What Is a Thyroid Gland, and What Does It Do?
The thyroid gland is an organ in the neck that makes essential hormones. The hormones produced by the thyroid affect how the body uses energy, so they impact nearly every organ system in the body. Thyroid hormone can also cause symptoms if it’s low or high (hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism).
What Are Some Common Problems Related to Thyroid Function?
Various factors can cause thyroid diseases, including excessive (hyperthyroidism) or insufficient (hypothyroidism) thyroid hormone production. Hypothyroidism occurs more frequently than hyperthyroidism, and most cases of both conditions are treated with medications called levothyroxine sodium and methimazole.
What Are the Signs of A Thyroid Disorder?
The signs of thyroid disease can vary depending on whether you have hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism. Hypothyroidism symptoms may include feeling tired, cold, constipated, gaining weight, having dry skin, and hair loss. Hyperthyroidism symptoms might include rapid heart rate, trouble sleeping because your heart is beating fast at night (called palpitations), sweating more than usual, or becoming overly sensitive to heat. People with hyperthyroidism can even develop a fever called a thyrotoxic crisis. Some people with either condition will feel fine for years before they’re diagnosed. Sometimes without warning, there’s an episode of an illness called a thyroid storm that causes spikes in your heart rate and blood pressure along with other problems like confusion and shortness of breath. Always do regular checkups for alcohol and thyroid problems.
What Causes Hypothyroidism and Hyperthyroidism?
The cause of your condition depends on whether you have too much or too little thyroid hormone. Too little: The most common cause is an autoimmune disorder called Hashimoto’s disease, where the body makes antibodies that attack the thyroid gland. However, there are many other causes of hypothyroidism. Too much: Hyperthyroidism is rare in people under 40 years of age and can happen because of radiation or radioactive iodine treatment for hyperthyroidism or Graves’ disease (a severe form of hyperthyroidism). Recently some drugs have been linked to increased thyroid problems leading some doctors to be more cautious about prescribing them.
Some important risk factors that may lead to the development of these conditions include smoking, low body weight, family history, previous thyroid surgery, certain autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes mellitus, pernicious anemia, celiac disease, Addison’s disease (adrenal gland failure), and stress.
What Treatments Are Available for Thyroid Disorder?
People with thyroid disorders are treated with medications called levothyroxine sodium and methimazole. That way, you can get back to living your life normally while feeling well.
What Is the Liver, and What Does It Do?
The liver is a vital organ that performs many different jobs in the body. For example, it helps with digestion by removing waste from your blood so your gut can do its job. The liver also makes proteins to help control blood pressure, fat to help you use energy, and cholesterol, so your cells have the material they need to work well.
The liver also makes a liquid called bile. The bile flows from the liver to a large tube at the bottom of your stomach (called the biliary duct) and empties into your small intestine (the first part of the bowel). The bile helps break down fat in food, so it’s easier for you to absorb in your intestines.
What Are Common Problems Related to Liver Function?
Liver function problems occur when your body has trouble with one or more of these important jobs that the liver performs. Many things can affect how well your liver works, but the two main types are hepatitis and cirrhosis. Hepatitis means that something irritates or damages your liver cells, like alcohol, certain drugs, or viruses. If your liver is irritated or damaged, it makes extra bile that can collect in the ducts leading into your small intestine. This causes jaundice (turning yellow), pain in your abdomen, diarrhea, and vomiting. This condition is called obstructive jaundice.
Hepatitis A, B, C, D, E are all viruses that cause liver inflammation. It may take months or years before you realize there’s a problem with how well your liver works because these diseases aren’t always detected right away. What causes hepatitis? There are many ways people can get hepatitis, including eating food contaminated by viruses during pregnancy, getting blood transfusions before 1992, having intimate contact with someone who has the virus, and engaging in high-risk behaviors like sharing needles or unprotected sex.
Cirrhosis means that something has caused permanent damage to your liver cells–over time, new cells replace dying ones, but this process doesn’t work perfectly. When you have cirrhosis, scar tissue builds up in place of normal healthy liver tissue. The scar tissue changes how well the liver works and affects blood flow through it, too; some people don’t have any symptoms, while others may feel tired or sick for years before they’re diagnosed with cirrhosis. Symptoms include nausea, vomiting, weakness, weight loss, and feeling bloated after eating. Some people with cirrhosis will eventually need to have a liver transplant to stay alive because the scarred liver is no longer working well enough for them to live without serious health problems–it’s not even able to work at all!
What Causes Liver Disease?
If your liver isn’t working well, it’s called cirrhosis. This is a late stage of chronic hepatitis C. Diseases that cause the body to attack itself (like autoimmune disorders) can also damage the liver and lead to liver disease. Other problems may include overuse of alcohol or prescription drugs along with fatty liver, alcoholic hepatitis, hemochromatosis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, viral infections including hepatitis A and E, metabolic diseases such as type 1 diabetes mellitus, certain types of cancer such as hepatocellular carcinoma (liver cancer), inherited disorders such as Wilson’s disease, toxin-related conditions, and having an injury to your liver. Liver disease can also be caused by fatty buildup in the liver called steatosis, resulting from using nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), diabetes, excessive alcohol intake, obesity, and iron overload disorders hemochromatosis, or hemosiderosis.
How Do We Diagnose Liver Disease?
There’s no single test that can detect every kind of liver disease. The tests you have depend on what type of symptoms you’re having, like:
- A blood test is the first step since it will show if a virus or other infection is causing your symptoms. You’ll usually need more than one for accurate results; these include serologic assays hepatitis A IgM antibodies, hepatitis B core antibodies, surface antigen tests, and hepatitis C viral load tests.
- A CT scan is done to check how much damage your liver has already suffered; you’ll also see if it’s causing problems in other parts of your body, like the abdomen or lungs.
- Additional tests may include ultrasound imaging, MRI scans, and a biopsy (removing tissue samples for testing).
- You may also need genetic testing to determine which viruses are involved.
What treatments are available for liver disease?
Treatment depends on the type of hepatitis you have. If it’s caused by a virus that you can’t fight off (like Epstein-Barr), there’s no specific cure, but medicine might help your immune system control the infection. Hepatitis A and E are preventable using vaccines that can significantly reduce your chances of getting sick if you get vaccinated before being exposed to something that causes the illness. Remaining hydrated through oral rehydration therapy may also help relieve symptoms. You’ll start feeling better after a few days, and within two weeks, you’ll feel like your usual self again.
Treatment for liver damage depends on the kind of disorder you have. If your doctor finds early-stage cirrhosis–before it has severely changed the way your liver works–you may be able to manage scar tissue formation with either medicines or lifestyle changes like quitting alcohol use, taking care to avoid infections, and limiting how much fat is in your diet.
For advanced stages of cirrhosis where the disease is irreversible, your doctor might prescribe medicines that encourage the replacement of dead cells with new ones called hepatocyte growth factors. These are experimental, but they’re showing real promise in helping people get better. A medicine called pentoxifylline can also help blood flow through the damaged liver by relaxing blood vessels to let more blood pass through. Another approach is called TIPS (transjugular intrahepatic portal-systemic shunt) which is surgery used to connect veins immediately next to the liver (portal vein) with another vein further down in your body that drains s s into your heart (superior vena cava). This procedure is still used primarily in research studies because it’s so expensive and risky; however, when it does work, it can help prevent severe complications of cirrhosis like esophageal variceal bleeding for people who are very ill.
Another promising treatment is liver transplantation, which may be possible if damage has been reversible or recent enough to avoid leaving you with too much disability after surgery. If you’re thinking about having a baby, talk to your doctor and go on a waiting list for a new liver as soon as possible before getting pregnant.
Hepatitis C is highly treatable with antiviral medications that can keep the virus from progressing into cirrhosis, although some complications may still develop. People who have hepatitis B or D usually need antiviral medicines, vaccines against these viruses, or immune globulin injections to prevent them from causing long-term problems. In some people, cirrhosis may be halted even after it’s been established by controlling severe liver damage caused by alcoholism with abstinence from alcohol use. Suppose you’re not currently drinking but want to avoid becoming alcoholic in the future. In that case, it’s a good idea to talk to a therapist or counselor about how you do this and how to avoid it before your first drink and regularly after that as well.
You should also see your doctor immediately if you develop jaundice (yellowing of the skin and eyes), even if the cause seems evident, like liver disease.
How do Thyroid and Liver organs affect each other when they are not functioning correctly?
The liver is the body’s primary organ of metabolism. The liver produces substances necessary for life, metabolizes nutrients and other chemicals, breaks down hormones and toxins in the blood, processes medications taken by mouth or injection, stores excess sugar as glycogen, makes amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), maintains your glucose balance (your body’s primary source of energy), filters out disease-carrying bacteria from your blood, manufactures cholesterol needed to support cell functions, purifies your blood with its filtering system called the sinusoids that remove excess fluids and wastes into bile which then flows into the intestinal tract where it helps break down food into usable nutrients.
The liver has a close connection to some thyroid diseases and hormonal imbalances, and most people who have hormonal imbalances also have liver problems. To understand the relationship between these two, it is necessary to discuss what each of them does, what they affect, and how they affect the other. The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped endocrine gland that is found in your neck and makes hormones that control metabolism (cellular activities) and growth and development, both physical and mental. Your body needs iodine to make those hormones, which is why those with thyroid diseases often suffer from iodine deficiency as well as bile dysfunction.
The role of the liver in all this is threefold:
- Providing glucose for energy production
- Harmful detoxifying substances
- Breaking down fats for steroid hormone secretion (androgens, estrogens, cortisol, etc.)
As you can see, many things affect each other, so it is essential to monitor all of these factors to maintain proper balance. The liver affects thyroid hormones by breaking down the proteins from which thyroxine and triiodothyronine are made. When the liver reduces its production of protein due to a lack of necessary amino acids or because the liver cells have been damaged by hepatitis B virus or alcohol abuse, or if the blood supply to the liver becomes inadequate for any reason leading to reduced synthesis of proteins in the sinusoids then thyroid hormone production will decrease as well. If this happens, your doctor may prescribe an increased thyroxine-containing drug to restore normal thyroid hormone levels.
The liver also affects the production of other hormones in the body, including sex steroids (which are made from cholesterol), adrenal cortical hormones (cortisol, cortisone, and aldosterone), glucagon, insulin, and growth hormone (GH). The liver plays an active role in energy metabolism (breakdown of carbohydrates to glucose) by making glucose-6-phosphatase enzymes. Glucose is then transported into cells for use as their primary source of energy. The liver entraps excess amounts of glucose, turning them into glycogen that can be released when necessary. It also changes ammonia into urea which gets excreted via urination. During this process, bile salts have been produced to digest dietary fats, which are essential for hormone production.
In addition, if your liver is not functioning correctly, it will affect thyroid functions as well. People with a chronic hepatitis C virus infection usually have lower thyroxine and triiodothyronine levels in their blood. These people also often have higher cholesterol concentrations in their blood, leading to atherosclerosis or clogging of your arteries that supply oxygenated blood to organs and tissues, including those found in your neck where the thyroid gland is located. This makes hypothyroidism induced by selenium deficiency more common amongst those infected with HCV because selenium is required to make glutathione peroxidase enzyme (one of the body’s most potent antioxidants).
People with a history of liver disease, cirrhosis, and/or hepatitis C virus infection should be aware that they are at greater risk for developing hypothyroidism. When the liver increases its synthesis of proteins to help regenerate damaged cells, it also elevates the production of many enzymes that speed up specific chemical reactions in your body. As a result of this increased enzyme activity from the regenerating liver cells, the blood supply to the thyroid gland is decreased, leading to deficient levels of thyroid hormones. This can cause symptoms such as fatigue, weight gain, constipation, and depression, so if you have been diagnosed or suspect Hepatitis B or Liver Cancer, please consult us because we might have some suggestions about supplements or other treatments we can try during your recovery.
Additionally, liver cancer patients experience hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) at some point during their treatment and care because the main thing taken from the body by liver cells is iodine. Typically, once processed through the thyroid gland into the bloodstream, this element stimulates certain hormones to be produced that control heart rate, metabolism, and libido/moods, among many things. As a result of removing so much of this essential element from the body via tumor cells, most people have to take a pill with potassium iodide in it after they complete prescribed courses of radiation therapy to replenish the body’s source of thyroid hormone production.
