April 15 2006: Weighty matters

Hashimoto say: Don’t sweat the small stuff or you’ll start to smell

Hello readers

I was not going to post anything over the Bank Holiday weekend, but hell, it’s no crime to change my mind and I want to keep you all coming back because I really value your visits to this site. Your involvement helps me to stick to my plan of fighting Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and proving my doctors wrong. Every time you visit this blog you are supporting me in my struggle. So thank you. And please do leave comments. There is a comment tag you can click on at the bottom of each post.

I was worried a few days ago because I weighed myself and my weight had gone up to 10st 111b.

This alarmed me because my normal weight is 10st 71b and I’ve maintained that pretty constantly since I’ve been on the cursed Thyroxine. I was all the more alarmed by the weight increase because since I started on my graduated Thryoxine reduction programme, I’ve reduced the amount of rubbish I eat: no crisps, ice-cream etc. So, if anything, I would have expected a loss of weight, not a gain.

This had me wondering, is the weight gain caused by my reduction of Thryoxine?

However, I would be doubtful. First of all, I’ve only been knocking out one 100mcg tablet on Sunday’s for the past two weeks so it’s very early days.

Also, I weighed myself again this morning and I was back down to 10st 91b.

I think I can probably attribute the marginal weight gain to a laziness lately about working out in the gym. However, exercise is an important part of thyroid recovery, I believe, so just because I have not been in the gym for over a week does not mean I’ve stopped exercising. However, I find gym exercise is better for keeping weight down. I’ve been jogging locally, I’ve walked a fair bit and this afternoon I’m going to do some gardening which is superb exercise.

I bought some beautiful irisis yesterday from Burford’s, an enormous garden centre in the Cotswold’s http://www.burford.co.uk/ . I love irisis yet don’t have any in my garden so I bought a load. I find a colourful garden really therapeutic. If any of you are into meditation I recommend you closing your eyes and visualising a beautiful garden with pinks, blues and crimsons. When ever you visualise the colour blue, imagine it entering your thyroid. Blue is a spiritually healing colour and calms and relaxes.

Just before I decided to begin on my road to restoring thyroid functionality I had a vivid dream. I was in my garden but it was different from my garden because it was lush and fertile in a way that my garden is not, as yet. It had a raft of colourful plants and flowers and running around the lawn were fawns, rabbits, squirrels, playfully chasing each other.

Now to me, because of my great love for wildlife, this was my idea of heaven. When I die, I want to spend eternity with the cats, dogs and rabbits I’ve had throughout my life. I can imagine nothing more wonderful. So this dream was beautiful to me. Now when I meditate, I imagine that scene and I find it very restorative.

Perhaps you have a scene that you love and when you close your eyes and visualise it, you feel calm and at peace. If so, that would be a good meditation for you. I cannot emphasise enough how important relaxation and minimising your stress is to good thyroid health, indeed all aspects of health.

Ten minutes a day’s not too much to ask. Listen guys, if I can find the time to update this blog every day, and I cannot tell you how busy my life is, I reckon everyone can find 10 minutes to meditate in a quiet spot.

So I challenge you all my hypothyroid readers: try meditating for 10 minutes a day. Perhaps combine it with the shoulder stand I outlined in an earlier posting. You can see a picture of what this looks like at http://www.yoga-alchemy.co.uk/asanas.htm
The shoulder stand is supposed to help balance thyroid function and stimulates the gland. I’m doing this one every day.

Well, I hope there is something here to help you. My aim is to try to provide something new every day I publish a post that might help some of my readers and might even enlighten a few “text book” medics out there whose only course or action is to treat Hashimoto’s with a pill.

Good luck everyone. Don’t forget I’d like your feedback. Your feedback could help others and might even tell me if I’m going wrong anywhere.

Incidentally, I've noticed that the hypertext links don't print out when I paste from Word into this post editor. If anyone knows how to make a hypertext link publish on this blog please let me know, otherwise I'm afraid you'll need to cut and paste the addresses into your browser. Sorry about that.

Lots of love

Hashimoto