Cut From Steel

Told he would never walk. He ran the fastest mile on earth.

Glenn Cunningham was seven years old when the stove in his Kansas schoolhouse exploded. The fire burned both of his legs badly. His older brother Floyd died of his own burns days later. Physicians told the family that Glenn would never walk again.

You can guess what a verdict like that does to a household. Glenn refused to accept it. He spent years getting those legs to work again, first standing, then walking, then moving faster than anyone expected of him. Running came last, and running was the part that stuck.

Glenn Cunningham became the best miler in the world. He set a world record for the mile in 1934, a shade over four minutes and six seconds, and nobody broke it for three years. In Berlin at the 1936 Olympics he took the silver medal in the 1500 metres. Five separate years he was ranked the fastest miler in the Amateur Athletic Union.

You will never hear a doctor tell you that you cannot walk. What you get is gentler and just as final… that you are fifty-eight, and this is what fifty-eight feels like. Glenn heard the harder version at seven years old and made the doctors check their work. A verdict is not a diagnosis. You are allowed to ask somebody to run the test.

Six things you call getting older

You are tired in a way that sleep does not fix. The weight came on without any change in how you eat. Cold rooms bother you now, and nobody else notices. Your skin has gone dry at the shins. Thinking takes a beat longer than at forty, and your mood sits lower.

I have watched men file all six of those under one word. That word is age. Age is often the honest answer. It can also be a gland at the base of your neck that slowed down.

You might be looking at hypothyroidism, meaning the thyroid is not making enough hormone. The NIH puts it at nearly 5 in 100 Americans aged twelve and older, most cases mild. Mayo Clinic lists the symptoms as tiredness, weight gain, sensitivity to cold, dry skin, depression, and memory problems. You just read that list twice.

Why it slips past a man

So why does a named condition with a simple test go missing for years? I will give three reasons.

01 / The symptoms belong to everything

Mayo Clinic says it plainly. An underactive thyroid often looks like a dozen other health problems. Tiredness fits a hundred diagnoses. A doctor in a short appointment reaches for the common explanations first, and the thyroid is not the first door he opens.

02 / It is filed as a woman's condition

You will hear thyroid disease described as a women's problem. The American Thyroid Association reports that women are five to eight times more likely than men to have thyroid trouble, so the description is fair. A condition that mostly turns up in women gets looked for mostly in women. That same group estimates up to 60 percent of people with thyroid disease do not know they have it.

03 / Age hands everyone an excuse

You are fifty-five, so the slowdown has a ready explanation. Harvard Health notes that in an older person, low mood can be the only sign of an underactive thyroid. The American Thyroid Association tells doctors it takes a high index of suspicion in older patients. In other words, somebody has to think of it. Usually that somebody is you.

How you settle it

You settle this with a blood draw. Mayo Clinic says the first test for hypothyroidism measures thyroid-stimulating hormone, or TSH. The American Thyroid Association explains it simply… TSH comes from the pituitary gland and tells the thyroid to work, so when the thyroid falls behind, TSH climbs. If it comes back high, the lab usually repeats it with a T-4 test.

I will be straight about what this is not. Most tired men do not have a thyroid problem. The US Preventive Services Task Force does not recommend screening adults with no symptoms, because the evidence is not there. Symptoms change that conversation. You have symptoms, so you have a reason to ask.

You should know that a mildly raised TSH can be part of normal aging, and the American Thyroid Association says it does not always need treating. That call belongs to your doctor. Never start or change a thyroid medicine on your own.

I am not promising an abnormal result. Most likely it comes back fine, and you have ruled something out for the price of a blood draw. You cannot fix what nobody checked. Ask for the test this month.

— Travis

Insider Member's Corner

6 free habits that hold your energy steady:

You didn't put in 45 years to settle for beige.

01 / Watch · Tudor Black Bay

Tudor is Rolex's sister company, and the Black Bay is the watch that stopped people calling it the cheap one. The design pulls from Tudor's old dive watches of the 1950s. Tudor lists the current 41mm steel Black Bay starting around $5,100 on a rubber strap, with the bracelet version a little higher. That is real money for a watch. It is also the kind you hand to somebody in thirty years.

02 / Cooking · Traeger Ironwood

The Ironwood is the pellet grill for a man who wants a brisket without sitting up all night minding a fire. Traeger lists the current Ironwood at $1,799.99, with 616 square inches of cooking space and a range from 165 to 500 degrees. You run it from your phone over wifi, which sounds soft until the first time you check the temperature from the couch. Super Smoke is the setting you will actually use.

03 / Book · The Old Man and the Sea

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