Guest Author - Jim Lowrance

Anxiety symptoms are one possible manifestation of hyperthyroidism or an over-active thyroid gland. Patients with hyperthyroid disorders report anxiety, nervousness, feeling on edge, panic attacks and free-floating anxiety symptoms or generalized anxiety. When a patient visits their Doctor with these symptoms combined with excessive energy, weight loss, hair loss, sweating, diarrhea and swelling or pain in their thyroid, blood tests of thyroid function should be ordered. This is true even if only one or two of these symptoms are present.

If a patient is found to have hyperthyroidism, the treatment would be to slow down the thyroid by use of oral medications. These medications are called “Anti-Thyroid Medications” and they slow down the thyroid’s overproduction of thyroid hormone. Patients may also be given beta-blockers, which are medications designed to block the effects of the over-production of adrenaline experienced by hyperthyroid patients. In more severe cases of hyperthyroidism, the thyroid may be partially or completely removed through surgery or the gland may be partially destroyed through Radioactive Iodine treatment (RAI). With RAI, also called “Ablation”, they give the patient a solution of iodine, that is radioactive and it will go directly to the thyroid gland, destroying thyroid cells, resulting in slowing down its overproduction of thyroid hormones.

The treatment for hypothyroidism is also by oral medication but in this case, medications called “Thyroid Hormone Replacement Medications” are used to supplement the thyroid’s underproduction of thyroid hormones.
The most common method used to diagnose thyroid disorders, is through blood testing. Blood is drawn and lab-tested to see if the thyroid’s hormone levels are in the normal range. If they are outside of the normal reference range, on the high end, this would indicate an over-active thyroid gland, “hyperthyroidism”. If the hormone levels are found to be outside of the range on the low end, it would indicate an under-active thyroid gland, “hypothyroidism”.

There is another very sensitive thyroid function test available and one that many Doctors will use alone before testing the actual thyroid hormones and it is a test called “TSH” (Thyroid Stimulating Hormone). This particular one is not actually a thyroid hormone but one that comes from the “pituitary gland“, found up in the brain. This gland regulates the thyroid, which is found in the neck, just below the Adam’s apple. The pituitary does this by means of TSH, which it sends to the thyroid to stimulate it to produce its own hormones, at the proper levels.

If TSH is found to be low, this would indicate that the thyroid gland is no longer being stimulated by the pituitary to produce hormones because it is already over-active. If TSH is found to be high, this would indicate that the pituitary is working too hard to get the thyroid to produce hormones because it is under-active. So TSH is a valuable test because of its sensitiveness in monitoring thyroid function.

If you suspect you have thyroid disease, that is either causing or aggravating anxiety symptoms in you, plus you see some of the other symptoms that indicate possible thyroid dysfunction, talk to your Doctor about getting tested because if this is the cause, treatment will go a long way toward relieving symptoms.