I was 17 years old. I was healthy (not knowing I would later be diagnosed with Hashimotos Thyroiditis), enjoying
life, when an irritating symptom began to haunt me; a pounding heart rate for
no apparent reason. I had just finished a Country Time Lemonade
and a wonderful bag of Doritos Nacho Cheese chips! This was my treat on a typical
beach excursion. But this day marked the beginning of my journey with this disease! I'm not sure how long I've had it but this is the first symptom I remember clear in my mind. This is a story of how I got rid of 99% of my palpitations!
Having absolutely no experience in troubleshooting my own
health and not expecting anything could go wrong with an 18 year old body, I
asked my girlfriend a very important question: “Does your heart beat fast
sometimes?”. She answered “no”. Then I took this question to others and finally
got the answer I was looking for; “it’s normal in some people”. Okay, now I was
fine again. Nothing to be worried about. I continued to minimize the symptoms
any time I felt them. After all, it was
normal in some people. This was just normal for me.
Fast forward, age 31 or so. A routine doctor’s appointment
with a round of blood tests landed me diagnoses of a disease. A disease? How
could I have a disease? I didn’t feel like I had a disease but I had regular
bouts with bronchitis, every year at least once, but most time 2-3 times. I
thought I just had weak lungs from years of asthma. As you can see I justified
everything that was going wrong in my body as “normal for me” and never took
action. So, now I got the name of this disease from my doctor, in a 5 minute
phone conversation. It went something like this: “You have been tested positive
for Hashimotos Thyroiditis. Don’t worry though. You just take a pill a day and
live normally. Eventually your thyroid will die but then you will just adjust
your dosage as it does. I have a prescription of Synthroid waiting at the
pharmacy. Have a nice day.” Of course, I’m summing up that conversation so you
get the idea of how the whole thing sounded to me.
Okay, so I started taking this thyroid pill and began living
life again. After all, the doctor said I would not feel the symptoms with this
wonderful pill. I’m sure you can see where I went wrong on this path already
but for me, I still think I’m going along as expected by the medical
institution and boy, did I trust them!
It didn’t take long for me to feel more and more frequent
palpitations and now it was even more concerning because they were in the form
of skipped beats and what I found later to be defined by the word arrhythmia. I
began researching reasons for this phenomenon. (I know, you must be wondering
how I can be so dense as to wait over 10 years before looking for answers but
maybe I just came from the generation that trusted the doctors more than our
own body. I don’t really know why. I had the false sense of security that the
doctors would take care of me while I lived however I wanted to!) Since I don’t
like the technical stuff behind my story, click here
to view all the different descriptions of these types of heart rate issues.
Now the trouble got worse. I seemed to be sick all the time.
I always felt “under the weather” and always felt tired, anxious and just plain
yucky. A good day was rarely to be found. I either had a migraine, joint pain,
chest pain, or some type of scary symptom. As I searched, I realized I was
still having symptoms of Hashimotos Disease! How could I? I was on this miracle
pill. I was told every time I went to my HMO that I was being treated for
thyroid disease so the symptoms had to be from “something else”. My allergies
continued to get worse. I was put on steroids, asthma medications galore, took
over-the-counter pain relievers and antibiotics were a regular occurrence. As a
side note, I haven’t had one antibiotic now for over 8 years! That’s another
story. We will stay on the palpitation topic here. So, with all that medication
going into my body, it now makes sense that the sinus rhythm was disturbed with
medication speeding up and slowing down my system. But every time I ended up in
the emergency room, I was told to go home, I was fine. They even gave me an
I.V. one time and told me I was dehydrated. This time though, they add a couple
devastating words to my file: panic attack. See, when your heart is beating out
of control, many professionals see that as being brought on by emotions. What
they don’t realize is that the heart rate actually causes the anxiety, not the
other way around. Sure, you can create a fast heart rate by having fear and
anxiety but this was just not the case for me. And now that my file was labeled
this way, I was not taken seriously when I went to the doctor again. I remember
a sweet young woman doctor grab my hand calmly and say, “Honey, it’s not your
thyroid. I recommend you get some psychological counseling.” She was so sweet
about it. I think she really thought she owed it to me to “tell me the truth”.
I bring all this up to give you the silver lining of my
journey. I can happily say that I have controlled my palpitations by 99%! Over
the last few years I have eliminated steroids, asthma medications (after being
on them all my life) and haven’t taken an asprin or pain reliever in 8 years! I
use a couple special herbal remedies. One is simply garlic for my antibiotic
needs and the other is 100% ginger. Both of these I take mostly in pill form. I
take ginger when I have intestinal problems and when I have some type of
headache. This is so rare though. When I say rare, I mean about 2-3 times per
year. The garlic I either take as a precaution when others around me are sick
or when I am fighting a cold which is very rare too. I’ve probably only had 6
colds in the last 8 years! I used to have infections 4-5 times per year. One
year I had bronchitis 6 times and 6 rounds of antibiotics all in one winter
season!
So, how did I get out of this vicious cycle? I explain a lot
on my blog. I also offer a forum other sufferers participate in discussions for natural healing where a lot of my journey is documented. My
approach has been people helping people. I’ve learn so much from others with
this disease. I can’t begin to tell you how important it has been for me to
have their support. I can tell you the first steps I took. There is so much to
talk about so I will have to stick to the main steps.
- Weaned
off all medications! Wow, this one is delicate. Do not do this without an
experienced natural doctor. There are some traditional doctors that will
help you on this journey I’m sure, but I could not find one, no matter how
hard I tried.
- Weaned
off my unhealthy diet. This included all preservatives, food allergies,
and began to look for whole food choices to replace my “fast foods”. You would be surprised how many palpitations can be eliminated by
reducing preservatives in your diet. Keep a food journal for a week or
even better, a month. In fact, I began my story with my beach trip diet of foods rich in preservatives! This process was difficult but very rewarding. This alone cut my palpitations
by 70% of their prior presence. Keep an eye out for MSG as one of the main culprits to your symptoms.
- Next, I
researched herbal remedies. If I hadn’t been on thyroid medication
already, I would have definitely tried Thyroid Assist first to get
my body functioning better. This may also be something I do now, but it would take monitoring my Naturethroid closely and adjusting it as needed.
- Lastly,
built my weary system back up by healthy eating, exercise, replacing the
chemical products in the home with natural ones, used my online support
group like crazy and had a determined attitude to fight this disease. I probably should mention the importance of good sleep patterns in this too! Go to bed no later than 10:00 p.m. if at all possible and keep this as a schedule. Your body heals best if you can sleep in the earlier hours of the night. This has worked marvelous for me and helps me "get back on track" anytime I'm feeling hypothyroid symptoms.
As of today, I am not disturbed by the worst type of
palpitations I used to experience. I'm talking about the kind that kept me from falling asleep at night. The kind that made me think I was experiencing my "last breath" in this world. The kind that completely distracted me from everything that was happening around me when they were active. The ones remaining have a root cause; a more logical explanation now that I've come to understand the root causes of the scarier ones. I've come a long way. The picture above is a word picture for how I felt when I "broke through" the darkness of palpitations. I want you to feel that too.
I know
what is on my list to fight next. I have a great story on how I switched from
Synthroid to Naturethroid and what a difference it made in my life on "my story" page of my web page.
Unfortunately, any medication, natural or not, has side effects. My goal is to get off of all thyroid medication one day. In the meantime, I am
researching ways to go even more natural on my supplementation. The reason I am
still experiencing some palpations (these are predictable - thus eliminating the fear I used to experience), as best as I can deduce, is that sometimes
my body is running a bit fast due to my supplementation with Naturethroid. I have
found it to be the best supplement so far but it just can’t always be
adjusted perfectly. I know this because of experimentation. I won’t get a fast heart beat while
exercising if I do so before I take
my dose for the day but I will if I exercise after. This a continuing journey for me. Will I ever find all the answers?
I don’t think so but I won’t stop trying. I feel better every year. I still
have to deal with the weight loss problems and other aspects of this disease
but I am so excited to know that answers are out there for problems as serious
as heart palpitations. If I found answers to them, I know there are more to be
discovered. And that is what keeps me seeking remedies to symptoms associated
with this disease. Underneath all of these symptoms, there will emerge the “root
problem”, if we only believe we will find it. May you continue to find answers
and better health.
Maureen