What is Thyroid Stimulating Hormone?

What is TSH and how does it relate to low thyroid?

“TSH is Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. It’s one of the most commons things tested when looking for hyperthyroid,” says Dr. Goodbinder. It doesn’t tell you what is going what’s going on with a thyroid, but it’s what they use to check your medications.

The purpose is to notice that if your thyroid stimulating hormone is going up then you have low thyroid function. If your TSH going down that means your thyroid function is actually going up. With that information, you are able to monitor and track the medication. But that’s not all.

Your TSH stimulates your thyroid to produce inactive thyroid hormones. Inactive thyroid hormone then goes down to your liver to become an active thyroid hormone. Then it can be pushed out to your gut and becomes free thyroid hormone. You have to check many things to find out what is going on and Thyroid Stimulating Hormone is ones of those.

My Doctor said my Thyroid Stimulating Hormone looks fine, but I do not feel fine?

This can absolutely be related to your thyroid despite your Thyroid Stimulating Hormone putting out good numbers. Let’s talk about how that works.

While your TSH looks fine, you can have a high level of what is called reverse T3, which is an inactive form of a T3; a reverse T3 actually binds up the receptors that T3 would go into and stops you from activating them.

So, while you may have a normal level of T3, too much of it is going into reverse (or inactive). So you may have a normal level of TSH but you still can’t use your thyroid properly.