Hi everybody. Welcome to episode 59. I had intended to give you a little update but I couldn’t muster up the time or energy to do it. School that is supposed to be part time turned out to be more like full time and I just didn’t have the time to research topics and put out good content so rather than giving you subpar information (and some of it may have already been) I decided to just take a break, finish out the quarter and start back up after finals. I got A’s in my classes by the way! Next quarter I am only taking one class; and actually only taking one class for the next year in order to better serve my clients and also have a life. My adrenals crashed during midterms. I was so physically exhausted I got up one morning, took a shower and had to lay back down. I spent the day on the couch and then ordered some licorice root to get me through the rest of the quarter.
Sadly, so far in my studies there has not been a lot of thyroid information that was new to me or surprising. In fact, I have this huge book called Nutritional Medicine that is like 2000 pages and it devotes less than a page of information on Hashimoto’s stating the base for it is rooted in food allergy. Well, that wasn’t surprising at all!
I have access to a huge database of research while I am in school so when I have a moment I look for information or studies on thyroid.
I found a study from 2016 in the Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons Pakistan called Frequency of Thyroid Peroxidase Antibody and its Association with Miscarriages Among Pregnant Women.
Around 25-30% of pregnancies end in miscarriage and the study doesn’t exactly define miscarriage. Not sure if stillbirth is in there or not which is how I lost my child. Chromosomal and endocrine system issues are a big reason for miscarriage but 20% of those miscarriages are the result of problems with the immune system and that especially affects recurrent miscarriage.
2-3% of pregnant women have hypothyroidism and 50% of those women have autoimmune thyroid disease. Our thyroid needs to be working properly in order for the mother and fetus to be healthy. The first 12 weeks of pregnancy, the baby relies completely on the mothers functioning thyroid and her thyroid hormone for optimal development. Hashimoto’s during pregnancy is a factor in whether or not a fetus’s brain develops properly. I always wonder if my son’s brain was okay. He looked perfect but I wondered if he would have been “okay” had he survived. Anyway, when you have Hashimoto’s it can increase the risk of “loss of conception” to quote the article.
They go on to say that diagnosis of subclinical hypothyroidism that is autoimmune in nature, it is important to test for antibodies against the thyroid. Lab values showing slightly higher TSH with normal thyroid hormone levels are common but antibodies (TgAb) show up on lab tests in 90% of patients. They go on to say that discovering the thyroid peroxidase antibodies (TPO ab) early on is a good indication of one developing hypothyroidism secondary to Hashimoto’s.
This study measured TPO antibodies during pregnancies of 1050 women who were clinically euthyroid- meaning they had no diagnosis of thyroid disease. They found 13.5% of those women tested for TPO antibodies but they state this is not uncommon and depends on your genes, environment and more. In the women with antibodies in this study, 2% miscarried and other studies have shown the risk of miscarriage higher in women who have antibodies against their thyroid.
These antibodies are a marker for T lymphocyte defects, which might be the cause of the miscarriage. Lymphocytes are immune cells made in the bone marrow and “grow up” in your thymus gland. They are found in your blood and lymphatic tissue where they are on the lookout for things in the blood and lymph that should not be there. T lymphocyte is a general name for T Cells and there are a lot of those. They do not specify in this study which T-cells they are talking about. I think the defect they mention might be the confusion the immune system has when something we ingest gets in to our blood stream that shouldn’t be in our blood stream via intestinal permeability or leaky gut. This creates antibodies against that foreign thing and sometimes our thyroid gets in the line of fire.
This study shows why it is so important to manage diet, sleep, stress and all the stuff I’ve talked about before. It is important that you be as healthy as possible before pregnancy. If you have autoimmune disease while you are pregnant- be mindful of all things going in to your body whether injected or ingested.
I’ve got some great questions in the pipeline which I will be answering coming up soon. I feel like I keep saying that but it is true. They are on my to do list. I’m doing this for you all so you can feel your best with Hashimoto’s and I am truly grateful you are here and stuck it out while I was on break.
Thanks for listening.