Читать книгу The Healthy Thyroid: What you can do to prevent and alleviate thyroid imbalance - Patsy Westcott - Страница 6

Thyroid problems can affect a woman at any age or stage in life – from the teens to retirement. Throughout this time, they are a source of much ill health and unhappiness. During the reproductive years and after the menopause, they can exacerbate other female health problems as well as create a host of debilitating symptoms that affect every system of the body:

• Thyroid problems can cause menstrual disturbances, such as heavy or absent periods, and worsen problems such as premenstrual syndrome (PMS).

• Thyroid problems are an underrecognized cause of fertility problems and miscarriage.

• During pregnancy, thyroid disorders are the most common hormonal problem.

• Even a mild shortage of thyroid hormone during pregnancy may affect the unborn child’s future IQ (intelligence quotient). Research shows that children, aged seven to nine, whose mothers had untreated hypothyroidism during pregnancy scored about seven points lower on IQ tests.

• According to US research, women with faulty thyroid function are more likely to give birth to babies with defects of the heart, brain or kidney, or have abnormalities such as a cleft lip or palate, or extra fingers.

• Babies whose mothers have an underactive thyroid have an increased risk of heart problems – even if their mothers are being treated for the condition. Yet, at the time of writing, the NHS still does not routinely test thyroid function in pregnancy.

• One in 10 young women have thyroid problems after giving birth, with symptoms such as depression, tiredness and a lack of zest that cast a shadow over the first months of parenthood. Such symptoms are often misdiagnosed as ‘the baby blues’, thus depriving women of treatment that would help.

• Later in life, thyroid disease becomes even more common. An estimated one in 10 women over 40 may have undiagnosed thyroid disease, which is particularly worrying as thyroid problems are associated with an increased risk of two very significant causes of female ill health in later life: heart disease and osteoporosis (brittle-bone disease).

• One in five women over 60 suffer thyroid problems. With the ‘baby-boomers’ reaching this age, thyroid disorders will become an increasingly major health challenge.

• Thyroid disease in older women is more likely to be ‘silent’, producing few or vague symptoms. But compared with, say, high blood pressure – another ‘silent’ disease with serious consequences – thyroid problems are far less likely to be suspected or tested for.

These facts and figures alone put thyroid disease on a par with conditions like diabetes, estimated to affect one to two in every 100 people, and breast cancer, which strikes one in eight women. However, thyroid problems attract only a fraction of the research funding given to these high-profile conditions, and have until only recently relatively poor media coverage. That this is now beginning to change was reflected by an editorial in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet that declared ‘you’re only as healthy as your thyroid’.