In conclusion, the current study shows that thyroid function (T4 and TSH) is significantly higher in those individuals suffering from poor sleep. The study has found correlations between sleep score, stress score and FT4 in this study group. This suggests sleep quality and stress levels can affect thyroid function.
Sleep loss can also affect the function of the human hypothalamo-pituitary-thyroid axis. In contrast to the effects of sleep deprivation in rodents, acute sleep loss in humans is associated with increased TSH, T4, and T3,6,7 and human sleep is believed to have an acute inhibitory effect on overnight TSH secretion.
Your Thyroid and Your Sleep
If your thyroid makes too much or too little of certain hormones, your body chemistry can get out of balance. That can affect your circadian rhythm -- the internal body clock that's responsible for your sleep-wake cycle.
There are certain things that can throw off your thyroid test results, including: Certain medications and supplements. The time between the last time you took your thyroid medication and when a provider draws your blood. (This is only a factor when you're taking thyroid medication that contains T3.)
You may feel nervous, moody, weak, or tired. Your hands may shake, your heart may beat fast, or you may have problems breathing. You may be sweaty or have warm, red, itchy skin. You may have more bowel movements than usual.
There are many reasons for experiencing tiredness and fatigue. In people living with an underactive thyroid (hypothyroidism), the body's metabolism slows down. This can often lead to many symptoms, including lethargy and fatigue.
Concomitant diseases, medications, supplements, age, gender, ethnicity, iodine status, time of day, time of year, autoantibodies, heterophilic antibodies, smoking, and other factors influence the level of TSH, or the performance of current TSH assays.
Thyroid scan
Your health care professional may ask you to avoid foods high in iodine, such as kelp, or medicines containing iodine for a week before the test. For the scan, a technician injects a small amount of radioactive iodine or a similar substance into your vein.
Sleep is important for everyone, but it's especially important if you have hypothyroidism. That's because fatigue is a hallmark of the condition. Hypothyroidism is a deficiency in thyroid hormones that causes metabolism and many other bodily functions to slow down.
Signs and symptoms of hypothyroidism can show up in the hands and nails. Hypothyroidism can cause dermatologic findings such as nail infection, vertical white ridges on the nails, nail splitting, brittle nails, slow nail growth, and nails lifting up.
Eye problems, known as thyroid eye disease or Graves' ophthalmopathy, affect around 1 in 4 people with an overactive thyroid caused by Graves' disease. Problems can include: eyes feeling dry and gritty. sensitivity to light.
Current research suggests that TSH serum levels peak at between 2 am and 4 am and decrease to their lowest levels at between 4 pm and 8 pm.
It is best to have the test early in the morning. Experts do not fully agree on what the upper number should be when diagnosing thyroid disorders. Some labs will use a higher normal range limit for older people (even as high as 7 µU/mL). Normal value ranges may vary slightly among different laboratories.
For example, the effect of sleep on TSH secretion would be different between individuals who go to sleep between 8 p.m. and 3 a.m., when TSH secretion is the highest during the 24 h period, and individuals who go to sleep between 2 and 8 a.m., when TSH secretion begins to decrease.
You don't need any special preparations for a TSH blood test. If your health care provider has ordered other blood tests, you may need to fast (not eat or drink) for several hours before the test. Your provider will let you know if there are any special instructions to follow.
If you do not take your thyroid medications consistently or correctly, the therapeutic drug level—meaning the concentration of medication in your body needed for the drug to work—can quickly drop. Without a consistent therapeutic drug level, your thyroid hormone levels can fluctuate, sometimes precipitously.
Not enough iodine.
The thyroid gland needs the mineral iodine to make thyroid hormones. Iodine is found mainly in seafood, seaweed, plants grown in iodine-rich soil and iodized salt. Too little iodine can lead to hypothyroidism. Too much iodine can make hypothyroidism worse in people who already have the condition.
In addition, stress exacerbates autoimmune thyroid diseases, such as Graves' disease and Hashimoto's thyroiditis, leading to elevated thyroid hormone and decreased TSH levels [10]. Despite being exposed to a similar stressor, autoimmune thyroid disease can make it difficult to interpret the response of the HPT axis.
Certain foods like fatty meat and cruciferous veggies may interfere with the production of thyroid hormone. Hypothyroidism can be a tricky condition to manage, and what you eat can interfere with your treatment.
Common signs
An overactive thyroid can also cause the following physical signs: a swelling in your neck caused by an enlarged thyroid gland (goitre) an irregular and/or unusually fast heart rate (palpitations) twitching or trembling.
Taking synthetic thyroid hormone medication can bring your T4 and TSH levels back to their normal ranges. Once you're on the right dose, your symptoms should subside. When you first start taking medication, your doctor will need to monitor your blood to fine-tune the dosage.