YouTube video by McCall McPherson explaining how to interpret an elevated TSH: she frames TSH as the "energy in" required to produce thyroid hormone versus free T3/free T4 as "energy out," warns that elevated TSH can cause symptoms (fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, low libido, dry skin, hair loss, constipation) even when output hormones are normal, and gives her clinical threshold of TSH < 1.8 for symptomatic patients.
Questions this video answers
TSH < 1.8
2024-01-18
Chapters
I've been getting this question a lot this week where someone will ask in the comments, okay, well, my output hormones, my free T3 and my free teeth 4 are normal, but my TSH is high. What does that mean? Do I have to do anything about it? So I want you guys to understand how that plays a role in how you're feeling. So I want you to think about your TSH as how much energy is going in to produce thyroid energy, okay? So think about how much energy you're using and putting in, and then your output hormones are how much energy you're producing, okay? So if you are using too much energy to produce energy, even if your energy is optimal or normal output, you're using more energy than you're producing. So you're going to be symptomatic, okay? So it doesn't matter if your output hormones are absolutely optimal, even by my neurotic standards. If you're using more energy than you're producing, you're in a deficit and you're going to have fatigue and brain fog and weight gain and low libido and dry skin and hair loss and constipation and some of these thyroid problems. So you have to think about things in two ways. Energy in and managing the energy going in and then also managing the energy coming out. I hope that makes sense. I will put I want your TSH less than 1.8. So people over 1.8 that show up in my practice generally have symptoms irrespective of their output hormones.
