Table Of ContentThe
THYROID
HORMONE
Breakthrough
Overcoming Sexual and
Hormonal Problems at Every Age
Mary J. Shomon
For my husband Jon, the loving, funny, and always
patient guy holding my hand and riding right alongside
me on my hormonal roller coaster
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our
experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps
change. There are new mountains.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
A small group of thoughtful people can change the
world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead
CONTENTS
Epigraph iii
Disclaimer vi
Introduction vii
Part I: The Thyroid
Chapter 1: About the Thyroid and Thyroid Disease 3
Chapter 2:Women’s Hormones 19
Chapter 3: Diagnosing Thyroid Conditions 39
Chapter 4: Thyroid Treatment 68
Chapter 5: Thyroid Risks and Symptoms Checklist 87
Part 2: Thyroid-Related Hormone Issues
Chapter 6: Puberty, Menstrual, and Sexual Problems 115
Chapter 7: Pregnancy Challenges 156
Chapter 8: Infertility and Miscarriage 193
Chapter 9: Postpartum and Breastfeeding Challenges 227
Chapter 10: Perimenopause, Menopause, and Premature
Ovarian Failure 260
Part 3: Finding Solutions
Chapter 11: Creating Your Own Thyroid Hormone
Breakthrough 303
v CONTENTS
Appendix: Charting Your Fertility and Menstrual
Reproductive Cycle 335
Resources 343
Bibliography 387
Index 395
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Mary J. Shomon
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Disclaimer
This book contains advice and information relating to health care. It is
not intended to replace medical advice and should be used to supplement
rather than replace regular care by your doctor. It is recommended that
you seek your physician’s advice before embarking on any medical pro-
gram or treatment. All efforts have been made to assure the accuracy of
the information contained in this book as of the date of publication. The
publisher and the author disclaim liability for any medical outcomes that
may occur as a result of applying the methods suggested in this book.
INTRODUCTION
As women, we’ve come to expect that certain things are in-
evitable. As young girls, we anticipate—but at the same time
dread—the first arrival of “Aunt Flo” or “my friend.” Then,
for the next 30 to 40 years, we assume that premenstrual syn-
drome, erratic cycles, and unusually light or heavy menstrual
periods are simply an unavoidable part of life.
In the meantime, women’s magazines and television news
programs deliver conflicting messages: you can get pregnant
from a single sexual encounter, but infertility is on the rise.
Teenage pregnancy rates are down, but if you’re a 45-year-old
celebrity, it’s a breeze to give birth to twins. If you can’t get
pregnant after trying for a year, your doctor says you are “ex-
periencing infertility” and shuttles you off to a fertility expert
for elaborate and expensive workups. After that you’re offered
costly procedures and treatments—everything from hormone
treatments to in vitro fertilization—to help you have a baby.
When we are pregnant, we assume that morning sick-
ness is to be expected—even the kind of morning sickness
that goes on all day and all night throughout the pregnancy,
leaving us dehydrated and debilitated. “Morning sickness is a
good sign,” say the old wives’ tales, and our mothers, relatives,
and friends repeat this mantra, while prescribing crackers and
club soda, as if that will make it better.
viii INTRODUCTION
And while we all want to be like the celebrity model who
still has an adorable figure with a tiny baby “bump” when she’s
nine months pregnant, and who gets back into size 4 jeans a
few weeks later, baby at her breast, some of us defi nitely don’t
fit into that category. Instead, we walk around feeling down
in the dumps, because our hair is falling out and we have no
energy. And we have a horrible feeling of guilt and failure,
because we’re not making enough milk to breastfeed our baby
properly. We need to supplement with formula, or worse—we
can’t nurse at all.
Many of us just assume that we’re not going to have the
sex drive that we had when we were young. After reading all
those women’s magazines and watching enough Oprah and
Discovery Channel health shows, who of us can’t recite the
reasons for our low libido? Marriage, exhaustion, children,
not enough time, stress—I could go on for pages listing all the
reasons why “losing that spark” is an expected part of life for
women.
Let’s not forget the hormonal grand fi nale: menopause.
Now that hormone replacement therapy is in the medical dog-
house, women are once again saddled with weight gain, hot
flashes, night sweats, fatigue, mood swings, vaginal dryness, and
low sex drive. And just to add to the fun, we now have some-
thing called perimenopause—the time before true menopause,
when we have all those so-called menopausal symptoms, plus
erratic and sometimes extremely heavy periods. It may come
as a surprise to you—it sure did to me—that perimenopause
can go on for as long as a decade!
Have I depressed you yet? You were already depressed,
you say? And sort of stressed out and anxious too? Of course,
depression and anxiety are conditions that we assume are a
given in today’s modern life. Antidepressants and antianxiety
INTRODUCTION ix
drugs like Zoloft, Prozac, Effexor, and Zyprexa are among the
most prescribed medicines in the United States today.
It may sound as if we women are destined to be victims
of our hormones from our preteens into our golden years. But
there is hope. And it comes from your thyroid—a small gland
that is very powerful, but often overlooked when it comes to
women’s complaints.
The thyroid is a bowtie- or butterfly-shaped gland lo-
cated in the neck, below and behind the Adam’s apple area.
It is the master gland of energy and metabolism, and a key
player in our complex endocrine system, interacting with oth-
er endocrine glands such as the pancreas, adrenals, ovaries,
and pituitary. The thyroid releases hormones that rise and fall
in concert with other endocrine hormones, such as insulin,
cortisol, estrogen, and testosterone.
When the thyroid is not doing its job properly, it can throw
the body’s entire hormonal and reproductive systems out of
balance.
An undiagnosed or improperly treated thyroid condition
may actually be at the root of many symptoms and complaints
that we assume are simply “hormonal.”
By conservative standards, there are almost 27 million
people with thyroid conditions in the United States today. An
estimated half of these people are undiagnosed.
And this estimate may just be the tip of the iceberg. Since
2002, experts in the endocrinology community have been
calling for changes in the standards that define normal thy-
roid function. Some doctors are already using new standards
for diagnosis and treatment, but many practitioners have yet
to adopt them. According to these new standards approxi-
mately 59 million Americans are considered to have thyroid
disease.
