Red Hot Mamas In Charge of Change.
By: Red Hot Mamas
Published: November 13, 2014
Contributed by Karen Giblin
Founder of Red Hot Mamas®
Recently, I attended the 84th Annual Meeting of The American Thyroid Association in San Diego, CA. This organization has over 1700 members from 43 countries around the world. Their organization is devoted to thyroid biology and to the prevention and treatment of thyroid disease through research, clinical care, education and public health. The president of this organization is Dr. Hossein Gharib from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.
The opening session was held on Oct 29, 2014 and Dr. Peter Kopp, Dr. Douglas Ross and Dr. Herbert Chen presented Recent Developments and Future Challenges in Thyroidolgy giving clinical endocrine review, as well as surgical review.
Oral abstracts and poster sessions, as well as Plenary Sessions and Meet the Professor Workshops continued through Saturday, November 1.
The guidelines for the treatment of hypothyroidism (2014) and the Abstracts for ATARI can be found on www.thyroid.org.
As you all know, I am the founder of Red Hot Mamas®. I am particularly interested in information about thyroid and menopause as it is oftentimes confusing to distinguish between menopausal symptoms and thyroid disease. That is why so many women suffer from undiagnosed thyroid disease.
Many women complain of sleep disturbances, fatigue, mood swings, depression and believe that these symptoms are just due to menopause. However, these symptoms may also be caused by a thyroid condition. So, as a patient advocate, I urge you to have your thyroid checked which is a simple blood test known as TSH. If your doctor determines that your symptoms are related to a thyroid condition, it may easily be treated.
I suggest you log onto www.thyroid.org for more information. They have patient brochures on thyroid diseases, frequently asked questions, links to ATAs patient education alliances and medical literature articles.
Also, our organization (Red Hot Mamas®), has partnered with The Endocrine Society’s Hormone Health Network. Please log onto their website, www.hormone.org for more information about your hormones and your health, disease conditions such as thyroid, as well as www.menopausemap.org which I helped create for them. www.redhotmamas.org has many articles about these topics, so please check back to our site and send any questions you may have.
In closing, menopausal women don’t account for a small number of women. In fact there are over 50 million of us in the US alone. It is imperative we understand the symptoms of thyroid disease at menopause!
