WHAT CHRONIC STRESS DOES TO YOU & WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
(1) CFS
From the point of view of a lay-person trying to make sense of an article like this, the best name for the effect of persistent stress is “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” (“CFS“), because that name tells you what the symptoms are. CFS is well described in terms of how affected people feel, but its origin and the true reason for the symptoms, are poorly understood.
Background – how CFS develops:
1) The thyroid gland makes a “raw material” hormone with four iodine atoms (T4), which circulates in the blood so that it is available to all of your cells. The cells absorb T4 from the blood and use an enzyme called “deiodinase 1” to remove one particular iodine atom, thus changing the T4 into T3. T3 is your body’s “accelerator” and without it, no cell can function efficiently.
2) Stress causes release of cortisol from the adrenal glands and cortisol removes T3 from your cells: if the stress is mild and transient, the cortisol spike fades away quickly and there is no effect on the function of the cells, nor of the body as a whole. However if the stress is severe, or if it becomes chronic, ongoing cortisol production and continuing suppression of T3 inside the cells, produces a condition which doctors call “Low T3 Syndrome” (LT3 S).
3) This sequence of events, leading to LT3 S, is an enigma to most doctors, whose medical education does not include the “functional” aspect of metabolism. Everyone is so ignorant of the condition that it has four other names: “Functional Hypothyroidism”, “Nonthyroidal illness”, “Subclinical Hypothyroidism” and “Euthyroid Sick Syndrome”.
4) The diagnostic terms are super-confusing, because none of these names tells the whole story. To me, the best term for the syndrome is Intracellular Hypothyroidism, because that name explains the underlying problem: “Intracellular” means “inside the cells” and “Hypothyroidism” means “shortage of T3”.
5) The corollary of course is that insufficiency of T3 decimates the efficiency of every cell in the body.
Caveat
We are talking about T3, the active thyroid 3 hormone, not “T4”, the raw material hormone which the thyroid gland makes.
IH symptoms
IH produces a variable suite of “low thyroid” symptoms, depending on which organs in the body are most sensitive to “T3 starvation”. The commonest complaint is feeling “cold, weak and tired”: there is fatigue, which is worse in the afternoon, combined with anxiety, “fuzzy thinking”, loss of motivation, poor sleep, constipation, mild depression and weight gain. However prolonged IH can produce any of the 300+ symptoms associated with hypothyroidism, including the ones which women in their 20s present to the family physician: chronic hair loss, brittle fingernails, hoarseness, dry skin with itching, hives, “brain fog” and low libido.
Serious Illnesses caused by IH
Intracellular hypothyroidism doesn’t just cause CFS. Over time, chronic IH is the root cause of many “autoimmune” illnesses and often, “one thing leads to another”, as our grandmothers used to say.
An example of autoimmune illness
The most dangerous condition caused by IH is “Broken Heart Syndrome”, properly called “Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy”, or “Dilated Cardiomyopathy” (DCM).
DCM is poorly understood because doctors don’t understand IH and don’t think of it.
DCM occurs following a stressful episode, such as the death of a loved one or any condition which produces grief. In DCM, the muscle cells in the heart weaken rapidly, because they can’t get enough T3 to function properly. Since they can’t contract properly, they stretch: the heart becomes swollen and is unable to produce enough pressure to pump the blood efficiently. The result is heart failure.
Doctors can prescribe drugs, to strengthen the heart and keep the person alive until the stress is resolved: with the stress gone, cortisol is banished, the supply of T3 in the heart muscle cells is reinstated, the muscles recover and the heart works perfectly, as though nothing had happened. If the doctors are unsuccessful, or if some subsequent event intensifies the stress, the person literally dies of a “broken heart”!
The circumstantial proof that stress is the cause of DCM is that if the person has another stressful episode, their Cardiomyopathy recurs and they get heart failure again.
An example of “one thing leading to another”: see “40 years: the medical biography of a Doctor”, in April 2024 (Post pending).
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