of your current health status. We can still support you and create a personalised nutrition and lifestyle plan for you based on our in-depth health assessments, presenting symptoms and health goals.
Our prices vary depending on which practitioner you see and the length of the consultation. We like to be transparent about our fees, and you can take a look here.
NEXT STEPS
If you resonate with any of these symptoms and would like some support, please book a complimentary call with our friendly assessment team.
They will talk through your health goals and symptoms, and recommend one of our nutrition team that specialises in balancing hormones.