Heavy periods connected to under active thyroid

Your period tells me a lot about your health - especially your thyroid.

Thyroid hormones affect every cell in you body

The reason you may feel not quite right when you thyroid is dysregulated is because every cell in your body is also feeling dysregulated. 

It is also the reason why thyroid issues have so many signs and symptoms, because they impact so many different areas of the body.

Thyroid hormones play a large role in menstruation and one of the major signs is whether your period is heavy or light.  Heavy periods go hand in hand with under active thyroid. 

Your thyroid could be involved if you notice signs such as:

• Bleeding that lasts more than seven days
• Bleeding that soaks through one or more tampons or pads every hour for several hours in a row
• Needing to wear more than one pad at a time to control menstrual flow
• Needing to change pads or tampons during the night
• Menstrual flow with blood clots that are as big as a 20 cent piece or larger
• premenstrual spotting
• irregular periods or no period
• girls getting their periods early (between 8 & 11 years)

Another area that is often looked over when it comes to thyroid is the role it plays in fertility.  Ovarian follicles need thyroid hormones to develop.  Therefore insufficient thyroid hormones can cause a failure to ovulate.  Most of the time issues connected to ovulation are put down to reproductive hormones like oestrogen and testosterone but we need to go one step further back to the pituitary gland who is like the master controller of hormones.  Thyroid hormone levels have a great impact on other hormones being produced by the pituitary gland such as prolactin, follicle stimulating hormone, and luteinizing hormone. 

Low thyroid hormones impact on your levels of oestrogen as well.  When thyroid hormones are low then the liver has difficulty processing oestrogen leading to an excess of oestrogen in ratio to progesterone (therefore heavy periods).  This excess oestrogen can then lead to metabolism issues and actually slow it down leading to

- weight gain,

- fluid retention,

- irritability,

- breast tenderness,

- sugar cravings

As thyroid hormones affect so many areas of the body an issue with thyroid is often misdiagnosed as other conditions such as 

• Depression
• Anxiety Disorder
• Fibromyalgia
• Chronic fatigue syndrome
• Bipolar Disorder
• Unexplained infertility
• Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
• Menopause syndrome

I see a large number of patients who come to see me as their last resort as they have been told time and time again that there is nothing wrong with their thyroid.  Often only one test has been done - TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone) Why only one test? because this is the one that medicare will cover for free, and if it is inside reference range medicare will not pay for any further testing. 

I am often sending patients for further thyroid tests as TSH does not tell us the whole story, it only tells us how hard the pituitary gland is trying to stimulate the thyroid gland.

What is missing?

- how much hormone is being produced by the thyroid?

- how much inactive hormone is being converted to active thyroid hormone? (the one that does all of the work)

- do you have a fatty liver and this is causing conversion issues?

- is the thyroid gland being attacked by your own immune system making it not work properly?

- how high is your reverse T3? (the brakes on metabolism)

- what is your ratio between active t3 and rt3?

- what is your gut health like? are you having trouble converting thyroid hormone due to imbalanced microbes in your gut preventing you from converting?

- do you have enough nutrients in your body to support thyroid function?

Who am I?

I am a Bachelor qualified Naturopath who specialises in improving metabolic processes in the body. Major areas for improvement include gut, thyroid, kidney, skin and liver health. Conditions such as hypothyroidism, fatty liver, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, type II diabetes, & irritable bowel conditions. I help my patients by giving them symptomatic relief while working on repairing the underlying causes of metabolic stress and waste accumulation. Patients experience amazing results which are seen in their blood tests with improved thyroid markers, cholesterol, and liver markers.  As well as lower blood pressure and see relief from improved gastrointestinal symptoms like the ones that mean you need to know where every single toilet is before you leave the house.

Melissa Callaghan BHSc, BTeach
Clinical Naturopath

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