Has Thyroid Disease Become More Common?

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Has thyroid disease become more common? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition, nutrition expert and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Josephine from Facebook asks, has thyroid disease become more common? Hey, it's JJ and today I've got my longtime friend Dr. Alan Christensen, also known as Dr. C, with me to answer this question. He's a board certified naturopathic endocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author from Minnesota who fell in love with his awesome wife Kieran at first sight and they decided to get married on their first date. And that was over 24 years ago. In his spare time, he's a big athlete, including, wait for it, Mountain Unicycling. Yes, really. Now be sure to check out his latest book, the Thyroid Reset Diet. We'll be right back with the answer. Stay with us.

Hey, it's J.J. here. Now, let's be honest.

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It seems like we hear more about thyroid disease. Is it more common than it used to be? I'm Dr. Alan Christensen and yes, thyroid disease is on the rise. Here's some things we know so far. So thyroid cancer, this is one that people don't think about as much, but I think they should. You know, it turns out that amongst women in North America, thyroid cancer is the fastest increasing type of cancer that there is. It's not the most common, but it's the one that we're seeing more of. More new cases than of any other type by far. In fact, the data has shown that in the last three decades, the rates of thyroid cancer have gone up more than threefold. There was some debate at first as to whether or not this meant really new cases or better early detection. And the consensus now is that no, this really means we are seeing more new cases now. The other thing on the rise is autoimmune disease in general. We'll talk about more types of thyroid disease, but they are autoimmune in nature. They're diseases that come about when the body's immune system mistakenly attacks parts of your own system. In autoimmune disease. We've seen that both genders, they've been on the increase, but especially for women. And this has been picking up since the 1970s. So this is true for autoimmune thyroid disease like Hashimoto's and Graves. It's also true for other autoimmune diseases like lupus or scleroderma or rheumatoid arthritis. And there's been some thoughts about why that is not really a clear consensus, but it seems that the more infections that we're exposed to early in life, the less likely that we are to develop autoimmune disease. So since the 70s, people get fewer infections as children than they did before. And by and large that's a good thing. But there may be ways by which the immune system misses out on training or misses out on ways to understand what is harmful and what is not. And then we think too about specific Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and we do have good data that that has been on the uptick as well. And that's been quite significant. What we see there manifests in terms of thyroid treatment. So treatment for thyroid disease, one of the more trackable types is the prescription of thyroid medication. A paper that came out in late 2020 showed that the use of prescription thyroid medicine has climbed greatly. They looked at the timeframe between 1997 to 2016, and over that timeframe, the expenses nationally in the United States for thyroid medications went up over threefold. And in terms of individual people on treatment, that more than doubled. So more than twice as many people are on thyroid treatment as were even just a few decades ago. And the last way we think about this becomes matter of public awareness. So people's perception about thyroid disease, their thought about the relevance of it, you know, if we look back to prior decades, words like Hashimoto's were pretty obscure. I remember when I first started practicing, even in medical school, I hadn't heard the term before. You know, it was a brand new thing. I remember patients were just floored when I would entertain that word or put it out there. And now it seems it's really part of the medical vocabulary for those who are, you know, trying to manage their symptoms, trying to take care of their health. There's also been more books about thyroid disease that have had more attention and more popularity than ever in the past. And also a lot more visibility amongst social media pages, social media groups. People think a lot more about this and they understand that unexplained symptoms can be caused by it. And then those that have it understand that it can persist and cause issues even well past them being on treatment. And one other point about just public awareness. A survey of functional medicine practices estimated that over 60% of patients who seek out functional medicine care have already been diagnosed with thyroid disease. So the question becomes, are there more people like that who seek functional medicine, or there's more diagnosis or some combination thereof. But in any case, it's inescapable that there's much more awareness of it. So, yes, thyroid disease, autoimmune thyroid disease, purely functional, non autoimmune thyroid disease like Hashimoto's and subclinical and then also structural thyroid disease are on the uptick. And the final version of this is one called subacute thyroiditis. This is a type of thyroid disease that comes on after one has an acute viral illness. And it's always been known to occur and to be a seasonal phenomenon, especially like in the cold and flu season. But there's been a lot of data saying that it's one of the more common complications after COVID infection. So post Covid, many have a acute version of thyroiditis. So thyroid disease is on the rise. And stay tuned. I've got several more discussions about why this is happening and some things that you can do about it.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com SAM.