Yes, it's true - I'm cracking up!  But truth be told I've been cracking up for years - my entire adult life actually.  Well minus a recent few healthy years.

I'm talking about my skin - the skin on my heels and the skin on my hands specifically.  Long long ago, when I was in my twenties my heels would crack so bad they would bleed.  Sometimes it would hurt just to walk.  My fingers would crack open as well and bleed.  I hated putting them into water - it would sting.

Over the years I was told various things by various people.  Dry skin apparently was my problem so I would spend money on special creams for cracked heels.  Or I'd be told my skin was simply dehyrdated and I needed to drink more water. Once, years ago, I finally mentioned it to a doctor and she told me to slather cream on my tootsies and then cover them with vaseline (endocrine disrupter!) and wrap my feet all up in saran wrap.   I grew up in the Canadian prairies &amp; eventually lived North of 65º.  The Arctic is considered a desert - it gets mighty cold and <em>extremely</em> dry there so I chalked my problem up to good old fashioned dry skin.

I wasn't diagnosed with hypothyroidism until a couple of years ago.  And even then it didn't really feel like a "diagnosis".  My doctor mentioned that my thyroid hormone levels were a bit off and that he was prescribing dessicated thyroid hormone for me.  Ok I figured, no big deal.  I didn't think I had the symptoms of someone with low thyroid.  I knew that there was a connection to estrogen so I didn't really think too much of it.  In fact, thinking back I probably didn't take it seriously enough.  Not worrying about not eating for an hour after taking my meds &amp; washing my morning pill down with my first cup of morning coffee!  At one point I even decided that since I had my estrogen dominance all under control that I didn't need to worry about this silly thyroid medication.

So for these past couple of years I've been on thyroid hormone but it's only been recently that I've discovered the link between my thyroid function and the symptoms I've had - most of them for my entire life.