Good Evening Everyone,
I am going to share a site with all of you who need extra help with those panic attacks!!!
I pray that this site helps each of you more than you could ever begin to imagine!!!
Here is the site.... Panic Pizza
God Bless Each of You is My Prayer!!!
Panic Pizza!!!
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Guest
Re:
Jenny-Anxious Jenny wrote:Hello everyone. I've been diagnosed with Hashimoto's BUT i am neither hypo or hyper. They say there are antibodies attacking my thyroid. Could this attack be causing my anxiety and panic attacks? I also have a hard time gaining weight! I hate this! I just want this over with now. I found a website http://www.stopthethyroidmadness.com/ and it's saying that even if you aren't hypo or hyper yet but you have antibodies, you should be treated with Armour and maybe stop the antibodies form attacking the thyroid. Sounds interesting! My endo says that my thyroid problem has absolutely nothing to do with my anxiety. I don't believe it! Any insights?Take Care
I was diagnosed 5 years ago after having nasty panic attacks. From what I gather, alot of people with thyroid disease can suffer from anxiety and panic, and alot (such as myself) actually get diagnosed this way (I thought it was food poisoning).
NOW, stop reading anything from stop the thyroid madness.com. They are a dangerous website. They will go so far to state that everyone, regardless of condition, needs to take something like 3+ grains of Armour to be well. This is nonsense, and extremely dangerous. A better site to go to is About.com, and look under thyroid. Mary Shomon is, IMO, the Lucinda Bassett of thyroid advocacy and help. There is a tremendous group of help in the forum as well. I've been a regular for a few years now.
Through the past 3 years, I've seen 4 general practitioners, 2 Endo's, 2 urgent care doctors, 1 DO, 1 psychologist, and 3 anxiety counselors. Everyone concludes anxiety is the problem for me. But no doctors tell me that it is thyroid related. In fact, my blood work is pretty good, and my adrenals are functioning fine. I don't seem to have any problems with testosterone, either.
My ferritin is high (a marker of inflammation in the body), but my iron is good. So are my b12 and vitamin D. My new Endo noticed that my calcium was slightly high, and he wants to monitor it. I was also diagnosed with moderate obstructive sleep apnea back in August after years of keeping my wife up with my snoring.
Thyroid can cause all kinds of problems in the body- you have to remember that it controls all metabolic functions. If it ain't working, neither are you!
I seem to be someone who is really (read: really) sensitive to dosage changes. I increased the dosage back in December by 6.25 mcg every other day. Tiny, tiny stuff. Yet on the first day I felt flushing, increased heart rate, suffered from frequent waking during the night, anxiety, etc. Call the doctor- who also has 1/2 of his thyroid removed, mind you- told me that its not related and that its anxiety.
After about 4 weeks this all returned to normal. So it was an adjustment. But then I began to revert back to feeling like crap, so I decided to go up to 6.25 mcg every day (doctor wants me at 12.5 mcg more every day, so I'm not doing this on my own). But this time I've been taking a small amount of Klonopin at night (.25 mg).
What did I notice?
No flushing, no anxiety, no worry, no fear, sleep through the night, no intestinal distress. It would seem that anxiety is causing all of this transitional hardship...just like the doctors tell me.
Where I struggle is what is causing the anxiety? I've always been scared of doctors and of taking medicine. At 36, is this old fear still haunting me to the effect of giving me a disorder? Or is it hormonal? Or both?
To me, if I can pinpoint the cause of the anxiety, I can rest in knowing how to attack it- if its thyroid driven then I need to be sure to get my meds right. If its me...then its time for a serious change.
One more thing that you can take what you want from: I was watching TCM last weekend, and a Humphrey Bogart movie was on. In it, he killed his wife to be with his mistress. But there is a scene where he has a doctor looking at his "broken" leg. Bogart asked the doctor when he would be able to walk again. The doc told him that he was medically healed, but that the nervous system needed to believe he was healed and also recover confidence in order to walk again.
That hit me. Could this be my problem? The endocrine and nervous systems, from what I understand, are very closely linked. Am I allowing old fears of taking medicine and being sick to upset me to the point of anxiety? Excessive worrying about my condition and how I feel? Am I blocking my own recovery?