Dr. Betty Murray explains why standard thyroid tests miss dysfunction in perimenopausal women. After age 40, thyroid performance declines as sex hormones fluctuate, but routine TSH panels alone can't detect it. Doctors need to test both thyroid and sex hormone levels together to catch what looks normal but isn't.
when you're perimenopausal and/or menopausal, there is an interplay between those hormones, the sex hormones and the thyroid, and everybody overlooks it. They're like, well, my doctor said I was normal back when I was 35, so I don't have a problem. Yeah, exactly. Let's go into that.
Let's talk a little bit about that because I don't think that gets said enough. And this ties into thyropause. So I talk about thyropause in the book, and the definition of thyropause is when your thyroid gland shits the bed after the age of 40 due to fluctuating hormones. So what do I mean by that hormonal change? Many of you women are nodding your heads going, well, I know that. I don't have to be told that, right? It's your hormones are going on this wild roller coaster ride. And so then we see the overlay of symptoms. So yes, we have the perimenopause menopause symptoms, then we have the low thyroid symptoms. And that poor woman is like, what in the actual is happening with my body right now? Because she's being hit from 2 different directions, thyroid and hormones together.
When women end up in this perimenopausal zone, it's— you, you need to be looking at all those things all the time to identify if that may or may not be going on. And I think that completely gets missed.
