Gena Lee Nolin's 20-Year Nightmare With Thyroid Disease

Alan Christianson, N.M.D. (left), Mari Cartel (center) and Gena Lee Nolin (right). Photo: Lifescript.com/John Sylvain.

Thyroid disease is highly treatable, but as any thyroid sufferer will tell you, it can take the fight right out of you.

There is the relentless fatigue ? not just being tired ? but sleepiness so severe that napping in the shower wouldn?t be unreasonable.

Add to that the changes in hair consistency, depression, brain fog, weight gain and loss, as well as major stomach issues. And you?re just touching on how debilitating the condition can be.

Still, those symptoms weren?t enough to red flag thyroid disease for actress Gena Lee Nolin. It took nearly 20 years for the ?Baywatch? star to be correctly diagnosed with Hashimoto?s disease, a condition in which the immune system attacks the thyroid, resulting in an underactive gland.

In fact, thyroid problems are often overlooked because the symptoms can be present long before thyroid hormone levels change enough to be noticeable, says Alan Christianson, N.M.D., author of ??The Complete Idiot?s Guide to Thyroid Disease?.

In fact, those levels can appear normal and yet the symptoms can be significant.

?So, you?ve got to get pretty good and sick before it gets flagged,? the doctor says.

Nolin was pregnant with her third child when she got very sick and began to experience what the doctors believed was a heart problem. Her doctor even considered using defibrillator paddles to shock her heart back into a normal rhythm.

?[They considered it during] my third pregnancy without my thyroid being checked,? she says.

The actress declined because of her advanced pregnancy; after more blood tests doctors realized her thyroid was the culprit.

Now Nolin is stepping up in the video below ? along with her physician Christianson ? to warn women about signs of thyroid problems. Perhaps the next patient might not have to wait 20 years to begin feeling better.

Join Nolin, Christianson and Lifescript in an hour-long Twitter chat starting at 10 a.m. PDT Friday, June 1. ?We?ll be discussing thyroid health using hash tags #lifescriptchat ?and #thyroid.

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