Over 10% of the American population is diagnosed with diabetes (over 90% being type 2 diabetes, the kind that can be prevented) and many more go undiagnosed or are in the prediabetes stage. There are significant risk factors associated with being diabetic, including the risk of developing cardiovascular disease (such as hypertension, heart attack and stroke), vision problems, and kidney disease.
Because diabetic complications can be serious and even life-threatening, researchers are focused on finding the root cause of this highly preventable disease. One of many possible causes of diabetes may be thyroid dysfunction.
To learn more, a recent study evaluated the correlation between thyroid function and diabetes to determine if there was a causative link. Most of the participants were older- the average age was about 65 (diabetes risk increases significantly at this age) and did not have diabetes at the beginning at the trial. Over the course of approximately 8 years, thyroid tests were tracked, including TSH- which increases as thyroid levels decrease, and free T4- which directly measures thyroid hormone.
The general pattern discovered was, that as TSH levels rose (indicating low thyroid levels), the risk of developing diabetes increased. Conversely, higher free T4 levels (indicating normal thyroid levels) were associated with a decreased risk of developing diabetes.
For a group of participants who started as “prediabetics”, meaning their tests were borderline diabetes, they had the largest risk of developing diabetes if their thyroid labs became abnormal over time. In other words, for the participants who started with prediabetes, if their TSH increased, and/or their T4 decreased over time, they had a much greater chance of developing full blown diabetes.
The questions still remains; “how does the thyroid link to diabetes?”. Hypothyroidism has been shown to be related to decreased insulin sensitivity, and maybe this helps explain how low thyroid function can ultimately progress to diabetes. It’s been found that treating hypothyroidism and normalizing thyroid levels can help improve insulin sensitivity.
This study could help physicians lower their patients’ risks of developing diabetes by making it a priority to test blood sugar levels whenever thyroid tests are abnormal. Physicians may be able to catch cases of prediabetes earlier and guide patients to make healthy lifestyle adjustments that could prevent progression to diabetes.
There are 2 factors which would have made this study more useful. First, it would be interesting to see if there was a correlation between low iodine levels (a major cause of low thyroid production) and developing diabetes. Secondly, it would be helpful to measure body temperature to identify cases Wilsons Temperature Syndrome (WTS) which may have been missed where TSH was normal (as often is the case). WTS is a reflection of poor thyroid hormone function, and goes beyond just measuring low thyroid levels. It’s possible that WTS is also a risk factor for diabetes, and treating it properly could potentially decrease the risk of developing diabetes. Myself, and many other physicians have seen that normalizing low body temperatures often improves blood sugar control.
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