Welcome to the Tweed Trends podcast. Hey, Evette, what's trending today? Hey, I'm Evette, hey girl, and you are tuned in to Tweed Trends. It's the quickest way to find out what's trending today.
All right, fam, it's Thyroid Awareness Month, so let's get started. Thyroid Awareness is pretty near and dear to my heart because I suffer from thyroid issues. And because of that, I am like a super advocate to let people know about it, as well as trying to urge people. Even if you don't think you have any symptoms, make sure that your primary care doctor goes and checks your thyroid levels.
I mean, I wish I had known about it sooner. I wish I knew that it was a thing to even be concerned about. But we'll get to me later. Let's start with the basics.
How much do you know about your thyroid? Do you even know where it's located? Or what does it do, seriously? Well, just in case you are unaware, it's a small butterfly-shaped gland in your throat, and it can wreak havoc on your entire body.
When I say your entire body, I'm not exaggerating. It can wreak havoc on your entire body. Trust me. Like I said before, I speak from experience.
But so today we're going to talk about some of the possible symptoms of a dysfunctional thyroid and hopefully bring awareness because this is a little tiny organ that is a pretty big deal. Now, I'm no doctor, but I'm going to break this down the best way that I can because I only play one on television. The metabolism is controlled by hormones produced in our thyroid gland. Pretty basic, right?
When we have too many or too little of that thyroid hormone circulating in our blood, our metabolism will be negatively affected. And on top of that, it may bring about a series of symptoms over time. Hypothyroidism is a syndrome caused by insufficient thyroid hormones, means that it's not enough. It's easily treatable.
However, the key thing, it has to be diagnosed first. You can't get the help if you don't know that there's a problem. So here's a list of symptoms of hypothyroidism. Fatigue, weight gain, constipation, high blood cholesterol levels, chilliness, cramps, joint problems, menstrual irregularities, weak hair, emotional distress, depression, cognitive difficulties, development problems in infants and growth delays.
Now, if any of those symptoms speak to you, like you've been OK, you feel fine, but just kind of out of the blue, you're starting to notice something different. Don't sit around and wait for it to go away. Don't think that it's a fluke. Go to your doctor and be like, hey, can I get my thyroid levels checked just for kicks and grins?
I would like this. You have to be your own medical advocate because I'm telling you they're not going to just do these things on their own sometimes because the symptoms are so varied, a symptom that you have may look like something else showing up. They may say, oh, well, you're on this medication. That's the side effect of the medication.
Don't worry about it. Once you get off this medication, that should go away. It should clear up. And then say you stop and it's still there.
Well, all of that time period in between, they do let go by thinking, oh, it was just my meds. You could have been getting to the root of things and checking on that thyroid because I'm telling you that little tiny thyroid gland, it can do some things. Hopefully you picked up on the fact that I was putting emphasis on the po in the previous segment. And that's because high po-thyroidism has an opposite, which is high per thyroidism.
And that's basically the issue that I've had to contend with. I have a hyperactive thyroid, and I've actually been diagnosed with something called Graves' disease, which is basically an autoimmune disease that causes my thyroid to overproduce hormones. Now, let me give you a list of some of the symptoms before I go into my own personal situation. Some of the symptoms that you would experience if you had a hyperactive thyroid would be shifts in appetite, mood swings, irregular heartbeat, lighter and less frequent periods, changes in appearance, like the bulging eyes, bowel dysfunction, sleep difficulty, increased sweating, excessive fatigue, tremors, and shortness of breath.
So now with my situation with a hyperactive thyroid, I believe that mine was inherited because I can actually remember as a child dealing with certain things. And actually all through my life, when I look back, I'm like, hey, that was there, and this was there. How crazy is that? For example, I can remember as a kid sweating while just sitting down watching television.
It was a thing. It was a joke where it'd be like, man, I sit down and just sweat. It's sweating. I sweat easily.
And it very well could have been my thyroid that was causing that. When I was in college, I used to have tremors. My hands would shake. And my roommate and other friends, they looked at it as being in college.
I was studying so much that I was staying up late. And this is what was causing me to have these tremors. They were like, girl, you're nervous, you need to do something about that. And didn't have enough sense to be like, you know what?
Maybe I should go to the doctor and get this checked out and figure out why my hands are shaking. And then on top of that, the thing that got me to the doctor was as an adult, I had heart palpitations. I was sitting down on the couch one day watching television. And all of a sudden, it felt like I had been running a marathon or something.
My heart was racing. I was having trouble catching my breath. And it was like, whoa, I don't know what happened just now. But that right there needs to get checked.
And that is what got me into the doctor's office. That's what caused me to find out that I had an issue with my thyroid. And but at no point did anyone ask me, have you had any of these other symptoms throughout your life? Because if they had, I would have been like, oh, yeah.
In college? Yeah, as a kid? You know, didn't ask me those things. You have to be your own advocate.
Bring these things up. Talk to your doctor. Let them know. Like, I tell everybody, like, whether you're having symptoms or not, get your thyroid checked.
Because the sooner you know, the more you can do. The, you know, you get on it fast. You try to get it under control. As a matter of fact, speaking of getting it under control.
When, so my thyroid has gone into remission, so to speak. Whereas the first time I had the issues with the palpitations, got it under, I don't even know that we got it under control that time, but I ended up getting pregnant. And my doctor said that a lot of times pregnancy will cause the thyroid to act regular again. So I was back in regular levels.
Everything was good. Then years later, it flared up again. Now this time that it flared up, I was going to a doctor. And the way we figured it out this time was that I had lost seven pounds in seven days.
And I was not doing a single thing, trying to lose weight at that time. So, and I was eating a lot too. And, you know, so it was one of these things. So then I, I tell the doctor, I'm like, oh, you know what, my thyroid, some years back, was hyperactive.
Well, that doctor tried to tell me that I was wrong. And that it must have been hypo. And I'm confused. I'm like, well, why do you say that?
And he said, well, because you're African American, in most cases African Americans have a hypo active thyroid and not a hyper. And I said, well, you know what, hold on for a second. Because I had a binder. And I would keep all of my blood work stuff in that binder and carry it with me to doctor's appointments intentionally, because I had to be my own advocate.
I had to be able to speak up for myself and speak intelligently. And even when a medical professional decided that they were going to challenge me on something that I knew about my own body, I had the receipts right there in the book. I flipped to it. I showed it to him right there, sir.
My thyroid was hyperactive. They had me on these meds for this long. This is when it started acting regular again. So then he had to take a step back and realize that I'm not the one to be played with when it comes to my health.
So that's why I say guys, you have to be an advocate for your health, for your relatives. If they're afraid to speak up, you'd be like, you know what, let me come to the doctor with you. Let me ask those tough questions that you maybe don't feel comfortable asking them, or request those tests that maybe you have no clue about. So long story short, we ended up taking a year to get my thyroid under control, because at that point it was way out of whack.
One other thing that this thyroid was doing was keeping me from getting pregnant. I so desperately wanted to have a baby at the time and could not seem to, it just wasn't happening. And the doctor said, you know what, stop trying. Let's get this thyroid under control.
And then we'll see what happens. My thyroid, he took me off of my medicine in August, October I was pregnant. Look at God, you know, but once again, you have to know what's happening. You have to go to the doctor.
You have to get regular checkups. You have to pay attention to your body and what's going on in your body. And I know you're probably like, girl, you know I went way over time in this segment. I know, but like I said at the beginning, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart.
And I just really need you all to know and understand that you have to be an advocate. You have to speak up because if not, people will just kind of push you off to the side and be like, you know what, they don't know what they're talking about when you actually do. Well, that was today's episode of Tweet Trends. I hope that you, if nothing else, have decided that if any of the symptoms that I mentioned today speak to you, that you will set an appointment with your primary and ask them to please have your thyroid levels checked.
Because I'm telling you, don't treat your health like a card game. It's not a game of poker because when you think about it, you've got the cards that you've been dealt. You can see your whole life. You know what you've been through, what you've done.
You can see that, but the doctors can't. And your individual doctors, the other players in the game, they can't see what the other ones hold in either. So my primary doesn't know what I told my cardiologist or my endocrinologist or my ophthalmologist. Nobody knows unless you put them all in the loop.
So what am I getting at? Carry those documents with you when you go to your doctor's appointments. Just so that one can know what the other one has going on because as a matter of fact, my eye doctor needs to know what's going on with me as far as my endocrinologist because there are eye issues that could come as a result of thyroid issues. And if one knows what the other one knows, then that cuts down on the amount of time that you have to play sitting there and guessing at what this thing could be.
You know, before I get back up on my soapbox, let me just go ahead and cut it. Let me go ahead and cut it now. Bottom line guys, get your guy ready to check. Okay, if nothing else, for me, the fact that it's Thyroid Awareness Month.
Yeah, okay. Another thing I'd like for you to do is to tell all your friends to check out Tweet Trends. They can find me on Twitter, Instagram or YouTube at HeVet, that's at HeVet, E-D-E-T-E or just look for the hashtag Tweet Trends. On top of that, you can also find me on Facebook at HeVet1.
All right, have a great weekend and I'll see you back here again on Tuesday.