I was just wondering, never had a thyroid problem before & I'm in my 60's. Last yr got some uknown illness & they started on me. I was sent to Dr after Dr blood work, MRI's, Ct scans, biopsies you name it. Well nobody really gave me an answer. I was sent to an excellent cancer Dr who is an expert w/blood work. She looked at all the papers alot of them. She then sd this is terrible you have had much too much radiation, stop it now, there is no cancer. Well not long after I went to my primary Dr who did a blood test for thyroid & it came up 5.67TSH & found out I have a nodule in thyroid. Can you get thyroid disease from having too much radiation? Thanks
The thyroid is susceptable to radiation therapy. It has been known to fail in people treated for other forms of cancer by radiation therapies. HOWEVER normally the failure takes a LONG time and the amount of radiation is excessive. I do not think that your CT, and MRI alone did the trick. You had to be predisposed to thryoid dysfunction. HOW many Cts and MRIs did you have exactly? One CT and one MRI wouldn't do it. Now if you had five of each.. it is possible.
Do you know if you have Hashimoto's? Or has your thyoid just failed? What were your TSH levels the years before all of your testing? There is not enough evidence to determine whether the radiation caused/aggravated the issue or if the issue was present before radiation.
MG
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If we learn by our mistakes, I am working on one hell of an education.
Yes, too much radiation can affect your thyroid, but it's not usually from a series of x-rays, it's usually from radiation treatments for cancers (ie, radiation for breast cancer) or exposure to a nuclear plant disaster, or working with radiation for many years---that type of thing.
It also probably wouldn't happen immediately---many people exposed to the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster, which was in 1986, are coming out with thyroid cancers now.
Perhaps the doctor was trying to say, don't expose yourself to all those tests and x rays unless there is a very valid reason? (I'm not sure, but I think MRI's don't use radiation by the way)---I don't think they can see radiation in your blood, so the doctor could have been making the general statement.
People can have great sensitivities to these things, but you could have had a progressive thyroid disease that is coincidentally now showing up in your blood work.
During that time I had 4 Ct scans & 1 xray poss 1 MRI & bipsies. I think she did mean too much of everything including anestisia. I had an ultra sound of the thyroid since an ENT Dr sd to ck it showed a colloid cyst in left thyroid lobe, just lately had a nuclea med uptake & scan & it says no evidence of cold nodule. tsh was4.89, t4-1.1 t3-286. He gave me syndthroid 12.5 for 5 days & .25 for 2 days. my t-4 went to 1.2 tsh 1.29 t-3 306. I was so bad on synthroid, loosing alot hair, tired all day, diarreah, legs killing me, even my eyesight bad I went off it. He was mad sd thats all he will prescribe. Going to see a woman Dr this week to see what she says. This is so confusing to me but I will say I feel so much better off that med, not on anything right now.
