I was diagnosed with......

About 8 years ago I started to know that something was not right with me. If you asked anyone in my family they would say that I was never "normal" and in a way that is true. Where should I start. I don't want to over whelm you with this but I wan others to know so I help you know if you need help. All my life I have been cold but hot to the touch. I would have headaches just about everyday. I would have brain fog, as in spacing out and forgetting things that would happen a few minutes ago. I would have blurry vision every now and then. But the one thing, well two things that I hated the most was..... I had really bad stomach problems and would not lose weight no matter what I did. 

So we went to the doctor to get some blog work done. What I found out was the first step to a long path. I was told that I have thyroid problems. So I had to get blood taken once a week to see what they could find. At first they said it was hyperthyroidism then two weeks later I was hypothyroidism. I could never get a real answer. Mind you I had tricare (military insurance). After three months of the run around I asked them to send me to an endocrinologist, and they told me NO! Yeah so I was seeing a PCM, a family doctor not a specialist and they thought that they could fix me. They did nothing, so I got tired of getting my blood taken so I stopped going.

Five years later I had a doctor tell me I should go get it looked at (thank you Luck Air Force base) and I had an ultra sound. Then they told me they wanted to get a biopsy. But that scared me to death. I did get to see an endocrinologist and he was the one who told me 1. that my thyroid is messed up due to having a baby (NOT) and 2. it sounds like I have something called Hashimoto syndrome.  His first answer was, here lets get you on some meds, oh yeah and you can't breastfeed with taking it. Aiden was 4 months old and I wanted to breastfeed as long as I could. I decided to wait until I was done having kids to get my thyroid looked at.

Three years after that I saw a commercial for a doctor who work with people who have thyroid problem and most had Hashimoto. So I gave him a call. He not only did my blood work but he did a LOT of blood work. My Hemoglobin was 5.8 (should be 4.8 - 5.6, meaning that I have an increased risk for diabetes. A few other things that was border line high/low. But my thyroglobulin, anitbody was 5.7 (should be 0.0 - 0.9) As you can see I was not just high I was up in the sky HIGH! That is how you know that you have Hashimoto. 

So what does that mean in a nut shell... it means that my body as an autoimmune problem it is literally at war with itself. So how do we fix this? Well there are a few things I could do, yes I could get on the pill (which I till might need) but I could also go on the Hashimoto diet. This diet really is not to hard, that is unless you are in love with bread! I told my husband one day that I think I would die if a doctor ever told me that I could not eat bread anymore. Well I was told that two weeks ago and I'm not dead... not yet! That's right the diet is to cut out gluten and to get a paleo diet. I will go more into what a paleo diet is later in other posts. 

Some foods can make your thyroid flare up for me it is gluten and soy. Two of the hardest thing to get out of a diet. But just after two weeks of working on this. I have had no headaches, I am no where near as tired as I used to be, little to no brain fog, and I am not freezing anymore. I still need to do a food allergy test to find out if something is causing problems, but I never knew that just changed what you eat can make a big difference. 

Katie