About the thyroid
The thyroid gland is a small, butterfly-shaped gland found immediately below the Adam's apple near the base of the neck. The thyroid gland, despite its tiny size, has a significant impact on the function of several of the body's most essential organs, including the heart, brain, liver, kidneys, and skin. It is critical for the body's overall health and well-being to ensure that the thyroid gland is healthy and working properly.
How Your Thyroid Functions
Consider your thyroid as a car engine that controls the speed with which your body moves. An engine generates the energy required for a car to go at a given speed. Similarly, your thyroid gland produces enough thyroid hormone to cause your cells to perform a specific function at a specific rate.
Thyroid hormone cannot be produced without fuel, much as a car cannot produce energy without gasoline. Iodine is the source of this fuel. Iodine is obtained from the consumption of iodized table salt, shellfish, bread, and milk. Your thyroid collects this essential component from your bloodstream and utilises it to generate two types of thyroid hormone: thyroxine (commonly known as T4), which has four iodine atoms, and triiodothyronine (also known as T3), which has three. When one atom is taken from T4, T3 is formed, which occurs primarily outside of the thyroid in organs and tissues where T3 is used the most, such as the liver, kidneys, and brain.
T4 is generated and then stored in the thyroid's many tiny follicles. T3 is generated and stored in the thyroid as well. Thyroid hormone is secreted into your bloodstream in amounts that fulfil the metabolic needs of your cells when your body requires it. The hormone quickly enters the cells in need and binds to specific receptors in the nuclei of the cells.
Your car's engine generates energy, but you control how fast it travels by pressing the accelerator pedal. The thyroid gland also requires guidance, which it receives from the pituitary gland, which is positioned near the base of the brain. The pituitary gland, which is about the size of a pea, is regarded as the "master gland" because it regulates the thyroid and other glands in the endocrine system. Your thyroid gland receives messages from your pituitary gland, which inform it how much thyroid hormone to produce.
TSH levels in your blood fluctuate depending on whether enough thyroid hormone is created to meet your body's requirements. TSH levels above a certain threshold cause the thyroid to create more thyroid hormone. Low TSH levels, on the other hand, signal the thyroid to cut down production. The pituitary gland receives data in a variety of ways. It can read and respond to the amount of T4 in the blood, but it also responds to the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that produces its own hormone, thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH). TRH promotes pituitary gland TSH production. The hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis is the network of communication between the hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and thyroid gland (HPT axis).
