Grief — How It Changes You
Previa Alliance Podcast
Whitney shares her year-and-a-half journey with unexplained insomnia, weight gain, and hormonal shifts, which medical professionals initially struggled to diagnose. After an OB reveals a critical T4
Key takeaways
- Whitney's persistent insomnia and weight gain were traced to a suppressed T4 deficiency and low testosterone, masked by thyroid medication that only normalized TSH and T3.
- The physical health decline began shortly after Whitney experienced three family deaths within two months in 2022, highlighting the body's stress response to trauma.
Main topics
- Grief and its physiological impact
- Thyroid function and hormone regulation
Notable quotes
"Grief is one of the greatest stressors a human can experience."
Conclusion
The episode underscores that grief manifests physically and cognitively, requiring
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:02) you Speaker 2 (0:09) Hi guys, welcome back to Preview Alliance Podcast. This is Sarah and hi Whitney. How are you, my friend? I am good. How are y'all? Good. And guys, before we dive into this episode, just a little heads up of what we're going to be talking about if you're not in the headspace. We're going to be talking about grief today. And while it may not be the funnest topic to talk about, it's vital and important to talk about because we're all at some point going to experience grief. No one's immune to it. But just in case you're not in that headspace, give yourself a pause. We have so many other great episodes that you can listen to. But if not, let's dive into it. Whitney, what, like anything, inspires this episode to us that we thought, you know, this Speaker 1 (0:58) is our real Speaker 2 (0:58) life Speaker 1 (0:58) and our text. So I guess I'll go into, like, the backstory of what kind of made my own little therapist light bulb go off. So backstory for about a year and a half, I've been struggling with insomnia. And at first I say at first it was a, it was a legitimate factor where I had like a strain on a lower back muscle. It would spasm at night. That would create insomnia. Went to the doctor, went to physical therapy for the back got resolved, but I still had insomnia. And so I went back to my PCP and I was like, Hey, like, My back is doing significantly better, but I really don't want to be taking Flexeril, which is a muscle relaxer, just to go to sleep at night if I don't actually need that. She said, absolutely understand it. Brought me a script for hydroxyzine, which I will say has worked fantastically for my insomnia. No shade to my PCP because she was treating said problem. And then I see my GYN every December for an annual. And I was telling him about everything. And he was like, you know, you've been diagnosed with hypothyroidism for almost a decade now. I wonder if it's Hashimoto's. Because in addition to the insomnia, you know, hopefully this is not TMI, but I feel like it's all women. And we talk about, you know, postpartum and all the things here. Like my cycles were just off as far as like the flow and things of that nature. So I was concerned. about that kind of that 2 30 crash in the afternoon um and so he was like you know let's test you for Hashimoto's my labs came back beautiful which you're like wait you should be happy about that i'm like it is such a double-edged sword of like yeah you don't have hoshimaru's but also what is going on with me To the point where I was like, well, am I impairing menopause? Like, what is going on? And so fast forward to June. So just a couple of months ago, saw my PCP and I'm like, hey, loving the hydroxyzine. It's going great for me. You know, definitely noticed the insomnia worse about two to three days before my period. So again, feeling like it's a hormone influenced situation. And I said, you know, maybe it's my cortisol. that's off, you know? And I told her, I was like, this feels like spaghetti noodles. I'm just throwing everything at the wall just to see what sticks. But in addition to that, I have gained seven pounds since March. And if y'all know me, y'all know that I run. I actually completed my very first marathon in March. And I told her, I was like, here's the deal. Yes, I do. Let me some Chick-fil-A fries. I eat them. But I'm not eating that all day, every day with absolutely no activity taking place. I was like, my calorie math just is not mathing. And she agreed. And so she did what I thought to be a very extensive blood panel. So I got my CBC done. She did my cortisol and it was on the like mid slash low end of cortisol. My thyroid panels were good. My T3 and my TSH were perfectly normal. Kidney function was fine. Liver function was fine. I'm not pre-diabetic, blah, blah, blah, all these things. So then I'm just sitting there like, what is wrong with me? And so I made an appointment with my OB. But in the meantime, my curious little self went back and looked through the portal of my records from my PCP from about 2022 until now. And up until this past March where I had that huge jump in my weight of seven pounds. I noticed that I slowly started increasing my weight, like pound here, two pounds here, nothing that you would really get alarmed Speaker 2 (4:39) over. But Speaker 1 (4:40) also started noticing a slight increase in my bad cholesterol number. Now, my overall cholesterol, beautiful, good cholesterol, beautiful. Bad cholesterol is just a touch over like the normal range. I'm talking like I'm 10 points over the normal range. Mind you, cardiac problems run in my family. which is why I run so much is to try to be in good heart health. And I was like, that's interesting that I see that trend. So jump ahead to, I go to see my OB and I told him, I was like, I don't know if I'm in perimenopause. I don't know if it's my thyroid. I don't really know what is wrong with me, but something is wrong. And I don't know what to do at this point. And this is where my type A came in clutch. Okay. I had screenshot all of my lab results from my PCP. was able to hand him my phone and he scrolled through and he goes, okay, good. You're not pre-diabetic. We know that. He goes, your cortisol is good here. He goes, but cortisol fluctuates so much. One little snippet doesn't give the whole picture of cortisol. And my PCP had told me that too. She was like, it can be all over the place in one day. Fair enough. And so one thing he noticed was that in my thyroid labs, my TSH got looked at and my T3 got looked at. My T4 did not. Speaker 1 (5:57) And he goes, here's the thing. The medication you're on absolutely will make your TSH and your T3 look good. He goes, because