Annoying Thyroid? Stats and Symptoms of Thyroid Disease
Posted by on July 8, 2013 - 10:13am

For such a little organ, the thyroid gland sure can cause a lot of trouble.   This small, butterfly-shaped gland controls nearly all of your body’s metabolic processes by secreting different kinds of hormones. Almost 60 million Americans are estimated to have some sort of thyroid problem and a vast majority of these individuals don’t even realize it.

Women have a much greater chance of developing thyroid disease than men—researchers estimate that women are 6-8 times more likely to develop thyroid conditions in their lifetimes.

Thyroid disease can refer to anything from hyperthyroidism (overactive thyroid) to thyroid nodules to thyroid cancer. The first step in understanding the thyroid and your personal risk factor is to educate yourself on the different types. Pay special attention to the symptoms and see which ones apply to you.

Some of the most common symptoms include:

  • Persistent weakness or pain in the muscles and joints
  • Hair loss
  • Sudden changes in weight
  • Inexplicable mood changes, especially depression
  • Irregular menstruation
  • Irregular bowel movements (constipation or diarrhea)
  • Neck swelling

If you are experiencing several of these symptoms, a TSH screening is good place to start; this simple blood test determines how well your thyroid is functioning.

Once you are diagnosed with a thyroid disorder, there are several treatment options ranging from surgery (for cancer, goiters, and nodules) to drug therapy. Just know that there are several treatment options to choose from and that (most importantly) you are not alone.

Guest Author: Carolyn Heintz is a nutritionist, freelance writer and mother who has dedicated her life to building a comprehensive knowledge of how to eat, exercise, and live well. In her spare time, she runs her personal health and wellness blog.

Is Thyroid Cancer Incidence Up?
Posted by on December 3, 2010 - 11:05am

The American Cancer Society projects the U.S. incidence of thyroid cancer in 2010 at 44,670 cases (14.4 cases per 100,000 people)  with women having 3 times the rate of men.   The rate of thyroid cancer diagnosis has doubled since 1990, in large part because of improved diagnosis, but also because of unknown factors.

Despite the increase, thyroid cancer death rates have been relatively stable over the years.   The ACS predicts 1,690 deaths in the U.S. in 2010.  It remains a very treatable disease. Many people develop benign lumps, known as nodules, in the neck, but only one in 20, are malignant.   Even when it is an aggressive form of the disease, there is a 97% survival rate after 5 years.

The cause for this increase in new cases has created much debate among the scientific community.  Is the real reason better detection rates or is there truly an increase in cases?

Over the last 30 years, ultrasound and fine needles biopsies have helped diagnose cases that would never have been found before.  A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2006 reported that 140 % increase in thyroid cancer from 1973-2002 was a result of increased diagnostic capacity.  Many of these were extremely small, papillary thyroid cancer tumors (most common and treatable type) that would have never caused  problems in the majority of cases.

This "over-diagnosis" raises another debatable question, are we doing unnecessary surgeries on cancers that are unlikely to create harm?  Further confusing the issue is the fact that about 10-30% of fine needle biopsies come back with an inconclusive diagnosis for malignancy, yet, all or part of the thyroid is removed. Once the final pathology is done on the removed tissue, only 15-20% turn out to be malignant.

This is definitely a complicated issue and a new molecular test is undergoing clinical trials at nearly 50 sites that researchers hope will sort benign from malignant nodules in the indeterminate fine needle  biopsy samples. If this new test helps produce a more certain diagnosis, patients who come back negative could avoid surgery but continue to be monitored through clinical exams and occasional ultrasounds.

To read more about thyroid cancer, click HERE.