You may also have thyroid hormone conversion problems, where you have enough T4 and T3 in the bloodstream, but the organs and tissues are not effectively converting the inactive T4 into the active T3 that you need at the cellular level. This is similar to the better-known concept of insulin resistance, where your body produces enough insulin, but your cells become resistant to it, so your body loses its ability to respond to it. What you may be experiencing is thyroid hormone resistance, where your body is capable of producing thyroid hormone, but nutritional and metabolic dysfunctions have made your tissues resistant to that hormone. If I seem to be focusing on hypothyroidism, it's because it's ultimately the end result for most thyroid patients. Typically, this would be a holistic or alternative medicine physician with expertise working with thyroid disease and other difficult-to-diagnose conditions. The bottom line is that if you suspect thyroid resistance or conversion problems, you will need a practitioner who is skilled in clinical, observational diagnosis, and who, in the face of normal blood test values, will still be willing to try you on a course of thyroid treatment if you have observable signs of hypothyroidism. You may have a family history of thyroid disease or a number of thyroid symptoms - even a low basal body temperature - but you have TSH, free T4, free T3 and antibody levels that are normal.

This test is considered irrelevant by many mainstream practitioners, however. This typically occurs when the body is under stress and is cause for treatment according to some practitioners. In both cases, you may show normal circulating levels, but you are hypothyroid at the level of your tissues, organs, and cells.