The thyroid gland is a distinctive butterfly shaped organ that sits in the middle of the lower neck, below the Adams’s apple, and over the windpipe. It consists of both a right and a left lobe joined by a thin strip of tissue called the thyroid isthmus.
The thyroid gland takes up iodine from the diet to produce thyroid hormone which controls your metabolism. Thyroid hormones produced by the body affect almost every organ in the body. It regulates our metabolism and the rate at which the body uses calories (metabolism), our heart rate, regulates bone loss, affects our mood and regulates body temperature.
The two main hormones produced by the thyroid gland are T4 (Thyroxine) and T3 (Triiodothyronine). T3 is more active than T4 but produced in much smaller quantities. Thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) is a hormone produced by the pituitary gland, an organ situated behind your sphenoid sinus at the back of the nasal cavity. It controls the release of T4 and T3 into the blood stream. Dr Sarkis will order Thyroid function tests in all patients with thyroid dysfunction to assess levels of TSH, T4 and T3 to determine whether your thyroid gland is producing normal amounts of thyroid hormone (euthyroid), too much thyroid hormone (Hyperthyroidism) or too little thyroid hormone (hypothyroidism). Often these have already been organised by your GP or endocrinologist.
Thyroid diseases can be considered as either functional or structural in nature. Functional disorders may cause either too much thyroid hormone (e.g. Grave’s disease, toxic adenoma, toxic multinodular goitre) or too little thyroid hormone (e.g. Hashimoto’s thyroiditis). Structural disorders of the thyroid gland generally result in enlargement of the gland and include multinodular goitre, thyroid cancer or enlarged thyroid nodules.