Jules' two decade long journey to health

Yes, you read that title correctly, my health woes started over 25 years ago and it has been nothing short of a two-decade long battle to get myself to where I am now health wise and I can finally say, I feel great! 

How it started. 

It is hard to pinpoint when I actually started to feel the effects of my health issues, I was young, in my early twenties just having had my second son and felt relatively well. The pregnancy weight dropped off, I was always naturally very slim, I felt a little tired, but I had two children under the age of three, when a health visitor called to do her final visit and noticed a lump on my neck.

The health visitor told me it was my thyroid, and I should get it seen by my GP. I had no idea what she was talking about but when I looked in the mirror and turned to the side, I could see a large protruding lump that somehow, I had never noticed. 

A few weeks later after a number of GP visits, two ultrasounds and one biopsy, I was told I had a benign goiter, and that I should take a small amount of thyroxine to prevent the goiter from growing and return for a check in a year. I did not know any better, so did as I was told and life trundled on for 7-8 years, this was mistake number one, I should have questioned why my thyroid was enlarged but I didn't. 

Mistake Number Two. 

I was around 32 with three children, I was still taking the 'small' amount of thyroid medication levothyroxine, I had not really noticed or rather I ignored how I struggled to sleep, my mind raced constantly, I had strange attacks of paranoia that I had never had before and my mood was all over the place, it was starting to affect my everyday life,  so off I went back for another check with the GP.

Another ultrasound and biopsy, my goiter was growing larger and pressing on my windpipe despite the thyroid medication that was meant to prevent this. So off I was whisked for half my thyroid removed, mistake number two allowing this to happen. 

 

Mistake Number three. 

Fast forward another ten years, my children were growing up, I was working as a midwife with a very busy life. The strange moods, paranoia, sleep struggles and racing mind would come and go, sometimes they were there for weeks other times I felt fine for a while, but they always returned.

I was starting to finally realise something was not right, I had always been such an easy-going person, laid back and levelheaded but I was seeing less and less of that person has time went on.

So off I went again, more biopsies on the half of a thyroid I had left. This time they told me they were 95% sure it was thyroid cancer and that was what was causing the thyroid to grow continuously and apparently it was covered in nodules.

 

I was whisked away once more for the last side of my thyroid removed, this was mistake number three and my biggest health mistake to date. 

 

They biopsied the removed thyroid, it wasn't cancer, it had just grown very large. I have no idea why, but I still did not think to question why my thyroid just kept on growing, maybe I was just so busy with a growing family that your health takes a back seat and I just wanted to get on with life.

Years later I found out that I was extremely iodine deficient, and this was probably causing the nodules and goiter to grow, simply supplementing with iodine could have saved my thyroid. 

 

It was downhill from there. 

To be honest for the first year or so after having my thyroid completely removed, I felt great. No more mood swings, sleeping better and I felt more like my old self. My life was very busy, early forties, teenagers to look after, I moved countries, busy career and even though I was looking after myself, I had always eaten well and exercised, I started to feel unwell.

This time it wasn't just my mood, I started to have heart palpitations, days where I was so tired, I struggled to get out of bed. I noticed that my face looked puffy and sometimes even swollen, my usually thick shiny hair began to look dull and became brittle, my blood pressure was high, my cholesterol was through the roof and my iron levels were at rock bottom.

Off I went to another GP, all I was told was keep taking your thyroid medication, take an iron supplement and change my diet. Frustrated I contacted another GP, this time an integrative one, he ran a full thyroid panel, he was only Doctor to run a full thyroid panel following my total thyroidectomy.

The thyroid produces a number of hormones, but the important ones are T4 a storage hormone and T3 the active hormone, these hormones basically run your body, they regulate metabolism, temperature, brain function, you name it thyroid hormones have a hand in it somewhere.

I was on T4 only medication, most people with thyroid issues are prescribed this, with the understanding that your body will make the conversion from T4 to T3. T3 is the active hormone that really does the majority of the work.

 

 

My T3 level had never been tested in the whole time I had been having thyroid tests. My T3 level came back barely there, more than rock bottom, I was basically slowly dying at the age of 43! 

It turns out that I do not convert T4 into T3 very well, so just taking thyroid medication that consisted of only T4 did not work for me. The new GP put me on a different thyroid medication that contained both T4 and a small amount of T3, he also told me to look at my diet, that although it was very clean, I still had high inflammation markers in my pathology which he seemed to think could be contributed to a food sensitivity.

I went away, new medication in hand and a whole lot to think about. I turned to Google scholar, I bought books on the thyroid, on diet, and on biohacking your health, I consumed this information like my life depended on it, because at the time I felt like it did. I realised that even though I ate a relatively clean diet and I exercised, there was a lot more changes to implement.

I cut out gluten and dairy from my diet, because these have been shown to cause inflammation especially in people with autoimmune issues. Within days of doing this, I felt a change, this prompted me to look at what else would cause inflammation, I then cut out grains for over 12 months in a bid to give my body a rest and allow it to kind of detox. 

With the new thyroid medication, the new way of eating (I don't like to call it a diet, it's a lifestyle for me) I began to see changes, nearly every day I felt better and better. My skin and hair began to glow and grow again, my mood became really level with no swings up and down, the puffiness in my face and body began to subside, and I just started to feel great, about myself and life! 

I ticked along like this very happily for a few years, until I reached my late forties, when I literally woke up one day with joint pain, that moved around my body, knees, hands, wrists, shoulders, a different area on a different day. While I was trying to get to the bottom of the joint pain, I also began having bouts of vertigo, bad enough that I would vomit constantly for a day or two until the vertigo subsided. 

I was back to square one, I looked well enough, but I felt rubbish! I initially put it down to my thyroid and so did my doctor, because let's face it, so far, any health issue I had faced in my life could be attributed to that. He diagnosed me with fibromyalgia, telling me that was the reason for my joint pain. I was skeptical to be honest because I just did not have any of the other symptoms of fibromyalgia.  I adjusted my medication, tightened up my diet even further and tried to carry on as normal. 

My lightbulb moment.

I carried on with life, managing the joint pain through diet and with a range of supplements, magnesium and anti-inflammatory medication became my best friends.

Then one day I was reading an article about perimenopause symptoms, I was surprised to see joint pain and vertigo on the list, this was my lightbulb moment! Apparently declining estrogen levels can cause pain in the joints because we are losing our natural lubricant. The fluctuating levels of estrogen and progesterone can cause vertigo.

Was this what had been causing my issues for the last few years, surely, I would have recognized this, I mean I was a women's health professional! But in reality, it is easier to see the solution or the issue when it's someone else's and not your own. 

Menopause and me.

Determined that I now had a reason for the pain, I hit the research articles again, I decided that hormone replacement therapy was right for me and realistically was the only thing that might help the joint pain and even the night sweats I was now having. If I wasn't sure before I was sure now as I lay dripping wet through in bed at night, I was in full blown perimenopause, even though at the age of 50 my periods were still regular as clockwork.

 

 

I saw a women's health doctor, told her what I thought about my pain and by then I had read around the subject and decided which hormone replacement therapy I wanted, I requested to be put on a low dose to trial it, she agreed and off I went.

A few stops and starts, a couple of changes in dose and route of application, i.e., patches to gel and my life literally went back to normal in the space of two months! 

 

Where I am now.

I am not going to sit here writing this and say, I never have any joint pain because I do, but not enough to impact my day like it used to. I still eat what some might call a fairly strict diet, I eat no gluten, very little dairy, virtually no sugar, limited alcohol and no processed foods. But I am a 90/10 person, so If I want to indulge on a nice meal out with my husband at the weekend then I will, because, well life is for living! 

I am religious about taking my supplements and getting some kind of movement and exercise in every day. I walk 4 plus km per day and do some kind of resistance training a few times a week. I have learnt to prioritize sleep because this really helps me feel good and something I have been guilty of neglecting in the past. 

 

 

Next month I will be 53, I became a grandmother this year and I can honestly say I feel better now than I did in my 30's. I rarely feel tired, I have no mood swings at all, I sleep well and most of all I love life!

Over the years in my quest for good health and also in my career caring for women, I have spoken to and met so many women who are in the same position I used to be, maybe not thyroid health, but other hormonal disrupting issues or maybe total overwhelm with family and work. I just knew that I had to share the knowledge that I gained over the last 25 years and help other women feel great too, this is why I joined forces with Sarah and created Pure Goddess.

All women deserve to feel good! 

 

 Jules X