Thyroid Adrenal Disease Testing - 6 More Tips for Proper Diagnosis! Part 2 of 2

Has your thyroid and adrenal disease been missed or mistreated? There are an estimated 60,000,000+ people today with undiagnosed hypothyroidism. Discover what it takes to get properly tested; this is part 2 of 2 articles on thyroid adrenal disease testing.

In this second article, we continue with 6 more critical or major tests you should address if you really want to know what is going on with your thyroid and adrenal glands. While there is other thyroid adrenal disease testing that could be helpful, having these tests done should be a great start on assessing status and determining what kind of actions you can take to improve the functioning of your thyroid and adrenal glands.

Your overall health will also be much improved if you can address any factors where you have subpar thyroid or adrenal performance occurring, as these glands affect the entire body.

1. Basic Food Allergy Testing. If you have any food allergy findings, anything positive, you really should see a nutritionist, and especially a holistic nutritionist to help you review what you are eating, what you can change, and how you can revise your diet. If there are several food allergies that are elevated, you may want to consider a complete blood panel of IGG blood testing, and several of the laboratories like Bio Tek are able to do that from even just a little finger stick of blood.


2. Heavy Metal Testing. This should definitely be done if you have any amalgams or silver fillings, if you eat or every ate any significant amount of fish, certainly if you have exposures, just being near a coal factory that is coal burning, and certainly if you have any neurological symptoms, any tremor, any symptoms of Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, any brain fog, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, as all of these can be related to heavy metal toxicity.


3. Vitamin Testing. This is very essential, and the things that are most related to thyroid problems are zinc levels, and especially RBC, red blood cells zinc level is important, you serum selenium is significant, those are both required for thyroid conversion in the cells to the active form (T4 to T3 conversion). And B vitamins are also essential, it is especially easy to measure B1, B6, and B12.


4. Comprehensive Analysis of Intracellular Nutrients. For more complete testing, there are labs such as Spectra-Cell that can do a very comprehensive analysis of intracellular nutrients, and they will measure 33 different vitamins, many that you can't get from a regular lab such as vitamin C, vitamin K, vitamin E, certainly all the B vitamins, but also Biotin, CoQ10, Alpha-Lipoic Acid, selenium, chromium, calcium, which is the only way to get an accurate level, not possible from traditional labs, magnesium, zinc, copper, glutathione, Carnitine, serine, glutamine, on and on. So this is a very helpful test, and everyone I have tested so far has one, and usually several, deficiencies that are essential for maximizing your health.


5. Saliva Testing for Adrenals. If you have concerns and you're not sure, there are several companies including Diagnostics that will do a saliva test - a little spit 4 times during the day, and they can even measure your DHEA and cortisol as it fluctuates through the daytime and evening, and this is really much more accurate than one single blood test at one point in time. And it will tell you if you are having adrenal fatigue or adrenal burnout, or high cortisol, maybe high stress, both of these may be detrimental to your thyroid function.


6. Complete Panel for Food Allergies. Again for food allergies, if you have one or two of the common food allergens such as gluten or casein you may want to consider a whole panel, because often with leaky gut there may be other foods that have caused problems and you have become allergic to them. Several companies, including Bio-Tek will do 96 different food allergens by IGG from just several drops of blood and you can even do this test at home - just a finger stick and put a drop of blood on a little card, dry it and send it off. So it is a fabulous way to get a very complete analysis, with minimal cost and time.

In summary, these tests, combined with the first five will provide a comprehensive picture of your thyroid and adrenal health. By knowing in depth what is going on, you can then move on to specific action steps to address any deficiencies, and work to correct any imbalances.

In the next article, we will provide a checklist questionnaire that will allow you to determine for yourself if you may have thyroid and adrenal concerns. If you score positively on many factors listed on the questionnaire, then it may be worth pursuing the additional testing that we wrote about in this article and the last one.

Thank-you for reading,

Diane Culik, MD
ABC Wellness