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Intolerance to cold environment is very typical of low body temperatures. However, some people with low body temperatures experience heat intolerance and say they feel “hot all the time.” It’s not clear why this occurs. It’s not that their skin feels hot to the touch; it’s often cool. It’s that they may want the thermostat turned down when others want it turned up.

People with low body temperatures are usually cold intolerant, but some are heat intolerant.

If you are cold or heat intolerant, I suggest that you start taking your

I’m going to suggest a very simple way to improve your overall health, especially the balance of your endocrine system. Get outside in the sun for 20 minutes or so a day. Let the sun hit your skin–forearms and face is enough–and allow some indirect sunlight to get to your eyes by forgoing the sunglasses and brimmed hat.

Why? Natural sunlight has unique health benefits. For one thing, it allows your body to make vitamin D. You can make up to 10,000 IUs of vitamin D in one sunny

Do you know that saying “Bad things happen in threes”? Well, that seems to be the case when it comes to a set of symptoms. Depression, obesity and fibromyalgia seem to cluster together, and may actually have a common cause–low body temperature due to problems with thyroid hormone.

Thyroid hormone–specifically T3–regulates the body’s metabolic rate, and so, determines your body’s usual temperature. When thyroid hormone is low, or isn’t being used properly, your body temperature drops, and many of the biochemical processes in your body slow down. Energy metabolism slows, which means you don’t burn as many calories as you would

Metabolism is the rate at which your body uses energy–how fast your motor runs. When your metabolism is slow, all the processes in your body slow down. You might feel tired, depressed, cold, sluggish. You’ll find it hard to lose weight because your body will be more likely to store calories as fat, not burn calories for energy.

Here are some common causes of slow metabolism:

Too little sleep. While the occasional all-nighter forces your metabolism into high gear, chronic partial sleep loss (less then seven hours a night) has a profound effect on your metabolism. It affects glucose regulation, causing insulin

Stress can have a major impact on your body. Whether it is a new baby, menopause, an accident or injury, financial or legal concerns, or chronic illness, stress can throw your whole system off-balance. The normal “feedback” loops that maintain homeostasis–a state of equilibrium in your body—can get out of whack and the result can be fatigue, anxiety, irritability, insomnia, low sex drive, high blood pressure, disrupted menstrual cycles, low pain tolerance, inability to concentrate, burn-out. You may find it increasingly hard to recover fully from even minor set-backs.

Stress affects a feedback loop called the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal cortex (HPA axis). This

Getting to the bottom of why you’re tired all the time can be difficult. If you’re so run down that you see your doctor, chances are good that you’ll have your Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) level checked. If it’s normal, your doctor will assume it’s not thyroid-related, and move on to other tests, such as a Complete Blood Count (CBC), Lyme disease, vitamin D, B12, and occult blood in your stool. Liver enzymes, hepatitis exposure, sleep studies–the list of possible tests is endless.

While some of these tests might be worthwhile, depending on your symptoms and risk factors, there’s always a

Pregnancy and its aftermath can be tough on your thyroid system. The mother’s body goes through tremendous changes during pregnancy, as any mother can attest.  One of my professors in medical school, while he was explaining the great changes in blood tests that occur in pregnancy, said “There are three kinds of people in the world, males, females, and pregnant females.”  Obviously, the entire process of creating and delivery a human being into the world can be both miraculous and stressful on the body. In fact, pregnancy is the

Allergies are an immune response, not to an infection, but to something irritating to your body nonetheless. You can be allergic to just about anything — pollen, animal dander, fungi and mold, dust and microscopic dust mites, even environmental chemicals. You may never figure out what all is causing your allergies. In fact, it could be an overwhelming combination of things.  And you literally can’t shake it off.

Research shows that a disordered immune response is associated with low thyroid function. Autoimmune disorders are common–where the body attacks itself. Allergies and infections

Nutritional deficiencies can play a significant role in thyroid problems.  That’s because certain nutrients are needed both to produce T4, the inactive form of thyroid hormone, and to convert T4 to T3, the active hormone.

Here are some of the best foods for your thyroid.

Seaweed (kelp, dulse, hijiki, nori, arame, wakame, kombu) and shellfish (shrimp, mussels) all contain iodine, a nutrient needed for your thyroid gland to be able to make both T3 and T4. The RDA for iodine is 150 micrograms. (It’s 220 mcg during pregnancy and 290 mcg during breastfeeding.  Whether or not most people

It’s not something most doctors ask about, and many women, perhaps, think, “Well, if I wasn’t so stressed out, or tired, or down, things would be better.” It’s lack of sexual desire we’re talking about. Women may discuss it with their friends, but they often don’t bring it up with their doctor.

But low sex drive, in women and in men, can be a symptom of low thyroid function. An expert in sexual function once said, “People will often say that sex is not very important, until they begin having problems with it.”  Even if decreased sex drive or function is