Why does hypothyroidism cause depression?
In: Biology
So the short answer to this is we don’t really know.
The long answer is that we think thyroid hormones are involved in what we call “neuroplasticity” or structural changes in the brain. This includes the growth of new, baby neurons. We know from previous research that growth of new neurons seems to be linked with depression, and several anti depressive treatments work by increasing the growth of new neurons. So, when you have a decreased level of thyroid hormones, your brain probably isn’t producing as many new neurons and not as much neuroplasticity is happening, and we think this might be what’s causing the depression. But we’re not totally sure because it’s hard to study (to see if a human brain has made new neurons recently, you need to look at a slice of the inside of their brain under a microscope…so they’d need to be dead.)
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