Take your temp!

When you hear the phrase “Take your tem­pe­ra­ture”, you usually asso­ciate it with being sick and loo­king for a fever.

But your tem­pe­ra­ture can also be one of many clues of your meta­bo­lic health. As a hypothy­roid patient, taking your tem­pe­ra­ture can be an impor­tant aspect in three other ways:

1) diag­no­sing hypothy­roid
2) dosing with natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid
3) asses­sing your adre­nal sta­tus

Gene­rally, the ave­rage tem­pe­ra­ture of an adult with a healthy thy­roid and a healthy meta­bo­lism is 98.6 degrees Fah­renheit or 37.0 degrees Cel­sius, and that occurs around mid-afternoon or 3 pm. So if you take your mid-afternoon temp and find it in low 98’s or even in the 97’s, you have been given a strong clue that you may be hypothy­roid. And a few report their mid-afternoon temp being in the 96’s. BRRRR.

Another tem­pe­ra­ture clue is to take it before you rise from your bed in the mor­ning. Dr. Broda Bar­nes, a doc­tor who paid atten­tion to cli­ni­cal pre­sen­ta­tion and presc­ri­bed Armour, found that a healthy before-rising mor­ning basal temp should be bet­ween 97.8 — 98.2. If it’s higher, you may be hyperthy­roid, and if it’s lower, you are most likely hypothy­roid. He also recom­men­ded under-the-arm tem­pe­ra­ture tes­ting, but patients have found oral to be just as effective.

Addi­tio­nally, once you are on natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid,  and are con­sis­tently rai­sing your doses, you will see your temps climb to healthy levels with inc­rea­sing feel-good symp­toms to match. In many patients, reaching the ave­rage temp around 98.6 can hap­pen before you are even on your opti­mal amount of Armour.

But what if you are seeing your tem­pe­ra­ture all over the map, such as one temp one day, and a temp one-half to two degrees lower at the exact same time the next day?? That could be a sign that you have low-functioning adre­nals, a com­mon con­di­tion with hypothy­roid patients, which means you aren’t pro­du­cing enough cor­ti­sol. And for some folks, it takes sup­ple­men­ting with low-dose Hydro­cor­ti­sone or other adre­nal sup­port pro­ducts to bring that sta­bi­lity in the tem­pe­ra­ture back.

Dr. Rind has an exce­llent tem­pe­ra­ture graph you can use to unders­tand temps:
http://www.drrind.com/therapies/metabolic-temperature-graph

WHAT KIND OF THERMOMETER SHOULD YOU USE? Though Dr. Rind above doesn’t recom­mend the old-fashion oral mer­cury ther­mo­me­ters, we as thy­roid patients have found them quite use­ful and accu­rate as com­pa­red to most digi­tal ther­mo­me­ters, which tend to be off up to a degree one direc­tion or the other. Yes, some digi­tals are defi­ni­tely bet­ter than others. But when in doubt, use your Mer­cury, or any fluid-filled ther­mo­me­ter, which in modern times, repla­ces the older mer­cury ther­mo­me­ters. It’s also impor­tant to leave it under your ton­gue long enough, i.e. seve­ral minu­tes.

WHAT IF YOUR TEMP IS NORMAL OR HIGH, YET YOU HAVE HYPOTHYROID SYMPTOMS? This is a clue that you may have an anti­bo­dies attack on your thy­roid, called Hashi­mo­tos Disease, making it wise to do the two anti­bo­dies tests to con­firm or rule out Hashi’s.

WHAT ABOUT MENSTRUATING OR OVULATING WOMEN? Your inter­nal body tem­pe­ra­ture can be very reac­tive to your female hor­mo­nal state, making it lower or higher than nor­mal. So kno­wing what it going on within is impor­tant to eva­lua­ting a temperature.

DO TEMPS CHANGE AS ONE AGES? Yes. They seem to lower. But that could be rela­ted to the slo­wing down of the thy­roid in aging.

So TAKE YOUR TEMP!!