Thyroid Disorders Are Often Missed

Do you battle low energy, brain fog, anxiety, depression, tingling in your hands or feet, cold hands and feet, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, headaches, hair loss, constipation, weight gain, or low sex drive? These are just some of the many symptoms associated with low thyroid, a condition often missed by conventional medical lab tests.

Though weighing less than one ounce, the thyroid gland (and the hormones it produces) are involved in nearly every bodily function. Your thyroid controls cellular energy, maintains body temperature, regulates growth, and affects brain function, moods, and emotions. The thyroid hormones, which control your metabolism (your energy), are internally secreted and then transported through the bloodstream to various organs. The thyroid’s main purpose is to produce, store, and release these two important hormones: triiodothyronine (T 3) and thyroxine (T 4).

I routinely have chronically ill patients present with all the symptoms  of hypothyroid. The symptoms are, after all, very similar to those with a chronic illness. And in fact, up to 63 percent of patients with fibromyalgia and/or CFS/ME have been shown to have hypothyroid. I estimate the same for as many as 70 percent of my patients.

Low energy, headaches, migraines, low moods, constipation, hair loss, tingling in the hands and feet, and weight gain are simply dismissed as being due to fibromyalgia. They are also the symptoms of adrenal fatigue and low thyroid function, not fibromyalgia.

Unfortunately for busy, sometimes fibromyalgia illiterate doctors, its simpler to sweep these symptoms under the fibromyalgia rug, than to take the time to do the detective work-really listening, doing more advanced testing, research, thinking outside the box, to uncover the cause or causes of these warning signs.

Doctors don’t know, or choose not to accept, that low thyroid and or adrenal fatigue often don’t show up on routine testing. More detective work is needed. Its easier and faster to simply cover up the symptoms associated with fibro than to take the time to find the causes.

But treating the symptoms and failing to correct the causes often creates more problems. One of the common underlying causes of fibromyalgia, one that routinely missed by most conventional doctors, is low thyroid function.

Fibromyalgia and Low Thyroid

It’s not unusual for patients to tell me that they have been tested over and over again for hypothyroidism but their tests are normal. Their doctor tells them they’re fine. Well, the doctors should realize that chronically ill patients aren’t “normal.” It is no wonder they often have “low normal” or “high normal” blood work, which in their case, suggests they are in fact positive for that test. Blood tests are based on samples from the normal population.  Chronically ill patients are special, and their blood work needs to be thorough and methodically scrutinized for any clues of thyroid dysfunction; otherwise they fall through the cracks.

Sweeping the Symptoms Under The Fibromyalgia Rug

Low energy, headaches, migraines, low moods, constipation, hair loss, tingling in the hands and feet, and weight gain are simply dismissed as being due to fibromyalgia.

But treating the symptoms and failing to correct the causes often creates more problems. One of the common underlying causes of fibromyalgia, one that routinely missed by most conventional doctors, is low thyroid function.

Unfortunately doctors often miss a thyroid problem and instead recommend a mood-elevating antidepressant, stimulating amphetamine like Ritalin, pain pill, or cholesterol-lowering medication for the symptoms of low thyroid. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

Conventional medical professionals know that thyroid blood tests are less than perfect. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry has reported that “laboratory blood tests for thyroid may be inaccurate for many who get tested for hypothyroid disorder.” In 2004, the president of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) said, “There are more people with minor thyroid abnormalities than previously perceived.”

Compounding the problem of using standard blood tests to diagnose hypothyroid is the inability of doctors to agree on the laboratory parameters. According to the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) guidelines, doctors have typically been basing their diagnoses on the “normal” range for the TSH test.

The typical normal TSH levels at most laboratories, has fallen between the 0.5 to 5.0 range. Those with a TSH below .5 are considered to have too much thyroid hormone (hyperthyroid). Those whose test results are above 5 are considered to have too little thyroid (hypothyroid). However, it’s not uncommon to find doctors, including endocrinologists (thyroid specialist), who withhold the diagnosis and treatment of hypothyroid until a patient’s TSH tests read considerably above 5.

Newer guidelines, often ignored by conventional doctors, shows that a TSH level above 3.0 indicate low thyroid or hypothyroidism. Some doctors believe that anyone who has a TSH above 2 and complains of hypothyroid symptoms (depression, fatigue, brain fog, etc.) should be placed on thyroid hormone. While doctors debate which parameters or numbers are correct, millions of low thyroid patients are not properly diagnosed and treated.

 Research continues to suggest that thyroid hormone deficiency may be a key feature in FMS etiology. Researchers have observed that FMS patients respond best to treatment with thyroid hormone as part of a comprehensive regimen to optimize the patient’s metabolism. They stated in the Journal of Myofascial Therapy that “virtually all FMS patients dramatically improve or completely recover from the symptoms with this regimen.

As long as the patient does not take excessive amounts of thyroid hormone, there are no adverse side effects.” In fact, T4 with T3 has improved or eliminated depression, brain fog, feeling of cold, constipation, chronic fatigue, headaches, insomnia, muscle and joint pain, and chronic sinus infections.

A thorough thyroid blood test should include not only thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and Thyroxine (T4), commonly checked in conventional blood tests, but should also include free and total T4, free and total triiodothyroxine (T3), reverse T3 (RT3), thyroid antibodies, and T3 uptake. If these tests aren’t being done patients run the risk of suffering with the symptoms of low thyroid for years. Worse, patients are often placed on all sorts of life robbing drugs to treat the symptoms of low thyroid, fatigue, high cholesterol, mood disorders, instead of the cause-a low thyroid. Missing the opportunity to accurately diagnose and treat low thyroid is a one of many ways fibromyalgia patients falls through the cracks.

Join Zoom Meeting

Dr Murphree Live “What You need to Know About Your Thyroid.”

Time: Apr 29, 2026 06:00 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Click on this link Wednesday April 29 at 6pm CDT
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88111545540

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