307. Depression, Anxiety, and Your Thyroid

If you are depressed or anxious, the first thing you should do is see a doctor for a complete physical, including a thorough blood workup…before taking medication or seeing a psychotherapist. Among a number of physical conditions that can cause depression or anxiety, an underactive or overactive thyroid may be the culprit.

If your thyroid is underactive, the symptoms may include fatigue, fuzzy thinking, and depression. If your thyroid is overactive, the symptoms could be anxiety, insomnia, and high blood pressure.

A woman, who was fatigued and depressed, had had her thyroid levels checked for eight years. They seemed to be normal. It was not until a comprehensive lab test that a doctor suggested treatment. Thyroid disease is not an isolated occurrence: more than twelve percent of the population in the U.S. have some form of it.

Depression is best treated by a regimen of body, soul, and spirit. Start with the body.

About Patrick Day

In 2010, I escaped from four long years of deep, dark depression. This blog shares lessons I learned from those years as depicted in my autobiography - How I Escaped from Depression - as well as other insights about depression and anxiety that only come from someone who has gone through it. When you have a heart attack, you become an expert in heart attacks. When you have diabetes, you become an expert in that condition. As such, I am an expert in depression, with a four-year experiential degree and graduate studies in how to live a life going forward that keeps the ever-lurking Depression at a healthy distance.

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