Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis (HT) goes through stages. It’s a progressive disease that worsens with time if left unattended. Being familiar with the stage you’re at is key. It boils down to 3 variables: antibodies, symptoms, and thyroid gland damage.

The initial stage is the presence of thyroid antibodies in your blood, but no symptoms or any sign of disease. TPO-Ab (Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies) are produced by your immune system. A low amount below lab range is not considered alarming. But this is the watchful stage where you can start reducing the triggers that could set off the condition. You can have a genetic predisposition for this disease, but you don’t have to develop it.

The next stage is the presence of abnormally elevated TPO-Ab above lab range, and some symptoms. However, the condition hasn’t progressed enough to require medical intervention. Here you don’t feel well, but your thyroid hormone levels are within lab range, so you are dismissed with “nothing’s wrong with your thyroid”. 

When your TPO-Ab and symptoms keep increasing, and there’s enough damage to your thyroid gland’s tissue to diagnose the disease, that’s the stage where medical intervention typically starts. At this advanced stage, your thyroid labs would start to show high TSH level as well as Thyroglobulin antibodies (TgAb), indicating low thyroid hormone production. Scarring, swelling, inflammation of the thyroid tissue, accompany this stage, hence the thyroiditis.

Bottom line: a clinical diagnosis typically requires abnormally high antibodies, with symptoms, and sever thyroid gland condition. Elevated antibodies alone may not be enough for a diagnosis because mainstream medicine tends to focus on the thyroid treatment, and not necessarily on treating the autoimmune aspect of the disease.

The takeaway: the presence of TPO antibodies is a message from your body telling you that something is wrong. That you can and should do something about it. So, if a reading of your blood tests puts you in the early stages, you may slow the further progression of the disease with the right lifestyle strategy. You can consider a nutritional approach to help dampen the inflammation. Because you want to keep your antibodies as low as possible.

Even if you are in that advanced stage where you think the damage is done. Not all is lost. You can implement a different strategy to slow the progression of your HT or put it into remission. 

During this thyroid awareness month, please have your TPO antibodies checked in your next blood test. So that you know where you stand on that line. If you know someone who needs to hear this, please share.

I still have so much to tell you about the full thyroid panel blood test.