Is your Hashimoto’s inherited?

i am not sue of your question exactly - inherited or lyme?

hashimotos is a auto-immune condition
many things can trigger auto-immunity

chronic infection is one of the main ones - intracellular infections like lyme, bart etc are particularly good at triggering auto-immunity. hashimotos is one of the easiest to get. it has been likened to the canary in the coal mine - the first form to be triggered

rates of hashimotos in lyme disease are rather high - i think horowitz writes about it in his books as being as high as 30-50% of his patients - that's way higher than the general population

all of these people are not genetically susceptible
so i would say its just a common feature of long term infection with intracellular infections.
so its just a roll of the dice - upset the system for long enough and one or more auto-immune conditions can develop - but will not always do so.

various auto-immune neuropathies - like small fibre neuropathy etc are v common also - esp in the long term infected in the lyme disease population

things like PANS/PANDAS are also auto-immune and also common in lyme and bart

Reynaud's syndrome is another common one in this population

i also believe all of us with lots of aches/pains/ muscle wasting/ headaches etc will have many abnormal self antibodies floating around in our system - but not ones we have a simple test and a name for - as is the case with the100 or so recognised auto-immune conditions.
there are several thousand individual proteins in the human body - 5000ish from memory - and there is no reason why we couldn't start making antibodies to any one of them - if triggered to do so.
then if the resulting disease is not one of the 100 already known - its likely to be impossible to diagnose or name - but will still cause symptoms.

fortunately i think a lot of these reactions can also settle down again if the infection is resolved

there will likely be a genetic element - but whether it is 2% or 25% of the reason in your case - no one will be able to say.

i have family members with it also - but then they have other health problems that make me think some form of chronic infection - possibly even lyme or bart is at work there also - though never diagnosed

some of these infections can be passed in-eutero so family members can share them - even if no obvious symptoms - and an auto-immune disease could be the only sign they show

families also have shared risk of exposure to the arthropods that transmit the organisms - its not uncommon for a whole family to have the same exact strain of bartonella for instance - Ed Breschwerdts published a paper on that - and it seems that many people can cope with these organisms pretty well - without spiralling into severe illness - as long as too many insults are not suffered at once

finally it isn't necessarily a flawed immune system - just one with a different balance

for example sickle cell disease evolved and survives in people of African descent because it confers protection from malaria on the persons who have it. but the price they pay is that they get pain and circulation issues the rest of the time as a consequence.

many differences in immune system genetics are like that - it makes the system better at some things but worse at others

Thank you for your responses. And thank you for discussing familial connections to Hashimoto’s. I do realize that questions I have in all likelihood cannot be answered, but I appreciate that others here have dug fir the same info.

Yep as we have both stated before, we suspected Lyme symptoms as kids but since docs didn’t test for Hashimoto’s or Lyme when we were kids, we are left to wonder.



Interestingly, you sought treatment for your thyroid about the same time I did. I was in my late 20s by the time I was diagnosed. Ironically too 2013 was the year I sustained one tick bite too many and all heck broke loose.

Without a doubt, there is a significant difference between tired and feeling like your body is not creating sufficient energy to function normally. A need to rest/sleep more than others has plagued me since I was a kid. My mom actually loved the fact that I didn’t fight bedtime. This lack of energy in adulthood has proven inconvenient to say the least. Hoping it improves once infections are under control.

its early days yet - as although i have more function than when i was at my worst - i am still treating and defo know my body is not functioning normally -

my t3 seems to settle a little higher - when i am doing well

i have had one or two times where my TSH was suddenly v low indeed - like 0.05
not sure what that was all about

my guess is lower inflammation is the main driver - inflammation interferes with conversion - so conversion of T4 to t3 probably improves when inflammation is under control

overall though i think it will only become clear whether the thyroid situation can right itself - or to what degree - after infections are fully under control / cleared

i am not overly concerned as i was mountain biking and still doing OK - when my thyroid first started - i didnt find this out until i demanded my medical records from my useless GP who hadn't informed me i had a TSH of 7 or more on one of my tests - this was 3 years before i became ill with lyme - so while its clearly important - i was able to hold a job down, go to the gym and go mountain biking at the weekend, all with uncorrected thyroid issues and high TSH before lyme - so i dont think its a big driver of my symptoms.

it was back to the normal range for me - which is around 1 - on the next test - so i did not do anything with it
thyroid hormones take some time to settle after a dose change - so i was aware that i could end up chasing my tail for months if i adjust after a single out of range reading

and though i am part way recovered - i am very much still in treatment - and my readings can bounce around somewhat as i go through different treatments / layering in more things - and experiencing herx as a result of them ( inflammation will throw of many test results ) - overall on average my thyroid results in a good place

i am also taking LDN and its reported that for some people their thyroid tests can suddenly start to normalise as a result - - so i am watchful for this - but not acting on any blips

A year after ending lyme treatment I was still increasing thyroid dose, just like every year since 1997....

But, thyroid then improved about two years after ending lyme treatment, when I decided to go 100% gluten free (was 90% GF previous year, with no symptom reduction).

100% GF stalled/leveled my thyroid med increase and dissolved my 10 year old thyroid nodule. One of two elevated antibodies was now normal (for about five years now).

New Dr says antibody levels dont matter once you have them. He's an idiot. Gluten obviously causes thyroid gland inflammation in me, which is certainly not new info in the thyroid world.

Unfortunately my good endo retired, and his replacement is more of a a "TSH king" vs looking at t4/t3 and my symptoms.

Right now my latest TSH was 0.100, which, yes that's pretty low. But I am not hyper, very relaxed and a little tired still, but he insists that I am hyper and will reduce my med Rx. I have ZERO hyper symptoms. When I do get a little anxiety; its situational, not all the time. Actually having more hypOthyroid levels gives me anxiety.

My FT3 is upper third up from bottom of range and FT4 is about half way up the range. I think its perfect, Dr doesn't like it.

Regular Drs dont want to see you once an endo has been treating you. Other alternatives are $300 per hr naturalpath Drs ect like lyme Drs.

Post Edited (astroman) : 10/25/2022 2:00:14 PM (GMT-7)

i believe in most illnesses, there is a pathogen whether viral or intercellular bacteria that the immune system is automatically attacking. also in the future most of what is thought to be genetic will be unveiled and understood as passing pathogens congenitally in utero...
..

"your free T3 is the main one to determine your thyroid status by

TSH will often be v low when supplementing with thyroid hormones and is no longer a reliable marker - esp if supplementing with T3

Free T3 should typically be in the upper 3rd of the normal range"

Exactly. But good luck finding a local Dr in the US who goes by this- almost none will. They go by the TSH golden rule and keep people hypO. Its crazy. And life changing to not be optimal.

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One trick for people on both t3 and T4 - skip your thyroid dose the day before the test, this will drop the TSH test results a little and you wont even notice.. I forgot to do this.

You look on the US functional medicine association website, and 90% of them are now chiropractors!!! There used to be more MD's listed on there, and some took insurance. Thats almost completely gone because insurance hates real Drs. vs conventional brainwashed Drs.

Garzie,......OK, interesting.

.....but your Dr still does the lab tests and ......then prescribes your T4, correct?

If thats the case, the Dr can still control your T4 amount and keep you hypo per TSH even while not knowing your getting T3 on your own. How do you get around that?

Post Edited (astroman) : 10/26/2022 10:34:12 AM (GMT-7)