In men as well as women, the liver needs to support the thyroid hormone balances.
The liver must be fully functional in order to convert the T4 form of thyroid into the T3 form.
T3 is the immediately active form of thyroid hormone.
It serves to help regulate the oxidative metabolism which fuels our cell mitochondria.
But what if you’re not converting the T4 into T3?
Today men and women who are diagnosed with low thyroid are only given T4.
Occasionally they may be given a whole thyroid product that includes T4 and T3.
But in general, almost everyone is given a synthetic thyroid T4.
The expectation is that the patient’s liver will convert the T4 into T3.
But what happens if the liver isn’t healthy enough to convert the T4?
Remember, only the T3 is really active.
If the liver is fatty, or if testosterone is just a bit too low, the liver isn’t able to do the job properly.
So, if you’re given enough T4, but your liver isn’t healthy, it can’t convert sufficient amounts of T4 and T3.
What if your liver is compromised and you’re not taking thyroid medication?
Your thyroid glad will be secreting T4 with the expectation that the liver is converting it to T3.
But now it turns out that may not be happening.
It turns out that healthy testosterone levels are essential to converting T4 and T3.
Testosterone plays a key role in converting T4 into T3.
This study was conducted on rats who had their thyroid organ removed.
Some of these rats had their testicles removed as well.
The females had their ovaries removed.
Removing these organs allowed researchers to control hormone levels.
They could then test giving the rats testosterone or estrogen to see the effects on the conversion of T4 into active T3.
It was shown that higher testosterone levels lead to greater liver activity in converting T4 to T3.
Women with much lower testosterone also have a lower thyroid conversion rate.
In fact, they have about half of the activity rate than men have.
So women will only convert T4 into T3 about half the rate that men will.
Low testosterone means that you probably are low thyroid.
I’ve observed this many times with men.
I’ve seen it in women, too.
In fact, just about everybody that has a low sex drive has low testosterone levels.
They have high estrogen levels.
And they suffer low thyroid.
Oftentimes the low thyroid isn’t diagnosed with medical studies or tests.
Although there is a type of test that Dr. Broda Barnes did and that a few doctors still do today.
This is a testing method that simply monitors body temperature and heart rate.
As a result, many men are feeling that they are low in testosterone and are suffering low sex drive and poor erections when in reality they are low in thyroid.
These men may actually be a bit low in testosterone, but it probably isn’t their main issue.
The real issue is that their low testosterone is affecting their thyroid.
It’s reducing the amount of T3, the active form of thyroid, in their body.
They also studied female mice to see if estrogen played a role in thyroid.
It turns out that estrogen doesn’t do the job of converting T4 and T3.
Th researchers gave female mice who had their ovaries removed estrogen.
They found that the estrogen showed no activity in terms of helping the liver convert T4 to T3.
Only testosterone was involved in the T4 conversion, regardless of if it was for male or female mice.
As the researchers note in their study:
testosterone plays an important role in sex-related differences in rat liver T4 to T3 conversion and in the regulation of these levels.
All the hormones are essential to both men and women.
There’s no such thing as a male hormone or a female hormone.
Testosterone is as necessary for men as for women.
If you have low testosterone, you might want to raise up a bit.
That may, in turn, increase the conversion of T4 and T3 in your liver.
And this will help increase your metabolism.
Citations
Regulation of rat liver type 1 iodothyronine deiodinase mRNA levels by testosterone
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/030372079503689X
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