How to Fix Food Sensitivities

What to do when the list of foods you don’t react to gets smaller and smaller.

How to fix food sensitivities.

Food sensitivities can be a symptom of many, many, many types of conditions. Too many to list.  They affect around 20% of the population compared to 1-2% for food allergy. A food sensitivity is technically a non immunological response and diagnosis is not cut and dry. There are also a variety of reasons for a food sensitivity to occur in someone- they can be GI health related, enzyme deficiency related such as a lactose intolerance. There are other mechanisms as well but not as important for you as the client to worry about. The issue I’m discussing today is related to you being triggered by multiple foods.

Do you have multiple foods you are sensitive to that are not getting better or you have a list of food sensitivities that just seems to keep growing?

Have you tried the autoimmune protocol diet (AIP) or an elimination diet and that didn’t help you at all? Or did it make your symptoms worse?

This can be caused by what is called loss of oral tolerance. Oral tolerance is how our immune system works normally to allow us to eat food while also protecting the body from bacteria or other things on the foods we consume.

If your condition hasn’t gotten better on AIP or elimination diet, which is meant to remove foods that might cause inflammation and keep you sick, then it is time to look for other reasons why you are not better.

Maybe your practitioner has had you do a leaky gut protocol but did they address why your gut was leaky in the first place? AIP isn’t supposed to be a months long type of diet, despite what the internet tells you about how long you might have to be on it. I may have even said in the past that up to 2 years might be needed. This is not actually the case. The diet is supposed to help you figure out which foods you are reacting to and then readjust your diet until further healing is done.

If you have hashimoto’s you will probably need to avoid gluten permanently and likely need to avoid dairy as well. For me, even too much of other grains in my diet and particularly gluten free breads have caused reactions in me. This is telling me that I likely am dealing with leaky gut but the reason needs to be dug into. This is called a cross reaction where these foods cause the body to attack thyroid tissue or even brain tissue and both can happen in Hashimoto’s.

What goes wrong in the immune system?

Specific immune system cells called dendritic cells found in the small intestine have a job of checking the proteins that come along to figure out if your immune system should react to them. They tag proteins from foods that are not fully digested. Poor digestion can be a need for enzymes or hydrochloric acid or maybe just a calmer environment in which to eat and a thorough chewing of each bite.

Lack of mucus membrane antibody immune cells (SIgA) may be another reason that you have so many food sensitivities. In this case, you may just need to work on your digestion. When you’re thoroughly breaking down the proteins in your diet by chewing well and eating while in rest and digest mode, you can see an improvement in the reactions of these immune cells.

If you are dealing with lack of SIgA cells, we need to dig into seeing if you have an infection, HPA axis dysfunction, nutrient deficiencies or are using steroid medications.

Another type of immune cell called a regulatory T cell will take the message from the dendritic cells and decide whether or not to tell the immune system to create inflammation to get rid of the invader. This happens in your lymph which is why you can have an inflammatory reaction anywhere in the body. Lymph goes through all of your body so you may have joint pain or muscle aches or skin rashes if you are having inflammation. We all respond differently.

Aside from alerting the lymph, these dendritic immune cells can also bring these otherwise normal proteins to the liver and cause inflammation there making your body’s normal detoxification processes more difficult which can also affect the livers ability to convert T4 to T3.

One way to help your immune system do it’s job better is Magic Mind. I’ve been taking it for about 1 ½ weeks now and it has not only improved my focus and productivity but it has cordyceps mushrooms in it which is an adaptogen that reduces inflammation, strengthens your immune system, and supports higher energy levels and physical endurance by ramping up the production of ADP (needed to make ATP) in your mitochondria. I can feel a change in my brain when I take this. Seeing how well it works for me, I would encourage you to try it as well, especially if you are not at 100% each day. It has ashwagandha in it too which helps reduce stress, rhodiola to give you more energy and help increase your body’s resistance to stress and it enhances mental clarity. All things those of us with thyroid problems deal with almost daily. This little green shot has been a real game changer for me.

You can check it out at magicmind.co/helpforhashimotos and get up to 56% off a subscription for the next ten days with my code HASHIMOTOS.  You’ve got nothing to lose but fatigue!

Being on AIP can alter the make up of your gut bacteria and it is well known that the diversity of the bacteria in your gut is very important in immune health and in allowing your body to tolerate a variety of foods. This is why a wide variety of vegetables and fruits is so important. Challenge yourself to eat 3-4 different veggies each day and work on getting at least one pound of veggies in each day. Have a variety of fruits but not too much as it can cause blood sugar dysregulation.

Other things that can cause inflammation and contribute to food sensitivities from loss of oral tolerance are toxins like BPA and whatever is in your BPA free water bottle- it is still a toxic chemical.

Maybe you have histamine issues. This can be covered in a separate podcast but common symptoms of histamine issues are things like seasonal allergies, sinus congestion, asthma, skin rashes, joint pain, anxiety, irritability, and migraines. A good place to start with histamine is to avoid fermented, smoked foods, dried fruits, and leftovers from the fridge.

You can do food sensitivity testing. I’m kind of on the fence about this one. I’ve done a Cyrex labs test and avoiding those foods while healing my gut did help me but I’m not 100% on board. Cyrex labs does have some good tests that have been well tested so if you are not getting better after trying all the things, this might be a good next step.

Before the food sensitivity testing I would recommend getting your female hormones in balance, fixing chronic stress- both mental/emotional and physiological. Also, getting blood sugar balanced and getting you on the proper thyroid meds.

Lastly, we may have to check, via testing, to see if your immune system is suppressed. One big clue for this is if you never, ever get sick. Getting to your root cause is what I do. It takes time and effort on both our parts but it can be done.

What results is more energy, improved moods, and you get your life back and that is really the end goal!

Some simple things you can do on your own is just try to eliminate  any food you suspect for about a month and when you reintroduce it and you react then you know it should be avoided. You can also keep a food journal tracking your symptoms. Just list out all the foods you have eaten, the amount you ate, and what time. Track how the food was prepared so you can track if a cooked or raw food is the culprit. For instance, my oldest daughter has reactions to raw banana and apple but not cooked. Keep track of symptoms- when you notice them/time of onset, how severe they are and how long before they went away. I got glutened on valentines day and onset was immediate- before I had finished eating and I had bumps appear on my jaw line and neck and my face was itchy and I had immediate brain fog which lasted a couple of hours. Doing this helps teach me about your experience so I can better help you.

What if you could stop sitting on the sidelines of your life and live more fully?

What if you could stop fatigue in its tracks and have more energy?

What if you had a plan to fix your Hashimoto’s?

What if you didn’t have to guess (and waste money) which supplements your body needed to help you move towards healing?

What if you had someone to help you who has been there, knows what it feels like and got out of the hole that is mismanaged hypothyroidism?

These are all things my clients get when they work with me.

Hand holding if you need it. An advocate. Someone who truly cares that you get better and knows how to help you.

I can help you feel better. Day by day.

I’m here when you are ready. Book your Fight Fatigue Discovery Call Here

Yoga for fatigue?

There is no transcript as this is a conversation with a friend and colleague who loves to help people as much as I do.

Here is the link to the yoga session I talk about in this episode.

When you're feeling fatigued:

- Start where you are: begin lying down, and work your way up.  

- Don't overdo it, you may just do part of the video to start with. 

- The breath is a powerful tool: work with the Inhale, slightly increasing it (never longer than the exhale). Most people naturally have a longer exhale, so we will make inhale and exhale equal in length in this class. 

Allison Millers website here Offering weekly live virtual classes on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and an on-demand video library so you can practice anytime, anywhere! Virtual Memberships are $24/month. 

Nutrifol for Hair Loss in Hypothyroidism

Nutrifol for hair loss from hypothyroidism?

The short answer is no.

Here’s the long reason why.

If you are not familiar with Nutrifol, I’ll fill you in. I don’t watch a lot of regular tv but do watch some streaming services and I often see commercials for Nutrifol for hair growth.

I am always skeptical of things like this mostly because I have been sold supplements by practitoners I saw over the years that did absolutely nothing for me.

They state they use medical grade natural ingredients to target the root causes of thinning hair such as stress, lifestyle, and nutrition. Taking their product is suppose to give you quicker hair growth, and fuller, stronger, thicker hair.

I’ll have a screen shot of the ingredients with the transcript on my website. You can search for episode 116 or Nutrifol to find it.

Some of the ingredients include:

Biotin.

This does build healthy hair. Chicken & beef liver and egg yolks are best sources of this important nutrient. You only need 100mg/day per 100g of protein that you consume and most of us don’t get 100g of protein per day. I try really hard to get 100mg of protein per day and most days I only get in about 50g. You have to be really intentional with EVERYTHING you eat to get this much in. Nutrifol has 3000mcg or 300mg. In high amounts this isn’t toxic but can interfere with absorption of B5 and lipoic acid. High doses can also cause your bloodwork to present false positive results.

Nutrifol label

Read labels on everything so you know what you are putting in your body.

Vitamin C.

This helps manage stress by providing this nutrient to the adrenals. For hair, it contributes to our hair pigment and prevents gray hair or at least makes our hair more resistant to turning gray.

Fresh fruits and veggies are great sources. 100-200mg in supplement form may be needed if you don’t eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies.

Essential Fatty Acids.

This supplement contains fish but it doesn’t really list how much. Deficiency in omega 6 fatty acids can result in hair loss. The best way to get your omega 6’s is to eat 2 egg yolks or 100g of liver each day. Fish oil is not what you need for the purpose of keeping your hair thicker and fuller.

Iodine.

RDA for iodine is 150mcg/day. Nutrifol has 225mcg. If you have Hashimoto’s or Grave’s disease, taking iodine even at this amount can increase your antibodies and an autoimmune attack on your thyroid.

Iron.

Not in this supplement but deficiencies and excesses can cause hair loss.

Selenium.

The ultimate thyroid supplement touted by everyone on the internet as something you need if you have thyroid problems. Selenium helps us manage stress but too much can cause your hair to fall out and it may raise your risk of diabetes and cancer. Measure blood levels before taking selenium in supplement form. Optimal levels in plasma are between 90-140 ng/mL for most people. Amounts in food vary depending on the content of the soil where the plants were growing and where the animals were eating.

Zinc.

Deficiency early in life can lead to impaired hair growth. Supplements help with decreasing infection, inflammation, and oxidative stress.  Oysters, and red meat are the best sources.

Vitamin E.

This should always be given in a combo of all forms or tocotrienols, not just a single form like in Nutrifol which contains only alpha-tocopherol but in a small dose.

Horsetail.

This has silica in it and has been shown to improve hair luster and may prevent the rate at which your hair falls out. It is the silica that does this and horsetail is said to have high concentrations. Fiji water also has a fair amount of silica in it.

Japanese Knotweed.

This is a good source of resveratrol and is an invasive species plant. It is used in traditional Chinese medicine to aid in GI health and circulatory health. There is zero info that I could find on hair growth or preventing hair loss for this particular plant. It is the resveratrol I believe that is the key here as it is an antioxidant. Antioxidants help protect cells from damage. Blueberries are also antioxidants!

Solubilized Keratin.

This provides amino acids to replace the keratin lost as we age. It may reduce fine lines and depth of wrinkles- I’m all for that! 500mg along with zinc, B3, Copper, B5, B6, and biotin in a 2010 study improved the quality of the human hair shaft creating smoother, shinier hair and reduced the number of hairs lost during washing. This info on keratin, came from a supplement company- just so you know. I’m a little leary of the info when it comes from supplement companies because their whole purpose is to sell you said supplement.

Nutrifol has a blend of 530mg in 4 capsules of amino acids, keratin, horsetail, and knotweed.

Now I want to talk to you about supplements. The supplement industry is a $39 billion industry with over 166 million Americans using them each year. There are around 85,000 supplement products on the market with 1000 new products coming to market each year.

23,000 ER visits are attributed to supplement use each year but side note there are over 730,000 yearly ER visits associated with adverse events to the medical use of prescription drugs. So there is a .015% chance that a supplement will send you to the ER. I still recommend not guessing at what you need to be taking and work with someone who will honestly tell you what you might need.

I’ll give you just a quick history of the regulation of supplements.

The Harrison Narcotic Act of 1914 required narcotics to only be sold through a prescription. In 1927 the Bureau of Chemistry split into the Food Drug and Insecticide Administration and the Bureau of Chemistry and Soil.

In 1930 The Food Drug and Insecticide Administration became the FDA.

In 1938 the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act said that the FDA should oversee cosmetics and therapeutic device and Homeopathic remedies became regulated under this act.

The definition of a drug became anything intended to effect the structure and function of the body and anything intended to diagnose or treat.

In 1958 the Food Additives Amendment created a list of things that are Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS).

In 1966 the Fair Package and Labeling Act required warning labels of supplements and banned the ability to make health claims with regard to dietary deficiency. Any supplement with more than 150% RDA were to be considered drugs.

The 1976 Proxmire Bill prohibited the FDA from regulating vitamins and minerals as prescription drugs. The 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act provided a regulatory framework for the supplement industry authorizing the FDA to come up with Good Manufacturing Practices and classified supplements and dietary ingredients as foods, not drugs.

The FDA monitors supplement safety, regulates labeling and claims on products and there is no authoritative list of supplement ingredients before October 15, 1994. The manufacturers of supplements are responsible for determining if an ingredient in their product is a new ingredient.

There was an investigation by the NY Attorney General in 2015 looking at several different supplements sold at 4 major retailers. The majority of these supplements did not even contain the herb listed on the ingredients label. They had powdered rice, asparagus and even houseplants in them but not the thing they were supposed to have.

In addition, a 2010 report found that a liquid selenium supplement had over 40,000 micrograms per dose instead of the 200mcg the label claimed.

Good Manufacturing Practices do not apply to raw materials suppliers. You may have heard me say that the higher quality supplement companies have 3rd party testers making sure the raw materials brought to their docks are free of heavy metals and other contaminants. If they are not, they are sent away for some other company to buy. There is no guideline for what contamination levels are acceptable. Good manufacturing Practices don’t address absorption, dissolution, or bioavailability. The companies that are for use by practitoners only do third party testing and voluntary quality control. Some of these certifications are USP, NSF, and Consumer Labs.

I am not saying that Nutrifol is shady at all. I want to be clear. I just think that at $79 per month for a 30 day supply is a bit much. Pure Encapsulations Hair/Skin/Nails Ultra is $43.99 for a 30 day supply which is about half the price. I’m sure Nutrifol is so expensive because they have a fabulous website and they do a lot of advertising.

You can sign up for an account at my dispensary https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/hfh and get 10% off all your supplements. But please, don’t buy a bunch of supplements hoping they will fix your problem. Supplements for the most part are either bandaids to your root cause or are needed for a time period to replenish your deficiencies and help your body heal.

If you would like to do a supplement review I’m happy to help you with that. An hour and half consult would be needed to do that. You can reach out by emailing me and I’ll send you a link to make an appointment for that. The cost is $295.

You can also schedule a discovery call at helpforhashimotos.com click on the get help and then book appointment. You will be on your way to feeling better, having more energy and getting off the sidelines of your life in no time!

“What’s for dinner?”

We all dread that question...

And for good reason. No one wants to wait until the last minute to try to prepare something nutritious and healthy —that’s stressful!

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At Help For Hashimoto’s, we put the person back in ​person​alized meal planning — and now you can too. Head over to helpforhashimotos.com and click on the meal plans tab.

Thanks for tuning in. I so appreciate you guys. Please leave a rating and or review at apple podcasts so more people can find the show and get help.

You can also download my new ebook, The Definitive Guide to Hashimoto’s when you sign up for my email list.

Link to FDA Warning Letters Search https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/compliance-actions-and-activities/warning-letters

Why are my periods so heavy?

Let’s understand how your period works. Many of us do not understand the basics of how our menstrual cycle works. And that’s okay. Who did we have to teach us?

Being able to identify any abnormalities in your cycle is one way to find potential health problems so understanding your menstrual patterns can help you a lot.

You and any adolescent girls in your life might want to consider charting your cycles. There are a ton of apps for this purpose. I can’t personally speak to any of them but I’m sure you know someone who can recommend one.

The bottom line is that your period is a definite reflection of your overall health.

The pill is the doctors answer to period pain, PCOS, irregular cycles, endometriosis, heavy periods, acne….. the list goes on.

One thing you need to know is that being on the pill or any other hormonal birth control does not give you a period. The pill actually forces you to bleed but this is not a period. Bleeding from the pill is from the dose of the hormones in your body and the lack of them in that 4th week.  Your period is occurring from an interaction of your natural hormones, ovulation and progesterone production. It occurs about every 28 days- this part most of us already are aware of. Hormonal birth control stops your ovaries from releasing eggs and stops the production of hormones.

Your cycle has 3 phases

• FOLLICULAR PHASE 7-21 days long taking place around day six to day 14

• You have around 608 follicles, each containing an egg and they produce estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone

• Follicles take 100 days to mature from their beginning formation to ovulation. If these follicles are not healthy at any point over those 100 days then that can show up as a problem with your period down the road. Unhealthy cells making unhealthy tissues and you have heard me say this before. So an unhealthy follicle can show up months later as a significant problem for you

• When follicles enter the follicular phase, follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) tells your follicles to make estrogen

• Estradiol comes from your follicles, other forms of estrogen like estrone come from fat tissue and also from your gut bacteria.

• Estradiol boosts mood and libido by boosting serotonin and dopamine

• It helps you be more sensitive to insulin allowing you to keep fat off and preventing insulin resistance

• It also plays a role in your uterus lining growing and thickening- this means, the more estradiol, the thicker your uterine lining and the heavier your period will be

• OVULATION PHASE occurs around day 14

• This happens when a follicle reaches its destination, swells up and releases an egg. This is ovulation. You may feel the rupture on your lower pelvis. Once this occurs, a pregnancy can also occur

• You need ovulation to make progesterone

• LUTEAL PHASE from day 15-28

• The ruptured follicle that released an egg becomes the corpus luteum and releases progesterone

• How healthy the corpus luteum is, is affected by whether or not that 100 day journey of the follicle was healthy. Healthy cells make healthy tissues …..

• This phase and the corpus luteum can be affected by your thyroid health and nutrient deficiencies. You need a solid 100 days of good health to produce a healthy corpus luteum

• The progesterone made in this phase is really made to build a healthy pregnancy. It also balances out your estrogen levels. it thins your uterine lining, it helps prevent breast cancer compared to estrogen promoting it. It boosts thyroid hormone which is actually part of raising your body temperature.

• Having a balance between progesterone and estrogen can keep your period aka your flow light!

• Progesterone reduces inflammation, helps you build muscle and helps you sleep. it protects against heart disease and helps you handle stress better by calming your nervous system

• Hormonal birth control doesn’t provide this calming effect and may in fact cause anxiety and apparently can even change the shape of your brain according to Peterson & colleagues from the American Journal of Psychiatry.

• Your luteal phase lasts 10-16 days if you don’t become pregnant. At this point the corpus luteum shrinks, progesterone drops off and you begin your period.

• A healthy body will produce a healthy period.

• A healthy corpus luteum with adequate progesterone production will create a healthy flow

• period flow should be well formed and flow should not be super heavy

• ideally you would not have any clotting which may be occurring in a hypothyroid state

Day one is the first day of your heavy flow and the start of a new follicular phase. This lasts from 5-7 days.

If you are not making enough progesterone it is due to a short luteal phase. Some causes of this are long or heavy periods, PMS, or spotting.

A very heavy period consists of a flow releasing more than 80mL or a total of 16 fully soaked regular tampons or 8 super over all the days of your period. It can also be a period lasting 7+ days. If yours lasts more than 7 days, you should consult your doctor.

Copper IUD’s, perimenopause, no ovulation, thyroid problems, and endometriosis are reasons for a heavy bleed. The biggest cause of heavy bleeds though is having low progesterone and high estrogen. Too much estrogen will also cause sore or tender breasts, PMS and fibroids.

Hypothyroidism is a common reason for a heavy flow. Remember every cell in your body has receptors for thyroid hormone. Every cell needs thyroid hormone. if you don’t have enough thyroid hormone, your follicles won’t be healthy, you may not ovulate which creates whats called an anovulatory cycle and you won’t make progesterone because you didn’t ovulate.

Hypothyroidism affects your body’s ability to coagulate your blood and slows down estrogen metabolism. This means your body can’t get rid of estrogen as well. So if you have a really really soft bowel movement on the start of your period that can be because you are not able to metabolize estrogen well. Not being able to coagulate your blood means a flow that flows more.

This is the basic story. An important story for you to know even if you are in menopause because it may answer questions for you about why you suffered over the years. If you are currently suffering with a really heavy period, what would it be worth to you to be able to solve it? You don’t have to have a heavy, horrible period. I suffered with this very issue my entire life. My wish for you is that you can take control of your health and your body’s healing process so you can have the highest quality of life possible. No more suffering with heavy periods or fatigue or exercise intolerance or whatever else you’re going through.

Don’t waste your time guessing or even wishing things were different. Your health doesn’t really have a price tag does it? What is the cost of your hypothyroidism now? How is your quality of life? How is the quality of your relationships? Hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s affect relationships too. Get rid of the crazy that comes with a body that is not getting what it needs.

Are you ready to get off the couch, off the sidelines of your life and feel great again? I’m here to help. I can help you feel better. Health has no price tag and you know you only have this one life here and now. Let’s make it a great one. Schedule your discovery call at helpforhashimotos.com and click on the Get Help tab and you can schedule your discovery call so I can learn more about you.

Sign up for my newsletter while you are there and you can get your Definitive Guide to Hashimoto’s.

Thanks so much for tuning in!

Does Hashimoto’s Cause Leaky Gut?

I was looking at my download statistics of my episodes and you know what the most popular episode is so far? The celery juice episode. I think it is titled Will Celery Juice Help My Thyroid. This tells me that you guys are looking for a quick fix. I get it. I would love a magic pill to just not have to take meds for the rest of my life and to not have to worry about overexercising to not put me in a state of fatigue for days. There is nothing magic about fixing this disease because it affects every system in your body. If you want to feel great, and who doesn’t, you will have to constantly be mindful of your diet and lifestyle choices. That part is simple- the mindful part because either you are mindful about what you put in your mouth and what time you go to bed or you are not. Simple. Do or do not, there is no try as Yoda says. It turns out you will always have to be mindful of leaky gut or intestinal permeability among other things.

Hashimoto’s can wreck your gut.

Remember that Hashimoto’s is an immune system problem causing hypothyroidism so your thyroid is NOT the problem. The problem is autoimmune flare ups that need to be managed. The problem is also that this disease can cause inflammation all through the body systems. Your immune system is not being regulated when hashimoto’s is active (you have antibodies) which means you can lose your gut barrier aka have leaky gut. It also affects the make up of your microbiome or the balance between the good and bad bacteria in your gut.

When there is inflammation due to a flare or high antibodies, and by the way, high antibodies can be 50 or 500 or 5000. It’s different for everyone and when there is inflammation, thyroid hormone won’t be converting. T4 won’t be converting to T3 so your cells can use the T3 or your thyroid receptor sites might not be responding well to T3.

I learned about a study from Dr. Kharrazian that showed that your thyroid hormones, T4 and T3, have a role in keeping your immune system working and bringing down inflammation.

Think about what that means for you if your meds are not optimized. Maybe your TSH is sitting at a 4 or 5 and your doctor doesn’t think you need hormone replacement for that or maybe you feel fine at a TSH of 5 and you don’t want to take medication. Well it turns out that this medication, if your body is in need of thyroid hormone (yet you feel fine without it) will help to regulate thyroid gland tissue destruction. All this to say that taking thyroid hormone replacement will calm down inflammation in your body caused by the autoimmunity.

This is why when you first go on meds you feel really good until you don’t! The thyroid hormone  replacement you are taking started the process of calming the immune attack and calming the inflammation but when you keep doing what you are doing, it isn’t enough to fix the whole problem.

This attack on your thyroid has created a lot of inflammation all over the body and created tons of free radicals and oxidative stress. Oxidative stress just means that your body’s natural abilities to deal with free radicals is overwhelmed so those free radicals are going around in the body and wreaking havoc. Oxidative stress causes damage in the body at the cellular level and remember that we need healthy cells to make a healthy body.

Thyroid hormone replacement helps to protect against those free radicals and oxidative stress causing damage to your cells. Of course anti-oxidant supplements or foods can help you with this but the best first line of defense in this case is to be sure your body has enough thyroid hormone to start with otherwise the anti-oxidant supplements and foods are a bandaid though eating anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant foods is never a bad idea.

One other thing that gets damaged when you have inflammation from poor thyroid hormone optimization is your gut. The gut lining is targeted by Hashimoto’s flares causing leaky gut and then leading to a host of problems including food sensitivities. So thyroid hormones can help in healing leaky gut. You can work on healing your gut all you want but if you need thyroid hormones and your body isn’t producing them or you are not taking them then it just causes this vicious cycle of damage and inflammation leading you to feel horrible.

Maybe you have been diagnosed and you are on thyroid hormone replacement but you have a doctor that doesn’t see the need to test your thyroid hormone levels yearly and you just keep taking the same dose for 3 or 4 years. It happens. So you might be in this subclinical hypothyroid place. Subclinical meaning your labs now look normal but there is autoimmune destruction happening that eventually causes need for more thyroid hormone.

Deficiency in thyroid hormones promotes more autoimmune destruction which produces less thyroid hormone and creates a terrible cycle of destruction in the body and one of the things destroyed or attacked is your gut lining. So now you have leaky gut which in and of itself can be a trigger for autoimmunity.

Here’s the thing though- we can’t just work on healing the gut. There is a whole host of things that need to be worked on and the gut and thyroid hormone replacement are just two of them. Healing the gut while there is a ton of inflammation happening just isn’t going to solve the problem. We have to work to get your inflammation down first with simple things like exercise, and lots of plant foods. These will increase your antioxidants naturally.

  I’ll post a list of antioxidant rich foods from the Institute of Functional Medicine along with the transcript to this episode on my website. As far as exercise goes, just start moving. If you are new to moving at all, check out my friend Andrea’s business called Autoimmune Strong. Her website is getautoimmunestrong.com  She starts at a very beginner level so you can get strong from the inside out.

The point is that we have to find your triggers- what is causing your flare ups, what is causing your antibodies to be higher. What is causing your inflammation? What is causing your immune system to be on fire?

The best places to start are diet and lifestyle which is kind of everything actually. We have to ask if there is something you are eating that is causing inflammation. How is your sleep? How are your relationships? How sedentary are you? Do you get outside? Do you have fun? All of these things matter to your health but to anyones health really.

Let’s get this figured out together. I’m taking new clients and can work with anyone from anywhere through my safe and secure health portal. Video chats are a nice time saver- you don’t have to take time from your day to travel to me. I can keep my services affordable because I don’t have an office to pay for.

What if you could stop sitting on the sidelines of your life and live more fully?

What if you could stop fatigue in its tracks and have more energy?

What if you had a plan to fix your Hashimoto’s?

What if you didn’t have to guess (and waste money) which supplements your body needed to help you move towards healing?

What if you had someone to help you who has been there, knows what it feels like and got out of the hole that is mismanaged hypothyroidism?

These are all things my clients get when they work with me.

Hand holding if you need it. An advocate. Someone who truly cares that you get better and knows how to help you.

I can help you feel better. Day by day.

Reach out today- HelpForHashimotos.com

One more thing before I go:

I try to always take a food first approach and I am happy to report that I can now offer you an Anti-inflammatory 3 day food plan to help you maximize your efforts to keep these cell damaging free radicals at bay. This plan is free on my website if you go to helpforhashimotos.com and click on the meal plans tab, then click just about anywhere on that page to be directed to the meal plan. You can sign up for a free trial to get the meal plan. No credit card required to do so. It’s totally free with no strings attached.

As always, thanks for being here. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for sharing this with people you know looking for help with their hypothyroidism or other autoimmune conditions. Please leave me a rating and review on apple podcasts so more people can find the show and get help too. If you have not already, go get my new ebook The Definitive Guide to Hashimoto’s. When you sign up for my newsletter it will be delivered to your inbox.

Until next time! Love to you all.

How to manage Hashimoto's when you are a workaholic.

A listener writes in about her busy life and how to get help with fatigue, achiness, weight gain and menopause. 

Good Morning Stephanie,

Thank you very much for the ‘Guide’ and for all the information you provide.

I have a topic of interest that you may be able to address.

How to manage your Hashimoto’s when you are a workaholic.

Example: I have a full time job, Mon – Fri, 08:00 – 4:30

                            Part time job, Sat and/or Sun, 07:00a – 7:00p

                            Help husband with his job, about 10hrs week.

Plus all other items relating to running a home.

I don’t have kids but I do have 5 animals. I’m a fur mom. 😊

I usually only have 3, maybe 4 full days off a month.

And – no – scaling back on work is not an option at the moment.

All thyroid labs are good. Doctor says don’t worry about the Hashimoto’s. ☹

History of thyroid cancer, left side removed. Hashimoto’s, Chronic reactive Epstein Barr, risk for Rheumatoid arthritis, and…menopause, lol.

But still very tired, sore/achy, and weight gain after watching diet, trying to get exercise, and taking supplements.

So any insight you could give pertaining to this type of situation would be great.

I’m sure there are others in this same boat as I am.

Thank you again.

You’re wonderful.

Pam

Hi Pam,

Thanks for writing in. I really appreciate it.

Sounds like you have an extremely busy life and not sure how you power through with fatigue!

First thing I would say is, let’s have a look at your thyroid labs and see if they really are optimal. They may be optimal based on the lab values given but they may not be optimal based on what a healthy persons labs should look like.

Of course your doctor says don’t worry about the Hashimoto’s because standard of care in conventional medicine is not to treat it but to up your dose yearly as your thyroid tissue is destroyed. I’ve said that a million times on here so that is old news.

Next is to see if your medication is at the right dose and kind. Many people do fine on T4 only meds like Synthroid or Levothyroxine but a lot of people don’t. It’s clear you will need thyroid meds lifelong based on the fact that you are missing half your thyroid.

Chronic reactive EBV could very well be due to stress or overworking. In this case with the very busy life you have, some adaptogenic herbs might be called for. Potentially Rhodiola, Schisandra, Ashwagandha, Holy Basil or Maca. Don’t just go throwing these in your regime though. It really depends on what is going on and starting slow with one of these like Ashwagandha or Maca first, see how you feel after a couple weeks of taking it and then add in some others. You can order these through my dispensary at https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/hfh

When you have Hashimoto’s your risk for other autoimmune disease raises by about 30% so I will say, not slowing down a bit or at the very least making sure your diet is dialed in pretty much perfectly means your Rheumatoid Arthritis risk is probably higher than most.

Having a history of thyroid cancer is a big deal as well. Make sure you are having tumor markers tested regularly - I would guess this is being monitored but you never know. It should be if it isn’t.

I’m going to do an episode on cancer in general but to make sure your cancer does not come back into the other half of your thyroid OR appear somewhere else, there is a lot you can do in your diet and your lifestyle.

I want to say that I don’t think being busy is bad, especially if you are happy and you have good relationships, especially with your husband and those close to you. Sometimes this matters more than anything else. So if you feel great, have a sense of purpose and community and are truly happy, you are one step ahead of many people in your same situation healthwise.

It would be good to know what supplements you are taking. With cancer being in your past. L-glutamine is a popular supplement but there is some risk it might feed cancer so be aware of that.

Avoiding sugar as much as possible is a good idea - sugar is the main fuel for cancer cells. Your diet should be from the cleanest sources of food that you can afford. Here is where organic matters most. Lots and lots of fresh veggies, dark leafy greens, fermented foods such as sauerkraut and kimchi, bone broth, berries (keep other fruits to a minimum), locally raised organic meats if you can do it. I know this seems ridiculous given the cost of groceries but these are ideal for preventing a recurrence. I can provide meal plans and do so for my clients when they want them so that finding food to cook becomes much easier. Also, given your busy life, some non starchy carbs are probably needed daily to help maintain your energy.

You stated you are still very tired, sore/achy and dealing with weight gain and the most lovely menopause. The weight gain could be menopause related or it could be inflammation. It could be both. Hard to say without looking at your diet and some labs. Feeling very tired could be due to a need for T3 meds or an upping of your dose- again, those normal lab ranges may not be normal. Menopause can also cause joint pain.

If it is your joints that are sore and achy, this can be due to higher levels of inflammation and with menopause we lose some stability from decreased strength and tension in our tendons. If it is muscle soreness and aches then it could be a mitochondrial issue so we would need to look at what nutrients your body might be in need of.

A good fish oil may be in order for you and possibly a broad spectrum one that has omega 3,6,7 and 9. Designs For Health makes one called OmegAvail Synergy which again, you can get by going to us.fullscript.com/welcome/hfh which is my dispensary and gives you a 10% discount. Clients get 20% discount.

If you are not strictly gluten free, I would start with that and see if it improves any soreness you have. If not, try avoiding nightshades like tomato, potato, peppers, eggplant, etc. A quick google search of nightshade foods will help you find a whole list.

If none of this helps the soreness and aches then I would suggest and elimination diet.

You may also want to support your immune system. Looking for nutrient deficiencies is a good first step so that we can identify what your body needs. Things like vitamin A, C, D, or zinc. Maybe you need nutrients to support your mitochondria like B vitamins or maybe you are anemic? There might be more questions than answers here but it gives you something to think about. Here is also where being gluten free will be helpful along with figuring out if there are other food sensitivities. An elimination diet is the best way to know if you have a sensitivity as there is not one really good blood test for allergies or sensitivities.

You stated you are trying to get exercise. What does that look like? I imagine if you are fatigued that exercising is the last thing you want to do. When you have Hashimoto’s or any autoimmune disease, exercising can cause more fatigue if not done right. We have to not over do it. In your case, you might be working so much that exercise of any kind will send you over the edge. I would try for some restorative yoga if that is the case. It is the most amazing kind of yoga where you lie down in specific poses made to help restore your body and energy. And it is worth doing if you can do nothing else.

If you are doing a lot of sitting at your day job or the weekend job then I would make a plan to do some standing when you can. Get a standing desk to do some work at. Walk at lunch during a couple days a week. When you go to the store, park far away and walk from the back of the parking lot. Take the stairs when you can. All of this adds up and is a great first start to exercising when you can.

I hope this helps a bit. I can’t give specific details about what you should be taking as far as supplements go because that would be irresponsible.

Thanks for sending in your question. I love when you guys do that.

I created a new guide for you all called the definitive guide to Hashimoto’s which you can get by signing up for my newsletter. Use the pop up form on my website to be sure you get access. I am not sure the other sign ups on my site have it attached. If you sign up for my email list and it doesn’t show up, email me and I’ll send it to you!

Thanks so much for listening AND for tuning in! I am so so grateful to all of you.

Please share this with anyone you know who is dealing with Hashimoto’s and if you could be so kind to leave a rating and review, it helps more people find the podcast in the sea of millions of podcasts out there.

How to Fix Hashimoto's

Can you reverse Hashimoto’s?

Is it fixable?

I’ve talked about this before in episodes 52 and 55 but that was a long time ago for me so I am revisiting this topic again today.

I’ve said before that you will never not have Hashimoto’s so I don’t like the word remission. You can fix the reasons why you have it though.

If you are going to have any autoimmune disease, this is the one to have. It is one of the most common and probably the least destructive to your body and you can control how bad it gets once you know you have it. And if you manage it, your likelihood of having other autoimmune disease will be less.

The biggest problem with having hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s or any thyroid issue really, is that the standard of care just completely sucks most of the time. Doctors often don’t listen, you can’t try a different medication because they won’t prescribe it and you are often told your labs are fine when you feel horrible.

I was perusing a thyroid facebook group that I could access without having a facebook account. If you are on those groups- get off them. I find zero people who are interested in fixing their problems and are just there to agree with everyone else how terrible this disease is.

I’m here to tell you it is terrible if you let it be and it is manageable if you want to manage it. And this is where I come in because I can help you figure out just what you need to do to manage it.

In order to lower your antibodies which is really what remission would be there are several things that need to be considered.

1. You have to remember that Hashimoto’s is first and immune system problem. What does this mean exactly?   Autoimmune disease occurs when the immune system attacks your own tissue.  When immune cells called B cells and T cells are made in bone marrow and they are specific to self tissue, they will destroy themselves.  It is said that some of these cells escape. There are some more complicated biochemistry things that happen that I won’t go into that lead to how things go wrong with this.  One of them is what is called the bystander effect where the immune system is attacking a foreign thing and our tissue gets attacked too. The other is molecular mimicry where a tissue looks like a foreign thing and the body attacks the tissue by mistake.  It is also thought that mental and/or emotional stress can be a trigger for the immune system attacking our tissue and neither the bystander effect or molecular mimicry have to be at play.

1. classic example of this is from my own life when I had an extremely stressful pregnancy and lost my baby in a thyroid storm. I had so much stress and worry and anxiety for a lot of reasons in that pregnancy and I didn’t know how to manage my emotions. I didn’t have to tools to deal with stress and I didn’t have a partner who had the tools to deal with my stress. It was a really terrible situation that resulted in tragedy. Not managing stress and having high cortisol just screws up your immune system.

2. we know a major cause of autoimmunity is genetics plus some kind of trigger like infections, toxin exposure, stressor, plus leaky gut

1. functional medicine tools are really helpful in figuring out triggers and figuring out the root cause of your hashimoto’s. We look at predisposing factors like genes, environment; triggers that caused the symptoms as just mentioned; mediators that will maintain the disease like nutrient deficiencies, cycles of inflammation in the body.

2. we further dig into lifestyle habits that can be changed, look at whether you can assimilate the nutrients you are taking in. Do you have floating stools? low iron? Do you have high CRP, Ferritin, or low albumin? Do you have poor exercise tolerance? Are you sensitive to jewelry, perfumes, air fresheners? Do you have issues with rashes? What about fear, anxiety around your thyroid condition? Really doing a deep dive with these things is super helpful to figure out where to start with YOUR condition. This is why there is no specific Hashimoto’s Protocol that is going to work for everyone because not everyone has the same triggers, predisposing factors, or mediators.

2. Second we need to consider gluten sensitivity. There is a clear association between autoimmune thyroid disease and sensitivity to gluten, unfortunately. This is an easy first step that seems overwhelming and hard to do. It’s not that hard. Take it one day at a time, one meal at a time even. I can put together simple meal plans with shopping lists for you to follow and I have a guide for by clients on how to easily go gluten free. Consider also gluten cross reactivity. Things like dairy, yeast, oats, corn, rice, millet and instant coffee all have been shown to cross react with gluten. This just means the proteins in these are similar enough to gluten that they might cause the same issues for you as gluten when you eat them.

3. We also have to consider if you have any infections. There’s a ton of bugs causing infections associated with Hashimoto’s. Do you have an infection? Good way to know is to start with a CBC with differential that I read for you. It is also helpful to know if you are lacking in the fat soluble vitamins A,D,E,K. If you have infections, it can be remediated pretty easily.

4. Is there inflammation? If your antibodies are high then you have inflammation somewhere in your body. Inflammation can be from poor diet, infection, toxins, trauma. We can stop inflammation by avoiding those triggers mentioned earlier and choosing a healthier lifestyle and diet.

5. Do you have blood sugar regulation issues or insulin resistance? This is common in PCOS and there is a connection between it and Hashimoto’s.

6. Do you have leaky gut or intestinal permeability? This is when molecules from inside the GI tract move across the lining of the gut or the gut wall through tiny openings. Leaky gut greatly contributes to the immune system attacking our tissue. If you have food intolerances other than gluten, migraines, gallstones, chronic fatigue syndrome or an autoimmune condition then you likely have some form of leaky gut. And if you have an autoimmune disease, you likely have to manage leaky gut long term meaning- every so often do a protocol to heal leaky gut. This can be lab tested but is expensive so I start with how you present clinically (inflammation, food sensitivity etc). Do you drink alcohol? Take corticosteroids? Have excessive stress or eat a lot of sugar? Other triggers for leaky gut are things like the standard american diet, an imbalance of gut bacteria, medications, and toxins.

7. What are your other hormones doing? Cortisol, DHEA, testosterone, progesterone, estradiol. If these are out of whack, your thyroid will be affected at some point. A common time for onset of Hashimoto’s is during pregnancy and postpartum. If you already have Hashimoto’s are want to get pregnant- it typically doesn’t get worse in pregnancy though it seems my stillbirth might be the exception to the rule. It also could have been that my doctor took me off my medication and that is why my baby died. I will never know and can’t dwell on it. That is not a good place to live- the wondering why.

8. Emotional Health- stress. Remember that I said stress was a trigger in me losing my baby. Stress increases our susceptibility to infectious disease (think colds, flu, etc), seasonal allergies, bacterial and yeast imbalances, poor sleep, leaky gut, decreased oral tolerance and more. Something as simple as listening to classical music has been shown to reduce hives. So we need to have an outlet to our frustrations and stressors. Hobbies, a sense of control, change the way we interpret stress and most importantly a sense of community and social connectedness. In person- not online. Something we all have been lacking in. I have been listening to The Life Coach School Podcast while I work out. It has been really insightful so far! Controlled breathing is also quite helpful- you can learn from a yoga practice, meditation apps, Wim Hoff method or whatever floats your boat. The relaxation response is very powerful in its ability to regulate gene expression, metabolism, insulin secretion. We all need to work on practicing that more. I definitely do.

9. What about toxin exposure. We are exposed to chemicals every day and they accumulate in our fat tissue so the older we are the more toxins we have in our fat. There are many negative health consequences to toxins including consequences to our hormones and thyroid. Teaching you how to minimize your exposure to toxins and safely eliminating them as you lose weight is part of working with me. Fasting, juice fasting, water fasting and other ways of fasting may make your toxicity worse rather than better. Ways to know if you are dealing with over exposure to toxins are:

1. taking a lot of medications

2. being sensitive to odors

3. having used or been around toxic chemicals or potentially toxic chemicals over a period of time.

4. muscle pain

5. brain fog, poor memory, other cognitive issues

6. numbness on one side of the body

7. symptoms of autonomic dysfunction such as dizziness, fainting when standing, problems urinating, loss of bladder control - this sounds like a drug commerical - and I think you would have to be quite toxic to present with this though I could be wrong.

8. medications, supplements that cause the opposite of intended response or cause a sensitivity

10. 10.Other things to consider

1. sleep- are you sleeping 7-8 hours per night and is it good quality sleep. Until I started sleeping well- I was a complete disaster. I had to move out of my own bedroom because my husband snores so loud and he sometimes chokes in the night and then punches the bed or wall - not conducive to good sleep. He did a sleep study and they said he might have mild sleep apnea. He tells me I’m a light sleeper and minimizes the punching because it only happens every once in awhile. Imagine being sound asleep and all the sudden, there is a fist near your head or you hear it hit the wall. That will cause a cortisol response and probably keep you from falling asleep for a couple hours. While separate rooms to sleep in has not been good for marriage, it has been great for my health and my happiness. If I don’t get good sleep, I am a disaster. Emotionally and physically. It is like I can’t function. If you do nothing else, make good sleep a priority!

2. Liver function is another thing to consider but a complete blood count should cover that. Your liver needs to be healthy to convert T4 to T3 so your cells can use T3. You also need it to make healthy bile so you can remove toxins via your bowel movements.

I want to discuss a few other things too.

Understand what health professionals don’t know - any health professional.

Chances are they are not well versed in autoimmune diseases, especially when it comes to how to manage them with diet and lifestyle (and some people will need medications)- in both holistic and conventional practices, diagnosing AID can be challenging taking many years to do. Some will tell you it is hopeless, some will tell you you can just change it with a few supplements and a diet change.

It is complicated and very dependent upon your own body’s biochemistry.

Conventional and holistic medicine provides little Medical Education around autoimmune disease. My own masters program had a class specific to autoimmune disease and it provided me with little direction on how to work with individuals with AID- I already knew most of what was taught.

Many tissues in the body can be affected so it isn’t super easy to understand. Your practitioner should not take on the idea that when they have a hammer everything is a nail. There is no general protocol for your condition. You don’t get better and then you get frustrated- I have been there!

Do you have your own bias? If you feel food might be bad but you don’t want to try a gluten free diet so you find a practitioner who agrees with you- you are letting your bias determine the management of your disease- we all have some bias but don’t let it gauge your direction

Take charge of your own health- you know how this impacts your body and your life- if you are looking for someone to tell you how to live, what to eat, etc then you won’t get better. You have to be the one in control of your health. Only you know how you truly feel, only you know if a supplement is working ( you should feel something when you take most supplements designed to help a condition)

• how are you going to monitor your condition?

• lab tests

• questionnaires

• journaling

• are you going to be active or passive in your own health care

• How are you going to build your healthcare team?

• nutritionist

• doctor

• trainer

• build a team of trusted professionals who can help support you - every AID is different and each one has individualized expression of each disease - 10 people with MS or Hashi’s won’t present the same way because each has different triggers and ways the disease expresses itself

This is a lot to think about and probably a little overwhelming. Bottom line is you can fix the reasons why you got Hashimoto’s but you will always have to manage it. Stay off those depressing thyroid facebook groups and start thinking about how you can start feeling better now! You don’t have to feel crappy all the time. You can have more energy, lose weight, and get your life back and I can help you do it.

Thanks for tuning in.

Go to Help for Hashimoto’s dot com to get my guide “5 things your doctor won’t tell you about hypothyroidism” and schedule your Fight Fatigue discovery call so you can start to feel better sooner rather than later.

I appreciate you all!

Losing weight after menopause

Hello

I just started listening to your podcast and love it! I heard you mention menopause and how you gained weight and lost it. I would love to hear you elaborate on this subject. Menopause and Hashimotos and weight gain and what to do. I feel desperate with trying to lose and so many different ideas out there from intermittent fasting to keto and I don’t know what to focus on that will work. Please consider doing a podcast show about this.

Thank you

Beth Axxxxxxxx

Thanks for this question Beth.

Weight loss in menopause while also having Hashimoto’s can be a bit challenging. There are a lot of things to consider.

It’s not about calories in and calories out. Calories do matter and what kind of calories you are eating matter but what matters more is what is gong on in your body hormonally.

If you are struggling with weight loss, you could be dealing with a hormonal imbalance of some kind. Maybe your thyroid medication isn’t optimized well. Maybe some other hormone is off, like cortisol, insulin and/or leptin.

Maybe you have estrogen dominance or low testosterone. These things will determine how fat you get from the calories you do consume.

Most of the time the weight loss struggle, when not thyroid hormones, might be an issue of cortisol. When cortisol is high over a period of time it can create lower levels of serotonin affecting mood (depression), keep you from sleeping well (increasing sugar cravings) and can cause you to store fat.

Too much cortisol can create that dreaded muffin top and this needs to be fixed before much of anything else can be taken care of. Higher cortisol can give you that wired but tired feeling, make you quick to anger and make you feel irritable. It also is a cause of fat gain. I spent years like this though the weight gain in my late 30’s and all of my 40’s was really minimal because I was still cycling so estrogen was helping to keep me thinner.

When dealing with low cortisol you can get tired easily or have poor stamina and low cortisol can cause you to look at things in more negative ways, you might find you get sick more often, and of course it contributes to thyroid dysfunction.

Cortisol is 100% related to stress and how you react to it which will sabotage your fat loss. When high, cortisol increases blood sugar which leads to higher insulin levels which can increase fat storage.

Remember stress can be mental/emotional, strained finances, toxic relationships, infections, poor or little sleep (even shift work), food allergies/sensitivities and over exercise.

Bottom line, working to lower stress and manage cortisol will help reduce body fat.

When cortisol is high it will also decrease conversion of T4 to T3 which causes a slowed metabolism which will probably lead to fat gain.

I mentioned leptin before. This hormone tells your body when you are full so if leptin is blocked, you don’t get the full signal and you may end up eating more calories than you need/want leading to poor blood sugar regulation, higher insulin, and fat storage.

Gut health is also important. Many of you know a large percentage of your immune system lies in your gut aka GI tract aka intestines. If your gut is unhealthy, so are you, and this includes your ability to lose fat.

GI dysfunction very simply can look like gas, bloating, undigested food in your stools, terrible smelling gas, constipation and/or diarrhea, bad breath, nausea.

If the bacteria in your gut are out of balance, this can affect the conversion of thyroid hormone from T4 to T3, slowing metabolism. It can also affect the body’s ability to excrete estrogen creating a recycling of the hormone and cause you to gain fat.

If you are not properly breaking down the foods you are eating then you are not absorbing nutrients either. You need adequate protein to be digested and absorbed in order to make neurotransmitters, repair tissues and build a healthy immune system. If you have poor digestion this can lead to anemia which causes muscles to fatigue easily and can make it difficult to exercise and will decrease your ability to lose fat.

Inflammation in the GI tract can cause a stress response in the body which will increase cortisol production which can cause immune system problems in the gut itself leaving you susceptible to infections which will cause more inflammation and more cortisol leaving your body in a cycle of inflammation.

Eating foods you are sensitive to can cause a stress response in the body leading to release of cortisol and, you guessed it, fat storage.

Now you all know that when your thyroid is sluggish it means difficulty losing weight and easy gain of weight. All the stuff I’ve talked about can affect thyroid function and poor thyroid function which can include being on medication that isn’t fully supporting optimal function can affect all the stuff I’ve already discussed.

Sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone, when out of balance, will definitely cause you to hold on to fat as well. These hormones impact your ability to feel emotionally well, have will power and have any kind of motivation. In order for your sex hormones to be in balance, you have to have balanced blood sugar, balanced adrenals, and a healthy GI tract. If your testosterone levels are high you will have trouble losing fat. In addition, if you are dealing with any kind of toxicity at all from xenoestrogens, fat loss will be difficult.

All of this needs to be corrected before fat loss happens and fat loss should not happen if you are not reasonably healthy because you don’t want to be losing fat tissue which will mobilize toxins from that fat tissue and if you are not eliminating them, they will redistribute in other tissue. Not good.

Think if you have some of this stuff going on and then you hit menopause. Our estradiol is lower in menopause and estradiol helps us be more sensitive to insulin. So now we are at higher risk for insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance means your blood sugar levels could be normal but you might have too much insulin in your blood. High insulin with no where to go means fat storage. This means that for some of you for the first time in your life, what you eat will greatly effect your weight. Sugar and anything that converts to sugar will be a problem for you in excess. This means less dessert, less treats, avoiding sugary drinks and for some of us it might mean quitting these things altogether. It just depends on how important getting rid of the belly fat is to you. And it isn’t forever. Just long enough to give your body a minute to get insulin levels regulated and then you can figure out what you can enjoy and how much of it. It’s called finding your carb tolerance. This doesn’t mean you need to go low carb either because that is a problem for hashimoto’s but you might need to reduce the amount of bread, white potatoes and rice until you get things regulated. This is something I can help you with and I recommend having some labs done to see just where your biggest problems lie with this. There are some extra markers you should ask your doctor for but before you do, I recommend meeting with me to figure out what might be going on, then you can go to your doctor and get your labs done with what ever add ons I think you need.

Now, a topic all on its own is detoxification and I’m giving a talk at an online summit in January. Sign up for my newsletter at outofthewoodsnutrition.com for info in that in the coming weeks. There is a fair amount of research tying pesticides to fat gain and to poor liver health. Some in the scientific community suggest that our body creates more fat to handle the load of toxins we get exposed to. I have a couple of different questionnaires you can take to asses your toxin level when you work with me. It is the best and cheapest way to determine toxic burden because most testing is not reliable.

There is an immune system marker called Interleukin-6 or IL-6 and when that is increased due to inflammation of some kind, it can make it difficult to lose weight and keep it off and it may be a trigger for fat gain. Fat tissue is now considered to be an organ in the endocrine system and it likely causes inflammation while inflammation causes us to store body fat. Another vicious cycle.

Decreasing inflammation through diet is a great first step in beginning to lose fat. Cutting sugar, processed foods and eating real whole foods is important. If you need meal plans, I can help you with that. If you are a client in my 6 month package, you get meal plans for free. If you just want a meal plan consult, we can work something out.

All of this is tied to your brain health which I won’t go into detail here but what’s going on in your brain physiology impacts sex hormones, thyroid hormone, neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, GABA and more.

Dopamine helps to keep our metabolism going and when we have low dopamine we have low energy and the worst part- sugar and junk food binges. Don’t let anyone tell you this is about will power. They can seriously suck it if they do. If you are low on GABA, it can also cause cravings for fat and carbs. This is not to say you should supplement with GABA because you can do that but that won’t fix why you are low on it in the first place.

I’m not about bandaids for problems unless they are needed to get your body on the right track while we figure out what problems you are dealing with.

Most of this info really applies to anyone but this question was about dealing with menopause. I went in early. I think I was 46 or 47. Either way I was super happy to not have a period anymore because my periods were horrible my whole entire life. I’m reading a book about hypothyroidism that was written at least 40 years ago and thinking back on my childhood and my first periods- I had so so many signs that my thyroid might not be functioning well all the way back to 13 years old. Sometimes this makes me so mad because I feel like a huge part of my life was just subpar. It’s really why I worked so hard to get my masters and my nutritionist license. I have so much to offer you guys in the way of experience and knowledge around these topics so that you don’t have to suffer like I did. It’s the only way I can not just sit and wallow in losing so many years of well being. I’m so glad I woke up and fought for better health. Some days are still a struggle but those are fewer and farther in between as long as I manage my stress and diet. In all honesty, I’ve gone off the rails a bit with my diet. Sometimes eating super healthy all the time just gets old. And, I’m paying for it a bit. My digestion sucks right now and today my energy level is in the tank but I think that is mostly due to getting up too early, working out too hard and a couple crappy things in my personal life.

I really need to start meditating and journaling again. I have a locked document on my computer where I write out things I would never say out loud or want anyone else to read. It’s where I get all the anger off my chest and just let it go. I highly recommend it for a release, especially if you don’t have anyone you can talk to regularly or you don’t want to always be complaining about certain people.

Anyway, back to menopause. As I said, I was around 46 when it hit for me. The average age is around 51. And let me just tell you- life is not over once you hit menopause. Before you hit it though, you might be having some crazy symptoms- even if you are fit and your diet is dialed.

Anxiety, racing thoughts, heart palpitations, hot flashes, insomnia, depression and so on. You can even have these symptoms in your thirties if your body is going to go into early menopause. If you are fit, these may be milder than someone who isn’t but very few of us make it through perimenopause without some symptoms. Peri-menopause occurs because your hormones, estrogen and progesterone, are all over the place.

Abdominal fat gain in menopause is real and so is loss of lean muscle. This is due to decreased sensitivity to insulin as I mentioned earlier. Your blood sugar is likely higher and there is likely some insulin resistance which lead to fat storage.

Any high cortisol, again, also leads to fat storage. We also become less able to build muscle and you are losing bone mineral density. It becomes pretty imperative at this stage in life to start exercising if you don’t already, and lifting weights is the most beneficial.

Let’s talk estrogen, specifically estradiol or E2. This form of estrogen declines in menopause. It promotes muscle growth and muscle strength- you need to lift heavy weights to make up for loss of estradiol.

You have to watch inflammation and blood sugar too. When estradiol declines but estrone or E1 might be a little higher and progesterone is low, it can cause sore joints.

The average weight gain in menopause is 5-8 pounds. As I mentioned before it was 28 pounds over a couple of years for me. It didn’t help I was mostly sedentary for 2 ½ years sitting at my desk doing homework and not changing how I ate much at all. In fact, I probably ate more sugar and crap due to stress in school which contributed to my weight gain. The change in estrogen levels and cortisol make us gain fat in our stomach which puts us at higher risk for heart disease. If your fat is in your thighs however, you are less likely to be at risk for heart disease.

Exercise and a dialed diet are going to be key to fat loss in menopause. I’m not a trainer so I can’t speak well to exercise but Stacy Sims in her book Next Level recommends sprint interval training for fat loss along with lifting heavy.

Her book gives you plenty of ideas on what kinds of exercise you can do but if you are new to exercising, buy the book and ask a trainer to help you work out based on the principles in the book.

It might take you some time to find a trainer willing to do it- I hired a guy who agreed to read my copy of Next Level and he never did. He told me he knew enough that he didn’t need to after he had the book for a few months.

Then, when I got it back it looked like he spilled water or something all over it. I was slightly annoyed over the whole situation- also I didn’t speak up for myself- still a work in progress there!

Alright- so sprint training and lifting heavy. I use an airdyne bike at my gym and do 8 rounds of 20 seconds high intensity and then 10 seconds off. I also lift heavy using a program from the book Hangry by Sara Fragoso and Dr. Brook Kalinak. I’ve definitely gained muscle and lost some fat but the biggest change has been body composition. My thighs are smaller and the dimples on my behind are getting smaller.

This has been two years in the making for me. In order for this to be sustainable and enjoyable I go to the gym 3 days a week and I foam roll, warm up, lift heavy, sprint and then stretch. I hate working out but after 2 years, it feels good to go. I feel stronger and more confident and the weight is coming off slowly which in my opinion is the only way to do it.

I’ve been more mindful of what I eat but that needs to get more dialed in as well. Like I said, I’m kind of off the wagon which for me just means eating more gluten free bread and too many nuts. I’ve also cut back on chocolate and rarely drink coffee.

By the way, lifting heavy as defined by Stacy Sims is lifting six reps or less of the most weight you can of things like deadlifts, chest press and squats. Get the book, read the book and then find someone to help you write a program from the recommendations in the book. Don’t try to figure it out on your own unless you are well versed in the gym already.

Doing this will help increase your metabolism, help you lose fat, improve your stability so you don’t fall and break a hip and improve your body composition.

Let’s talk diets.

If you are exercising, it will be super important to fuel yourself before you exercise otherwise your body will be stressed which messes with your muscle gain and fat loss. Eat a little protein and a carb like banana and nut butter, toast and nut butter, or something like that.

I tend to forget to do a carb in the morning but I do cold brew and protein powder before I go to the gym and I eat as soon as I get home. Sims states in her book that women specifically need to eat within 30 minutes of a workout in order to build muscle and keep our body from further breaking muscle down.

If you don’t eat right after your workout, your body is in a stressed place, blood sugar is likely high and you are more likely to store body fat. So working out while intermittent fasting is a big big no no. Eat some protein- whey protein is ideal, animal protein is also good. Chicken, eggs, nuts, fish, greek yogurt, cottage cheese. Any of these before or after are good.

Then do your best to get around 100 grams of protein per day or around 30 per meal.

If you google Stacy Sims and Intermittent fasting you will find a good article on why you should not do it. A very brief summary of why you shouldn’t intermittent fast or the ketogenic diet is because both of these diets mess with a neuropeptide called kisspeptin which, when it is disrupted will make our brain think we are deficient in nutrients, especially carbs leading to increased appetite and increases insulin resistance which leads to fat storage.

Fasting and exercising leads to higher cortisol which leads to fat storage. Short term, the keto diet might be great- long term it can mess up your endocrine system and increase fat gain. The article is called Yes! You are an athlete. No! You shouldn’t practice intermittent fasting. It’s a quick read and pretty easy to understand.

Bottom line- no to dieting, yes to exercising. Yes to figuring out your carb tolerance. Yes to looking at your blood work. Yes to joining me for 6 months every other week to help you get and stay on track with all of this. If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired. If fatigue is winning at keeping you on the sidelines of life more than you are winning at having the life you really want, then we need to talk.

You can schedule a discovery call at outofthewoodsnutrition.com under the work with me tab. Let’s see if we are a good fit. I know I can help you get your life back! Let’s do this together! I am compassionate and I have a real passion for helping people just like you get rid of their fatigue!

If you haven’t signed up for my newsletter you can do so on my website as well and get 5 things your doctor won’t tell you about hypothyroidism. I send out recipes almost every week in my emails.

Thanks to Beth for sending in this question. I love when you guys do that. If you have a question, please email me at stephanie@outofthewoodsnutrition.com or fill out the contact form on my website. It’s so much more fun to answer your questions than come up with content or guess at what you might be interested in.

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time.

Is Intermittent Fasting Good For Hypothyroidism?

Hi Stephanie, 

Hope this email finds you well 

This last email of yours got me thinking about how now a days everyone is promoting intermittent fasting, 16 hours or more of fasting, very early dinner and late breakfast or skipping breakfast to have lunch directly. 

I want to know what’s your take on this.  

Thank you for all the content you publish and all the effort you put into giving us updated information. 

Have a great  thanksgiving. 

Kindest regards,

Lucia 

A quick primer on what IF is. It is in the category of time restricted feeding, alternate day fasting, and just plain fasting. This just means that you eat your allotted calories for the day within a specific time frame or eating window. This can be four hours, eight hours, 12 hours- basically whatever you choose as long as you eat within that window.

The idea behind this is that restricting your eating window to a specific timeline causes your body to burn fat and it is said to be good for you, your cells, etc.

The caveat here, and this is the case with most research done on humans, is that the subjects of the research or more often than not, men. A woman's biochemistry and physiology is not the same as a mans so the research cannot always translate to what women should or could be doing for better health.

The second issue is that research on intermittent fasting and the benefits of it, is often done on obese and overweight subjects. Almost any dietary changes made to this category of people will indeed show that it can be helpful in improving health outcomes. Men, especially do fairly well on an intermittent fasting diet with improvements in fat loss, blood sugar and insulin levels. Women, however, show no improvements in blood sugar or insulin levels in some studies, according to researcher Dr. Stacy Sims.

Most review articles on intermittent fasting have looked at things like body weight, waist size, blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar, cholesterol levels, etc.  There is little research on the effects that IF might have on circadian rhythms of hormones, including thyroid hormones.

A lot of studies of any kind are first done in a petri dish or in animals, usually rats. Sometimes this is all that is done, usually because it would be unethical to do certain research on humans.  These types of studies don’t always translate well to humans. It is something that should be in the back of your mind when you hear things like “Research shows that xyz…”. Always have that critical thinking hat on.

That said, in rat studies, 24 hour fasts lower blood levels of T3, thyrotropin releasing hormone and TSH. In humans, T3 falls pretty fast after a fast. A 3½ day fast in healthy people showed T3 and TSH both dropped within the first two days of the fast. Another study showed T3 dropping by half in 24 hours while TSH remained stable. This is significant for anyone who’s thyroid condition is not already properly managed. And, I’m not sure how long these studies were for. What’s to say that after a year doing this you might also see significant issues with TSH levels. This is the problem. We don’t know because as far as research studies are concerned, thyroid problems are well managed with levothyroxine.

For people doing alternate day fasts from 4 weeks to 6 months long, the amount of T3 in blood was lowered while TSH, again remained the same. Another study showed eight weeks of time restricted feedings for just 8 hours also caused low T3 and normal TSH.

One study in this review showed 6 months of alternate day fasting showed no effects on FT4 or TSH in those with subclinical hypothyroidism. For those that need a reminder, this is when you might be feeling like crap but your thyroid levels don’t present out of the standard lab range so they do nothing for you. This is also when working with a nutritionist is important. Another study though, showed that fasting during Ramadan caused subjects on thyroid meds to need their dose to be raised.

This information is from a review which is referenced on my website with the transcript of this episode in case you want to have a look for yourself. I did not look at the studies mentioned in this review at all. I’m just summarizing what the paper states. If I had a guess, I’d say the studies were not done on women for the most part.

In addition, according to Dr. Sims, intermittent fasting caused more oxidative stress in female subjects where the opposite was true for male subjects. It also slowed production of thyroid hormone and slowed metabolism. Slow thyroid and slow metabolism go hand in hand.

This is a problem for women because when we fast, our body hangs on to fat or tries to hang on to it by slowing things like thyroid and metabolism down. If you exercise and fast together, it makes this even worse. If you are overweight and sedentary, you may see a benefit for awhile at least on the outside but you could be really f-ing things up physiologically.

Same thing applies to the ketogenic diet, another very popular option for weight loss. According to Sims, women’s bodies use carbs to startt hefat burning process and women tend to already be physiologically set to burn fat for fuel but needs those carbs to get things going. She states in her book, Next Level, that the keto diet, even in the short term, may negatively affect bone health meaning causing bone loss which is not a good thing for those of us in post menopause. It might also mess with hunger signals making you feel more hungry and store more fat (another problem for menopause because our satiety signals are not as strong and we hang on to fat much easier). It can also increase cortisol levels which is closely tied to how well your thyroid works.

I hope you found this info helpful. The moral of the story here is not to jump on the latest and greatest health or diet bandwagon. Quick fixes are not long term fixes and they are not a magic pill. The best, most sustainable way to help your chronic health, your thyroid condition, is to make changes you can stick with for the rest of your life. That is what I am here for. You can schedule a discovery call on my website helpforhashimotos.com and we can chat and see if we are a good fit. You can also sign up for my newsletter and get Five Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Hypothyroidism. I’ve been doing a series on mindful eating every Friday in my newsletter as well as a weekly recipe. I respect your inbox and strive to provide you with quality content.

Have a great week!

Welton S, Minty R, O'Driscoll T, Willms H, Poirier D, Madden S, Kelly L. Intermittent fasting and weight loss: Systematic review. Can Fam Physician. 2020 Feb;66(2):117-125. PMID: 32060194; PMCID: PMC7021351.

Kim BH, Joo Y, Kim MS, Choe HK, Tong Q, Kwon O. Effects of Intermittent Fasting on the Circulating Levels and Circadian Rhythms of Hormones. Endocrinol Metab (Seoul). 2021 Aug;36(4):745-756. doi: 10.3803/EnM.2021.405. Epub 2021 Aug 27. PMID: 34474513; PMCID: PMC8419605.

Why balanced blood sugar matters for thyroid health.

Every organ or gland in the body uses sugar (glucose) for energy production. If you don’t have glucose getting into your cells, you will suffer with low energy. Low energy for your cells but also low energy for you. If your cells can’t be fueled, that will definitely affect your overall energy levels.

If you have low blood sugar, either from not eating enough or from being on a blood sugar roller coaster with the dips of low blood sugar, then your thyroid will not have enough energy to do its job creating a sluggish thyroid.

If you are dealing with insulin resistance at all, (and many people are and don’t realize it) which is when your cells are resistant to the insulin trying to bring in glucose for energy use because there is too much glucose in the blood, then your thyroid will suffer. This is because it too will not be getting the glucose it needs for it to work properly.

In addition, having regularly high blood sugar causes damage to the lining of your blood vessels, your organs, your brain, and causes you to store fat.

High blood sugar causes inflammation throughout the body, including your thyroid so it can’t get all the nutrients it needs to produce thyroid hormones. This will lead to an increased TSH but it might not be high enough for your doctor to say, ‘Oh, you have hypothyroidism’. That said, you also might not need medication for a situation where your blood sugar is affecting your thyroid. You can make some diet and lifestyle changes and get things working better and then retest your thyroid labs. If they get better, then you know what you were doing is right.

Aside from diet, the things that can contribute to blood sugar imbalances are poor sleep. Even just one night of poor sleep can cause short term insulin resistance including in otherwise healthy people. I think of all the nights I slept poorly because my husband snored so loud that I was awake much of the night and if it wasn’t him waking me up, I was waking up because my blood sugar was so low in the night that my body used cortisol to raise it and that cortisol caused me to wake with a start and a racing heart.

Sometimes it still happens to me although very rarely and when it does there is some kind of dream involved that creates the racing heart to wake me up. Only now I can fall asleep pretty quickly rather than when my kids were younger and I was up half the night because of either the snoring or low blood sugar or a combo of the two. My poor kids. They took the brunt of my awful moods due to lack of sleep. Thankfully they have forgiven me and we have pretty good relationships. My life was a huge mess for years because of blood sugar. I don’t want that for you.

When you don’t sleep well, you get no growth or repair which is what is supposed to happen while you are sleeping. This is when your body fixes itself. With blood sugar problems like insulin resistance, you are dealing with a vicious cycle when you are not sleeping.

Stress is another issue related to blood sugar imbalances and poor thyroid function. I feel like a broken record because stress is huge. Again, emotional stress, physical stress, environmental stress. All of it is a problem if it is chronic. Cortisol is a stress hormone. When it rises temporarily, it triggers the liver to make glucose and it can even cause a breakdown of muscle tissue and there is some storage of fat.

If you have chronic stress in your life for whatever reason- it may not be in your control but it will affect you. Your brain senses stress, the pituitary gland sends a signal to the hypothalamus to tell the adrenal glands to secrete cortisol to manage the stress. The pituitary and the hypothalamus are also involved in thyroid hormone secretion. Do you think if the brain is dealing with stress, it can tell the thyroid to release just the right amount of hormones? The adrenals and the thyroid gland are very closely tied together when it comes to function and dysfunction. Very important that the adrenals are not having to deal with chronic stress whether it is from external sources or from imbalanced blood sugar.

When you eat in relationship to when you go to sleep is also very important as well as when you eat in relationship to exercise.

Eating right before bed, especially something that will spike your blood sugar which can raise cortisol which will then inhibit growth hormone (for repairing tissue while you sleep).

If you are not eating protein right away in the morning then your body will take it from your muscle. Protein in the morning is important for stable blood sugar all day long. This is a big deal as we age too because the older we get the easier it is to lose protein. Lifting weights is super helpful, especially as women enter menopause.

How many meals are you eating in a day? Not even meals though, it could just be a problem if you are a chronic snacker. Every time you eat, insulin is released. If you are eating/snacking every hour or two, you are releasing insulin. If you are insulin resistant, that glucose can be stored as fat. Your body needs a break in between meals to burn fat.

A lot of practitioners will tell you to eat 4-5 smaller meals throughout the day to deal with blood sugar imbalances. This is not necessarily helpful. It really depends on what is going on with you and what your blood chemistry says. There are a few different reasons why your blood sugar might be out of whack. Let’s figure that out so we know how to deal with it.

So you have all this imbalanced blood sugar, maybe insulin resistance. This has caused inflammation in the body. You are stressed which can also cause inflammation. Your diet is poor because you are stressed which can also cause inflammation. See how this works?

All of this can lead to gut issues like leaky gut aka intestinal permeability which can lead to food sensitivities and more inflammation and can also create the perfect storm for Hashimoto’s to occur.

Let’s review this quickly.

Blood sugar goes up, it can’t get into the cells because of insulin resistance. Your body senses that the sugar is still in the blood so it raises insulin even more. This leads to glucose to be stored as fat. In addition, when the blood sugar is reduced because of insulin you can get those crashes of low blood sugar which triggers cortisol to try to bring your blood sugar back up but the adrenals release too much which brings your blood sugar up too high and the cycle starts over.

It is vicious.

If you have leaky gut, we need to fix that, figure out what is causing it and fix that inflammation in the body.

You can get a glucose monitor relatively cheap. The strips for it are the expensive part but if you want to really see what foods set off your blood sugar, a glucose monitor is a good tool. You can even do a continuous glucose monitor that you hook up to your phone so it is monitored all the time. You will be able to see some really good trends in how your body responds to sugar. Normal blood sugar hovers around 80-90, 80-100 depending on who you talk to. If your blood sugar is higher than that first thing in the morning, then you have a bit of a problem with insulin resistance. There are other tests that are helpful for looking at blood sugar as well and when you work with a practitioner like myself, they can be good tools to see what kind of blood sugar problems you are having. You can be insulin resistant and depending on what your labs say will determine how you fix it. Even blood sugar issues are not once size fits all.

Other things to consider when looking at your blood sugar dysregulation:

1. Cortisol - is it low? I’m not talking about Adrenal Fatigue because that doesn’t really exist. What I’m talking about is low cortisol. Do you crave salt? Is your blood pressure low? Do you wake during the night- usually around 3am?

2. Are you deficient in certain nutrients? There are things needed to allow your cells to use glucose properly. If you have fatigue or weakness, poor cognitive function, insomnia, muscle cramps, inflamed and scaly skin, hair loss, pale skin tone.

3. Do you have stomach pain, nausea, no appetite, bloat?

4. Maybe you have antibodies to insulin?

5. Frequent need to pee? Hungry after meals? Frequent infections? Fatigue? Gaining weight around your waist? Higher blood pressure.

6. Excessive sweating? Tremors, palpitations? Mood disorders?

7. Body pain, joint pain, muscle pain, fatigue, insomnia, depression, anxiety, mood issues.

Any of these can be causing blood sugar dysregulation issues and should be fixed with a practitioner. I can help you figure out just what might be going on and give you the tools you need to fix these issues with ongoing support. I’m no longer doing one off appointments because this does not help you work through the overwhelm that sometimes comes with diet and lifestyle changes. When working with me you get bi weekly appointments for six months to help you overcome your chronic health issues. If you just need one appointment to send you in the right direction that is available too. This would be for someone who can take the info and run with it. I have found that longer term, having support over 6 months to a year is way more helpful in setting you up for success. If you are ready to figure out what is going on with your blood sugar or your thyroid problems, reach out. Book a discovery call to see if we are a good fit at www.helpforhashimotos.com.

If you wouldn’t mind leaving a review on iTunes, I would really appreciate it. Reviews help boost my visibility so others can find the show. I’m eternally grateful for those of you that tune in. It is my sincerest hope that you find value in each one of these episodes and I work really hard to provide you with good information. This is my job. I’m working for you. Now that I have all of my 1000 client hours needed to get my nutritionist license I am taking on a full load of clients. If you need help, please reach out. If you know someone suffering silently with a thyroid condition, please share this with them. Have them sign up for my newsletter. There is a lot of work to be done to take control of chronic illnesses like thyroid disease and that starts with you taking the first steps to want to feel good again. You are here and listening and learning. You have what I didn’t have when I was first diagnosed. You have a world of information on the internet, a lot of which is crap, some of which is good. As I am learning and growing I will fix what mistakes in information I have talked about in the past. I’m always trying to do better so you have the latest information to get you feeling better.

Wishing you a wonderful week. Thanks again for being here.

At home thyroid testing.

An out of whack thyroid means inflammation, chronic mental and/or emotional stress, diet, and our modern lifestyles are walking us right into a hormonal (thyroid and otherwise) nightmare.

Our hormones and the glands that produce them are all connected and all of our body systems are connected. When one is not working well, the others will not be working well.

But you go to the doctor and they check your thyroid, right?

And they usually only check TSH and they tell you everything is fine, and then maybe they offer you an anti-depressant as a solution. Or maybe they tell you to exercise more. All the while you are walking around with a slow functioning thyroid and no one is willing to do anything for you.

You might be feeling a little blue and maybe you are the only one in the room with a sweater or coat on because you are cold. Side note, this has been a family member of mine for her whole life….

My bones used to be cold. I was so cold at night it would take me an hour to fall asleep because the second I took my socks off, my feet were ice. Now, I sleep with a window cracked in the winter and it feels great.

Maybe you are feeling tired, putting on weight or cannot lose it no matter what, maybe you don’t sleep well or your skin looks unhealthy (dry, not glowing, etc). All of this is tied to how well your metabolism works and if your thyroid is working slowly, your metabolism is working slowly.

Anyway, whatever your symptoms are, you are not alone and you can fix them.

And there is a very basic test you can do at home to help you figure out if there is more to your story than what your doctor is telling you.

There is a medical doctor named Broda Barnes who came up with this at home method as he had made it his life’s work to study the thyroid all the way back to 1940.

With this test, the assumption is that your doctor has done a thyroid test and told you it is normal but you still have symptoms.

All you have to do for this test is take your temperature. Full disclosure, I have not tried this because I am lazy and you need a mercury based thermometer called a basal thermometer. The reason for this is that a slow thyroid (hypothyroid) causes your overall body temp to drop and that is why you feel cold.

For men and women in menopause, all they do is take their temp but for women still cycling you have be mindful of doing the test in relation to your cycle and ovulation because your temperature will naturally rise at that time.

Here are the instructions:

1. Shake down a basal thermometer and put it on your nightstand, within reach, before you go to bed.

2. When you wake up in the morning before you do anything else, and try not to move too much, put the thermometer under your armpit which is the most stable place to take your temp for this. No getting up for any reason whatsoever, just take the thermometer and put it under your arm and lay still for ten minutes. Do some deep breathing and do your best to do some kind of meditation so that you are not even thinking about anything - especially anything that might stress you out. No looking at your phone, no texting, no tv, no music, nothing. Just lie there and breathe.

3. After ten minutes, write down your temp. You might want to make a little chart of the day and time you took the temp.

4. Do this for five days in a row- If your temp is normal (above 97.8 to 98.2) then you can stop and we need to do some digging to figure out why you still have symptoms.

5. After five days, you are going to take a thyroid supplement: either Thyrotrophin PMG from Standard Process or Thyroid Synergy from Designs for Health, or GTA Forte from Biotics Research. GTA Forte is the supplement that took away my cold hands and feet.

6. You take these for the next 2-3 weeks and continue recording your temperature. Give it a few days before you even see any kind of changes.

   1. You can get either of these from my dispensary for 10% off at https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/hfh Please don’t buy from Amazon- there are a lot of counterfeit supplements on that platform and buying from a practitioner helps support their small business. It helps me pay for the podcast streaming service.

   2. If you are doing Thyrotophin PMG take 6 capsules in the morning. These can be stimulating so don’t take after 1 or 2pm.

   3. If you are taking Thyroid Synergy then take 4 in divided doses (2 in am and 2 at lunch)

7. You want to be watching for a trend of your temperature rising while you are on the supplements. This will be an indication there is a problem with your thyroid.

8. If your temp goes above 98.2, cut back on the supplements by maybe 1. This should not make you feel hyperthyroid. Obviously if it does then you want to be sure to stop the experiment.

As you work on your health, which you can do with me in my 6 month program meeting bi-weekly, and your overall health improves, your thyroid may start to work better. This of course depends on where you are in the whole thyroid gland breakdown. Working on emotional stress, inflammation, reducing toxins, cleaning up your diet, fixing nutrient deficiencies, and so on will change some things for the better and then you may not need the supplements anymore.

I want to say a word about emotional stress and thyroid too because there is a clear spiritual/emotional/energetic component to this disease. If you want to heal your body and your thyroid, you will eventually have to deal with this component. Thyroid problems are often about communication, the throat chakra if you are in to woo woo. Do you have no voice in your marriage or other relationship? Is there something your are not being honest with yourself about? Are you not speaking your truth? Are you not saying what is on your mind?

You cannot heal your thyroid without dealing with this stuff. They are so tied together it isn’t even funny. We can look at your labs and give you all the tools you need to get better but this stuff also has to be addressed.

I have personal experience with the need to heal this kind of stuff. I grew up not really having a voice and continued being in relationships where I didn’t have a voice my whole life. I am finally to the point where I feel like I can speak freely and use my voice. This stuff is real. And it matters.

But if you are not ready to deal with it, that’s okay too. You can work on all other aspects of your life and deal with it later. There was a time I wasn’t ready to deal with it and I waited until I was ready. It’s okay.

I also don’t want you to blame yourself. You didn’t know what you didn’t know and that is okay. All that matters is that you are here now and even if you are just letting this sink in, I’m proud of you for that.

You can feel better. I can help you do that. I can be your voice for now until you are ready.

You’ve got this.

Stress, gut health and hashimotos

A super short episode talking about all the things stress effects and how it can contribute to thyroid problems. It feels a little incomplete but I published it anyway. :)

What do my labs mean?

Your lab tests are only as useful as their interpretation.  I may have told you to ask for certain labs or maybe you have read on the internet what the best labs to ask for are to figure out why your thyroid isn’t working well.

Maybe your doctor will order the labs you ask for but do they know how to interpret them beyond the standard lab ranges offered? Do you? Probably not. So you have all this information and no plan to get you feeling better.

I’ve even seen functional medicine lab ranges that are more narrow than the standard or conventional lab ranges not be good enough to figure out a problem. The reason behind that is that the functional lab companies are getting their ranges based on the people who are coming to them for tests.

What does this mean? It means that the sick people going to a functional medicine doctor to get their labs are the people who’s results are making the lab ranges. This is true for most labs.

Does that sound like a way to figure out whether or not YOUR labs are out of range or within range? They might be within range of a bunch of other people who feel like crap and don’t know why.

Basic blood chemistry labs like a CBC, CMP, lipid panel, iron panel, thyroid panel can be super helpful but also know that your symptoms matter regardless of what your labs say. The labs are a way to help put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Your symptoms are your body’s way of telling you something is up. They help gauge whether an intervention is working or not. I saw plenty of people who could not help my fatigue because they were not looking in the right place or they were trying to bandaid the symptoms without really getting at the root cause.

Today I wanted to share with you my old labs and how they were interpreted by my practitioners at the time and show you what was missed based on the scientific research based lab values I use.

I was looking in a file cabinet for some financial documents and then got side tracked with all the stuff that could be thrown out in the file cabinet and I came across a green folder with a hand written schedule of appointments for a plan I paid for through a certain chiropractic office. I dug into it and found so much stuff related to my health and trying to feel better over the years. I thought this would make a great podcast episode since many of you have been to multiple practitioners and still feel like crap.

I’m taking you back to 11/25/2011 which is the first wellness plan I found from the 1st holistic practitioner I saw. She was a naturopathic doctor and from what I can tell from my research on her, she was out of ND school/residency about a year or less when I saw her. She was a kind, passionate doctor. I saw her for a few years until it got to be too far of a drive and I still wasn’t feeling great. She was actually on to why I wasn’t feeling great and it was an emotional component I wasn’t dealing with and her suggesting we work on it scared me away. I quit working with her after that and kept looking for the magic pill with other practitioners and never ever felt quite right.

I remember one visit with her where I had brought her a list of supplements I was taking based on testing I had done in my nutritional therapy practitioner training and she said, “I don’t even know what to do with this.”. I could tell she was super annoyed and I get it now as a practitioner because when a client/patient is taking stuff outside of the protocol that was set for them it may or may not be detrimental to the outcome. Plus, you might also just be wasting your money.

Anyway, I went to her for fatigue, hypothyroidism, mood issues, blood sugar issues, and apparently heavy bleeding during my cycle- super heavy. I’m sure there was other stuff but I don’t have my intake form.

Any of this sound familiar to you?

She recommended to me before testing was done:

• Coconut oil for low blood sugar/shakiness

• Flax meal, 1-2 T daily (she suggested mixing in applesauce) all month

• Omega 3: super EFA liquid 1 tsp/day all month

• GLA: 1000mg flax and 1000mg EPO days 15-28

• Vitamin D3: start at 2000IU/day, get tested within 2 weeks

• Probiotics: HMF Neuro caps 1/day

• Acupuncture for mood support

• Labs to get: TPO Ab, Tg AB, FT3, FT4, TSH, rT3 ($155); 25 OH Vit. D, 22IgG Food intolerance test

• See a gynecologist to get pelvic/transnational ultrasound to rule out organic causes of heavy bleeding with menses

• Schedule next appointment in 6 weeks

I did some testing on 12/9/2011: Intestinal barrier assessment 22 IgG through Pharmasan Labs. Just for reference, I was 40 years old (I’m 51 now) and my kids were 11, 9, and 6. I was working as a social worker 20 hours a week and not a very happy person.

Results were:

• Intestinal barrier assessment showed a moderately leaky gut

• Food parameter summary/food sensitivities detected

  • Yogurt was high

  • Baker’s yeast, egg white, tuna, wheat were moderate

  • Cows milk, gluten, goats milk, oats, shrimp were low for presenting antibodies

• Vitamin D test was at 33.3 on 12/8/11 and she told me the range was 40-100

I saw her on 1/2/2012 to go over these test results.

The wellness plan was:

• Avoid yogurt, bakers yeast, egg white, wheat, milk, gluten, oats for at least 4 weeks. Then trial reintroduce the low foods one at a time in this order: oats, milk/cheese- wait at least 4 days in between reintroducing when not eating oats. So eat oats for 4 days, wait four days then reintroduce milk/cheese but don’t eat oats while doing that.

• Breakfast ideas: quinoa porridge, organic chicken sausage, avocado with sea salt, egg yolk

• Flax seeds 1-2 tablespoons/day all month

• Super EFA liquid 1 tsp/day all month

• GLA: 1000mg flax and 1000mg EPO days 15-25

• Vit. D: 10,000IU per day for one month, then reduce to 4,000IU/day

• B6 complex 1/day with breakfast

• Probiotics: HMF neurocaps 1/day

• Slow Flow- use day 1 of period 3 caps every 3-4 hours

• Progesterone cream: day 15-28, stop if period comes before day 28, 1 pump per day at bedtime

• Permeability complex II- 1 cap 2x/day with meals

• She will contact me with thyroid results

• Retest vitamin D in 3 months

• Pelvic/transvaginal ultrasound due to menorrhagia to rule out other causes before getting ablation

• Schedule next appointment in March.

• On the back of the plan was a drawing of leaky gut

The wellness plan for my next visit on 3/9/12 went like this:

• substitute sugar for yacon syrup, read labels and eat less than 20-30g of sugar per day and watch to see how skin reacts.

• Snack ideas: celery/nut butter, carrots/hummus

• Same supplements as before with addition of

  • orthothyroid 2 caps/day

• Remove IUD

• Next visit 8-10 weeks, discuss periods, skin

I’m missing a years worth of labs and wellness plans from her- I do remember her diagnosing me with Hashimoto’s after these thyroid labs were done so I was off to see about medication changes from my doctor because ND’s in MN cannot prescribe medication.

I got more labs done on 1/8/2013 from Pharmasan Labs. The panel was called the Endocrine Health Basic and it was a saliva test.

The cortisol test wasn’t horrible as far as results go- it was a little low in the morning and stayed below range until about 2 pm where it barely went within the range and then was a little high around 9pm. This is a typical pattern for someone with thyroid problems. According to the reference range, my cortisol was below reference range all day long- could be why I was so tired all the time and my blood pressure was super low (I was also freezing all the time).

DHEA was 274.5 with reference range for women at 57.0-615 so that was normal

Estradiol was off the charts low at <0.8 and it should have been between 1.0-14 according to the lab range.

Estrone was 0.8 and that was within the range for my age group.

Progesterone was 566 so high for the range of 38.0-462 but she had me on progesterone cream so I can only imagine that it was probably in range before that.

Testosterone was 26.2 which was also within this labs range.

I wrote her an email on 2/20/2013 saying i got a new presecription for thyroid meds with an increased dose. I got a referral to an endocrinologist which I did not use because I have not found them helpful in the past and they are more expensive to see. I was getting heart palpitations on my new medication so I was taking half a pill and working my way up to a full pill to let my body adjust. I told her I didn’t feel clear headed, probably brain fog, and I was super forgetful and having a hard time concentrating. I said, ‘my kids think I’m crazy’. I told her I was worried about taking a higher dose and asked if I should take it and see how it goes.

She replied that my thyroid needs more support so it might be worth trying to see how my body tolerates it. She wondered if there was something in the medication that my body didn’t like. I believe the real problem was that my cortisol was so off still, I didn’t handle stress well and my body was just responding to the T3 in the new medication. She suggested I ask my doctor for Westhroid or Naturethroid and to ask my pharmacist about the medication I was taking and why I might be having palpitations on it.

I do remember taking Westhroid and doing really well on it and then there was a shortage or whatever and I had to find something else. Story of my life!

On 10/25/13 I redid the Endocrine Health Basic lab panel

• cortisol was within normal range except at 8pm it was high at 3.3 and it should have been below 1.5. She told me to take magnesium at 7pm. I remember the first time I took a powdered magnesium in water. I felt a rush of calm over my whole body from top to bottom. That is the only supplement that has made me feel a physical difference.

• DHEA was at 58.6, remember last time it was in the 200’s. It was still within the normal lab range but much lower this time. My notes say DHEA is a counter balance for cortisol

• All the sex hormones were within the lab normal range. The healthy lab ranges I have are for blood and not saliva so I can’t compare the two. One thing to know is that even functional medicine labs are making their ‘normal’ lab ranges based on the results of people who use the lab. Who goes to practitioners who use ‘functional medicine’ labs? Sick people! I think my hormones were off because I was still a long ways from feeling good with severe mood swings, poor sleep, angry all the time, terrible blood sugar and more.

• I must have had a visit on or around December 4th 2013 because I got a wellness plan via email with 24 things on it

• Supplement protocol changed a bit- ground flax in applesauce was making me throw up shortly after taking it.

  • Floravital iron and herbs at 10ml per day to see if tolerated and reduce dose if it caused constipation

  • NO RAW brassica veggies or soy because they can interfere with thyroid function- we now know this not to be true unless all you ate was brassica veggies and nothing else in huge amounts every day.

  • Add a pinch of sea salt to my water

  • Cornus Sanguinea for autoimmune thyroid support 1 spoonful in the morning (I don’t remember taking this)

  • Adrenal support 2 caps with breakfast

  • EstroMend 2 caps with dinner for memory/estrogen support instead of Femmenesence Pro Peri

  • Take a break from Sepia 200ck for at least one month to see if PMS is manageable without it (she was throwing supplements at this mood problem and nothing was sticking)

  • Repeat thyroid labs in 5 weeks

  • Glutenzyme by Pharmax in case of accidental gluten exposure - at the time we were not sure if I had celiac disease because I never got tested. I felt so good off gluten I didn’t want to go back on to be retested. At this time I was very strict with avoiding gluten.

  • Exercise: do yoga and she wanted me to go to a Qoya class which was about a 40 minute drive for me from my house and I never went. I don’t like driving that far for a workout- even now, my gym is 5 minutes from my house.

  • Grounding/visualization: imagine roots growing from your feet that firmly connect you to the earth. I still do this when I feel stressed. She said the roots provide you with nourishment/energy and offer a way to release any unwanted energy back to the earth to transform it.

  • We discussed removing my mercury fillings from my teeth.

  • Return visit in 8 weeks.

The next set of labs is from 11/26/2014 so almost a year later. By this time I probably did have my fillings removed. I did 1/4 of my mouth at a time with a dentist who knew how to remove mercury safely.

By this time I had found an MD willing to treat my symptoms along with my labs and I don’t think I was seeing the ND anymore- she was too far away for me. That said, I was driving almost an hour to the MD but she took my insurance so the visits were way cheaper. I had also gotten my nutritional therapy practitioner certification by this time. The notes on the reason for the visit was that I was here to check on thyroid, I fell really good, not fatigued, sleeping 7-8 hours, feels well physically, stress is reduced, had heart palpitations when tried raising dose of thyroid meds last time. This doctor was the only doctor in her practice willing to use something other than levothyroxine to treat thyroid so I tread lightly with her in order to continue to get the meds that made me feel good. I’d also make a note that I was not feeling tired even though my iron levels were super low- I think this was attributed to being filled up with friends in a community of like minded people who I really enjoyed. I had previously lost a friend group in 2010 and had found friends through my certification program.

• FT3 2.0 (lab range 2.0-4.4) normal but low by my ranges

• FT4 0.74 (0.82-1.77) low by lab and my ranges

• TSH 5.070 (0.450-4.500) High by lab and my ranges

• TPO Ab 69 (0-34) high

• Tg Ab 1.0 (0.0-0.9) high

• RT3 11.4 (9.2-24.1) lab range only

Again, these are lab ranges here that are done on probably both healthy and sick people because it was the lab at the doctors office though some of this, like Reverse T3 and the antibodies may have been sent out to Quest diagnostics. Had my doctor used the ranges I have which are based on healthy people and from the research, it may have painted a different picture. Here I have low T3, low FT4 and High TSH which indicates I’m not making enough T4 and not converting it for whatever reason. My meds were raised.

Fatigue was back with a vengeance and by January 2015 I was going to a chiropractic office that had a medical doctor on staff. My hope was that I would be able to see the doctor and have him prescribe my meds. The funny thing is, I never asked the chiropractor if I could do that. I just assumed. When they presented their plan and the cost, there was no mention of the doctor. I figured out later, he was a place holder so they could do certain things in their clinic that needed an MD on staff. I don’t think he was ever there. I didn’t have my voice, I was too timid to ask about seeing the doctor.

So for this office, their treatment plan was for my complaints of low energy, anxiety, brain fog, constipation. Based on my history and his exams he recommended the Nutritional Function lab test, GI Effects Stool test, Cyrex Array 4 for food hypersensitivity with the knowledge that I may need further testing based on the results of these tests.

Their plan included 6 visits with the nutrition chiropractor and 16 visits doing oxygen therapy which was their fix for my fatigue. He put me on the Apex Energetics RepairVite Diet and their powder. I did feel really good after this diet but it was restrictive. They used the IFM MSQ each visit to see how things were either improving either for the better or worse. In 2015 this plan cost me $1235 after discounts.

They did a body composition by hooking me up to some electrodes and having me lay on my back for around 10 minutes or so. I got a super fancy report showing my BMI at the time was good. It also had something on it called phase angle and mine was low. This report indicated that that is consistent with cell death or cell breakdown which could very well have been the case. I was thin and tired and brain foggy. It is said to be a predictor of malnutrition and I do think at the time I was not absorbing nutrients really well. It also showed that I was about 31.4% body fat so likely losing muscle and what you might call skinny fat. All that from a really fancy nine page report.

I did have my blood drawn for a CBC at their clinic. They didn’t give me the actual results but a fancier paper with each marker, my lab value, functional ranges and laboratory ranges. The entire thing was highlighted line by line in green for normal, yellow for out of the functional range and red for out of the laboratory range.

This blood draw was from 2/24/2015 - I was originally going to go through each lab marker and tell you the differences between their lab range and my lab ranges but I think that is going to be too much so I’m going to skim over them. The point I’m trying to get across is that this chiropractor missed some things that I would catch with my lab ranges. These things would be minor for the most part and could be fixed with some diet changes and supplements.

They missed low albumin, high AST and ALT liver markers, low sodium, high CO2, high bilirubin, low glucose, high HBA1C, low HDL cholesterol, high iron, low ferritin, low neutrophils, and high lymphocytes. They had shown high monocytes and eosinophils where my ranges said they were normal.

When the lab ranges vary so crazily from lab to lab and practitioner to practitioner, things can get missed. The blood chemistry training I received from my former professor allowed me to get scientific research based lab values on healthy individuals that are sound with ranges tight enough that I’m able to catch things before they get bad so to speak. This lab also showed TSH was a little high and T4 was low which would indicate I was in need of an upped dose of medication which I could not get from them because their doctor on staff was not actually on staff.

I was more mad at myself about that whole doctor thing because I didn’t have the confidence to ask them about it. I was intimidated by the chiropractors for some stupid reason. Things would definitely be very different now- I have found my voice! I would have questioned them about seeing the doctor. I was just so desperate at the time.

They also had me do a Cyrex Labs Array 4 - Gluten Associated Cross Reactive Foods and Fodds Sensitivity which is for IgG and IgA antibodies. Nothing was out of range but soy and corn were considered to be just slightly out of the normal range. He put me on the RepairVite diet for 3 or 4 weeks then when my MSQ showed I felt really great he told me I could go back to my normal diet. That was it. According to him my gut was healed.

Next was a Genova Diagnostics GI Effects stool test. A huge fancy report with graphs and pictures in color on the first page that told me nothing. I had undigested fat in my stool and some species of bacteria were low. So the solution was to take HCL with meals.

They also did a comprehensive melatonin profile which came back normal. I think he did that one because I was so tired. Remember that they missed low ferritin which will make one tired so I think this test was a waste.

In April 2015 they had me to the Adrenocortex Stress Profile which is a saliva test. It showed my cortisol was high all morning and high normal in afternoon and normal at night. I think the stories in my head contributed to my stress levels. I was not a happy person and I was wound up pretty tight.

Once I was done with their program I told them I was still fatigued and they told me to go back to my doctor to have my thyroid checked. And that was it.

I was back at my doctor that took insurance in August 2015 and had a CBC done again. There was about a 5 months difference between the two labs and this one was showing anemia and likely micronutrient deficiencies. RBC, Hemoglobin and Hematocrit were all low and MCV was high by my ranges all of which indicated I needed some nutrients. I had my B12 tested too and it cam back normal by the lab range. I don’t have a different range for that but it would be interesting to dig through the research which I might do at some point. All of this would point to fatigue for sure but it was missed by my doctor.

Same doctor tested my thyroid on October 6, 2015. FT3 was normal (low by my range) at 2.0, FT4 was low by both ranges at 0.74, TSH was high by both ranges at 6.130. I was on naturethroid at the time and struggling with palpitations when the dose went up so this is when I started splitting the dose and taking it twice a day. When TSH and T4 are low it could mean an iodine deficiency (not likely though I was not eating a lot of processed foods and using sea salt), autoimmunity- so antibodies could be high, and there was likely less conversion of T4 to T3 because there was less T4. There was a definite thyroid gland dysfunction.

Fast forward to April 2017 when I had my blood and urine tested for life insurance.

By my ranges, glucose was low, BUN was low, Creatinine low, Uric acid low, bilirubin low, liver enzyme ALT high, AST high normal but better than the previous years labs, GGT low (indicated oxidative stress), protein low (low by their range too), albumin low, globulin low normal (low by their standards), calcium low, LDH low (indicative of glucose issues), HDL low (inflammation), cholesterol/HDL ratio leaning towards an increased risk of CVD. They missed a lot of stuff with their ranges and I got the best life insurance rating you can possibly get.

My latest labs were done at my last visit to get my prescription renewed. I’m grateful to have a quality nurse practitioner willing to work with me based on my symptoms. She is cash pay though so I do pay out of pocket every time I see her. She is also functional medicine trained. The first time I saw her, she had me do a Dutch test and a Cyrex leaky gut panel- that was around $1000 for the two tests. I didn’t learn much from either- stuff I kind of already knew. I also did a food sensitivity panel from Cyrex that came up positive for foods I had been eating a lot of and tuna and shrimp. Since those two were on that very first food sensitivity panel I did back in 2012 I wonder if there isn’t some significance to that.

I did a gut healing protocol- a mix of following her recommendations and my own gut healing protocol from my GI class. It worked. I have been able to reintroduce dairy on a limited basis, meaning I don’t eat it every day, and nuts.

Back to my latest labs- done in April 2022. I compared them to the labs I had done July 2020 which was fun for me given my blood chemistry background.

What was missed?

Everything came back normal according the the lab values from the lab which was Quest Diagnostics.

My lab ranges revealed some white blood cells were high indicating a potential for low cortisol, a virus, parasite, and general inflammation. My blood sugar was low at 70 but can be low if cortisol is low or in hypothyroidism. My HDL cholesterol was low indicating the need for gallbladder support and triglycerides were high which can be high if there is hypothyroidism or elevated estrogen. My cholesterol to HDL ratio was high which can indicate an increased risk for cardiovascular disease.

My calcium was low indicating potential need for getting more in my diet or poor absorption. It could also be a mineral deficiency but I can’t confirm that because the minerals were not measured.

Creatinine was low which would either be decreased muscle mass or poor protein intake. LDH was high which can be high with hypothyroidism and my TSH was 20.39, FT4 0.7, FT3 2.2.

Clearly my thyroid labs say I was hypothyroid which affected the results of my other labs.

Why was I so hypo? I forget to take my afternoon dose of NDT a lot. I retested in June of this year after being more diligent about taking that afternoon dose and my TSH was 0.44, FT4 1.1, and FT3 3.7.

Why did I share all of this with you?

So you know you are not alone on this journey. I get what it feels like to feel bad.

I’ve done the work to understand what your labs might be saying about what’s going on in your body and I can help you figure it out.

I also want to point out that a lot can change in a couple of months of giving your body what it needs or what it is asking for so one bad lab result does not mean you are doomed. That lab draw is just a picture in time of what is going on and retesting with the same labs after a couple months of changes can help me see if things are going in the right direction.

Let’s figure this out together. I am on your team.

Thanks for tuning in.

Why Did I Get Hashimoto's?

Thanks for tuning in. It has been 7 months since I recorded an episode and I am grateful to every one of you who is still here or who has waited for me to finish school. I graduated in December with my masters in nutrition and FM and now I am mentoring with a nutritionist and 2 naturopathic doctors to get the hours I need for my certified nutrition specialist exam and subsequent licensure to become a nutritionist in my state.  Why does all of this matter to you? There are so many practitioners in the health space these days- the market is flooded and every one of these practitioners has the perfect program or protocol for you to feel your very best. I’ve seen many of these practitioners myself from medical doctors to naturopathic doctors to chiropractors to nutrition practitioners spending thousands upon thousands of dollars and being loaded up on supplement after supplement. The failure of any and all of these people to help me feel better lead to my own certification in nutritional therapy. The problem was from the very beginning I knew I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I didn’t like reading research and I didn’t really know how which is what led me to get my masters. I knew I needed more information to be able to help the population of people I wanted to help which is you. Wonderful humans with thyroid problems who are not being served well by their doctors or who just need a little something extra to get them feeling better. 

The doctors I am mentoring with (and I paid a pretty penny to do so) are amazing. They are a husband and wife team and one of them was my professor for two of my courses in my masters program and his teaching literally changed the way I think about health and wellness. He does not teach protocols. He taught me how to critically think about WHY someone’s body is not working well and all of this starts at the cells and your biochemistry. The word biochemistry used to scare me because I never ever thought I was smart enough to learn and know the science of the body. I have taken a deep dive into biochemistry and physiology- further than I needed to go for my degree because if I can really know the inner workings of the cells of the body then I have the tools to help anyone and my passion is helping you because I have been there. I have felt like crap for years- low energy, fatigue to the max, not just cold hands and feet but cold bones. 

The sea of health coaches and people with certificates in nutrition is full and like I said, each one tells you they have the answer to your problem. Generalized protocols for chronic conditions will work for some people but they will never work for everyone. Just like diets don’t work for everyone. You are a biochemical individual and that is why a general protocol isn’t the answer. You have all this conflicting and frustrating information on google but all you want is to live your best life or you would not have tuned in. If only you could get a clear set of instructions to follow so you knew just what to do to feel better. You can but you won’t find it in a book or a program because those things know nothing about who you are and what is exactly going on with you. 

My mentors have created a short questionnaire that is based in the scientific literature called The Cell Blueprint. It tells me what is going on with you and the best part is it doesn’t tell me what you need but it does tell me where I should go looking next. Add to that the ability to really interpret your blood chemistry from a simple complete blood count with differential and I can have a really good start in understanding exactly what is going on with your body and how to start you on the road to feeling better. You likely do need some supplements but they are individualized for you! Someone recently contacted me about wanting a supplement protocol to make her feel better and I need you to know I don’t work that way because you can’t supplement your way out of a bad diet or an unhappy life and an unhappy life can definitely affect your cellular health.

Aside from this, I found a study through Dr. Bryan Walsh that talks about the season you were born and how that may play a role in your getting Hashimoto’s or Graves disease so that is what I’m talking about today. 

This was a really interesting study done in Greece looking at this idea of birth month and autoimmune thyroid disease. It is well known that 21% of the cause of Grave’s is attributed to triggers from the environment such as infections and viruses with less research being able to pinpoint this to Hashimoto’s disease. There is also a confirmed connection in the research between a Rubella infection and hyperthyroidism. In addition, there is a clear connection between viral infections and T1D and MS. The association between T1D and both Grave’s and Hashi’s and possibly MS is also high meaning that having one of these leads to you being more susceptible to having the other which is a great reason to get your thyroid condition well maintained. It is nothing to mess around with - I certainly do not want MS or T1D. 

The thought behind this is that infections occurring in utero may play a role with the fall and winter months when infection rates are generally at their highest.  All Grave’s and Hashi’s patients in this study (around 1200 people) had their month of birth compared to disease development. Grave’s was more prevalent in men who were older at diagnosis and they had high FT4 and low TSH. Hashi’s was more prevalent in women, they were not as old at diagnosis compared to those with Graves, TSH levels were higher than 10, FT4 lower than 7.0 and TPOAb were greater than 50. An ultrasound of the thyroid diagnosed Hashimoto’s autoimmunity. 

Grave’s Disease diagnosis was based on diffuse goiter (which means the whole gland is involved rather than just a nodule), ophthalmopathy (eye balls stick out, or increased levels of thyroid receptor antibodies/TRAbs). In the general population, in both sexes, the highest incidence of births was in summer and more males with Graves were born in winter while women with Graves were more likely to be born in spring and fall. 

In Hashimoto’s, patterns between birth month for the general population and both men and women the birth month patterns were different between men and women as well. Men were born in summer months and winter months and women were more often born in winter months and the birth month correlated with how high the antibodies were. Researchers even checked to see if there was a significant difference in overall viral infections when these subjects were in utero and there appeared to be no change in general viral infection rates from the norm. 

The idea behind this study was to find a similarity or not between viral infection and T1D compared to viral infections and Hashi’s or Grave’s as the two are commonly held together and T1D is more commonly associated with infections in fall and winter when more people are getting sick. This supports the idea that a viral infection could be a trigger for any one of these conditions in those who are genetically susceptible. 

The high antibody connection between birth month and high antibody titers is similar to birth month and high antibodies against B cells in T1D. Being genetically predisposed to autoimmune disease combined with the trigger of infection could be all it takes to progress into a full blown autoimmune disease. 

One thing that allows this progression is unhealthy cells which don’t need curcumin or gogi berries to run well. Let me help you figure out where your core or root cause issues are stemming from by having a look at your Cell Blueprint. This is the best time to do this while I have my mentorship. They charge $500 for a one hour consult so you are getting three minds for the price of $153 which is what I currently charge for a one hour consult. Most people only need 3-4 visits total with the subsequent visits costing $79. I don’t have any packages right now but will be eventually. My sole concentration right now is seeing as many clients as I can while I have mentors so I can be the best at what I do. If you are interested, please reach out at outofthewoodsnutrition.com and fill out my contact form. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for my newsletter as well and get your copy of Five Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Hypothyroidism. I look forward to helping you get back to your old self. 

There will not be an episode next week but I do hope to be a bit more regular with getting episodes out now that I am out of school and done with my interpreting blood chemistry course. Thanks again for tuning in. I appreciate you! 

Should I take antibiotics?

Someone emailed me and asked about taking antibiotics and whether or not it was a good idea to take antibiotics at all for a particular condition since she knows that they can harm the population of bacteria in the gut. If you go back and listen to episode 81 you will find some good information on probiotics. 

If you have to take antibiotics for something, it’s okay. I don’t think they are always warranted but it isn’t my place to tell you whether or not you should take them. There will be changes in gut bacteria when you take antibiotics and you can take probiotics at the same time as you take antibiotics, just not together. The scientific research shows that taking the probiotics while on antibiotic treatment will decrease antibiotic-related side effects like diarrhea or other GI symptoms and will also reduce the associated damage that comes with antibiotic use to the gut microbiome. This means taking specific probiotics will help minimize the damage that probiotics can do to those good bugs. 

Florastor which is available almost everywhere is a Saccharomyces cerevisiae variety boulardii (Biocodex strain). When you see saccharomyces boulardii listed on a supplement label- it is incorrect. It should be Saccharomyces cerevisiae with a strain name after it. So they are not all the same. The strain matters. Florastor has the rights to this strain I believe so it is a good thing you can get it anywhere. 

Another probiotic you can take is called Lactobacillus helveticus R0052 or Lactobacillus rhamnosus R0011 which will provide similar support as Florastor. These two strains are found in Xymogen Probio Defence, Xymogen Lacidofil, Jarrow Jarro-Dophilus EPS & EPS higher potency, Jarrow ultra Jarrow-Dophilus and Natural Factors Relief Biotic.  ORDER YOUR PROBIOTICS HERE

When taking antibiotics you want to take the probiotics 2-3 hours after the antibiotic so it can survive and taking them with a meal will help them survive digestion.  In addition, make sure you are eating lots of fiber, always, because your gut bacteria feed off of insoluble fibers which keep their populations healthy and strong. 

This is probably the shortest episode I’ve done. Remember your are not your diagnosis, you can live well with Hashimoto’s. Of any autoimmune disease, this one is the least debilitating and you can manage it well with diet, lifestyle, and proper medication dosing- so having a good doctor is helpful and I know that is the problem for many of you. I’m sorry for that. I wish there was something I could do to help with that. 

How Does My Immune System Work?

How does my immune system work? 

If you have tuned in it is probably because you have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. If you have Hashimoto’s it is because your immune system has gone wonky. In future episodes, I will cover why this happens in more detail but to understand autoimmunity you first need to understand your immune system in general. 

The main purpose of your immune system is to keep out bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Our body has the perfect environment for all of these things to flourish which is why we have an immune system. The body has barriers such as skin, mucous membranes, and even stomach acid to keep these bacteria, viruses, parasites, and more from fully entering the body. If the body doesn’t keep out these bugs because one or more of the first lines of defense are not working well then your immune system gets to work to keep them from wreaking havoc. 

When something enters and gets past the first lines of defense, the immune system has to distinguish between self and non-self. It asks the question, ARE YOU ME? and ARE YOU DANGEROUS?  When your immune system is healthy, it will be able to tell the difference between self and non-self, so it doesn’t attack your tissue and just sets out to destroy actual invaders.  Your cells are marked as self and should not be attacked. When the immune system encounters cells or other organisms such as viruses or bacteria that are marked as non-self or foreign, an attack will be launched. 

The chemical triggering that attack is called an antigen and the response is called an immune response. Antigens can be a microbe like a virus, it can even be just part of a microbe. Other human tissues or cells will have foreign markers as well which is why organ transplants have a risk of rejection. 

Let’s talk a little bit about how the immune system is structured.  All organs of the immune system are called lymphoid organs. They house white blood cells called lymphocytes. Tonsils, adenoids, lymph nodes, lymph vessels, the thymus gland, the spleen, Peyer’s patches, your appendix, and bone marrow. Bone marrow is where we make blood cells which include white blood cells.  The thymus gland is where T cells mature. Lymphocytes travel through the blood and through the lymphatic system which runs parallel with our veins and arteries so cells and fluids can be exchanged between the two and be on the look out for invaders.  The fluid running through your lymph system is clear and it sort of “cleanses” the tissues of the body. 

You may have felt a lymph node when it is swollen. These are clustered together along your lymph vessels but especially around the neck, armpits, stomach, and groin areas. Your immune cells hang out here waiting to catch an antigen. Antigens are a protein or chemical that the immune system responds to and it can be pretty much anything but is likely to be a bacteria, virus, worm, food, allergen, or mold.  Your response to an antigen will be or can be different than someone else’s response because we all have different immune cells that are specific for things like mold or bacteria. That is why mold really affects some people and not others. 

Invaders and immune cells go through lymph vessels, exit through the lymph nodes, and make their way to the bloodstream where they go throughout the body looking for antigens, go back through the lymphatic system, and do it all over again. They are like a 24-hour patrol center. 

In your spleen is where immune cells congregate and plan. They bring an antigen there and that’s where they deal with it or decide what to do with it. 

The immune system has the ability to recognize most of the foreign invaders we could possibly encounter and when one of these invaders is known to be in the body, the cells that recognized it multiply themselves to create an arsenal of attacking cells to get rid of the invader. Once it’s gone, they dissipate but leave a few cells around to watch for that invader to come back. Kind of like a watchman that will alert the need for supporting troops to come help. 

Lymphocytes, those white blood cells, can be split into two groups. B cells and T cells.  B cells are made in the bone marrow and they make antibodies like IgG, IgA, and IgE (immunoglobulins).  Antibodies attack antigens in the blood. This applies to autoimmunity and leaky gut. When the gut is leaking and your digestion isn’t working well, antigens from food end up in the bloodstream, your immune system attacks and you become sensitive to the food. Once the B cell has identified an invader, the T cells are called in to attack it. B cells make antibodies, but only one per cell. So a B cell discovers an antigen and it tells a plasma T cell about it. The plasma cell then makes antibodies and sends them to the bloodstream. Antigens and antibodies are like puzzle pieces- some fit exactly right and sometimes you think you have it right but it’s not quite a good fit. Either way, when they fit together, the antibody sends a signal that the antigen needs to be destroyed. 

T cells don’t go around looking for antigens just floating around in the blood but instead, they have receptors that find antigens on a cell’s surface. These special cells will either regulate and instruct an immune response or they will attack an infected cell. You may have heard of Th1 and Th2 dominance spoken about in autoimmune disease, especially hashimoto’s. That is referencing T helper cells. These cells are like the cruise director on the old tv show The Love Boat. They coordinate and communicate with other cells like telling a B cell to make an antibody, or they call in the eater cells called phagocytes or they call in the killer cells. 

Natural killer cells are a type of killer cell. They release little particles that release a chemical that kills the invading cell and can attack any kind of invader. Other killer-type cells only kill cells with a specific antigen on them. 

I mentioned phagocytes or eater cells before. These types of cells swallow and digest invaders. A monocyte is a type of phagocyte in the blood that turns into a macrophage or big eater when it makes its way into tissue. They are found in the lungs, kidneys, brain, and liver among other places. Macrophages are like scavengers that clean things up. 

You have likely heard of histamine. That is produced by a cell called a granulocyte. They release granules that are full of chemicals, histamine being one of them, that set out to kill microorganisms that cause inflammation and allergic reactions like last year when I ate a tomato for lunch and proceeded to immediately get flush in my face and on my arms and legs. It was august and I tend to have a bit of a fall allergy so that combined with the fresh garden tomato was all my body needed to have a histamine reaction. 

Other cells that have granules they release are called neutrophils, a type of phagocyte, as well as eosinophils, and basophils. Mast cells are similar to basophils but aren’t found in blood but in the lungs, skin, tongue, and in mucosal linings and they also cause allergy symptoms. 

If you have been following Covid research at all you may have heard of a cytokine storm. Cytokines are hormone or chemical messengers. They talk to each other using their chemical messages where they act on other cells to create an immune response. Interleukins, interferons, and growth factors are cytokines. Interleukin 2 will tell the immune system to make T cells and, they can boost the immune system. Cytokines are also involved in repairing damage from inflammation or fighting off an invader- a bodyguard of sorts. 

We have something called a compliment system that has proteins that work with antibodies kind of like an additional force for good. They play a role in our inflammatory responses like when we hurt ourselves. The warmth of an injury, as well as the swelling, pain, and redness, are partially from the complement system.  In an immune response, there is a cascade of reactions that result in an invading cell being sort of drilled into. 

Infections are the most common issue we have as far as disease is concerned and the bugs causing those infections to have to get past our skin, mucous membranes in the respiratory system, and our digestive system. The only way to get past the skin is through a break in the skin. If a microbe enters your nose, you will make more mucous, you may even sneeze or cough in an attempt to keep invaders out. I think about sneezing in allergy season- that is your body’s way of trying to keep those little buggers out of the body. My daughter said she must have sneezed 40 times last night in the middle of the night- she has pretty bad seasonal allergies. I also think about my husband’s smoker’s cough. I imagine that his lungs are so damaged from smoking for 40 years (he’s only 54) that anything entering his lungs may be why he coughs so regularly. 

Our stomach is supposed to be acidic. I have talked about this in episodes about digestion. You need stomach acid. It is a line of defense against microbes that we swallow with food. If something makes it past all these barriers and we know that they do because we have all been sick. Our mucosal surfaces, stomach lining, intestinal lining and even the genital area are all lined with mucosal membranes that have IgA antibodies in them. Under that layer are macrophages, B cells, and T cells just waiting to identify an invader. Then they have to get past the phagocytes, natural killer cells, and the complement system which are all set up to destroy an invading substance.  On a side note to that- all this hand sanitizer being passed around everywhere these days to avoid Covid virus exposure - what do you think that is doing to your skin microbiome?  Likely changing its makeup and causing an issue with that particular immune barrier. Maybe instead of killing off the good bugs in addition to viral bugs, we should be providing our skin with the proper bugs to keep that immune barrier strong and healthy so it can fight off the bugs. Just something to think about- critical thinking my friends. 

Bacteria live in between cells and get attacked pretty easily by antibodies. Viruses and parasites have to enter cells to survive. If a cell gets infected it has its own defense system in place to tell the immune system to kill it. There are some parasites that can live outside of a cell, if they live outside the cell it is likely because they are too big to enter the cell and so more of the immune system has to get involved. 

We have two types of immunity. Innate/non specific and specific/acquired/adaptive. 

You are born with your innate immune system and it becomes active around 3-4 weeks and you need it to live. All microbes that get into the body are monitored by this system like a surveillance team. This is where most of the immune cells are made: 

• macrophages: this cell is in every tissue of the body ready to respond to invaders at all times and are very useful in the skin, GI tract, nose, and lungs where they produce cytokines which can be toxic to some invaders but they also call in more macrophages, dendritic cells, white blood cells to help in defending against invaders.

• Neutrophils: a white blood cell and a granulocyte (releases granules that are toxic to the invader) that kills anything. It wraps itself around the invader/eats it and kills it. And they eat and eat until they die. Pus is a good example of a neutrophil that has died and is a barrier between infection and the rest of the body.

• Eosinophil: another white blood cell that eats and kills but also will present antigens to T cells and B cells, is involved in allergies.

• Basophils: Another white blood cell doing similar work as neutrophils and eosinophils and is involved in allergies but there isn’t a lot of information on this one.

• Mast cells: these hang out around blood vessels and nerves and these are what release histamine, heparin (anticoagulant), and cytokines that cause swelling and bring in more of the macrophages and neutrophils to eat things up.

This branch of the immune system is what creates inflammation and part of that inflammatory process is due to the complement system because it calls in inflammatory cells coating invaders so they get eaten. It is also quick to react which is why it isn’t super specific so every response will be very similar no matter the reason it was activated. It also doesn’t care if it is a foreign invader, a damaged cell that needs to be taken care of or a perfectly healthy cell like one near a cut on the skin for example. This non-specificity only becomes a problem when you are dealing with inflammation due to chronic stress, infections that stick around, hormonal issues, or consuming a lot of foods that create inflammation which then leads to further health problems. 

Your specific or adaptive immune system is developed over time. The flora of the gut help develop it and you won’t live well if this system doesn’t work, but you can live. It can take over when your innate immune system can’t handle the infection, injury or inflammation occurring. When innate needs help, it takes one of those eaten microbes/viruses and presents it on its surface to show a T helper cell that can recognize the antigen presented. The T helper cell then gets activated, multiplies, and further activates the specific/adaptive immune system. 

This branch is specific in what it attacks and it remembers these invaders so next time they come by they can respond faster and more aggressively. If you have had chickenpox this is why you only get them once. Your immune system remembered that virus and keeps it from reinfecting you. It differentiates between self and non-self very specifically when responding to pathogens but this branch is also what attacks our tissues in autoimmune disease. 

There are two categories of adaptive immunity. 

Humoral and Cellular Immunity. 

Humoral immunity uses B cells created in the bone marrow and sent out into blood and lymph. B cells are what produce antibodies or immunoglobulins to fight off very specific things. Your body produces millions of B cells each day and each of these cells has a specific antibody on it so as it is circulating through your blood and lymph it is looking for a match to the antibody it is specific for. Once it finds it, if it finds it, it attaches to it and releases a signal to activate cytokines (made by T helper cells- which we will learn about later). The B cells for that antigen will then multiply themselves so the rest of that antigen can be gathered up. While it is multiplying it is also making a different kind of B cell called a plasma B cell that makes more antibodies to increase the attack on the antigen/foreign invader and memory B cells so it can remember this antigen for the next time it tries to invade. The innate immune system helps out here with their macrophages or eater cells and the complement system to clear out the invader quickly. 

Cellular immunity involves the T cell white blood cells that are developed in the bone marrow but go to the thymus for training before being released into the blood and lymph. There are two classes of T cells: CD4 and CD8 and they work with the receptor on the T cell to find invaders recognizing even a fragment of a foreign invader that may have been partially broken down inside the cell already. 

There are two major types of T cells: Killer T cells and Helper T cells. 

Killer T cells are CD8 cells that attack infected cells in the body- they are looking for foreigners presented on the cell surface and can be activated by other cells like macrophages, B cells and T helper cells to kill an infected cell. These are the ones causing issues with organ transplants and killing cancer cells. 

Helper T cells you may be familiar with as Th1 and Th2 are a part of this group and you may have heard these mentioned in relation to being Th1 or Th2 dominant. These cells tell the killer cells what to kill but they also release cytokines (inflammatory chemicals). Each of the Th cells releases a different kind of cytokine to create a certain type of immune response. 

Th1 cells involve innate immune cells like macrophages and cytokines that tell T cells to turn into killer T cells. Having too many Th1 cytokines can create hypersensitivity to food. These are the most commonly made cytokines and are also effective at taking on bacteria, viruses, some parasites and cancer. Taking ashwagandha can increase Th1 and that is only good if your Th1 is low. Reishi mushrooms also increase Th1. In the case of an infection, increasing Th1 would be okay. Th1 is high in ulcerative colitis in addition to food sensitivity. Low Th1 is related to actual food allergy and colon cancer. 

Th2 cells activate B cells which multiply and create antibodies. These are made in response to worms and parasites and when these are overproduced in the gut they can lead to food allergy or anaphylaxis. High Th2 is implicated in Crohn’s disease. 

Another T helper cell called Th17 is very inflammatory and is activated when we encounter some bacteria, fungi, or parasites. This increases inflammation to help get rid of bugs and is involved in asthma. This one is implicated in autoimmune disease and can produce Th1 or Th2- it all depends on the person and what is going on with them. This is probably too much information for you but I just wanted to lay it out there. The more you know the better equipped you are. 

There is another T cell called a regulatory T cell or T reg cell which is also a CD4 T cell that helps regulate (hence the name) the specific/adaptive immune system by shutting down the immune response when appropriate. They play a role in regulating the immune system in a way that creates tolerance where it will not attack an antigen (in pregnancy- so your immune system doesn’t attack your baby) and in stopping T cells that are preparing to attack self (our tissue). It is said that T reg cells also play a role in autoimmunity. They work to keep other cells from becoming pathogenic. If Th1 is out of control, T reg cells are supposed to keep it under control. You can increase your T regulatory response which will even out Th1 or Th2 by eating well, meditation, yoga, singing with people (strange I know), and some supplementation which I am not going to tell you about because I don’t want you to just go supplementing with something because you think this is a problem for you. 

To summarize 

Your immune system, when working well or when it is healthy, plays the role of detector and defender. It is tightly regulated within the body systems. It is reparative and it is tolerant (won’t attack you or the foods you eat).  We will get to what happens when it attacks you in a future episode. 

What is an antibody? 

These are proteins and are actually immunoglobulins which are the Ig in IgA, IgG, etc. The job of an antibody is to notice when another protein is near and bind to the part of that protein and deactivate it and also will send a signal out to the rest of the immune system if it has attached to a foreign protein (one it doesn’t recognize as safe for you). This can cause the immune system to react and attack.  Antibodies are Y-shaped with each part of the Y having a specific job. The tips of the Y have an antigen-binding site meaning it binds to antigens. It is like a lock and key. The antibody won’t bind to the antigen if it doesn’t fit just right. 

Immunoglobulins have classes or types characterized by another type of protein attached to them and are named IgM, IgD, IgG, IgE and IgA. Each has a specific type of thing it looks for in the body. 

IgM antibodies: these signal a potential recent infection as they are the first thing to respond to an antigen in the body. They are secreted by the B cells which remember are there to identify the invader/antigen and tell the T cells to attack. We make IgM antibodies to everything. 

IgD antibodies: there is not a lot known about these but they work with new/immature B cells and can activate other immune cells like basophils and mast cells to produce cytokines (inflammation chemical messengers).

IgG antibodies: these are in the greatest numbers in the blood (3/4 of the antibodies circulating) creating most of our antibody type immune reactions and gives us a Th1 response. These respond to bacteria and viruses. 

IgE antibodies: these bind to allergens and cause a histamine release giving you the symptoms you feel from your allergies such as pollen, rag weed or hay fever. These also bind to parasites and worms which are more common IgE reactions in less westernized countries.  

IgA antibodies: in mucosal areas like the small intestine, respiratory tract, and basically anywhere there are secretions in the body. These respond to food and some infections. 

All of these can be found in the blood with IgA being found in all secretions. 

What do antibodies do? 

They can coat or surround a microbe or other substance so it can be eaten and disposed of. They can neutralize things like toxins which in the case of botox injections is the reason why you have to get more and more of an injection for it to work. They activate the compliment system which is a series of proteins that poke holes in bacteria. They activate other cells like mast cells to break up worms to be eaten by macrophages or eater cells. 

Your immune response will be the same whether it is food, bacteria or viruses or allergens that your body is responding to. The immune response to food is the only thing that has what is called immunological tolerance so you are not reacting to everything you put in your mouth. When you have tolerance to food that is an IgA reaction. When you have a hypersensitivity or food sensitivity that is an IgG reaction and allergy is an IgE reaction. You can react to something you are sensitive to with the same reaction as an allergic reaction, the difference is that one is an IgG reaction and one is an IgE reaction. I have been told that healing the gut can allow someone to reintroduce those IgG reactive foods again. 

Consuming foods that provoke an IgG reaction regularly will create chronic inflammation through the overproduction of reactive oxygen species and oxidative stress along with the inflammatory cascade in the gut and then into the body systemically depending on how bad it is. Chronic inflammation can also be caused by obesity, gum disease, injury, underlying infections, mood disorders (here it is a chicken or egg situation- which came first). 

Bottom line- there is a lot we don’t know about the immune system and how it acts/reacts etc. Now you have a very basic understanding of the immune system so you can be more proactive in your own health. When we know better we do better. 

Please sign up for my newsletter at outofthewoodsnutrition.com and get my report on the five things your doctor won’t tell you about hypothyroidism. Older episodes refer you to social media accounts which are no longer around and I’m happier and more sane for it! You can find me here on the podcast or on my website. 

Thanks for listening. 

Will Selenium help my thyroid?

Hello and welcome to episode 102. Thanks for joining me. I have a couple of announcements before we get to today’s content. 

First, on a personal note, someone close to me was scammed by one of those internet gift card scams. Because they used to work for the company that the scammers pretended to be, this person, an older person, believed them. It is a scam where they get you to sign in to your online bank account and they say they are refunding you say $299.00. As you are typing, they add an extra 9 to the account so it looks like you are getting a refund of $2,999.00 and then they say they will get in big trouble with their boss and the only way to remedy this is to buy gift cards and read them off the numbers. This person bought a total of $3500 in gift cards, $1000 of which was able to be frozen but they were out $2500. So please have a conversation with the older adults in your life. I never thought this person would have been able to be scammed like this in a million years and they were. There are a lot of great YouTubers getting back at these scammers if you want to check them out Kitboga is a good one as well as Scambaiter and Jim Browning. 

Okay, the second thing I wanted to talk about is LifeTune - they sell emf-type devices and they sent me a couple for my phone. I muscle tested them and they seem to work for me. If you are interested in checking them out, they seem to have a sale going on all the time at up to 35% off. You can use the discount code GETCLEAR for 10% off at www.airestech.com. 

You can also get 10% off Meizen skincare at myzenskincare.com using the code 10% off. That is the number 10, percent sign, space, off. I love their skincare, especially the edelweiss serum and the vitamin c spray. Dr. Martha also has some nice essential oil blends and awesome body oil that smells like cinnamon. Please support local small businesses if you can. 

Okay, now on to the good stuff. I’m in a program called Practice UP from the good people at Metabolic Fitness Pro. They strive to give practitioners the latest information/science to help them put into clinical practice so they can be the best practitioners out there. That is my goal. To be the last stop for all of you fantastic Hashi’s patients out there. I am still learning and plan to continue to always be learning so I can serve my clients in the best way possible. Anyway, each month we learn about something clinically relevant and last month we learned about Selenium and the role it plays in thyroid health and in type 2 diabetes. I’ve got some great info for you guys. 

What we know: 

Autoimmune thyroid disease accounts for around 85% of people with hypothyroidism and the cause of Hashi’s has many factors involved. Our genetics and environmental triggers play a role but are not well understood. We have the highest selenium concentration per mass unit of tissue in our thyroid gland and has direct effects on the metabolism of thyroid hormone. Many of you have heard or been told to take selenium to help with reducing thyroid antibodies and many studies have shown that it is, in fact, effective at reducing TPO antibodies. There are several studies that show it has no effect as well. Many of the studies going either way here have a poor quality of evidence. That means the way the study was conducted had some problems that may have affected the outcome and results. 

Those studies that showed an improvement in antibodies could have had people in the study that were deficient in selenium in the first place but baseline levels of selenium were not measured. When people were followed for 3,6,12 months and antibodies were measured, they didn’t see much change in antibody levels after 12 months which could suggest there was a deficiency in selenium that was fixed by supplementation and could also be why there was no clinical improvement in those subjects. 

A study published in January of 2021 goes over many of these studies in detail. It is called Insufficient evidence to support the clinical efficacy of selenium supplementation for patients with chronic autoimmune thyroiditis with the lead author being a name I can’t pronounce but will have the reference in the “transcript” on this episode on my website. The bottom line is I have three studies I’ve read today that are suggesting that supplementation with selenium may not be needed. 

As I said, it can improve or lower antibodies but it really doesn’t do anything for the course of the disease. In Graves’ disease, it might lead to faster remission of hyperthyroidism and improve upon the quality of life- so keep that in mind. 

Other nutrients interact with Selenium which will affect you. For instance, Vitamin C is thought to increase the absorption of Se. If you are deficient, Vitamin E will make the selenium deficiency worse and if you are not deficient, having adequate vitamin E levels may help prevent toxicity from too much selenium. Large doses of Omega 3 fatty acids, potentially several grams of fish oil for example, my cause the need for more selenium. Large amounts of zinc and copper can cause a selenium deficiency so if you are deficient in those, you may also need selenium. Vitamin D supplementation can increase selenium. 

What I am getting at is that you may have been told to take selenium because a few studies showed that it reduced antibodies but do you know if you really need it??? 

The average adult’s selenium levels are said to be optimal at around 80-120 mcg/mL and at that level are said to be good. It does act as an antioxidant at this level in the body but anything more than that can mess with insulin signaling and eventually causing insulin resistance. Too much selenium causes insulin resistance, higher HBA1C, and metabolic syndrome. Hashi’s patients are already at risk for developing these things and adding selenium supplements to your regimen could almost guarantee these things in your future. 

There is also an association between serum selenium levels and all-cause mortality and cancer deaths when selenium in your blood is measured at over 150 ng/mL. Below 130 ng/mL is more protective. Another study showed a direct relationship between exposure to selenium and odds of type 2 diabetes with the higher plasma or serum levels of selenium at around 140 ng/mL. 

Another study called Effects of Long Term Selenium Supplementation on the Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes that was almost 8 years long found that long term supplementation with selenium may increase the risk for type 2 diabetes. The group in this study with the most type 2 diabetes while supplementing with 200mcg per day was the group that had the highest Se levels at the beginning of the study which was around 121 ng/mL or higher. That is not a lot- that is within the normal range. 

If you are deficient, you may need to supplement with it for a bit but it is likely once you are absorbing nutrients with some gut healing you will get enough from food. You can go to whofoods.com and type in selenium in the search bar, scroll down and click on selenium and it will tell you all about this mineral and which foods are highest in selenium. Here is a shortlist in order from the highest amount of selenium per serving to lower but all have good amounts: 

• tuna

• Shrimp

• Sardines

• Salmon

• Cod

• Crimini & shiitake mushrooms

• Asparagus

• Mustard seeds

• Turkey

• Chicken

• Lamb

• Scallops

• Beef

• Tofu

• Eggs

• Brown rice

• Sunflower and sesame seeds

• Cows milk

• Cabbage

• Spinach

• Garlic

• Broccoli

The RDA for selenium is around 55 ug/mL day with the tolerable upper limit at 400 ug/mL but remember what I said earlier- at 121 ug/mL in the blood- long-term supplementation can cause type 2 diabetes. 

Use an app like Cronometer to see what you are getting in nutrients, not just selenium but all nutrients. 

Take out all your supplements. If you are really anal or organized, make a spreadsheet of all the nutrients in everything you are getting from supplements so you can see if you are getting not only too much selenium but maybe you are getting too much or not enough of something else. For this very reason, I don’t recommend just Willy Nilly taking a supplement because you read it was good for you! 

Dr. Walsh in Practice Up gave the example of a supplement company which he didn’t mention that has a thyroid protocol. All the supplements in this protocol that would be given to a practitioner from the supplement rep because the bottles all say 1 cap per day because then the FDA doesn’t get involved in their business and then the practitioner passes the protocol on to the client—- The bottle of a thyroid conversion supplement says take one cap per day but the rep says to take 3, three times a day..... see what I’m doing here??

This protocol amounted to almost 1400 mcg/day of selenium and I just told you that 200mcg per day over 7 years caused type 2 diabetes. Granted, you would not be on this type of protocol for 7 years but maybe 3-6 months? Do you need that much selenium over even that time period?? 

This type of thing can happen with any nutrient- so go through all your supplements and really look at what you are getting in. In addition, you can ask your doctor to test selenium levels in your blood but if they won’t do it, you can order your own lab test from a direct to consumer lab company like Ulta Labs or Any Lab Test Now and it should be around 110ug/dL - 120 ug/dL

You may or may not need selenium, it may lower antibodies but it probably isn’t going to fix the problem, and remember there is plenty of selenium in food. 

Where you live matters, some middle eastern countries are lower in selenium status than China which is really high. The US tends to have plenty of selenium in general. Remember to calculate your intake of food and in supplements. Are you deficient in any other nutrients? This is why I try to hammer home that you need to work with someone to figure this stuff out. 

Okay, that is it for today. I hope you guys enjoyed this and that it wasn’t too much science or too technical. I get requests from people about 1x per month to be on the show that is really what feels like trying to promote their own business or programs. I try to only have people on that I feel have something to offer and are not just one big commercial for their business. I don’t want to do that so I hope you like what I’ve done here today. I think it is good stuff. 

Remember you can get 10% off at AiresTech.com using the code GETCLEAR and 10% off at myzenskincare.com using the code 10% off.  You can learn more about Practice Up here.

Until next time. 

Can a Vegan Diet Help Hashimoto's?

Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me today on Help For Hashimoto’s. I’m so glad you are here. I’m on my spring break and have a week off. It is nice to be on my own schedule but I also seem to be much less productive. 

I had a guest on a few episodes ago who was an energy worker. Her name is Rachel Vineyard and she did an energy healing session with me that cleared up many many cords I had attached to me that were weighing me down. After she cleared and sealed them I felt so much better and lighter and happier. Now that my time is up with her and I’m on my own, I had a dream that a dark figure was trying to reattach itself to me and since that dream, I have had really low energy. I told Rachel I have a sneaking suspicion of where the dark energy was coming from and I am hopeful I can keep it from taking hold. It is so frustrating to feel good, almost normal, and then have my energy just stolen away from me again. I know some of you have this same issue. Just low energy all the time. Maybe some of it is I keep forgetting to take my afternoon dose of my medication. I had my labs done on Monday so I look forward to seeing what they are. Either way, I just keep swimming as Dori says in Finding Nemo. 

I received a question from a listener so let’s get right to it. 

Hi Stephanie,

 I hope you are well.

 Firstly I just want to let you know how much I love listening to your podcasts.  I listen to them after I drop my daughter off at school and before going to bed everyday.

 Thank you so much for the time that you put into these podcasts and for keeping it REAL!!

I first got diagnosed with Hashimoto's by my naturopath end of Jan this year after years and years of feeling crap! I have been back and forward to numerous Dr's only to tell me that everything was fine, only when i knew it wasn't.  I knew something was not right when none of my clothes fit me, I was feeling tired and exhausted all the time, I was feeling extremely anxious, getting rashes all over my body, constipated/diarrhoea and bloated all the time (to the point I look like I'm about to have triplets), body aches and pain and so the list went on.

I tried to treat it naturally with herbs and i gave it a month, but I just simply was not feeling right.  I was then told my naturopath to cut out gluten and goitrogenic vegetables and take supplements.  I was following all of this strictly, and cut out drinking on the weekends, but I was still feeling awful.  I was starting to feel so alone and lost in this journey that I felt suicidal.  I hated my puffy, chubby body, the pain I was in and this new person.

I have also suffered from candida since I was 11, to the point that I had a diatherme of the cervix, tried every anti candida diet, coconut oil-EVERYTHING YOU NAME IT!

 Now my Naturopath thinks I may have leaky gut or SIBO and wants to treat me for this.  I keep getting told by numerous health professionals that I cant be vegan with Hashimoto's but I have been eating this way for most of my adult life.  I have an extremely clean diet, don't eat the vegan junk processed foods (like people think), and prior to Hashimoto's was extremely active.  Now i just feel like this lost fish drowning in a deep sea taking Levrothyroxine which I had to force my endocronologist to give me a compounding script free without the CRAP!!

 I just feel like my head is spinning and so alone.  I don't want to give up my plant based lifestyle because I HATE MEAT.  I love vegetables, lentils and legumes. 

 Is there anyone that can help?

 (Sorry for the long email)

 Kind regards,

Lizz

I kept getting told by health coaches that I can

The short answer on whether you can be a vegan or vegetarian and have Hashimoto’s is yes but there is a few things we need to discuss. First, had anyone asked me this question even a year ago, I would have told you there is no way you can be healthy and be a vegan or a vegetarian. I have changed my mind on that by being open-minded and willing to listen to the other side. I will say, I don’t necessarily agree with any type of diet that requires supplementation because you can’t get all the nutrients you need in high enough amounts from food. This is not a philosophical episode. You believe what you want. I’m basing my opinion on science. I’m also prepared to say that for the majority of people who are vegetarian or vegan, you can have an autoimmune disease and be healthy. In fact, there is a lot of research on Rheumatoid Arthritis being helped significantly by a vegan diet.  So, there will be no dogma about this. I want to help each of you be the best you can be so here we go. 

The first study I found is called Iodine Status and Thyroid Function of Boston-Area Vegetarians and Vegans.  We know iodine is important for thyroid hormone to be made. For women of childbearing age, getting enough iodine in your diet is important too. Iodine deficiency affects around 2 billion people worldwide and is the leading cause of preventable mental retardation (Leung et al., 2011). Here in the US, we get iodine from iodized salt, dairy products, eggs, seafood, and some bread. Iodine content isn’t usually on a food label and salt restriction is associated with iodine deficiency. Vegetarians consuming dairy and eggs may be getting enough iodine but vegans can end up deficient. This study recruited vegans and vegetarians who had been on their respective diets for at least 3 months and iodine was measured in their urine along with some other metabolites affecting thyroid function such as thiocynates in soy, a chemical found in cigarette smoke, and perchlorates which is an environmental toxin. The study had 78 vegetarians and 62 vegans of mixed races and sex. 

Vegans had lower iodine status compared to the general population and vegetarians. Women of childbearing age or those who are lactating should consume 150 ug (micrograms) of iodine per day as potassium iodide. The other compounds were measured to determine if they had an effect on thyroid function in competing with thyroid hormone. It wasn’t clear if that was the case but I think likely not since vegetarians had normal iodine status and vegans were low. 

Another study looked at lower intakes of iodine and selenium between vegans and vegetarians. While these diets tend to have better food quality and they also tend to be higher in vitamins C, E, B1, folate, magnesium they tend to be lower in vitamin A, D, B12, calcium, and zinc.  You may have read something different elsewhere. I am just telling you what the study says. Studies can be wrong but the internet can also be wrong. There were 62 women in this study- 26 omnivores, 16 vegetarians, and 20 vegans. A small study, so we need to take that into consideration. There were obvious differences between omnivores and vegans such as saturated fat intake and fiber intake- no excuse on the fiber intake for omnivores. All of us should be getting about 30 grams of fiber a day. I struggle with that myself which is so stupid because I feel exponentially better when I consume a lot of veggies. Anyway, this study reports all three eating groups had sufficient intakes of vitamins A, C, E, B’s and zinc and sodium. This information was taken via a food questionnaire that was analyzed by a computer. All three eating groups were not getting enough vitamin D, potassium, or iodine. The vegan group was especially low on selenium and iodine, B12, and calcium. (Fallon et al., 2020). 

Another study called Prevalence of Hyperthyroidism According to Type of Vegetarian Diet found that those consuming a vegan diet had a lower incidence of hyperthyroidism compared to meat-eaters and semi-vegetarian diets were not protective against hyperthyroidism. Hyperthyroidism is caused most commonly by Graves Disease which is also an autoimmune thyroid condition and equally not as fun to have. I’d even say less so than Hashimoto’s because while having a hyperfunctioning thyroid can cause weight loss, which many of us would not mind, it is not the right way to lose weight, and hyperthyroidism that isn’t controlled likely leads to thyroid storm and can result in you having to purposely destroy or remove your thyroid gland. This study used a food frequency questionnaire to determine nutrients taken in which is a common way to do that in scientific studies. It has some downsides, but it is a much less expensive way to determine this outside of monitoring or providing all food eaten by study participants. The information for this study was taken from the Adventist Health Study-2. Seventh Day Adventist’s are known for consuming a vegetarian diet, and 97,000 of them participated in this study. Predictors for hyperthyroidism were being overweight, obese, and female. Most vegans and vegetarians have a lower BMI which the researchers list as a possible reason for having autoimmune disease in general. That said, I know a lot of people who are not overweight who have an autoimmune disease so not sure how accurate that statement is. 

A study called Intake and Adequacy of The Vegan Diet. A Systematic Review of The Evidence (Bakaloudi et al., 2020) found that in general vegan diets are lower in protein than all other diets, and had lower intakes of B2, Niacin/B3, B12, Vitamin D, iodine, zinc, calcium, potassium, and selenium. 

I looked at one last study called Vegan Diets and Hypothyroidism. They discuss the higher incidence of hypothyroidism as autoimmune thyroiditis aka Hashimoto’s where almost all of us have anti-thyroid antibodies, are women, and are of increased age. Again, this study discusses the lower BMI found in most vegans/vegetarians as being protective against autoimmunity. This study also combed through the data from the Adventist Health Study-2. It is interesting to me that the folks with hypothyroidism in this study were found to be more likely to use salt, had higher BMI, lower-income, and education compared to people without hypothyroidism. Their main findings were that those following a vegan diet tended to not have hypothyroidism but this finding was not statistically significant which means that there wasn’t enough of a difference between groups for it to be a big deal. 

Outside of looking at diets, it appears that many hypothyroid patients are low in Zinc compared to normal healthy people. One reason for this can be that if you have hypothyroidism, you are not absorbing zinc as well in your gut or that other areas of the body are stealing it for their use. There is also a possibility that levels are just lower in hypothyroid patients as one study found that hyperthyroid patients had higher levels of zinc. We need zinc for thyroid hormone to be made, we need it to make proteins and it helps T3 get where it needs to go. 

Selenium is needed for thyroid gland function and a bunch of other stuff in the body. Rat studies show that production of T3 is inhibited in selenium deficiency without changing how much is stored in the liver and in rats, a deficiency will present as higher T4, lower T3, and lower enzyme activity involved in thyroid hormone conversion from T4 to T3.  Low selenium also means less glutathione which is a big antioxidant in the body that can play a role in more damage to the thyroid gland. 

The bottom line is you will want to be pretty diligent in making sure you get adequate amounts of foods with these nutrients. You can look up food sources of any nutrient at world’s healthiest foods dot com or whfoods.com. Just put selenium in the search bar or whatever vitamin or mineral you are looking for and it will show you which foods are highest in those nutrients. If you don’t think you can get enough from food then you should probably supplement. 

I’m awaiting a book that can help me further understand how to help my vegetarian and vegan clients but I can share some information on how to get enough of some nutrients through food. 

Calcium recommendations for adults is 1000mg/day but if you are a woman over 50 you need 1200mg/day. Plant-based sources are navy and pinto beans, dark leafy greens, tofu, blackstrap molasses, corn tortillas, figs, almonds, fortified juice or soy milk. Soy is okay to eat- please be sure it is organic. Vitamin D will help your body absorb calcium and if you supplement, you can take calcium citrate or malate any time of day, not just with meals. If you take it between meals, it is less likely to interfere with the absorption of other minerals. 

Vegans can get enough iron but it is not as well absorbed in plants so you need to consume more iron than the RDA to make sure you get enough, around 32g/day. Legumes, dark chocolate, spinach, blackstrap molasses, seeds, or fortified cereals are good sources. Foods with vitamin C increase iron absorption and you can cook more acidic foods in cast iron. 

Zinc- RDA is 11mg/day for men and 8 mg/day for women. If deficient it can manifest as poor wound healing, hair loss, immune system dysfunction, or dermatitis. You can get zinc from legumes, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and fortified foods. It is not as bio-available in plant foods compared to animal sources. I see a lot about “well planned” diets which to me means you must be really aware of what you plan to eat say over a weeks time to ensure you get all the adequate nutrients your body needs. 

Iodine- RDA is 150 micrograms with the upper tolerable limit at 1100 micrograms which is equal to 1/2 teaspoon of iodized salt, sea vegetables, and 1/16th teaspoon of kelp. If you are deficient in iodine, then brassicas and soy can cause thyroid issues. This one is kind of Goldilocks like- you can get too little and you can get too much and it will cause thyroid problems. 

B12- this is made in the gut of animals by bacteria. Vegans should supplement with this nutrient as it is not in many plant foods. You can get some in tempeh, sea veggies, and chlorella but the amounts are inconsistent. Supplement first, then fortified foods. RDA for B12 is 2.4 mcg per day and can be checked in serum on a lab test. The normal range depending on the lab can be from around 225 to 950. You can supplement with 1000-2500mcg 2x/week to get enough. If you are deficient, the type of B12 you should consume is methylmalonic acid. Deficiency presents as weakness, fatigue, mood changes (ha- maybe I am B12 deficient) with more severe symptoms of deficiency as megaloblastic anemia and nerve damage. 

Vitamin D- get it from sunshine, fortified foods,  and supplements. RDA is 600 IU/day with the government saying the upper limit is 4000IU per day. Some studies show up to 1800 per day will improve health while over that will worsen some health outcomes. Hashimoto’s patients need to be sure this is at a level above 30 since it plays a role in immune health and helps the cells grow and mature. 

As I learn more about this, I will share it with you all. I think we just need to be mindful of what works for our situation, beliefs, and body paying special attention to what works for our body. My body feels better when I eat a lot of plants but I also enjoy eating meat so I have no plans to give that up. If you prefer only plants for whatever reason, then do that. I do believe that vegan diets do have to be well planned. It can’t be all impossible burgers and fries with pop/soda and vegan cheesecake for dessert. There are plenty of ways to eat junk food no matter what kind of diet you eat. The most important piece is to make sure you are eating real whole foods as often as possible with the majority of them being plants no matter what kind of diet you choose. 

I made a few plant-based recipes over the last couple of days from the app Deliciously Ella. I discovered her from watching the Netflix show with Zac Efron where he traveled the world talking about sustainability or something. Anyway, Ella made him a vegan curry dish that looked so delicious I wanted the recipe. It was on her app so I bought it. I think it is around $15 for the year and let me tell you it is worth every penny. She has amazing recipes and there is a wellness component so you can exercise and track food, water, and sleep. I do struggle to get enough veggies in and this app helps. I will say it is a lot of chopping of veggies but the end products are worth it and I do feel so much better when I eat a ton of vegetables so there is a trade-off. 

We sometimes are looking for shortcuts to health because they seem like they are easier and the internet makes them look really alluring. Things like fix your gut with these five steps or 3 herbs that heal your thyroid, the 3 step plan to fix your thyroid. These are all internet marketing terms and if you have been listening awhile you know you can’t fix anything in just three steps. Our bodies are machines dependent on the proper fuel to keep them running well. You didn’t end up with hashimoto’s in three short steps and you are not going to fix it in three short steps. Diet and lifestyle changes are key for long-term health. 

Thanks for listening. Please sign up for my newsletter over at outofthewoodsnutrition.com and if you would be so kind to leave a rating and review on apple podcasts I would so appreciate it. Send me your questions too. I love hearing from you guys.

Also, there is a theory about women who have lost their voice in life and the relationship it has to thyroid problems. If you have a story of losing your voice in your life- due to emotional abuse or whatever if you want to share your story with me email me at stephanie@outofthewoodsnutrition.com .  Until next time. 

References:

1. Leung, A. M., Lamar, A., He, X., Braverman, L. E., & Pearce, E. N. (2011). Iodine status and thyroid function of Boston-area vegetarians and vegans. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 96(8), E1303–E1307.

2. Fallon, N., & Dillon, S. A. (2020). Low Intakes of Iodine and Selenium Amongst Vegan and Vegetarian Women Highlight a Potential Nutritional Vulnerability. Frontiers in Nutrition. 

3. Bakaloudi, D. R., Halloran, A., Rippin, H. L., Oikonomidou, A. C., Dardavesis, T. I., Williams, J., Wickramasinghe, K., Breda, J., & Chourdakis, M. (2020). Intake and adequacy of the vegan diet. A systematic review of the evidence. Clinical Nutrition.

4. Tonstad, S., Nathan, E., Oda, K., & Fraser, G. E. (2015). Prevalence of hyperthyroidism according to type of vegetarian diet. Public Health Nutrition, 18(8), 1482–1487.

5. Tonstad, S., Nathan, E., Oda, K., & Fraser, G. (2013). Vegan Diets and Hypothyroidism. Nutrients, 5(11), 4642–4652.

PCOS and Hashimoto’s

I’m talking today about PCOS. There is a relationship between this condition and Hashimoto’s so it is a good subject to cover. 

What is PCOS or polycystic ovary syndrome? 

It is a metabolic disorder that causes irregular periods or no ovulation, excess testosterone levels and polycystic ovaries. The criteria for diagnosing this condition is to have 2 of the three of the characteristics just mentioned. 

Signs and symptoms of PCOS: 

• Acne

• Hirstuism- excessive hair growth on face, back or chest for example

• Hair loss

• Obesity or trouble losing weight

• Infertility

• Low libido

It is thought that as many as 1 in 5 women suffers from this condition which has risk factors for diabetes of any kind and 50-70% of women with PCOS have insulin resistance. You don’t have to be overweight or obese to have insulin resistance with PCOS either. 

Other chronic conditions affecting those with PCOS can include metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure, cholesterol issues, sugar intolerance, higher calcification of coronary arteries, depression, anxiety, bipolar and binge eating. 

The standard of care for PCOS in conventional medicine is to put you on birth control pills, drugs to control the excess testosterone, infertility treatments if you want to get pregnant and metformin to control blood sugar issues/insulin resistance. 

The cyst in this condition develops when/if ovulation doesn’t take place, there is no surge in luteinizing hormone, estrogen doesn’t peak and the egg doesn’t get released for ovulation so it continues to grow as a follicle creating a cyst which continues to make more testosterone and cause low progesterone and create insulin resistance. It is an unruptured follicle at the antrum stage of creating an egg for release. This, keep in mind, is a very simplified version of what happens. 

The insulin resistance through a variety of processes leads to anovulation or lack of ovulation- no egg released and insulin resistance also keeps eggs from being produced. 

High insulin will cause high testosterone levels in women with PCOS but also, high testosterone causes insulin resistance. 

What else is common in PCOS?

Liver issues- Non alcoholic fatty liver disease is a common issue. So common that it is safe to assume if you have PCOS you probably have some degree of fatty liver. Fatty liver leads to insulin resistance and visceral fat accumulation which leads to obesity which leads to inflammation with leads to accumulation of fat in the liver which leads to fatty liver. Fatty liver decreases sex hormone binding globulin which leads to more testosterone which leads to insulin resistance. 

GI issues- gut dysbiosis, leaky gut, gram negative bacteria- interferes with insulin receptors driving up insulin and screwing up egg development. Gut dysbiosis all by itself can contribute to all of the three criteria mentioned for diagnosing PCOS. One study showed that women with PCOS had higher zonulin levels which is the compound that causes the tight junctions in the small intestine to open- causing permeability or leaky gut. It is also more common for women with PCOS to have higher incidence of H. Pylori infections. 

Other hormone issues- lean women with PCOS will get excess testosterone from their adrenal glands whereas obese women will get it from their ovaries. I don’t know why this is but if you have high DHEA and PCOS it is likely because DHEA is making testosterone

Environmental toxins- BPA tends to be higher in women with PCOS- glass, stainless steel should be in your cupboards. One study suggests that BPA affects fertility. It increases testosterone production in both women and men. BPA also lowers one detoxification pathway in the liver- creating another vicious cycle of excess BPA in the body- the body is not able to get rid of it so it just circulates in the blood. Prenatal exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals can cause a change in genetics for a fetus leading to PCOS or other health issues. 

Immune system dysfunction- discussed later

Inflammation- just having PCOS can lead to inflammation in the body creating a vicious cycle and wreaking havoc on the central nervous system. 

Oxidative stress- PCOS will often cause you to have less antioxidant status which means more oxidative stress, especially when dealing with insulin resistance too. One study showed those women who were also infertile had even more oxidative stress than PCOS women who were not infertile but had insulin resistance. Bottom line is the more insulin resistance, the more oxidative stress there will be and the greater the infertility the more oxidative stress there will be. There also seems to be more of a deficiency in glutathione levels, the master antioxidant, in PCOS. Supplementing with glutathione is tricky- oral supplements are not effective unless they are acetylated but you could also potentially take things like N-Acetyl-Cysteine to boost glutathione levels. Resveratrol also might be helpful. 

Nutrient deficiency- Deficiency in B12 and folate were common in PCOS women and also not eating enough can drive this condition. Maybe higher copper, low selenium, low zinc, high or low magnesium and more. Again- don’t just start taking one of these minerals. Know what you need. 

Glucose dysregulation- Mood or behavior issues due to reactive hypoglycemia can be a common symptom and a feeling of being tired but wired. 

Low cortisol can be a problem in this condition as well. Women with PCOS tend to have more of an enzyme that breaks down and degrades cortisol so you get rid of cortisol faster eventually leading to low levels. Morning cortisol tends to be lower and evening cortisol higher which means you maybe struggle to get out of bed in the morning and get that evening second wind. 

The thyroid connection. 

Women with PCOS had a much higher chance of having thyroglobulin antibodies. Low progesterone in PCOS causes the immune system to be overstimulated which produced more estrogen and lead to higher anti-nuclear antibodies, anti-thyroid antibodies and a bunch more antibodies against various tissues. 

It turns out perception may also have something to do with it. There was a study done on PCOS where women were given an MRI and shown pictures of a high-calorie food, low-calorie food, or some kind of control, and the high-calorie food picture increased insulin resistance. Crazy to think our brain has that much power. 

There is also the idea that insulin resistance is a protective mechanism for survival. We have increased glucose which the brain can use to stay alert, increase in blood pressure and blood coagulation for wound protection and obesity so you can survive a famine. Increased inflammation can prepare the body for trauma. All this is very primal and our brain and our physiology is still very primal and will lead to infertility or a bigger delay between pregnancies so there are less babies to feed and higher survival rate for mom and existing babies. The study this came from is called The molecular genetic basis of functional hyperandrogenism and the polycystic ovary syndrome. 

The best thing you can do with this condition either alone or combined with Hashimoto’s is to take a good hard look at your diet, then do some exercise. Get rid of the sugar and refined carbs and get moving. Exercise will help you get rid of excess glucose. 

You have to be careful with what you supplement with because not every one of you will need the same thing. I feel like a broken record saying that but it is sooo true. There are certain compounds called insulin secretagogue’s- they increase insulin in your body. If you have high blood sugar or hyperglycemia and high c-peptide then you don’t want to take compounds that will increase insulin secretion- things like Gymnema or bitter melon will raise insulin even further. 

If you have hypoglycemic tendencies you may be able to take something like licorice root or take fish oil, to stimulate proper use of glucose in the body. The thing is you don’t know what you need until you work with a qualified professional to help you figure out what your body is doing. 

Using a sauna as often as you can be helpful in the detoxification of toxins. Toxin levels measured as normal or negligible in urine and blood can be found in sweat. Sweating via exercise is good too. 

You also want to address inflammation, gut function, make sure your liver is able to do its job of detoxification of all the things, address oxidative stress, nutrient deficiencies, and fatty liver. 

That is it for today. Thanks so much for listening. If you like what you hear, please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If you don’t like what you hear, please reach out to me and let me know what you don’t like. 

All my best to all of you! I am grateful you chose me! 

References: 

Arora, Sheetal, Kiran Sinha, Sachin Kolte, and Ashish Mandal. 2016. “Endocrinal and Autoimmune Linkage: Evidences from a Controlled Study of Subjects with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.” Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences

Blumenfeld, Z., Kaidar, G., Zuckerman-Levin, N., Dumin, E., Knopf, C., & Hochberg, Z. (2016). Cortisol-Metabolizing Enzymes in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. Clinical medicine insights. Reproductive health, 10, 9–13.

Rutkowska, A. Z., & Diamanti-Kandarakis, E. (2016). Polycystic ovary syndrome and environmental toxins. Fertility and sterility, 106(4), 948–958.

Palioura, E., & Diamanti-Kandarakis, E. (2015). Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Reviews in endocrine & metabolic disorders, 16(4), 365–371. 

Duleba, A. J., & Dokras, A. (2012). Is PCOS an inflammatory process?. Fertility and sterility, 97(1), 7–12.

Kurdoglu, Z., Ozkol, H., Tuluce, Y., & Koyuncu, I. (2012). Oxidative status and its relation with insulin resistance in young non-obese women with polycystic ovary syndrome. Journal of endocrinological investigation, 35(3), 317–321.

Sam, S., Vellanki, P., Yalamanchi, S. K., Bergman, R. N., & Dunaif, A. (2017). Exaggerated glucagon responses to hypoglycemia in women with polycystic ovary syndrome. Metabolism: clinical and experimental, 71, 125–131.

Gluten Free diet to reduce antibodies

Welcome to Episode 99. I’m so glad you are here. Thanks for tuning in. My daughter and her friend were reading reviews for this podcast and came across a lot of really nice ones. Thanks so much for leaving reviews so more people can find the show. They also came across a couple of one star reviews because I was too political in a couple of episodes. The reviews said  they were listening to me to get away from all the craziness in the world and didn’t appreciate hearing about politics. One mentioned something about the former president and I think it may have been because I suggested we should respect the title, no matter who has it. So I just want you all to know, I do want this to be a place where you can come to let go of what is going on in the world and focus on yourself and your health. I will do better to keep things focused on you as best I can. Everyone is entitled to their opinion though and I do respect that as well, I’m not so sure it deserves a one star review but I get it. We are all polarized these days and cancel culture is a thing. If you feel so inclined, a rating or review would be helpful to get more people to find the show so more people can be helped. I truly do this so you don’t have to suffer like I have and that is the only reason. It takes a lot of time and thought and a little bit of money to put this out so please spread the word if you feel it is worth it- and let me know if you think I could be doing better. My plate is full- overflowing in fact and I don’t want to put out crappy content.  Ok. Enough about that. I really am truly grateful that you all tune in and listen and know that I really do this for you all. 

Today I am going to talk about a study I found discussing diet and hashimoto’s. I was just putting dishes away one morning and wondered if anyone had done any studies on Hashimoto’s and gluten and I had just been discussing a gluten free diet with one of my clients who has been a bit resistant. Sometimes having data to back up what I am saying can be not only helpful but also when you use science to back up what you are saying in addition to clinical experience or even the experience of others with the same condition it kind of validates everything. 

I went to searching the PubMed database using the words gluten and hashimotos and nothing came up so I messed around with my search terms and found a couple of studies I thought were interesting and they validate what myself and other practitioners have been saying about the effects of gluten and diet in general on hashimoto’s patients. 

The amount of research done on diet and hashimoto’s is slim and much research on the topic of this disease doesn’t take in to account our reduced quality of life. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have Hashimoto’s or know someone who has it. It is the most common autoimmune disorder and the cause of hypothyroidism in countries like the US that are NOT deficient in iodine. 

Primary hypothyroidism which is where your thyroid isn’t actually producing thyroid hormone and affects around 1-3% of the population. Sub clinical hypothyroidism is when you have a high normal or just over the high normal level of TSH on a lab test and all other labs, typically only T4 is measured, are “normal”. This affects around 4-10% of the population. 

As you probably know, women are more affected than men and I hope to uncover why that is over the coming weeks in my hormone class but my hunch is that because the thyroid is part of the endocrine system along with sex hormones, I think there is a connection between all the parts of the endocrine system but thyroid and sex hormones in particular. 

I was listening to my professor on a podcast and he said something I think we all need to keep in mind. Science is ever evolving and what we thought we knew to be true 20 or 30 years ago turned out to be not so great advice sometimes. His example was the whole low fat diet craze in the 80’s. Turned out to be sooo wrong. Another example was back when Pelegra was around. It was thought that a black fly was causing it and it turned out to be a B vitamin deficiency. And then there was the doctor who suggested that his colleagues wash their hands between working on corpses and delivering babies to potentially prevent the death of the women giving birth. Hmmm. Novel idea. He actually lost his medical license for that I believe. Turns out he was right. 

So the point I’m making is that what I am telling you is what the science shows today. Don’t take what I am telling you as set in stone fact and there is no other answer to be found. I’m telling you what I am reading in the science and the science is rarely settled. Critical thinking is important. Always. Keep that in mind. 

I guess what I know to be true now is that thyroid disease is increasing and women suffer from it more than men and according to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Hashimoto’s occurs in 4.8 per 1000 people in the US. 

Your thyroid hormones control your metabolism. Not just your weight but also the metabolism of your skin- think poor wound healing. It controls growth and how your body develops. They also are a part of the production of proteins that build bone and cartilage, production of enzymes (which do all kinds of things in the body but also includes digestive enzymes), and they help produce other hormones. 

Weight gain and the inability to lose weight are common though I have seen plenty of people with hashimoto’s not have an issue with weight. In severe hypothyroidism though your metabolism can be slowed by up to 50% which can create obesity without you doing anything different. A slowed metabolism can also screw up your blood sugar regulation. 

And as we all know, after getting your diagnosis, and getting on medication you still may have symptoms of fatigue, irritability, dry skin, hair loss, nervousness, and a poor quality of life. The American Dietetic Association and the American Thyroid Association appear to have no recommendations for diet and hashimoto’s. There is some research on a gluten free diet and hashimoto’s which shows it can be beneficial but the researchers speculate that it would be too difficult to maintain a gluten free diet because it is so restrictive and would lower the patients quality of life. I am here to tell you that is not true and if the gluten free diet improves your symptoms of fatigue, brain fog, hair loss, irritability etc- which would you rather have? It is a choice you can make. You don’t have to feel like crap and blame your doctor. You do have control of your life don’t you?

It is interesting that the one study done on the autoimmune protocol teaching diet and lifestyle changes in an online program didn’t improve labs but did improve symptoms. The study was only ten weeks long so I would argue that it could take longer to see improvements in antibodies and other labs since it didn’t take you ten weeks to get the autoimmune disease in the first place. The body is amazing and wants to heal but sometimes there is so much damage, ten weeks is not enough to see significant change. And that is okay. Know that healing takes time and some effort. It doesn’t happen overnight or magically. 

The science is on the fence about whether a gluten free diet will be helpful or not. Clinically I have seen it reduce antibodies and bring people back to life. The study protocol for a new diet called Diet4Hashi in the paper titled Evaluation of Qualitative Dietary Protocol (Diet4Hashi) Application in Dietary Counseling in Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: Study Protocol of a Randomized Controlled Trial by Wojtas et al., (2019) which is basically the description of the protocol for their proposed study on this diet in helping hashimoto’s says that you should eat vegetables several times a day, eat calcium rich foods several times a day, fruit once a day, whole grains once a day and animal foods (rich in selenium and zinc) several times a week and nuts and seeds can be eaten several times a week. This is their protocol for what you should eat. Very vague and based kind of the dietary guidelines. 

They say you should limit your raw cruciferous veggies to one time per week, sugar to once a week which includes drinks, fast foods or processed foods once a week, soy products can be consumed twice a month and alcohol once a month. This is not a bad diet to be on but it is what everyone should be on so the question remains as to whether you need to do anything extra special for Hashimoto’s. I might argue that you do, at least in the beginning. Most of us when we are diagnosed are dealing with a breakdown of more than just thyroid. Likely you also are having blood sugar issues, female hormone issues, digestive issues either all at the same time or you have at least one of those issues. Your gut likely needs to be healed.. there is so much. 

While this study isn’t done yet is is just one more way of looking at diet and Hashimoto’s. I did find another study called The Effect of Gluten-Fee Diet on Thyroid Autoimmunity in Drug-naive Women with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis that studied women between the ages of 20 and 45 to see if a gluten free diet would affect autoimmunity, the HPT axis or thyroid brain signals and thyroid lab markers.  One group was on a gluten free diet for 6 months and the control group had no diet change instructions. 

The idea behind this study is that Hashimoto’s and celiac disease together are a very common occurrence so much so that one study done led the researchers to conclude that all autoimmune thyroid patients should also be screened for celiac disease. In the gluten free diet study, the women did not have a celiac diagnosis but had positive antibodies for it along with positive TPO antibodies and “normal” thyroid labs. At the end of the 6 month study, the gluten free diet group 6 of the 16 patients in the gluten free diet group still had positive antibodies for celiac disease and all 18 in the control group or non gluten free diet had the antibodies. Turns out the gluten free diet was well tolerated- meaning easy to follow. The gluten free diet also lowered TPO antibodies and thyroglobulin antibodies and increased vitamin D levels but it did not have an effect on TSH, T4 or Free T3 or Free T4 and the women in the gluten containing diet group had no change in antibodies. 

It is curious that vitamin D levels went up on the gluten free diet. They also referenced another study where taking vitamin D in supplement form reduced antibodies too. Pretty cool stuff if you ask me and also some good data to maybe nudge some people in the direction of a gluten free diet. 

I re-recorded part of this because that first study was all I was going to talk about but it wasn’t anything conclusive and felt kind of like a waste of time. I double checked what episode this is and turns out this is episode 99! So when you search for the “transcript” of this episode it is under 99. 

That is all for today. I’ve been sitting on this for a few weeks wanting to add to it but spent all day yesterday reading two studies for one discussion forum post - not because they were that long but because they were hard to understand! I figured I’d just give you what I had so far on this topic. I hope it was helpful! 

Thanks for being here! I appreciate you!!!