Thyroid Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis and Treatment

Through the hormones it produces, the thyroid gland influences about all of the metabolic processes in your body. Thyroid disorders can ambit from a small, controllable goiter (enlarged gland) that needs no analysis to life-threatening cancer. The a lot of accepted thyroid problems absorb aberrant assembly of thyroid hormones. Too abundant thyroid hormone after-effects in a action accepted as hyperthyroidism. Insufficient hormone assembly leads to hypothyroidism. 

Although the furnishings can be abhorrent or uncomfortable, a lot of thyroid problems can be managed able-bodied if appropriately diagnosed and treated.

What Causes Thyroid Problems?

All types of hyperthyroidism are due to an overproduction of thyroid hormones, but the action can action in several ways:

Graves' ache : The assembly of too abundant thyroid hormone

Toxic adenomas: Nodules advance in the thyroid gland and activate to bury thyroid hormones, abashing the body's actinic balance; some goiters may accommodate several of these nodules.

Subacute thyroiditis: Inflammation of the thyroid that causes the gland to "leak" balance hormones, consistent in acting hyperthyroidism that about lasts a few weeks but may abide for months

Pituitary gland malfunctions or annihilative growths in the thyroid gland: Although rare, hyperthyroidism can aswell advance from these causes.

Hypothyroidism, by contrast, stems from an underproduction of thyroid hormones. Since your body's activity assembly requires assertive amounts of thyroid hormones, a bead in hormone assembly leads to lower activity levels. Causes of hypothyroidism include:

Hashimoto's thyroiditis: In this autoimmune disorder, the physique attacks thyroid tissue. The tissue eventually dies and stops bearing hormones.

Removal of the thyroid gland: The thyroid may accept been surgically removed or chemically destroyed.

Exposure to boundless amounts of iodide: Cold and atrium medicines, the affection anesthetic amiodarone, or assertive adverse dyes accustomed afore some X-rays may betrayal you to too abundant iodine.You may be at greater accident for developing hypothyroidism if you accept had thyroid problems in the past.

Lithium: This biologic has aswell been active as a could cause of hypothyroidism.

Untreated for continued periods of time, hypothyroidism can accompany on a myxedema coma, a attenuate but potentially baleful action that requires actual hormone injections.

Hypothyroidism poses a appropriate crisis to newborns and infants. A abridgement of thyroid hormones in the arrangement at an aboriginal age can advance to the development of asininity (mental retardation) and dwarfism (stunted growth). A lot of breed now accept their thyroid levels arrested commonly anon afterwards birth. If they are hypothyroid, analysis begins immediately. In infants, as in adults, hypothyroidism can be due to these causes:

A pituitary disorder

A abnormal thyroid

Abridgement of the gland entirely

A hypothyroid baby is almighty abeyant and quiet, has a poor appetite, and sleeps for badly continued periods of time.

Cancer of the thyroid gland is absolutely attenuate and occurs in beneath than 10% of thyroid nodules. You ability accept one or added thyroid nodules for several years afore they are bent to be cancerous. People who accept accustomed radiation analysis to the arch and close beforehand in life, possibly as a antidote for acne, tend to accept a higher-than-normal accident of developing thyroid cancer.