If you’re living with Graves’ Disease, the thyroid disorder that causes your metabolism to slow, you may struggle to maintain a healthy weight and stay active. In addition to causing extreme fatigue, Graves’ patients also commonly experience issues with their metabolism, which can lead to weight gain and difficulty in shedding extra weight. While there isn’t a foolproof way to lose weight with this disease, a few lifestyle changes may help you manage your symptoms.
What is Graves’ Disease?
Graves’ Disease is an autoimmune disease that causes an overactive thyroid gland, which in turn can damage the tissues surrounding the thyroid. As it relates to health, Graves’ Disease can cause hyperthyroidism, which is a type of hyperthyroidism that causes you to feel jittery, anxious, and over-excited. It can also affect your stress levels, mouth, and eyes.
Graves’ Disease, an autoimmune disorder, affects about 1 in 10 people and the thyroid becomes overactive. This gland lies behind your lower jawbone and produces hormones that control many functions of the body, including growth, temperature, and metabolism.
How to know if you have Graves’ Disease?
The thyroid gland is a small, butterfly-shaped gland that sits on top of your trachea (the windpipe). It helps control how your body uses energy. If you are experiencing any symptoms of a thyroid disorder, it’s important to seek care from a physician as soon as possible. The first step toward diagnosing a thyroid disorder is getting a thyroid panel. This blood test looks for problems in the thyroid gland and hormone levels.
Symptoms of Graves’ Disease
The thyroid gland in the neck produces hormones like T3 and T4. Symptoms may include:
- Unexplained weight loss.
- Unexplained and excessive muscle and joint pain.
- Swelling in the face and around the eyes.
- Swelling of the hands and feet.
- Fatigue.
- Irregular heartbeat.
Causes of Graves’ Disease
Graves’ Disease is an autoimmune disorder. That means your immune system attacks your own tissues and organs. It’s most common in women and can cause a variety of symptoms. It can damage the thyroid, which affects your metabolism and can cause you to gain a lot of weight.
Graves’ Disease is characterized by hyperthyroidism. According to the Mayo Clinic, the thyroid gland produces thyroid hormones, which in turn regulate metabolism. Graves’ Disease occurs when one’s immune system is attacking its own thyroid gland, triggering hormone overproduction.
Diagnosing Graves’ Disease
Most patients diagnosed with Graves’ Disease find that the condition is easier to treat if they walk out of the doctor’s door armed with as much information as possible. The disease affects about 1 in 5 Americans, and roughly 1 in 4 women will develop it. Many people don’t know that Graves’ Disease is manageable in most cases, and many patients can simply take it in stride.
Treatment for Graves’ Disease
Your thyroid gland plays a huge role in your metabolism, so when the gland isn’t working properly, this can lead to weight gain, fatigue, and other symptoms. When Graves’ Disease is left untreated, it can lead to other health problems like heart problems and eye disease.
Treatment usually involves treating the symptoms, but medication is often necessary. If you’d like to take more natural measures to manage symptoms such as joint pain, you could look into nanoparticle technology treatment in Overland Park, KS, or elsewhere. But it’s best to talk to your doctor about what the appropriate treatment options are for you.
Living with Graves’ Disease
Living with Graves’ Disease is surprisingly normal, considering its rarity. The Disease is typically characterized by a gradual, unexplained increase in thyroid activity. Because symptoms can be vague, an initial diagnosis can be hard for doctors to make. One study of 100 patients found that half of those diagnosed with Graves’ Disease were misdiagnosed, and half of those who were misdiagnosed at the time they were initially diagnosed later developed this disease.
Graves’ Disease is a disease of autoimmune destruction of the thyrocytes, which produce thyroid hormone. The thyroid hormone regulates cellular metabolism, growth, and brain development. The disease affects roughly 3 million Americans and is twice as common in women. Graves’ disease patients are at higher risk for developing thyroid nodules, hyperthyroidism, or thyroid cancer. Patients with this disease may experience excessive sweating, shaking, or tremors. Many times, these symptoms go unnoticed. It is the most common cause of hyperthyroidism, which may develop suddenly.