If you or someone you love is sick, going on medication is a logical next step. You get a fever and reach for ibuprofen. Allergy season comes around, and you buy antihistamines. Your thyroid is out of balance, and your doctor advises thyroid hormones.
We’re accustomed to using medication to treat the symptoms and get relief fast.
But what if medication isn’t the best option?
Thyroid medication is a perfect example. Say you develop some of the classic symptoms of hypothyroidism, including unexplained weight gain, hair loss, cold intolerance, and fatigue. Your doctor, suspecting an underactive thyroid, orders some tests to prove it. You get the results back and see your TSH levels are too high, a common marker for hypothyroidism. Suspicions confirmed, your doctor advises you to start thyroid hormones.
What you don’t know is that TSH can be high for a number of reasons, including the time of day you got your blood work done, your stress levels, and whether or not you ate breakfast.
If one or multiple of these factors are in play, you might not have hypothyroidism at all. In fact, you might take the same test less than 24 hours later and get completely different results.
At Kai Wellness, we see medication as a valuable tool in your medical journey. But like any tool, it works best when it’s used at the right time and for the right reason.
Too often, medication is used to manage symptoms before the cause is fully understood. That’s why we advise our patients to pause and ask a few key questions before they go on medication.
We’ll explore some of those questions below, including—what to consider before beginning thyroid medication, how to look for underlying causes, and how to determine when medication is truly the right step. We focus on thyroid medication as our primary example, but you will find that many of these ideas apply to other areas of your health, too.
Before You Start Thyroid Medication…
When we approach healing from an integrative, holistic perspective, the first step is always to look for the root cause of your symptoms.
If a blood test shows elevated TSH, it tells us that something in the body may be out of balance. But it doesn’t necessarily tell us why.
Your thyroid is part of an incredibly complex system. Without understanding what caused the elevated TSH in the first place, starting thyroid medication may not actually solve the underlying problem. In fact, it could create new ones.
What TSH Levels Don’t Tell You
Did you know that every cell in your body has a receptor for thyroid hormones?
As part of the endocrine system, the thyroid sends messages to your organs, tissues, muscles, and brain. TSH is part of the system, but it’s just one of more than twelve biomarkers that doctors use to accurately assess the health of your thyroid.
One of the most commonly underdiagnosed and mismanaged conditions related to the thyroid is Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Most people think that Hashimoto’s is a thyroid condition. In reality, it’s a systemic issue where your immune system confuses healthy cells as a threat to the body and begins to attack them. If you don’t treat the underlying immune imbalance, Hashimoto‘s can result in damage to the thyroid gland, which then leads to a thyroid disorder.
If your thyroid is underperforming, thyroid medication may improve symptoms for a while. But over time, it can begin to replace some of your body’s natural thyroid hormone production. That means the original imbalance may still be present, while your body becomes increasingly reliant on medication to function normally.
This is why the root cause matters.
The symptoms that lead us to suspect hypothyroidism are signals from the body that something is out of balance. When we only treat the symptoms, we never learn what caused the imbalance in the first place.
If the elevated TSH reading was a lab error, or a snapshot of a situational surge rather than a recurring issue, then thyroid medication could create new problems by introducing an elevated presence of a hormone that will be picked up by every cell in the human body.
Of course, this pattern doesn’t just occur with thyroid medication.
Many common conditions are often treated with medication before the root cause is fully understood, including:
- High or low blood pressure
- High cholesterol
- Osteoporosis
- Depression and mental illness
- Diabetes and metabolic issues
- Digestive issues
- Sleep issues
- Pain
When we take the time to address the underlying cause, we give the body a chance to rebalance itself. In many cases, that means resolving symptoms more completely, avoiding unnecessary medication, and supporting long-term health rather than just managing the problem.
What to Look For Before You Start Medication
To find the root cause of your symptoms, you need to do a little detective work. This is where working with the right doctor is invaluable. They can help you figure out which areas of your life are contributing to the symptoms.
Is poor nutrition causing fatigue?
Is an overactive immune system responsible for the imbalance in your thyroid?
Maybe you live in a moldy apartment, and mycotoxins are responsible for all of the above: fatigue, immune disorder, and thyroid imbalance.
When you’re looking for the root cause of your symptoms, you need to look at your illness as a single puzzle piece in the greater picture of your life. With the right doctor, you will look at nutrition, lifestyle, stress, sleep, mental and emotional health, and many other essential pieces to get a better idea of what is causing your symptoms.
Then, once you have a clearer picture, you work together to reduce the stressors causing the problem in the first place.
Medication might play a role, but a supporting role, not a starring one.
Is Medication the Right Choice for You?
Whether you are right at the beginning of your journey or in the middle, medication can be a valuable tool. We simply want to get you thinking about whether or not it’s the right option for you right now.
Medication is not the only option for those with thyroid imbalances. There are many safe and effective non-pharmaceutical medicines to treat various thyroid issues. Holistic, natural, supportive solutions that will address the cause of your symptoms rather than the symptoms themselves.
By relying wholly on medication, we are doing ourselves a great disservice. Your body knows how to heal, and your symptoms are a result of that healing process. Let’s uncover the reason behind the symptoms so you can not only feel better, but also resolve the problem for good.
Work with Kai Wellness in Santa Fe, NM
If your doctor isn’t willing to explore other options, maybe it’s time to get a second opinion. It’s always worthwhile to explore your health with a provider who is willing to help you look for the missing pieces of the puzzle.
Our individualized integrative approach always starts with the root cause. Feel free to schedule a 15-minute discovery call or book an appointment with us at our office in Santa Fe, NM.
