- The ARC - California Edition -

Your Thyroid AND Your Child's

Are you feeling a little fatigued? Maybe you are tending to forget things more often. Could it be true that you are gaining weight? These symptoms may be the result of your thyroid system operating in an inappropriate manner. Even mild defects of your thyroid system are capable of causing significant problems. 

In the case of a pregnant woman having an underactive thyroid, the risk is that her baby may be born with an IQ that is below normal. For a newborn infant, if its thyroid system does not work correctly and does not generate enough hormone, it soon may develop mental retardation or defects in its growth patterns. For the general population, an underactive thyroid can result in elevated cholesterol levels.

The thyroid system consists of your thyroid gland and two specialized brain centers known as the hypothalamus and the pituitary. The thyroid system is quite important to your health as it has been assigned the task of regulating the essential hormones which enable the tissues of your body to function correctly. Thyroid disease is defined as being the result of the thyroid gland becoming underactive (producing too little hormone) or overactive (producing too much hormone).

You can surely visualize that in order for a thyroid system to do its job over a person’s lifetime, it must be manufactured correctly to begin with. Scientists tell us that the thyroid system actually forms and matures while a baby is still within the mother’s uterus. Very early in the first trimester of a woman’s pregnancy, some tissues of her fetus are evolving into becoming the thyroid gland. 

By the end of her first trimester, the thyroid gland is usually functionally operating and is located in its permanent (life long) site within the neck of the fetus. By this time of development, a normal fetus will have a thyroid gland that is collecting iodine and other raw materials from the mother’s circulatory system. This ability of the fetus is very important to its future health, as these materials will later be used for the production of the thyroid control hormone.

By the beginning of the second trimester for the fetus, the other parts of a fetal thyroid system are operating correctly. For example, the hypothalamus will be mature enough to tell the pituitary to produce and release the control hormone. Researchers are quite sure of this since they can measure some of the fetal control products involved in this process.

As time goes along during this fetal development, the complex mechanisms start taking over total control of the hormonal management system. When the baby is born, the hypothalamus, pituitary, and thyroid gland should be working together, have matured and be totally functional. This expected level of development is an extremely important milestone for a newborn. Any defect in the thyroid development of a fetus may result in the overproduction or underproduction of thyroid.

Currently in this country, each state has a procedure in place to test newborns for defects in the operation of their thyroid system. The goal of this program is to identify these infants whose thyroid system has failed to either form or operate correctly. This failure of the thyroid system to function correctly at the time of birth is known as congenital hypothyroidism. In these babies, delayed diagnosis can lead to irreversible mental retardation and abnormal growth patterns. If thyroid hormone treatment is begun within the first 4 weeks of life, mental retardation and growth failure usually are avoided.