Our 10-year old daughter has Hashimoto's

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Hi everyone,

We're new on this forum and want to share what's been going on with our 10-year

daughter who was just diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. My wife and I are

hoping that we might be able to figure out what could be triggering the

auto-immune reaction in her thyroid gland and help our daughter's to get her

thyroid function back to normal.

Our daughter has been generally healthy except for a few matters such as being a

very picky eater with a history of possible GI reflux as well as vitamin D

deficiency. She's also had sleep issues lately and was recently started on

melatonin by our pediatrician.

Most notably though, she's been growth delayed and we've been seeing an

endocrinologist for several years who has tested her for various problems that

can cause growth delay but all of the tests have come back normal (up until

now).

Last week, we were scheduled to see the endocrinologist and we had some blood

tests checked and this time her free T3 (958) was elevated although her free T4

(1.5) and THS (1.1) were normal. Her eosinophil count was also slightly

elevated.

The endocrinologist said that her elevated free T3 was likely a lab error so we

rechecked her numbers two days later and her free T3 was up to 1358 and her free

T4 was now increased to 1.9. Her TSH had falled to 0.43. Thyroid antibodies

were checked and her thyroid peroxidase antibodies were very high at greater

than 600 IU/mL but her thyroglobuin antibodies, TSH receptor antibodies, thyroid

stimulating immunoglobins, gliadin antibodies, transglutaminase antibodies,

endomysial antibodies, and total IGA were all normal.

Fortunately, our daughter had almost no symptoms outside of feeling her heart

beating fast at times and having intermittent diarrhea. I spoke at length with

the endocrinologist who told us that our daughter has Hashimoto's and she

recommended that we return in 2 weeks for repeat thyroid blood tests with the

hope that things would resolve by then. No treatment or changes were

recommended.

My wife and I are, of course, concerned about our 10-year old's health. We've

spent the last few days reading as much as we could about Hashimoto's to learn

what we can do to help.

In particular, we're tyring to figure out what may have triggered the

Hashimoto's and what could trigger future problems. The triggers that keep

coming up in the books we're reading are gluten and casein (from dairy) and

interestingly we were eating a ton of pizza the week before her thyroid was

found to be elevated.

Our questions at this point are:

1. What can we do to help figure out what may be triggering her Hashimotos's?

2. What are the most common triggers for Hashimoto's?

3. Is it worth going gluten-free even though her gluten antibodies came back

negative on her blood tests?

4. Is it worth going casein-free? Are there blood tests to look at this?

5, Should we see an allergist?

6. Should we see a nutritionist?

7. Should we see a celiac specialist?

8. Is it possible that her thyroid issues could be related to her growth

problems even though prior TSH levels have been normal.

9. Is her elevated eosinophil count related to the thyroid problems?

10. Could the melatonin (that we started a few weeks ago) have triggered the

Hashimoto's?

Any help that anyone can give us will be greatly appreciated. We are so

concerned about our daughter and want to help her as best we can.

Thank you so much.

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