My Symptoms Before the Hypothyroidism Diagnosis

Today’s article is all about the symptoms I experienced before the moment I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

Before the moment when I launched my holistic health protocol journey.

I’m not saying that all these symptoms are linked to hypothyroidism. These are just all the symptoms I’ve experienced.

Out of curiosity, have you ever brushed anything off as being ‘normal’ when it wasn’t?

Did you think this was the ‘new you’ since menopause?

Or put your memory lapses down to stress, too much on your plate or plain lack of attention?

Well if so, you’re like me. That’s what I did.

And that’s why I was so thankful to get the diagnosis.

Because now it’s something I can actually work with.

In the article about my hypothyroidism diagnosis, you can read about my initial plan of action after the discovery.

So without further ado, let’s go.

A Little Background Info

I struggled with my health years ago when I started to suffer from extreme sickness after eating gluten. It was around 2014 that I realised that I was actually intolerant to caffeine and to gluten.

I still don’t know whether I’m celiac or intolerant because the only time I’ve been tested was after 10 years of not eating gluten, making the negative results a bit dubious, to say the least.

Caffeine was an easy fix: I went onto decaf coffee.

It was also simple to identify my caffeine intolerance because my body reacted violently within 10 minutes of drinking coffee and I’d have terrible cramping pains and would have to rush to the bathroom for long periods of time.

Gluten intolerance wasn’t so easy to discover. The symptoms usually took 6 hours or more to appear, which I knew nothing about, so I didn’t immediately realise the link.

Gluten used to make me soo sick I would lose an entire day, or even two.

So I removed gluten from my diet completely, which anybody who’s done it will attest to as no small feat because gluten is hiding in everything!

And I felt soo much better after I’d got gluten out of my life.

I thought that was an end to it.

Back to My Hypothyroidism Symptoms

My cluster of symptoms goes back years.

I don’t know how many of them are due to hypothyroidism so I will list them all.

Memory Issues & Brain Fog

A few years later, menopause came along and I began to get symptoms like weight gain, poor sleep, brain fog and shredded short-term memory.

Now this wasn’t just a matter of not remembering things here and here.

This made my working day hell because I couldn’t keep track of my memories – I had to write everything down.

If I forgot to write something down, it was gone. Didn’t exist. Adios.

And if I wrote it down but forgot to look at the list, it was also gone.

Feeling Extra Cold

As well as that, I’ve always had a tendency to feel the cold much more than the people around me.

The noticeable thing regarding my body temperature was that I would be freezing and wrapped up in winter clothes while my husband sat happily in a t-shirt.

And in a similar fashion, I would overheat.

So I decided that my thermostat was broken!

And that’s also classic with menopause, the famous hot flashes, so it didn’t really call my attention.

Increased Fat

During this period an extra layer of fat appeared around my tummy and wouldn’t budge.

Eventually, I just accepted it. At first, I tried to get rid of it through exercise, eating less quantity, eating less fat or cutting out oil altogether.

But it didn’t shift.

I didn’t lose any sleep about it. It was just part of the new middle-aged me, I thought.

What came next?

Alcohol Intolerance

Well, I seemed to be intolerant to alcohol. I’d already changed my relationship with alcohol so I didn’t drink heavily like I used to.

But if I had just one glass of wine I could develop a headache almost instantaneously which would last the remainder of that day, all through the night and for most of or all of the following day.

Other times I could have a drink and be sick as anything the following day.

And on other occasions, I could have a glass of wine and feel fine.

So I really didn’t know what was going on. And if you Google alcohol intolerance, this kind of intolerance doesn’t seem to come up.

Muscle Weakness

I also noticed a sudden drop in my strength. My muscles became weak and I couldn’t lift things that I once had so easily.

I did weights at home for a while. But honestly, it was like chasing the rainbow because I never felt any different even though the weights got heavier.

I stopped weights in favour of yoga because I love doing yoga.

Not long later I began to struggle with opening normal jars of food. Yes, it’s true, I can’t open a jar of artichokes for my lunch because my grip has become so weak.

Inflammation

And the next thing to come into my life was double inflammation in both knees.

It didn’t hurt to touch my knees and it didn’t hurt to bend them, walk, run, skip whatever. But, if I knelt, wow that was agony.

The first time it happened, I just touched the bottom of the pool with my knee by mistake and it felt as though I’d dug a knife into my knee. I literally searched the bottom of the pool looking for glass or a sharp tile or something.

But there was nothing there.