Autoimmune Diseases
Just saying this- if you have an autoimmune disease, don’t ignore it.
When I was first diagnosed with an autoimmune disease I was 14 years old (remember this as you read forward because 14 year old me was a bit of an idiot). We saw a wonderful doctor in place of my normal physician after I had complained for 3 consecutive days of heart palpitations that were strong enough they were actually taking my breath away.
This doctor, I’ll call him Dr. Show (even though that’s not his real name- a placeholder, if you will) had some blood work done- and now we had seen him before in the past. He’s a wonderful pediatrician and LOVES his job. He practically lives in his office and there have been times when I had blood work done and he would call in on Sunday to tell my mother the results- so in other words, he’s a good doctor. Anyway, I had had blood work done, and had to wear a heart monitor to school the next few days to track the palpitations, and when we got back, Dr. Show came in and we were promptly informed that not only did I have Hypothyroidism, I also had this little thing called Hashimotos Thyroiditis- an autoimmune disease that was the direct cause of my Hypothyroidism.
Well, I thought nothing of it. He prescribed me some medicine that would supplement my low thyroid levels and I considered it all fixed and done. I went about two years doing nothing about it and no research on it. Taking the pill just became another mundane part of life and I didn’t think much about the illness. But then something amazing happened that I hadn’t even considered to be a symptom of low thyroid/Hashimotos.
My depression faded away. Just from taking that pill and fixing that part of the issue.
For those of you that don’t understand what Hashimotos Thyroiditis is, it is, again, an autoimmune disease that primarily attacks your thyroid. For me, my thyroid hormone had been practically nonexistent because of it. But lack of that hormone can cause not only a number of physical issues (Such as weight gain, hair loss, fatigue, etc.) it can also cause a number of mental issues (Depression, anxiety, anger, etc.). From my knowledge going to long without it can actually cause you to go mentally insane if it gets to serious.
But here’s the deal- Doctors tend to say that it only attacks your thyroid. The only way they really treat it is by giving you thyroid medications. But the deal is that it is an Autoimmune disease.
It does more than just that.
Hashimotos symptoms can include but is not limited to
Hair loss
fatigue
insomnia
weight loss
weight gain
joint pain
depression
anxiety
heat sensitivity
general temperature sensitivity
mood swings
and more
It can make someone prone to miscarriages if it goes untreated. It can make you more prone to illness and make those illnesses last longer because, news flash, your body is to busy attacking itself to realize that the full front needs to be focused on the germs that just entered your body and not the body itself.
It doesn’t just attack your thyroid- it attacks your body.
I didn’t realize nor associate a lot of my symptoms with my disease for two years. I have a bad shoulder, my joints tend to ache, I can’t stand hot weather, I’m tired all day every day but I still have issues going to sleep and there’s more. I even developed lactose intolerance (well, more noticed it. I’ve been mildly lactose intolerant my whole life and just refused to admit it (thing is this autoimmune disease very well could have been attacking me on a more mild scale for years considering my behavior and body-type as a child)) soon after my diagnosis, and I only noticed it after watching Phil Lester’s non-dairy milk tasting video when he described the feeling dairy products gave him. Lactose intolerance, turns out, is actually a common pattern among Hashimotos fighters. Not only that, but gluten intolerance are common in us as well, and it took me years to actually admit that MAYBE it was a part of my issue. After finally going on a gluten free diet, it did actually help. As a matter of fact, I’m able to better tolerate dairy products because of it, or so it seems.
My overall point here is that, if you’ve been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, don’t ignore it like I did. It was effecting me in a ton more ways than I had ever thought. I was sure it wasn’t effecting me at the time, but it really was.
This has been a PSA for people like me
