Hello and Happiest of Sundays, Mere here.
I know, I know. She's back with another topic you were not planning to think about on a perfectly good day. But if you've been around here long enough you already know this about me ....I would rather be the person who said something early than the one who said nothing at all. And if I'm being honest, this has always been who I am. I just finally realized that in order to actually impact lives the way I set out to, the way I was meant for, I had to erase the narratives about my own voice that were never mine in the first place. So here we are.
Today I want to talk about bone health, thyroid health, and why those two things belong in the same conversation even though almost nobody puts them there. But first I need to tell you what got me here so I connect the dots well...or try to.
If you read the last several newsletters you know about my father, you know about the cognitive decline, the vascular dementia that was building silently for years. What I did not write about in that newsletter was the other thing I could not stop seeing.
How fragile he looked. Not just cognitively. Physically. Structurally. Undermuscled. Unsteady. Breakable in a way that was visible to anyone paying attention. His body was telling the same story his brain was...quietly falling apart while society around him said he was fine because "he got around okay." A man wearing a back brace, two knee braces, with enough turmeric in his cabinets for a small town, shuffling around in sneakers that looked like they weighed more than he did. But yeah, he was "moving." (Sigh.)
In his blood work, he had a TSH run at some point a few years ago. It was elevated. A full thyroid panel was never done then, despite my very brief and meek suggestion. His bone health was never examined outside of what surgery could fix what was already broken. Oh yeah ...they were fully ready to book him in for back surgery, no problem, but actually discuss weight training of any sort or nutrition? Ha. That, and full blood work was never drawn. Nobody asked the next question or looked at the bigger lens. About any of it.
I wrote another blog this week that I need you to read. It is about bone mineral density, thyroid health, and the conversation that is not happening early enough for most people. It is again personal. I share my own story in it ....premature surgical menopause, yearly bone density scans, a year where my density declined "remarkably", and then a year later, this year, where my provider used the word "remarkable" in a positive light! I am not handing you a single magic answer because there was not and is not one. But I am handing you the full picture that most women and men are never shown.
There is a finding in the blog I need you to carry with you even if you read nothing else today: a study found that postmenopausal women with TPO antibodies, a marker of autoimmune thyroid activity , had decreased bone mineral density and increased fracture risk even when their TSH was completely normal. Normal TSH. Abnormal bone loss. Because nobody ran the rest of the panel and mentioned bone health.
And here is the stat that should make every person reading this pause: nearly one in four women over 65 who fracture a hip will not survive the following year. One in three women over 50 will experience an osteoporotic fracture in her lifetime. One in five men will face the same. This is not an elderly person's problem. This is decades of unmonitored, unaddressed bone loss arriving all at once as a fracture, and by then the conversation is no longer about prevention. It is about survival.
I am advocating for my clients. I am pushing for full thyroid panels and blood work as a whole done. And I am fine being the annoying person who brings this up before you wanted to think about it. I would rather be annoying now than heartbroken for you later.
If what you just read made something click... if you are realizing that your thyroid has never been fully evaluated, that your bone health has never been assessed, that the "you're fine" you received was based on one number and not the full picture ...then I want you to know about something Sarah and I are doing if you haven't heard...
We are hosting a FREE live webinar on April 29th at 6 PM EST called Beyond TSH: The Thyroid Conversation Most Appointments Never Get To (And the Questions Nobody Is Answering).
The thyroid-bone connection I wrote about today is one piece of what we are covering. We are getting into the full thyroid panel, what each marker actually tells you, where supplementation goes sideways (I am bringing a real case study on that one), the nutrients that keep getting skipped, and the system-wide impact that nobody connects back to the thyroid.... including your bones, your brain, your cardiovascular health, and your hormones.
This is live on Zoom. It is FREE(!). There is no recording. And it is not surface-level. Every registrant, who is not a member of Fortify Core or Fortify Mentorship, will receive FREE 5 day-Limited access to Fortify Core!
If someone came to mind while you were reading this, PLEASE send it to them. The blog. The webinar link. Both. That is exactly how this information needs to move.
With love and transparency
Mere & Sarah
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