50 Things Only People With an Underactive Thyroid Tend to Understand

1. Always being cold. Or on the odd occasion, having a hot flush. Then resuming to being cold again.

2. The scariness of your hair falling out.

3. Gaining weight even though you’re eating all the right food in the right portions.

4. Being unable to lose weight when you’re trying everything you can.

5. Getting a decent amount of sleep, but still waking up more tired than the night before.

6. Brittle hair and nails.

7. Even the simplest of questions are nearly impossible to answer when you have thyroid brain fog.

8. Sometimes your thyroid brain fog makes you do silly things. Like putting the dirty laundry in the bin instead of the washing machine, or mixing up words and talking a load of gobbledegook.

9. Nothing helping your dry and tight-feeling skin.

10. Doctors not being as helpful as we’d hope, at times.

11. Friends, family and co-workers thinking we’re lazy, unproductive or slow at what we do. Little do they know about all the hypothyroidism symptoms.

12. Your body feels like you have the worst flu ever, with achy muscles and stiff and painful joints. All. The. Time.

13. Having a croaky voice on particularly bad thyroid days.

14. Mental illnesses and other conditions such as depression, anxiety and insomnia often come hand in hand with hypothyroidism, with most patients seemingly having at least one mental health condition.

15. Your menstrual cycle being irregular and sometimes a lot more heavy and painful. Sometimes it stops completely.

16. Learning that thyroid medication is needed for life.

17. That just because we’re on thyroid medication, it doesn’t mean we feel better. 

18. You often have no appetite.

19. Being tired is much more than anyone else understands.

20. You love your bed more than anyone will ever know.

21. Your life tends to revolve around sleep and energy levels.

22. People tell you “you just need to get enough sleep” or “you just need to eat healthy,” in a bid to help you, but little do they know! We wish it was that simple!

23. You have to cancel on plans with friends, and they think you’re being a cop-out, but you can’t even lift yourself off the sofa as your body feels like it weighs a million pounds.

24. When you’re one of the many thyroid patients who also have Hashimoto’s, and so you go gluten-free to help your symptoms, but people don’t understand why you may be “awkward” when eating out. “Just have gluten this one time, it won’t harm!” Yes, yes it will.

25. When changing to regular clothes from your PJs means you’re having a good day.

26. You’ve met doctors who won’t help you and insist “everything is in your head.”

27. The frustration when thyroid charities are so unknown amongst the general public.

28. It hurts when no one understands that it is a life-changing, lifelong condition.

29. Housework is daunting. 

30. We have to learn to examine our own necks for goiters.

31. Having hypothyroidism makes us more prone to other autoimmune conditions, getting ill more often, and especially adrenal fatigue.

32. We rattle because we have to take so many pills, tablets, supplements etc.

33. We have a large collection of thyroid books. 

34. Some of our closest friends are those from online thyroid forums or support groups.

35. Hypothyroidism can occur in men too. It’s a lower percentage, but still occurs.

36. Doctors tend to send us away with a prescription without telling us much about the actual condition.

37. Trying to run a family and maintain a social life, as well as work and complete day-to-day tasks is nigh on impossible, but we somehow manage it.

38. We just want people to listen and try to understand what we go through and have to put up with.

39. Putting on loads of layers often results in us still feeling cold.

40. Someone asking how we’re doing often means the world to us.

41. No amount of make up hides the bags under our eyes.

42. It’s not our fault we have hypothyroidism.

43. Keeping up a job is sometimes very difficult.

44. We worry about passing the condition on to our children.

45. A “lazy day” is our idea of heaven.

46. We tend to forget what “normal” feels like.

47. We’re prone to vitamin deficiencies such as iron, vitamin B and D.

48. Sometimes we just need to rant about the the frustration of having the condition.

49. We may feel 50 years older than we actually are, due to the symptoms of hypothyroidism.

50. We are sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.