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Graves Disease
November 13, 2009 |
It’s an attack on your thyroid gland, one that can’t be stopped.
The result: Graves
Disease.
“It’s the number one cause of hyperthyroidism,” says Dr. Shannon Greer, a family
practice physician on the medical staff of Lee Memorial Health System. It all starts
when your immune system mistakenly attacks your thyroid gland. That gland then starts
to overproduce the thyroxine hormone.
“That’s where you see people really start to lose the weight. They’ll develop proposis
which is protrusion of the eyes and can develop deposits behind the eyes and actually
start to push the eyes in a forward direction,” explains Dr. Greer.
Researchers are still trying to figure out what causes Graves Disease. It can strike
anyone at any age, but most cases are found in people over the age of 20. “Often
we start people out on medications just to get their symptoms under control.” Sometimes other treatments are introduced, depending on the severity of the disease.
While there is no way to prevent this sort of attack, the disease is relatively
easy to treat and is rarely life-threatening.
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