Word: thyroid
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...GOITER, a grossly enlarged thyroid gland caused by iodine deficiency. The condition was thought to have been eliminated during the Depression by persuading people to use iodized salt in their food. Now it has become endemic again, said Schaefer, affecting 5% of those studied-even though enough iodine to prevent goiter costs less than ½ per person per year...
More surprising was Dr. Silverman's report that heart disease acquired relatively late in life-including coronary occlusion-may be signaled by changes in the hand. Warm, moist hands with a fine tremor and occasionally clubbing* of the fingers, he said, suggest the possibility of an overactive thyroid with resulting inefficiency of the heart, and twitching of its upper chambers. A cold hand with coarse, puffy skin may be due to an underactive thyroid, and associated with fluid in the heart sac, a high blood-level of cholesterol, and even necrosis of part of the heart muscle from...
...Henry listed the drugs: one of the amphetamines, or "bennies"; phenobarbital, to reduce the nervousness caused by bennies; thyroid hormone, to increase metabolism; digitalis, the heart stimulant, for no discernible medical reason; and a thiazide diuretic to promote loss of body water. Each pill contained a safe daily dose of that particular drug, said Dr. Henry. But some of the dead women had taken several a day, and four of the thyroid or digitalis doses would be dangerous...
Worse still was the combination. Thyroid alone may make the heart more irritable. The thiazide diuretic and even the laxative reduce the body's store of potassium, and this definitely makes the heart more irritable. Then a heavy dose of digitalis would throw the heart into useless twitching. After a while the heart would stop. In all the cases studied, said Dr. Henry, the women were alone when they died. He sees confirmation of their cause of death in the cases of two women who were saved. One, who was about to be put in an iron lung, recovered...
Later, skin cancer may develop at this site, said Dr. Morgan. Hidden from view are internal cancers (especially of the thyroid), which may take many years to develop, and leukemia or "cancer of the blood." If a woman has a pelvic X ray in the first weeks of pregnancy, the fetus may be damaged, to be aborted or stillborn, or the child may eventually develop leukemia. Completely hidden from diagnosis or measurement are genetic effects, which do not appear until a later generation...