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Yellow Skin Around Eyes: A Sign of Thyroid Gland Dysfunction?

Jun 19, 2023 | Health & Wellness Blog Updates | Advanced Integrated Health, Thyroid Health

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Yellow Skin Around Eyes: A Sign of Thyroid Gland Dysfunction?

It’s standard practice to take blood tests and undergo assessments by doctors before you receive a diagnosis. But did you know that there are things you can look out for that indicate an underlying health concern? Changes in your eyes, tongue, and skin can signal that it’s time to see a doctor. One example includes yellow skin, which could indicate a viral infection or even thyroid gland dysfunction.

To help you know what to look for and how to proceed, we’ll look at some of the reasons your skin turns yellow and how it’s linked to thyroid conditions.

What Makes Your Skin Turn Yellow?

Your skin becomes yellow because of excess bilirubin levels – also known as jaundice. Your body makes bilirubin, a yellowish substance when it breaks down red blood cells. Normally, your liver would break down bilirubin and eliminate it from the body. However, certain factors can disrupt this process, causing bilirubin to accumulate and turn your skin yellow.

Jaundice symptoms don’t just include yellow skin. It causes the white part of your eyes, the sclera, to turn yellow or even brown in severe cases. It also affects the inside of your mouth, which becomes yellow and is accompanied by itchy skin all over the body. You’ll notice that your urine becomes darker, too.

Jaundice rarely affects adults on its own, but various other conditions can cause it:

Liver Disease

A major reason includes liver dysfunction, like alcohol-related liver disease or hepatitis. If your liver isn’t functioning properly, your body can’t eliminate bilirubin, causing it to accumulate. That’s because bilirubin needs to move quickly through the liver and bile ducts.

Otherwise, it builds up in the blood and is deposited in the skin, causing a yellowing of the skin, eyes, and the skin around the eyes. Alcohol-related liver disease is also a common cause, which is why doctors recommend controlling your alcohol intake.

Thyroid Storm

In some cases, an undiagnosed or poorly managed overactive thyroid can lead to a thyroid storm.

It’s a serious condition that involves a sudden flare-up of symptoms, often triggered by pregnancy, infection, or damage to the thyroid gland. It can also happen if you don’t take your medicine correctly, which is why doctors recommend taking the right dosage at the prescribed time. Other symptoms include:

  • a high body temperature
  • rapid heartbeat
  • hypertension
  • severe confusion and agitation
  • delirium
  • severe weakness
  • seizures

If you suspect that you or a loved one is experiencing a thyroid storm, take them to the ER or call an ambulance right away.

Besides these, other causes of jaundice include:

  • Blocked bile ducts caused by gallstones
  • Gallblader or pancreatic cancer
  • Autoimmune disease, such as those affecting the liver
  • Taking medications like oral contraceptives and excess acetaminophen.

Instead of trying to guess what’s causing the skin around your eyes to look yellow, we recommend seeing a professional and getting a diagnosis. And if you’d like to know more about how thyroid conditions are linked to jaundice, our experts at Advanced Integrated Health can help. Get in touch with us to schedule a virtual functional medicine session with our specialists and get answers to all your questions.

Jaundice

Diagnosing Jaundice And Determining The Underlying Health Condition

If you see a doctor and report other symptoms besides a yellow tinge in your skin, they’ll start by performing various tests. One of the first tests they perform is a bilirubin test. It can detect levels of bilirubin in the blood, and results can show whether the substance is accumulating in the blood.

Checking Liver Function

They’ll also prescribe other tests to determine whether the jaundice is occurring because of an underlying liver condition. These include liver function tests, a blood test for cholesterol levels, a viral hepatitis panel, and prothrombin time.

Measuring Thyroid Hormone Levels

To rule out the cause of jaundice, your doctor may also check other labs, such as a thyroid function test. These tests check levels of thyroid stimulating hormone, thyroxine, and triiodothyronine in your blood. There’s more than one type of test used to measure your T3 and T4 levels.

For example, a free level test only checks how much of thyroid hormone is currently available to your cells. On the other hand, a total level test gives you the amount of thyroid hormone bound to proteins, as well as the free amount.

How Liver Dysfunction Affects Thyroid Function Tests

If taken while jaundice is present, thyroid function tests don’t always reflect your actual thyroid status. The first reason is that your liver makes proteins that T3 and T4 hormones bind to. Thyroid hormones that bind to these proteins become inactive, so your body can’t use them.

Fluctuations in the production of these proteins can subsequently affect thyroid hormone levels. Some examples of such proteins include thyroxine-binding globulin (TBG) and albumin. And when you have chronic liver dysfunction, it reduces the amount of thyroid hormone-binding proteins, leading to higher free T4 levels on your test results.

Secondly, high levels of bilirubin reduce T4’s capacity to bind to proteins causing T4 levels to increase. So, if your doctor checks labs like thyroid function tests to find out the underlying cause, it’s less likely that the results will be accurate.

What If My Liver Function Tests Are Normal, But My Skin Is Still Yellow

If you take a blood test to check your liver function, it’s possible that your results will be normal. This means you don’t have jaundice, so your skin is yellow due to some other reason. One possible explanation is that your diet is high in beta-carotene. Foods that contain high levels of beta carotene are rich in orange, red, and yellow pigments, such as spinach, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, and especially carrots.

Carotenemia is the medical term used to describe yellowing of the skin because of high carotene levels in the blood. It’s typically common in infants, whose diets typically include purees made from green and orange vegetables.

It doesn’t happen if you eat a few extra carrots one day. Instead, it results from prolonged and excessive consumption of carotene-rich food. It also depends on your metabolism and the carotene content of the foods you’re eating. This condition is harmless and your discolored skin will gradually subside as you reduce your intake of foods that are high in carotene.

Can Yellow Skin Indicate a Thyroid Condition

Yes, it’s possible that the yellow skin around your eyes is caused by a problem involving your thyroid gland. However, there are several thyroid gland disorders and each one manifests in different ways. This butterfly-shaped gland produces thyroid hormones, which are crucial in regulating digestion, metabolism, and other functions.

Normally, your body controls thyroid hormone levels using the hypothalamic-pituitary-thyroid axis, which is a complex feedback loop. Disruptions to this feedback loop can affect thyroid hormone production and cause a disorder.

Hypothyroidism

Hypothyroidism is when you have an underactive thyroid, causing low production of thyroid hormone levels. This causes different body systems to slow down, such as metabolism, resulting in symptoms like weight gain, cold intolerance, fatigue, and muscle pain.

Having hypothyroidism increases your risk of developing gallbladder disease, which causes the formation of common bile duct stones. These stones block the bile duct, preventing bilirubin from passing out and causing it to accumulate in the skin.

Hyperthyroidism

Hyperthyroidism is the medical term for an overactive thyroid gland that produces more thyroid hormone. Its primary cause is Graves’ Disease, an autoimmune disorder. In Graves’ disease, you develop hyperthyroidism because of circulating autoantibodies.

Your immune system produces antibodies that mimic thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). These thyroid-stimulating immunoglobulins (TSIs) bind to TSH receptors and activate them, causing your thyroid follicles to increase the production of thyroid hormone.

People with the condition experience symptoms like:

  • Weight loss due to higher metabolism
  • High blood pressure
  • Fast heartbeat
  • Goiter or enlarged thyroid gland
  • Sweating
  • Restlessness

Thyroid storm, one of the causes we discussed earlier, rarely affects people with Graves disease. It happens when your body produces too much thyroid hormone due to poorly managed hyperthyroidism. It’s a life-threatening condition that causes yellowing of the skin around the eyes, along with other severe symptoms.

How Graves’ Disease Can Cause Jaundice

You can develop jaundice whether you have an overactive or underactive thyroid gland. That being said, Graves’ disease is the most common thyroid disorder that leads to jaundice.

When your body consistently produces high levels of thyroid hormones, it directly affects your liver’s function. As we discussed earlier, liver dysfunction can further impact your thyroid hormone levels.

Damages Liver Tissue

High levels of thyroid hormone can increase the liver’s demand for oxygen. This requires increased blood flow to the liver, which doesn’t happen. When the cells don’t receive enough oxygen, it leads to liver damage. People with Graves’ disease have a higher risk of experiencing liver damage. This risk only increases if they have other liver or cardiovascular complications.

Negatively Affects Thyroid Hormone Binding Proteins

We discussed earlier how your liver forms albumin and thyroid-binding globulin, both of which are proteins that impact thyroid hormones. When released normally, these proteins can maintain adequate levels of free thyroid hormones in your bloodstream. This keeps them within a narrow range and ensures that your tissues have enough thyroid hormone available.

When you develop liver dysfunction or disease, it impacts the production of these proteins. Lower TBG levels mean that there aren’t enough proteins to bind with free hormones, resulting in higher thyroid hormone levels.

How To Get Jaundice Treated

Your jaundice treatment can vary depending on the underlying cause. If the yellow skin around your eyes occurs because of Graves disease or some other instance of hyperthyroidism, your doctor may prescribe different treatments to manage the condition. For instance, antithyroid medication or radioiodine therapy. Managing excess thyroid levels is your biggest priority to treat jaundice.

But if you’re experiencing jaundice due to hypothyroidism, it’s likely due to an issue with your gallbladder. In this case, you’ll need to see a doctor to treat your existing gallbladder issues and treat your jaundice. Your doctor will also prescribe thyroid hormone replacement medication to manage your hypothyroidism. These medications increase your thyroid hormone levels, which prevents the formation of bile duct stones in the future.

For further information on treating jaundice by managing underlying thyroid problems, schedule a virtual functional medicine session with our experts at Advanced Integrated Health.

What About Thyroid Eye Disease

What About Thyroid Eye Disease?

It’s an eye disorder that leads to inflammation and damage to the tissues around your eye. The swelling affects connective tissue and fatty tissue around your eye, as well as your eye muscles. Thyroid eye disease is an autoimmune condition that’s related to Graves’ disease. Symptoms include:

  • irritation in the eyes
  • dry eyes
  • red eyes
  • bulging eyes
  • watery eyes
  • difficulty closing your eyes, which can lead to ulcers

Though symptoms don’t include yellow discoloration of the skin around your eyes, they can co-occur because of jaundice. Treatment for thyroid eye disease typically involves addressing the underlying thyroid disorder. They may also prescribe eye drops to relieve dryness and irritation, and anti-inflammatory medication to alleviate swelling.

Learn More About Your Thyroid: Schedule A Consultation With Advanced Integrated Health

Yellow skin around your eyes can occur due to various reasons involving your liver, thyroid, or both. Jaundice occurs when bilirubin isn’t eliminated from the body and accumulates in the skin. Damage or dysfunction in the liver, hypothyroidism, and hyperthyroidism are all possible causes of jaundice. Graves disease is the most common thyroid disorder linked to jaundice, and it can lead to thyroid eye disease, too. Your treatment can depend on the underlying cause, which is why doctors check your thyroid functioning before prescribing a treatment.

If you’d like to consult an expert on different thyroid conditions and how they increase your risk for jaundice, contact us at Advanced Integrated Health. We take a holistic and functional approach to medicine that focuses on overall wellness. Book an online functional medicine session with us to learn more.

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