Might your thyroid be telling this, and you are not aware?
I’ve always worked hard even from a young age.
Not just averagely hard – but grindingly, brutally hard at times.
I was reminded of just how hard that was, when Don of age 69, came to see me this week about his bad back…..
He had injured his back, he said, while setting stoat traps out at Uruti
Farm boys do the graft
As we talked, we found some common work / life experiences – farmwork as farmers sons – haymaking for the local carrier from age 14 age both him and me (I did this seasonally for 6-7 years) It was hot, heavy, dehydrating work (we used to drink 2 x flagon or 4.5 litres – jars of sweet orange cordial per day).
In between on the same days, we carted full truckloads of 45kg bags (they are 25kg these days!) of bagged cement off the rail siding to a local cement plant. We spat the “mud” from the cement dust onto our hands – never realising the risks of silicosis.
We both lifted 90kg bags of bagged barley from the paddocks, to the truck deck as 16- and 17-year-olds. This for me was in between times of wielding the chain saw for 8 hours and cutting fence posts in remote forestry areas. Or loading out the same.
Then I become graduate garbage collector
I went on and did 9 years garbage collecting. At that time in Wellington, we used carry sacks to collect 5-6 houses per sack from the back door of properties perched precariously on the hillsides.

Bruce Nelson, RIP – Tarikaka St, Ngaio, Wellington 1970’s
For me it involved shifting 2 tonne of garbage per day and running 20-25km per day. All this at pace as we worked on a job and knock system – when the bin quota was done, we would finish for the day.

Ian Haldane – Tarikaka St Ngaio, Wellington 1970’s – the full monty garbage collector
Scaffolding – the really hard arsed job
Then came 6 years of scaffolding. This topped garbage collection for its sheer physical demands moving 4-5 tonnes of steel per day up and down the face of commercial construction sites all over Wellington during the 80’s building boom. It was physically brutal stuff, done at pace and paid on output. I was completely spent most days. “Like a bullet that has been fired,” commented my boys Mum.
There was no such thing as “off days” doing this kind of work. I had to physically and mentally front up regardless of how I felt, get down in the trenches and complete the days quota.
Graduates in the university of life – our thyroids are the price we paid
Don is still hard at work throwing 25kg bags of fertiliser around most days. Today, I get to handle a couple of 26 pails of coconut nectar occasionally. Life is choice in comparison.
So, no surprise that in later years we both have thyroid problems – called hypothyroidism or underactive thyroid. We simply burnt them out through a combination of sheer physical stress, exposure to extremes of hot and cold stress – me working through winter in driving rain in Wellington, driven horizontal by biting Southerly winds.
The intense physical bone biting pain created by handling cold scaffolding tubes early in the morning, is burned in my brain.
Then came cold and physical stress by choice for 20 years, doing my beloved sport of waka ama (outrigger canoe).
All that plus the unconscious stress of running our small businesses – Nemos in a tankful of sharks.

Fighting off the next incoming lowball price from a larger shark. Or from some suicidal, desperate other small business throttle jockey.
Subclinical hypothyroidism is the price of chronic stress
Sub clinical hypothyroidism from chronic stress overload is vastly under detected around the world. Conventional medical blood tests just do not pick it up.
Here is a list of symptoms from the official UK government website.
Common symptoms include:
- tiredness
- being sensitive to cold – Raynauds disease
- weight gain
- constipation
- depression
- slow movements and thoughts
- muscle aches and weakness
- muscle cramps
- dry and scaly skin
- brittle hair and nails
- loss of libido (sex drive)
- pain, numbness and a tingling sensation in the hand and fingers (carpal tunnel syndrome)
- irregular periods or heavy periods

Is your thyroid idle (underactive)and disorderly?
Using Dr Tennants meridian assessment and Biomodulator tools, we can make an informed guess as to whether its likely you have this condition or not to within around a 70-80% degree of certainty.
Then you can ask your registered medical professional to do further work and tests to confirm or discard this original energetic assessment.
Call me now on 021 169 2611 for a meridian assessment.