For many people with high cholesterol the underlying issue may actually be hypothyroidism. Rather than diagnosing and treating the hypothyroidism, many people are told they simply need to eat healthier, exercise more and take medicine to lower their cholesterol.
What’s worse is that sometimes doctors make us feel bad, like we must be fat, unhealthy people who have no control over ourselves when in fact it could be low thyroid.
When the thyroid slows down (hypothyroidism), it also slows down the body’s ability to process cholesterol.
– Heather M. Ross, About.com
Certainly eating healthier and exercising are good, but cholesterol medicines (statins) have some scary side effects. But even more important, properly treating hypothyroidism could result in naturally lowering cholesterol, like it did for me and many others. On Stop the Thyroid Madness read people’s stories about how they lowered their cholesterol, not through statins, but through the right combination of desiccate thyroid medicine and other treatments.
When I was 18 years old, a doctor told me I had high cholesterol but no one made the connection to hypothyroidism. At that time in my life I was about 15lbs overweight. The doctor made me feel like I was fat and unhealthy, so I was therefore to blame for having high cholesterol at such a young age.
Now at age 41, on proper thyroid treatment my cholesterol is completely normal and healthy. Like me, if you have high cholesterol as a result of hypothyroidism learn more about thyroid symptoms, understanding thyroid lab work (even when the results say you are normal), and finding and good doctor:
