Endemic goiter is not really the result of a malfunctioning thyroid gland. What does cause it?

Video transcript

Hi everybody. Our next problem says inadequate dietary iodine intake, particularly in regions with iodine deficient soil and insufficient consumption of iodine rich marine foods can lead to diminished iodine intake in the diet, potentially causing enlargement of the thyroid gland. This medical condition is referred to as a endemic goiter B, Hashimotos, thyroiditis, C toxic goiter or D sporadic guider. Well, as we can tell, even if we don't remember just by looking at our answer choices, the term goiter refers to an enlargement of the thyroid gland. But we need to pick out which type of goiter we're referring to in the situation described in our problem. So we're talking about a region where you have inadequate iodine intake in the diet. This is going to be choice, a endemic goiter and it can help if you remember that endemic means something, a disease occurring in a region or community or restricted to that to a particular region or community. So in this case, we're talking about regions where you don't have enough iodine in the diet. So that's why endemic is the descriptor for this particular um enlargement of thyroid caused by not enough iodine intake. So let's just look at our answer choices to see why the others are not correct. Hashimoto's thyroiditis is an autoimmune disease. So it would not describe our situation of low iodine intake. In this case, the immune system begins to attack the thyroid. So that can cause inflammation and damage, which could refer, which could cause an enlargement of thyroid and low thyroid levels or low thyroid hormone levels. Excuse me. Choice c toxic goiter. Well, we can look at that phrase, toxic, meaning something is actually harming the thyroid and in toxic goiter, you have an enlarged thyroid, as you can tell by the word goiter uh caused by the production of too much thyroid hormone. And this can be caused by various conditions uh such as graves disease, thyroiditis, or toxic nodular goiter. So choice C is not what we're looking for in the description of a whole region where people don't take in enough iodine from their diets. And finally, choice d sporadic goiter uh refers to the situation when someone develops this goiter, this enlarged thyroid with no family or personal history prior to this. So kind of out of nowhere. So again, that's as opposed to endemic order where you see it in a whole group of people that don't get enough iodine. So the sporadic goer could actually be caused by insufficient iodine intake, but where it's limited to one particular person, not a whole community, it could also be caused by medical conditions or perhaps medications that have a bad effect on a thyroid but not what we're looking for in our problem. So again, when you have uh inadequate dietary iodine intake causing potentially causing enlargement of the thyroid gland, that medical condition is referred to as choice, a endemic goiter. See you in the next video.