 You probably know that thyroid gland has something to do with weight gain and obesity, but what exactly? Well, let's find out in this video. So your thyroid gland is a small butterfly-shaped gland which is found in your neck region, and it releases two very important hormones. We call them as triiodothyronine, which is shortly called as T3. It basically means there are three atoms of iodine in that, and tetraiodothyronine, which means there are four atoms of iodine atoms in that. So these are the two T3 and T4 are the two important hormones that thyroid gland releases, but what does it do? What's its function? Well, it's major function. Well, one of its major function is in regulating your metabolic rate. What does that mean? Well, imagine you just eaten lunch, your digestive system breaks it down into smaller pieces, but eventually you want to convert that food into energy, right? Converting food into energy is called metabolism, and the rate at which you convert food into energy is called the metabolic rate. Now, your body's metabolic rate keeps changing throughout the day, depending upon when you eat, when you are very active, when you are not very active, and so that regulation is done by these two hormones. But how exactly does it do that? Well, okay, imagine you have just eaten your lunch and you need to break it down and you need to convert that into a lot of energy. So what it does is that your body senses it and it releases these hormones. These hormones will go into your bloodstream, bind to your cells and everything, and it triggers a few things. One thing it triggers is that it helps in actually breaking down your carbs, fats, and proteins. So you probably know that carbs get broken down into smaller pieces. We call it glucose. Fats get broken down into fatty acids. Proteins get broken down into amino acids. So it helps in breaking them down. Okay, what next? At a cellular level, it also stimulates the mitochondrias and asks it to work more efficiently. So now your mitochondrias will take in these and converts it into energy. And that's how it increases the metabolic rate. But not just that, your mitochondrias will also say, hey, I need more oxygen because breaking down of this into energy requires more oxygen. So guess what? These hormones will also increase your heart rate. This will provide the necessary extra oxygen that is needed in helping mitochondrias break down these things into energy. And that's how you can increase the metabolic rate. All right, now imagine I have enough energy. I don't want a lot of energy anymore. What happens? Your body senses that. And it tells the thyroid gland to cool off, reduce releasing the amount of, reduce the amount of these two hormones. And therefore all of these activity reduces. And that's basically how you regulate your metabolic rate. Now, just based on this, can you think about what would happen if your thyroid gland is not functioning properly? If it's not releasing this at the right level, you can have two kinds of problems. One problem is it is releasing a lot more than necessary, which is called hypothyroidism. Or maybe it's releasing a lot less than necessary, which is called hypothyroidism. So can you guess in both of these conditions, based on now, you know how it regulates the metabolic rate. Based on that, can you guess what will be the consequences? Pause and try to guess. All right, let's see. If you have a lot more than necessary, then what can happen is, even when you don't need a lot of energy, you have enough energy, you don't need a lot of energy, all of these things will happen. So a lot of food will get converted into energy. And that means you will have a lot less food in your body. That means you will have weight loss. So you'll have weight loss. You will have a lot more energy than necessary, which is not a good thing. Too much of anything is not a good thing. That can actually cause anxiety. And not to mention, you will have increased heart rate all the time, which is also something that can cause anxiety. Okay, now the opposite problem. What if you have less than necessary amount of thyroid hormones? Well, now you will not be able to convert enough food into energy. And therefore a lot of food gets stored in your body, which means you get weight gain. You're not getting a lot of energy, which means you will be feeling tired all the time. Fatigue. And we think that can also lead to depression. And now that we know about these things, now that we are educated about these things, I think we have a responsibility towards our society. We owe it to our society to be very sensitive about these issues. It's so easy for us to go and tell people and say, hey, why are you so obese? Why don't you work out? Why are you so thin? Why don't you eat much? But I think we should stop doing that. Now that we know about these issues, we can be a little bit more sensitive towards our friends, our families, and anybody else. Another major function of thyroid hormones is that they affect the body and the brain development of infants and fetuses and children. So what does that mean? Well, imagine that somebody who's pregnant has hypothyroidism. What's gonna happen? Well, in addition to all the stuff that we just discussed, along with that, her baby's brain and body development, physical development would be severely affected. Which means if this is untreated, then eventually when the baby comes out, it will be severely stunted, both physically and mentally. And this particular condition is given a name it's called christenism, which could be an extremely difficult news for the family. Anyways, that's it. So to quickly summarize, your thyroid gland produces two important thyroid hormones, triiodo, which means three atoms of iodine, and tetriiodo, which means four atoms of iodine. Their important function is they regulate the metabolic rate, they do that by doing all of these things. And two common problems you can have is you can have hyperthyroidism, which is when you have a lot of these hormones in your body that can lead to a lot of these things happening, which means a lot of weight loss, can also lead to anxiety, increased heart rate all the time, and hypo, which means you have less levels than necessary, which means not enough conversion to energies happening, which means you'll be fatigued, a lot of food gets accumulated in your body, which means you get weight gain, can also lead to depression. And of course, since it also affects the body and brain development, hypothyroidism in pregnant folks can also lead to christenism in their children. You know, I was a little curious about where this word christenism came from, and turns out that it has its Latin origin from the word Christian. And I was like, what has Christian got to do with this? Well, turns out it was our way of just saying that it's the one who is human despite deformities.