As someone who has recently ~ and finally ~ been diagnosed as having hypothyroidism (a thyroid that is malfunctioning by doing less than it should), I thought you might like to see if the pieces fall in place for you, too.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=500416817733&id=182832983940

My doctor started testing my thyroid 20 years ago because I kept coming up with strange symptoms like hair loss, dry skin, abnormal heat regulation, weight gain, high LDL cholesterol (but low HDL), bowel problems, and so on. In each case, he ordered a "TSH" test and, every time, they came back as borderline. TSH is produced by the pituitary gland, not the thyroid, so it's an indirect (but cheaper for the gov't) way to measure thyroid function. So, no hypothyroidism for me, or so I thought until all this CCSVI stuff and some other things started happening.

With a 30+ year history of MS, I had my hands full and didn't go looking for more health problems. So, it was a total surprise when my anemia, which had simmered for over 10 years, suddenly took a nose dive and I ended up in the hospital in October 2009. Approaching menopause, my hormones had gone haywire. Still, no mention was made that this was another indication that something wasn't right with my thyroid gland.

That is, until Dr. Zamboni started piecing it all together. The thyroid's location tucked between the jugular veins just above where they join the subclavian veins emptying into the heart make it an unfortunate candidate for abnormal blood flow for people with CCSVI. You'll see in this diagram that most people treated for CCSVI are ballooned just below where the jugulars branch into the thyroid. Thus, if your jugular is stenosed at the jugular valve, your thyroid hasn't drained properly for your entire lifetime either! Chances are blood is refluxing right up the channel into your thyroid.

So, now what? Well, for me, I never had the right thyroid test done before my CCSVI treatment, so I'll never know what my baseline level of functioning was. My left jugular is still stenosed, so my thyroid doesn't have normal flow yet. When I finally had my thyroid checked the proper way this year ~ a T3/T4 test ~ it turned out I did, indeed, have a malfunctioning thyroid. This test measures the hormones actually produced by the thyroid gland. I also monitored my temperature every day at 11 a.m. for several weeks to see if it was lower than it should be. So I'm taking an iodine supplement and some tiny little thyroid pills. And my pre-menopausal symptoms have disappeared. Magic.

Maybe, just maybe, symptoms of hypothyroidism are confused with some of our MS symptoms. And maybe that's why these are quite often corrected with CCSVI treatment. Better blood flow through the jugulars = better blood flow from the thyroid. Could it be that simple?

~Sandra

Dr. Zamboni's paper you can take to your doctor if you think you thyroid might be affected by CCSVI: http://www.bentham.org/cnr/openaccessarticles/cnr6-3/Paolo%20ZamboniII.pdf

See here for more info on hypothyroidism:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001393

Measuring your temperature to check for thyroid function:

http://undoctoredhealth.blogspot.com/2009/05/thyroid-and-thermoregulation.html