I usually try to keep this blog fairly upbeat. However, today, I’m going to complain. I hear a little bit of complaining can be healthy, and goodness knows I could use a little bit of healthiness right now.
I’m exhausted! Not just the usual stayed up too late tired or the need a vacation tired. The bone-numbingly drained feeling that can only be described as feeling like something has been leeching the life force out of me for months and is reaching the bottom of the barrel.
It’s a physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. At first, I brushed it off as stress, since my life has been in a fairly constant state of high stress for the past five years. Law school, losing law school, losing my job, working two jobs, going back to law school, going to law school while working two jobs, having roommate drama, moving, etc.
However, my stress level has been fairly low lately. I'm working part-time, I'm settled into my apartment, I'm doing well in school, and everything is going right for a change. Even with all of that, my exhaustion has been getting worse. The huge wake-up call was last month during finals. I had a paper due in my seminar. I had been thinking about the paper all semester, and I had been doing research. When the time came to put it all together, I hit massive writer’s block. I wasn’t too worried at first, since the pressure of a looming deadline always gets my creative juices flowing. However, no matter how hard I tried, I was too tired to think about it, and I couldn’t make myself do it. Intellectually, I knew I needed to care, I wanted to care, and a part of me really did care, but I couldn’t make it happen. I felt like there was a fog hovering over my brain. I managed to write something, but it was terrible. The only thing that saved my grade in that class was my class participation.
I like my job, but when I get up for work in the morning, it’s a struggle to get out of bed. I always feel like I haven’t gotten enough sleep, even though I’ve gotten 6 or 7 hours. I walk through my days with bags under my eyes, constantly yawning. Even on the weekends, when I sleep in and get 9 or 10 hours, I’m still tired.
I started trying to figure out what was wrong with me. It wasn’t the flu, it wasn’t a cold, and it wasn’t anything else obvious like that. Someone suggested that it might be depression, but I found that unlikely because I’m happy. I’m not depressed – just really really really tired!
Anyway, I was so desperate for a solution that I figured I would look into it just in case. For reasons too lengthy to go into in this post, I’m concerned about the effects of antidepressants, so I got a comprehensive book that discussed and evaluated natural treatments for depression. It talked about herbs, meditation, therapy, etc.
As I was reading the book, there was a chapter that talked about the endocrine system. The author said that hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid) mimics the symptoms of depression, and people with thyroid problems are often misdiagnosed as being depressed. I kept reading and discovered that the main symptom of hypothyroidism is extreme fatigue. I have many of the other symptoms, too. (Cold all the time, hair thinning, difficulty concentrating, hypoglycemia, premature graying of the hair, pale skin, brittle fingernails, sore throat, inexplicable nausea, and ten mysterious pounds that moved in and refuse to leave.) Additionally, my mom was diagnosed with hypothyroidism last year.
I don’t have health insurance, so I had to get creative. I did a ton of research so that I’m armed with knowledge. I now know more than I ever thought I would need to know about my thyroid. For example, I found out that fluoride is used in Europe as a medicine to treat people with overactive thyroids, since it decreases thyroid function. Well, I’ve been drinking tap water for most of my life (which has fluoride added to it), and as a kid, my dentist prescribed fluoride pills for tooth health. Oops.
So, I’m now trying to find a non-fluoridated drinking water source. I’m going to have to go to one of those water stores that does reverse osmosis filtration, because a Brita filter won’t take fluoride out. (I’m not too worried about the lack of fluoridated drinking water harming my teeth, since I brush with a fluoride toothpaste.) I went to a water store yesterday, but all of the plastic bottles they sell are polycarbonate, which can leech the endocrine disruptor bisphenol-A. The store’s owner said if I wanted to, I could order glass bottles for $35. I’m looking for a cheaper source for glass bottles. I’m thinking 3 gallon bottles because 5 gallons of water combined with the glass would probably be too heavy for me to lift.
I found a laboratory that does mail-order testing, so I ordered a test kit to check my thyroid levels. I got the kit a few weeks ago, but I had to wait until yesterday to take the test because I had to take it on a specific day in my cycle so that progesterone wouldn’t throw off the results. The samples are on their way to the lab to be tested, and I should find out the results in a few weeks. If the results are abnormal, I’ll go see a doctor.
I’m torn on what I want the results to be. On the one hand, if the test comes back positive for hypothyroidism, I’ll know what’s wrong and be able to fix it. On the other hand, it will mean that I’ll have to take a pill every day for the rest of my life. If the test comes back negative, then I’ll be back at square one, exhausted with no idea why.
My research has indicated that many people are estimated to have subclinical hypothyroidism, which is basically a mild case that won’t show up on test results and doesn’t require drug treatment. I suppose the best case would be if I have that, and I can control it by making lifestyle changes such as eliminating fluoridated water and taking supplements. (L-tyrosine, an amino acid, and B-12, a vitamin, are necessary to the production of thyroid hormones, and vegetarians are commonly deficient. Maybe I just need to change my vitamins and be more faithful about remembering to take them.)
Or maybe I just need a vacation!
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