Recently I had my blood testing. I highly recommend that everyone do this on a yearly basis.
One marker that came back was a High TSH. Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. The idea is that this hormone is supposed cause the Thyroid to react . Once the Thyroid gland reacts it tells the Pituitary gland to lowers TSH. My condition was classified as Sub-Clinical HYPO Thyroidism.
This is an Auto-immune disease. One interesting note is that the doctor indicated that the body actually doesn’t KNOW about Thyroid (dumb feedback loop) but something could have happened virus or external (radiation) could have caused it to think that it’s not supposed to be in the body. Hence, “anti-bodies” will be formed. A virus could have caused the body to know about the Thyroid. The body then start attacking the Thyroid (Auto-immune).
A TPO test is a secondary test that’s used to determine whether these anti-bodies are being formed.