Welcome to the Therapy in a Nutshell podcast. I'm Emma McAdam, a licensed therapist. I make mental health skills more accessible so that you can get better at healing. Just a reminder, this is education, not therapy. If you'd like to learn more free mental health skills, check out our free courses at Therapy in a nutshell.com. Well, Tracy, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to talk with

you today. I'm excited too. It's great to collaborate together. Love this. Yeah, I love it too.

And I wanted to bring you on because there are so many physical, medical conditions that can often

look like or contribute to mood disorders like depression and anxiety.

And I think sometimes people go years without realizing that there's an underlying biological cause.

Absolutely.

And, you know, that's kind of where psychiatry really comes in is that overlap between physical and psychiatric manifestations of physical issues. I mean, that's where training lies, essentially. Yeah, which is why I'm so happy to have you on. You've specialized

in all of this. So what are, let's start with like, what are some of the big ones to look for?

What are some of the medical conditions that can look like depression or

anxiety or contribute to or fuel it? Sure. So I think the most common, or at least the most common

that I see, is thyroid conditions. So either underacting thyroid or overacting thyroid. So

hypo or hyperthyroidism. And I think it's probably the most common because it's more detected.

Like you may go to your general doctor and just get a thyroid level checked, whereas some of

the other things aren't necessarily screened for. Yeah. Yeah. If you have an underactive thyroid,

not only will you have other physical issues going on,

but it can look like a mild depression.

You can get depressive symptoms that don't respond well enough to your medications.

That's kind of one indicator.

You know, my dad, my dad had that.

So he got screened and he had low thyroid.

And when they gave him the thyroid medication, what had looked like depression basically went away. Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah. I love it when people have a physical condition that gets corrected and then they no longer have mental symptoms. I mean, that's like, that's easy. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's like you could go to therapy for five years and it's not going to fix the fact that you're tired and heavy all the time, right? That's right. Like your body's easy. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it's like you could go to therapy for five years and it's not

going to fix the fact that you're tired and heavy all the time, right? That's right. Your body's just not

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