Oprah puts spotlight on Thyroid disease

NEW YORK, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- U.S. endocrinologists say that Oprah Winfrey discussing her thyroid condition will result in many Americans going in for thyroid checks.

Winfrey described her thyroid condition in the October issue of O Magazine.

"First hyperthyroidism, which sped up my metabolism and left me unable to sleep for days -- most people lose weight. I didn’t," Winfrey wrote in O Magazine. "Then hypothyroidism, which slowed down my metabolism and made me want to sleep all the time."

Dr. Samara Ginzburg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York told the Society for Women's Health Research the Winfrey case sounded like chronic autoimmune thyroiditis or Hashimoto’s disease.

"Hashimoto’s can start with a hyperthyroid phase, due to release of stored hormone from an inflamed gland, followed by a hypothyroid phase," Ginzburg said in an interview with Dr. Jennifer Wider for the Society for Women's Health Research.

The thyroid, which helps regulate the body’s metabolism, can become overactive or underactive.

It is unknown what role female hormones play in thyroid diseases, but Rita Baron Faust, the author of "The Autoimmune Connection," stages of life such as puberty, pregnancy and menopause seem to affect the onset of thyroid diseases, Wider said in Society for Women's Health Research article.