Welcome to Apnathyroid, the India Specific Thyroid information page !



This is an effort at drawing attention to this tiny butterfly shaped gland in your neck. It has a direct influence on your wellbeing, and any change in what is considered its normal working, causes far reaching changes in just about every system in your body, nervous, digestive, circulatory, endocrine, musculoskeletal and any more that you can think of!

The thyroid manages metabolism in our body at the Cellular level. Its also a part of what one might call , a Hormone Orchestra; a system where the body, finely tuning its hormonal strings, has all the hormones interacting in a very constructive way, keeping you happy and healthy. Sometimes one of these hormones slides out of balance, and although, compensating adjustments are there, like in our real world , there exist limits.

Misbehaviour of the thyroid is like something amiss in your car's carburettor. One manages, but one also tends to be lazy, careless and ignore the signs. Thats where all the problems start.

Why India-specific ?

The last 20 to 30 years has seen as accelerated rate of what is normally termed "development" in India. We will confine ourselves to something that has affected the day to day lives of most Indians.

In my childhood, eating at home was the norm ; whatever you got outside, was frowned upon, and we did not DARE disagree with what folks thought. There was very little ready-to-cook culture, and almost no additives in food. Populations were less, pollution was less, and when you meant "fresh food" , it was always FRESH. We never heard of people having depression, and there was really no mental situation, that a good sweat-dripping exercise session , done on a regular basis, could not cure. And STRESS was just a 6-letter word, which was not considered fashionable to have.

In our late 30's , we came under the influence of " convenience " foods; education levels , particularly among women shot up, so more and more women started working. Migrations from other parts of India into the big towns ensured high demand and low supply of the resources. Pollution increased. Additives increased. Stress increased. Fast food arrived on the scene.

In the last decade of the last century, Indians proved they could match the developed nations, stress-level for stress-level, weight for weight, income for income, luxuries for luxuries, LDL for LDL, plaque for plaque, neuron for serotnin starved-neuron !

We started being afflicted by stuff we never saw happen to our parents. Some of our parents are still around, landmark pillars following their own sensible routine lifestyles, having the strength of mind to say NO to certain things.

And so it comes to pass that whatever solutions that exist for our afflictions, need to be a judicious mix of stuff you read , tempered with some wisdom , based on our traditional diets, social setups, cultural customs etc etc.

This site is an effort at putting together such information, along with references to what new research and discoveries are telling us today !