Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Selenium

While reading a health magazine the other day, I came upon an interesting article entitled "What's Making You Tired?" This caught my attention because I am always tired and have always been tired for as long as I can remember. Getting enough sleep doesn't seem to help and exercise does not give me more energy like the experts promise. So, I started reading the article, hoping they'd provide me with some insight. Here is what I learned:

The half-moon area at the base of your fingernails has a name - lunula. Interesting, huh? Even more interesting is that people with small or nonexistent lunulas may have a slow thyroid. Guess what? I don't have lunulas on any of my fingernails. Other signs of a thyroid problem: low blood pressure (the doctors are usually surprised at how low mine is), irritability and anxiety problems (this could be a thyroid problem or the fact that I have to deal with 30 7th-graders on a daily basis!), thinning hair (while I still have hair, I lose a great deal every day), feeling cold when others don't (I'm happy at 80 degrees or warmer - anything below that requires me to wear layers). The article recommended taking a supplement of selenium daily for 90 days to help regulate the thyroid hormone.

Willing to give it a try, I purchased a bottle of selenium tonight while my husband and I were at Target. The pills smell and taste like urine. This could be a long three months.

2 comments:

teacherwoman said...

Sounds like something worth trying! Keep us posted on how things are going!

Kerri Farley said...

Definitely would love to know how this works for you......I just looked at my fingernails..... I don't have much of a half moon on them either. Hmmmmm.