Here is a great new blog post from Professor Tania Sona Smith. It refers to important research that I have shared in other blog posts.
It shows how the loss of thyroid gland tissue is a game-changer. Losing the thyroid gland causes both loss of conversion from T4 to T3, plus the loss of the thyroid’s ability to switch more production to T3 if this is required.
It shows why conventional thyroid labs that have been developed from testing healthy people, are no longer applicable when you have a thyroid gland damage or loss.
It discusses the importance of the thyroid gland itself to maintaining good T3 levels, and in maintaining a healthy conversion rate of T4 to T3.
It introduces a term that I have avoided using, just in case it confuses people. This term is the T3-Shunt or TSH-T3 Shunt. Basically, this is all about the importance of the thyroid gland itself, in both producing and converting large amounts of T3 in a way that contributes to overall T3 levels, without detracting from peripheral T3 generation in the rest of our cells.
Note: there is not a special piece of tissue within the thyroid gland that is called the T3-Shunt. This term is just intended to describe the way that the thyroid works in the context of the endocrine system.
Clever thyroid gland!
It is a good read and explains some of the research papers in slightly simpler terms. Here is the link:
https://thyroidpatients.ca/2019/10/21/the-tsh-t3-disjoint-in-thyroid-therapy/
It is definitely worth a read through a few times.
Best wishes,
Paul
