Could the Thyroid Gland Dominate the Brain in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Now that we’ve explored thyroid disorders, let’s turn our attention to intrusive thoughts. These are unwanted, often distressing thoughts, images, or urges that seem to pop into our minds unbidden. While everyone experiences occasional intrusive thoughts, they become problematic when they are frequent, intense, and cause significant distress or interfere with daily life. Common thyroid disease symptoms that affect mood include anxiety or depression.

The Many Shades of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Treatment for thyroid disease often includes either medicine that lowers the amount of thyroid hormone that the body makes or medicine that replaces missing thyroid hormone. Treatment often improves symptoms caused by thyroid disease, including those that affect mood. It’s obvious that thyroid illness is one of the most prevalent disorders in the US because the medication standardly used to treat it is the second most prescribed medication. According to a report from The Medical Surveillance Monthly Report (MSMR), a peer-reviewed journal from the Armed Forces Health Surveillance, the most common illness was hypothyroidism over a 10-year surveillance period. Millions and millions of people are impacted by this problem, even the military!

• On a grand scale, anxiety, just like most other symptoms we experience, is a sign that something is out of balance within our bodies or our lives.
• This phenomenon highlights the potential protective role of estrogen in OCD and underscores the need for hormonal considerations in OCD management for women in this life stage.
• Reproductive hormones like estrogen and testosterone control sexual development and fertility.
• While the relationship is complex and not yet fully understood, several lines of evidence suggest that hormonal fluctuations may play a role in the onset, severity, and course of OCD.
• Common examples are people who worry about cleanliness or disease and wash their hands until the point of rawness.

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Intrusive thoughts—random, unwanted, often distressing urges or images—are, in and of themselves, not indicators of a mental disorder. We can think of intrusive thoughts as a benign bug in the software our brains run on. However, people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) find intrusive thoughts incredibly challenging to dismiss, giving rise to the distressing obsessions and time-consuming compulsions that characterize the condition. While hormones play a significant role in OCD, they are just one piece of the puzzle.

The menstrual cycle provides a unique window into the relationship between hormonal fluctuations and OCD symptoms. Many women with OCD report cyclical changes in their symptoms that correspond to different phases of their menstrual cycle. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as menstrual-related OCD, underscores the potential influence of hormones like estrogen and progesterone on OCD symptomatology. While exploring the role of hormones in OCD, it’s crucial to recognize that hormones do not operate in isolation.

• Obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) are commonly seen in patients with autoimmune thyroid diseases.
• PANDAS, based on a Streptococcus pyogenes infection, immune system activation, and an OCD outcome, is one example of immune-neuropsychiatry in action.
• For individuals struggling with OCD, particularly those with treatment-resistant symptoms, considering thyroid health as part of the overall treatment strategy may offer new hope.

Research suggests that the interaction between hormonal changes, such as fluctuations in estrogen and progesterone levels, and brain chemistry may contribute to the emergence of intrusive thoughts in PMDD. Talk to your psychiatrist before doing anything because I am not responsible for your self-treatment, and I’m not advising it. The study found a correlation between the rise of smartphone use and rates of the psychiatric problems above. The CDC substantiates this and their teen surveys found that hopelessness and suicidal ideation rose by 12% in just 5 years (from 2010 to 2015).

While anti-TG positivity in the female gender decreases OCS severity, anti-TPO positivity in males has a positive correlation with OCS severity. Moreover, the co-existence of thyroid autoantibodies in different combinations may affect the severity of OCS differently. I often get asked about the keto diet, as it can be used therapeutically for a number of health conditions, including mental health issues like depression and psychosis. 77 Anecdotally, I have also seen the keto diet help with anxiety and OCD, likely because of its positive effects on blood sugar.

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And remember, this condition -when untreated- stopping synthroid causes weight gain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, brain fog, slowed thinking, and much more. Endocrinologists almost always prescribe Levothyroxine to try people on as their first thyroid medication. Some very good clinical research shows it is not ‘the fix’ for people with hypothyroidism who ALSO have chronic stress, hormone imbalances, depression, OCD, or anxiety. Treating thyroid disorders in OCD patients may lead to improvements in OCD symptoms, although the extent of improvement can vary. Some patients experience significant relief from their obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors, while others may see more modest improvements. It’s crucial to manage expectations and understand that thyroid treatment alone may not be sufficient to fully resolve OCD symptoms in all cases.

The elimination of toxins is done through a two-step enzymatic process (Phase I and Phase II). In order to support both detox pathways, the liver needs to be given an abundance of vitamins and nutrients. In 2014, I suffered a sudden flare-up of my Hashimoto’s after starting to use a new lipstick. A third-party lab test revealed that this particular product had high levels of arsenic, and this matched up with my own toxicity lab results, which showed elevated levels of arsenic. Women, on average, use 12 personal care products daily, exposing themselves to 168 different chemical ingredients!

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the associationbetween circulating thyroid autoantibodies and OCS severity in patients with autoimmune thyroid disorders. This study revealed that OCS severity are higher in patients with autoimmune thyroid disorders than the healthy controls. Additionally, it has been shown that there is a correlation between the severity of OCS and thyroid autoantibodies.

All of these are known to stabilize and boost mood according to literature, and boost effectiveness of antidepressant medications. Before leaving the topic of mood stabilization, I would be remiss if I did not mention lithium orotate. This is a natural, over-the-counter mineral that is a strong mood stabilizer, and it can naturally raise serotonin levels, as well as the thyroid. Some of you who are hanging on by a thread with severe or suicidal depression will find solace in the fact that a simple, inexpensive thyroid medication (or supplement) could turn things around for you.