50 Things Only People with Hypothyroidism Understand

Originally published on 10th April 2016
Last updated on 5th January 2024

Here are a whopping 50 things that I feel only people with hypothyroidism tend to fully understand!

1. Always being cold.
2. The devastation of your hair falling out.
3. Gaining weight even though you’ve changed nothing.
4. Being unable to lose weight even though you’re trying everything you can.
5. Getting a decent amount of sleep, but still waking up more tired than the night before.
6. Having brittle hair and nails.
7. When even the simplest of questions are impossible to answer because you have thyroid brain fog.
8. When your thyroid brain fog makes you do silly things. Like putting the dirty laundry in the bin instead of the washing machine, or mixing up words and talking a load of gobbledegook.
9. When nothing helps your dry and tight feeling skin.
10. Doctors refusing to give us the medication and testing that we need to feel well.  Surely that’s not right?
11. Friends, family and co-workers thinking we’re lazy, unproductive or ‘slow’ in what we do. Little do they know about all the hypothyroidism symptoms.
12. Your body feeling like you have the worst flu ever, with achy muscles and stiff and painful joints.
13. Having a croaky voice.
14. That mental illnesses and other conditions such as depression, anxiety and insomnia often come hand in hand with hypothyroidism, with most patients having at least one mental health condition.
15. Your menstrual cycle being irregular and sometimes a lot more heavy and painful.
16. When thyroid medication is needed for life.
17. That just because we’re on thyroid medication, it doesn’t mean we feel better. A lot of patients aren’t on the right type of medication for them. There are a few different types but most doctors only consider one of them and it doesn’t work for all.
18. That you often have no appetite.
19. Being tired is much more than anyone else understands.
20. You love your bed more than anyone will ever know.
21. Your life tends to revolve around sleep and energy levels.
22. When people tell you ‘you just need to get enough sleep’ or ‘you just need to eat healthy’, in a bid to help you, but little do they know… We wish it was that simple!
23. When you have to cancel on plans with friends, and they think you’re being a cop-out, but you can’t even lift yourself off the sofa as your body feels like it weighs a tonne.
24. When you’re one of the many thyroid patients who also have Hashimoto’s, so you go gluten-free to help your symptoms, but people don’t understand why you’re ‘awkward’ when eating out. They say “Just have gluten this one time, it won’t harm!” Yes, yes it will.
25. When changing to regular clothes from your PJs means you’re having a good day.
26. When doctors won’t help you and insist that ‘everything is in your head’.
27. That you can have flares.
28. It hurts when no one understands that hypothyroidism is a life-changing, lifelong condition.
29. That a lot of us turn to self-medicating or going private in order to have any chance of getting better.(I had to go private to get the right medication.)
30. We have to learn to examine our necks for abnormalities.
31. Having hypothyroidism makes us more prone to other autoimmune conditions, getting ill more often, and adrenal issues.
32. We rattle because we have to take so many pills, tablets, supplements etc.
33. Even many endocrinologists, thyroid specialists, aren’t much more helpful than regular doctors.
34. Some of our closest friends are those from online thyroid forums or support groups.
35. Hypothyroidism can occur in men too. It’s a lower percentage, but still occurs.
36. Doctors tend to send us away with a prescription, without telling us much about the actual condition.
37. Trying to run a family and maintain a social life, as well as work and complete day-to-day tasks can feel nigh on impossible.
38. Recovery isn’t linear.
39. Putting on loads of layers often results in us still feeling cold.
40. Someone asking how we’re doing often means the world to us.
41. That no amount of makeup hides the bags under our eyes.
42. It’s not our fault we have hypothyroidism.
43. Keeping up a job is sometimes very difficult.
44. We can worry about passing the condition on to our children.
45. A ‘lazy day’ is our idea of heaven.
46. We tend to forget what ‘normal’ feels like.
47. We’re prone to vitamin deficiencies such as iron, Vitamin B and D.
48. Sometimes we just need to rant about the the frustration of having the condition.
49. Feeling fifty years older than you actually are, due to the symptoms of hypothyroidism.
50. Feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

Would you add anything else to this list?

Please remember that if you’re a thyroid patient living with poor mental health or lingering physical symptoms, that you don’t have to live this way. To address why you may still be feeling unwell (often despite being on thyroid medication too), please see this article and go through each suggestion, putting your thyroid jigsaw back together.

See also:

The book Be Your Own Thyroid Advocate: When You’re Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired, which explains how I got my own life back on track after being struck down with hypothyroidism. You don’t have to live a poor quality of life.

You can click on the hyperlinks in the above post to learn more and see references to information given.