The risks of thyroid disorders

Thyroid hormones are hormones produced by the thyroid gland and have the function of “setting the speed at which all the cells in our body work”. Without thyroid hormones you cannot live. The hormones must be in the normal range, neither high nor low.

Having low thyroid hormones means that the heart slows down, the intestine works less, the metabolism slows down, you fall asleep all the time and you feel very tired. And vice versa, if you have too many hormones, you will be nervous, tachycardic, excited, trembling, with diarrhea, not sleeping and losing weight because your metabolism is “on overdrive”. That said, you have to have them in place for the body to function normally.

There are many different types of thyroid disorders. Immune-mediated hypothyroidism is becoming a very frequent pathology and there are many people who suffer from it. Nowadays medicine gives a good response to these disorders and, although they are often chronic, the person is absolutely healthy with a medical treatment that is very easy to follow. The gland must also be studied because there are nodules that need to be punctured by FNA (puncture/aspiration/needle/fine) to analyze them, and sometimes the thyroid must be removed. There may even be thyroid cancers, but even thyroid cancer is a clinically curable process. He points out that it is one of the few cancers that oncologists do not treat because it does not usually require chemotherapy treatments.

What does the word cretin mean?

Young people associate the word ‘cretin’ with an idiot, and so it is. But that was the term used for the children of mothers who lacked thyroid hormone and they were indeed fools, because without thyroid hormones there is no normal brain development. Thank God the cretins have disappeared because all newborns are tested for thyroid hormones with that little prick that is given to them in the heel and when a deficit is detected, treatment is given and everything goes normally. That is how important these hormones are.