Goitre

Your thyroid is growing. Visibly, sometimes palpably, sometimes as a diffuse swelling at the throat that catches your own eye and those of others. An organ that normally sits inconspicuously beneath the skin is suddenly making itself known — it grows larger, pushes outward, claims space in a place where there was no space before.

Medicine has good explanations for this: iodine deficiency is in many regions the most common trigger. The thyroid needs iodine to produce hormones. When iodine is lacking, it grows — because it is trying to compensate through more tissue for what it lacks in building material. Alongside this there are autoimmune processes, hormonal changes, nodule formation, genetic predisposition. All of that is real. All of it deserves medical attention.