Welcome to the Endocrine Pathology Society!

The Endocrine Pathology Society is an international scientific organization dedicated to promoting advancement in the diagnosis and understanding of endocrine disease. The Society’s members are academically oriented pathologists and researchers who strive to integrate anatomically based histopathology with evolving knowledge derived from cellular and molecular biology. The Society is a Companion Society of the U.S. and Canadian Academy of Pathology and sponsor of the journal, Endocrine Pathology.

The new focus of the Endocrine Pathology website has been on the thyroid gland. Unfortunately, thyroid problems, such as hypothyroidism, is an issue that is still not fully understood by most in the medical community. Although much has been learned, especially in the recent years, the basic questions to how thyroid disorders happen in the body and how to effectively treat it, still do not have definite answers. Perhaps it is our diets. Iodine certainly is one of the most important of the nutrients and without it, the thyroid would not be able to function at all. As more and more research is being conducted, more valuable answers will be given to all these questions.

Thyroid Nodules are one of the many disorders found in the thyroid gland. If you’re unfamiliar with this disease, it is defined as lumps on the gland of the thyroid. There may be only one for some, but for the unlucky there might be several. Having these lumps does not necessarily mean that there is further problems, but often those who develop this disease end up having thyroid cancer. If the patient is lucky, they won’t have to worry about anything. But if they are not, it could mean needing to get the entire thyroid gland removed. This is certainly not a good scenario.

Another common thyroid disease is hyperthyroidism. This is more prevalent in women, however, it often occurs in men as well. Simply put, hyperthyroidism occurs when the thyroid gland produces more hormones than the amount that is considered normal by doctors. Since these hormones regulate the metabolism of the entire body, many patients find that they cannot gain much weight, sweat a lot, and are easily irritated. This is not a complete list of the symptoms, however, and there are a lot more associated with a person’s high metabolism.

The opposite of hyperthyroidism, and often referred to as the most common thyroid disorder, is hypothyroidism. This occurs when the thyroid gland produces far less hormones than what doctors consider to be the normal amount. Instead of having a high metabolism as associated with hyperthyroidism, instead patients have very low metabolism. Losing weight is often difficult, if not impossible, with those who have hypothyroidism. A slow metabolism is not the only effect of hypothyroidism however. Many patients report other symptoms such as a sensitivity to cold and low energy.

There is good news to be found in light of all the thyroid diseases. Often times, these disorders are a result of poor diet habits and lack of important nutrients including vitamins and minerals. Over time, in spans of months and years, the development of this deficiency results in these unfortunate thyroid conditions. Many people have started to turn to “homeopathic treatments” in an effort to correct their diet and in turn their thyroid issues. One of the websites I saw, Thyroid Advisor, focuses on providing thyroid supplement reviews. One of their pages contains a list of the top thyroid supplements they have reviewed thus far. For those suffering from these diseases it might help to learn more about these supplements.  It is highly recommended to read further articles and research that focus on how these complexes help provide relief to thyroid problems, mainly hypothyroidism.