Thyroid gland - Is China to blame?

[deremifri]

Hello everybody,

 

since I returned from China a few months ago, I started to experience several minor illnesses. Those, how it turned out, are related to hypothyroidism, an underactive thyroid. Now I wonder, whether my stay in China caused that condition.

Has anybody also had problems with his gland while in China or afterwards? A quick search on the web turned up a wikipedia page about iodine deficinciency (which is often blamed for hypothyroidism) in China in the 90s, but not much else.

Thank you for your help.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I am not a medical professional, but I was wondering, are you female? It seems just an extremely common condition for women no matter where you live. A few of my colleagues and friends and family suffer from it, and most of them grew up in Germany and England so environment is not to blame in their cases.

Did you have your blood and all checked by a doctor?

[deremifri]

No miss, actually I am one of the few males who have those problems (i think the ratio is 5:1). Blood checked out and confirmed. Doctor suggested that iodine deficiency might have caused that. Also I found that appearently 20% of the Chinese population suffer from that condition.

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90882/8251947.html

[roddy]

Yeah, but they're going to be the 20% with the most restricted diet. How long were you there, and what were you eating?

[abhoriel]

Iodine deficiency is the most common cause of hypothyroidism worldwide, but is relatively rare in the west. If you ate even vaguely sensibly, I'd have thought you'd be fine.

In the west the cause is usually autoimmune, which probably can't be blamed on China!

[deremifri]

Although this is not commonly accepted medical knowledge, there is some evidence that too much iodine intake can also lead to gland problems. Here is an artice from xinhua.net which suggests that the high number of people with that condition might be related to China's decision to wipe out iodine deficiency in 1995:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-09/03/c_13476357.htm

 

Personally, in my one year in China I only avoided meat and the cheapest food stands.Other than that, I was usually guided by my stomach and wallet.

 

@abhoriel: Indeed, it is usually an autoimmune disease in the west. However, the doctors did not diagnose an autoimmune disease, just an underactive gland, cause unknown.

[pprendeville]

Probably not of much use to you but my wife, who is Chinese, was diagnosed with an under active thyroid gland when she was expecting our first child in Ireland in 2009. We started living in Ireland in 2007 so it is unclear as to how long she had the problem. (NOTE:: The following is not medically advice, i.e. I am not advising you to take the following medicines, just mentioning what my wife takes). My wife takes eltroxin for her condition, I think 5mg daily. We stocked up on it before coming over here. She actually had a blood test done here in Beijing just before Christmas to get an update. We went back to her hometown the following day and were back in Beijing a week later so she went back for the results at 8am in the morning and apparently she couldn't get to see a doctor on the day as it was so busy. We need to find out the equivalent drug over here as she only has about one months supply left.

[abhoriel]

Yeah there is a Chinese study demonstrating that too much dietary iodine can lead to autoimmune hypothyroidism: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16807415/

eltroxin is just a trade name for levothyroxine. I would imagine that you won't be able to buy it in Ireland and will need to see the GP who will prescribe it.

Most of the time, they don't bother finding out what the cause is. they just do the blood tests, diagnose hypothyroidism and treat it. Sometimes antibodies can be blood tested for.

Iron deficiency hypothyroidism tends to cause a goitre (ie. Lump in the neck) iirc.