Today I thought we could chat about what Hashimotos Disease is, as well as autoimmune disease in general.
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– Hashimotos is an autoimmune disease that involves the thyroid gland.
– An autoimmune disease is a disease in which the body attacks itself.
– The thyroid gland is located near your neck and is some what of the power house of your entire hormonal system.
– You can have an underachieve thyroid (hypothyroidism) and not have Hashimotos.
– It is estimate that Hashimotos is undiagnosed in about 90% of the individuals who have it.
– Hashimotos is diagnosed with a blood test that your primary care doctor can order.
– Just like all autoimmune disease, there is NO cure for Hashimotos disease.
– Treatment includes taking medication to manage your thyroid levels for the rest of your life.
– There is not just one medication but multiple different medications that your physician can give as well as different combinations of these medications to manage your levels.
– Just like all prescription medications, there are side effects when taking thyroid medication(s).
– There is great debate over what your thyroid levels should be at any given time and therefore some physicians may diagnose one individual with a hypothyroidism while another physician may not.
– A sure sign of Hashimotos disease is your antibody count. This number however changes with factors such as age, gender, etc., if your primary care physician cannot help you understand your levels, an endocrinologist can.
– More and more research is coming out about autoimmune diseases as well as Hashimotos which is very encouraging for the medical community as well as those diagnosed with these diseases.
– The more common definition of Hashimotos disease is “an autoimmune disease causing chronic inflammation and consequential failure of the thyroid gland.”
– Sadly, many individuals who just simply manage the symptoms of Hashimotos disease rather than address the root issue (more on this later) eventually have their thyroid removed which as you can imagine can be scary, dangerous and life alerting.
– Due to this unfortunate reality, some individuals are choosing to address their thyroid health in a somewhat unconventional way and are seeing great results. More on this later too!
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I am very excited to start talking more about Hashimotos here… but since it can be a lot of information, I thought it would be best to take this topic piece by piece so that we all don’t get overwhelmed and overloaded.
Ultimately I am hoping to take you on my Hashimotos journey so that I can either motivate you to help someone going through this or that I can directly help someone.
If you have any questions regarding Hashimotos disease or autoimmune disease in general, leave it in the comments and hopefully together we can work on getting it answered.
THE KITCHEN REVOLUTION 