How Did I Know There Was a Problem?

I have never had a weight problem. I have been a normal, healthy weight and size for all of my life until about 4 years ago when I started to gain weight steadily. Which might be normal for someone hitting middle age but to start putting on a significant amount of weight over 4 years and 2 of those were years that I was training for a marathon was odd. And for all 4 of those years, I was incredibly active with running, riding bikes and doing yoga. I averaged 4 on a slow week and 6 days of exercise on a good week. I used the Nike + app and a Nike Fuel band and both of them indicated that I was significantly above average in the amount of exercise that I did compared to the total user base and to women within my age group. It just didn’t make sense that I would gain that much weight in such a short period of time while I was so active. My regular doctor told me that since the blood tests indicated that my thyroid function seemed to be fine it was probably because I had recently gotten married and I was probably eating bigger portions. Part of me worried that it was just because I was getting older and my metabolism was slowing down but another part of me was worried that it was my thyroid because my mom has hypothyroidism and she went from being a small framed woman with an A cup to a lady with Double Ds. I was terrified that that was what was happening to me at a much younger age than it happened to my mom. One of my friends suggested that I make an appointment with a new doctor who might order a more extensive panel of blood tests beyond the standard ones so I made an appointment with Dr Teresa Black who is a MD who also practices acupuncture. Lucky for me, we talked for a long time about why I thought there might be a problem with my thyroid that was not showing up in the standard blood tests and she listened and then ordered a test for thyroglobulin antibodies and that finally gave me an explanation. I was diagnosed with Hashimotos Thyroiditis which is an autoimmune disease where your body produces antibodies to attack your thyroid and one of the symptoms is weight gain. I felt giddy with excitement to finally know that there really was something beyond my occasional ice cream treat to explain my weight gain. My thyrogloblulin antibodies were incredibly out of range but that didn’t seem to alarm my doctor a whole lot. In fact, thank goodness I asked for a copy of my blood test results because when my doctor went over them with me, she somehow missed the thyroglobulin antibodies results. I looked over them when I got home from my appointment and almost had a heart attack when I saw that mine were 2,503 when the normal range was less than 20. I immediately called and had to leave a voicemail because I had been the last appointment of the day and to make matters a little more stressful, the office was closed for another 2 days so I had 2 days of Google searches and worry until Dr Black called and apologized for missing that - we had two set of blood test results - an incomplete set which she was looking at when we spoke and a complete set which her assistant gave to me. Dr Black told me that I had Hashimotos and that it was super common and that one thing I can do to help reduce the symptoms is to go gluten free. There is something in gluten (is it a protein?) that looks a lot like something in the thyroid tissue and with Hashimotos, the body produces antibodies to attack the thyroid - when gluten in the body, even more is produced. The end game of Hashimotos is Hypothyroidism so it is very likely that my mom had it and just never knew it. That said, after a few months of being gluten free, I did not feel any different than when I was enjoying gluten. And my mom had recently gone gluten free and she felt a huge benefit – her years long gastrointestinal problems were much much better and she was able to lose weight which she had not been able to do ever since her body exploded with hypothyroidism. But I was making progress because I had a second blood test and my thyroglobulin antibodies had dropped to 2,300 which is still super-high considering that normal is less than 20 but it was also a bit lower than the original test. So I felt that I was making some progress and that it would just take a bit of time to feel better.