Low thyroid function disrupts dopamine, acetylcholine, and GABA, causing brain fog, poor memory, and emotional problems that look like ADHD. Screen and treat hypothyroidism first, then reassess. Many women have both conditions, and fixing the thyroid reveals what's actually ADHD.
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When we are hypothyroid, we're going to experience the same lag in energy that the ADHD brain has. Every neurotransmitter can be disrupted by hypothyroidism. It is not just a case of dopamine, or like when progesterone gets low, that's about GABA. This is every neurotransmitter can be affected. So when we take acetylcholine, which is a big issue in ADHD, that's our memory, that's our working memory. That's why we don't forget what we're saying mid-sentence. Like, I'm able to sit here, have a conversation with you, and listen to what you say and think about what I want to say. And we take this for granted, but when you're hypothyroid, You start missing out on those things. And so hypothyroidism absolutely needs to be ruled out, in my opinion, if somebody is presenting, and especially if they say to you, I've never really had these issues before. Usually an ADHD woman will say, yeah, it's been a bit of a problem, but I've been able to like use Post-its or set a reminder, or I had all these tools that worked. Certainly when the hormones go away, things stop working. Every tactic you had starts to fall away. And so with hypothyroidism, we have to rule that out. And if you are hypothyroid, we have to correct that first. So in my patients, if I screen them, they're hypothyroid, they're not going for an eval for ADHD until I correct that, 'cause I want the true you. Don't think you're yourself when you're hypothyroid. And so if you get that corrected and you're still like, I cannot plan for the life of me, put me in charge of the bake sale at school and it is not gonna happen, or I have a really hard time organizing my schedule and understanding like what order to put things in, you have emotional dysregulation, that could certainly be hormonal, but that's a big one that almost every ADHDer has some emotional dysregulations. And so if you have these persistent deficits affecting your life, even after you correct the hypothyroidism, that's when it's time to investigate. And the reality is most women with ADHD are also going to experience some other co-occurring condition, with Hashimoto's hypothyroidism being one of those. Wow.
