Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

TRLK9802 t1_iuy0w9y wrote

Reply to comment by Abishek_Muthian in When I was 32, I was told that my bones were like that of an 80 year old. I have built a web application to track bone health and monitor treatments for those like me. No sign-up, No personal data collected, Completely Free and Open-Source. by Abishek_Muthian

Thyroid glands and parathyroid glands are very different.

Parathyroid glands regulate calcium in the body. There are 4 tiny parathyroid glands behind the thyroid gland, thus the name..."para" means "next to," and while these glands are near each other, they perform entirely different functions.

Sometimes, for unknown reasons, a parathyroid gland will develop into a benign tumor (sometimes more than one gland is affected, but most of the time, it's one gland); this is primary hyperparathyroidism.

When there is a parathyroid tumor, the affected gland that has developed into a tumor goes into overdrive and the other glands go dormant. The tumorous gland pumps out lots of PTH (parathyroid hormone), and this signals to the body to increase the body's blood calcium level...but the calcium has to come from somewhere, and it will be sucked out of your bones and teeth.

So now you have calcium being removed from your bones, causing osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is only one problem caused by these tumors. While these tumors are not cancerous, they are deadly because they slowly kill you...it might take 20 years, but they will kill you eventually if you don't have surgery.

Any young person with osteoporosis should have have been checked for hyperparathyroidism; this means blood tests where calcium and PTH are checked together. Sometimes, these blood tests need to be repeated multiple times to get a clear picture of what's happening.

You can read more about hyperparathyroidism and osteoporosis here (this is the website of the surgeon who did my surgery):
https://www.parathyroid.com/osteoporosis.htm

2

Abishek_Muthian OP t1_iuzt7wy wrote

Thank you for your detailed clarification, I realized para-thyroid could be different from usual thyroid gland anomaly only after my previous comment.

Your comment offers clear view of the distinction, I will get tested for the para-thyroid as well.

2

TRLK9802 t1_iv02uq9 wrote

Please feel free to follow up with me any time. I'm happy to discuss lab values once you have them, etc.

Very few doctors are parathyroid experts, so it can be quite difficult to get a diagnosis.

Having normocalcemic hyperparathyroidism made my diagnosis tricky, but once I found the surgeon who went on to do my surgery, he was quite convinced that I had a tumor based on how my labs looked.

With normal parathyroid function, there is an inverse relationship between PTH and calcium...meaning if one is high within its range, the other should be low in its range (and vice versa). Most of my PTH and calcium levels were within their ranges, but toward the tops of their ranges, so the lack of an inverse relationship was telling.

Also, you will see that the lab range for calcium goes to around 10.2 to 10.4, but only kids and young adults should have calcium over 10.0; once you're about 30 years of age, calcium should be below 10.0.

1