Читать книгу The Healthy Thyroid: What you can do to prevent and alleviate thyroid imbalance - Patsy Westcott - Страница 54

An overactive thyroid can affect your physical appearance. Your skin becomes thin, pink and moist; you tend to flush easily, and your palms may become red and sweaty. Your hair becomes fine and flyaway, and falls out while your nails become thin and flaky.

A number of those with Graves’ disease develop thyroid eye disease (see Chapter 8) and some will also develop an infiltrating skin disorder causing the skin on the front of the shins to become lumpy, red and thickened skin in the front of the shins – a condition also known as pretibial myxoedema. These symptoms can appear years before or after the thyroid becomes overactive.

Some people with hyperthyroidism develop thyrotoxic tremor – a constant, fine trembling that is most noticeable when the hands are stretched out. This is thought to be due to an oversensitivity to adrenaline. Maria, 35, a freelance photographer, recalls that this tremor was the first thing she noticed when her thyroid became overactive:

I first became aware of the problem when I noticed that I wasn’t able to hold my camera steady. I couldn’t hold a pen straight to write either, and I started having palpitations. My heart beat so fast that, on one occasion, I was convinced that I was going to have a heart attack. I was losing weight rapidly: I went from my usual eight-and-a-half to nine stone to seven-and-a-half stone, even though I was eating like a pig. And I was irritable and bad-tempered.