How to eliminate toxins from the body.

Welcome to Episode 75. I’m so glad you are here and I’m really grateful that you are listening. You know, when you have hashimoto’s and you are in the thick of it- you are dealing with a hypothyroid, your medication might not be optimal, you have zero energy and you just feel kind of like giving up on it all. I don’t mean on life but just feeling like there is no way out- like this is all you have in life and it just feels really hopeless. I want to tell you that it can get better. You can get better. You can feel better. You can have a wonderful life and you can really live again. You have to do some work to get there though and I think that can feel daunting especially when it might feel like a lot just to get out of bed or just to make it through the day.

 I remember feeling like that, especially when I was first diagnosed. I had to get out of bed because I had a toddler and a newborn. My husband was not a lot of help and I was not good at asking for help. I put it all on me to get everything done and to be good at it all and that was freaking exhausting. That caused me to burn out my adrenals and sadly I had no idea about any of the stuff I am teaching you in this podcast. 

You all have a leg up on me. You can learn from all this information I am giving you and you can begin to take those first steps to start to feel better. Even if, like I posted on Instagram a week ago, it is just taking a few extra steps in a day. If you are struggling to make it through the day just doing regular day to day stuff- the next time you go to the store park in the back of the parking lot and walk those few extra steps. The next time you are watching tv, get up at the commercial and just stand for one of them, or walk around your living room just for one commercial. Then keep doing that until it gets easier and easier and you can go for a walk in your neighborhood. Little by little a little becomes a lot. You can do this. You really can and the reason I am here doing this is so you don’t have to suffer like I did. Seriously. I want life to be good for you because you deserve a good life, a happy life, a life fulfilled. You are worthy and you are enough. 

Ok. Now let’s get on with the bones of the show. This week in the detoxification series is all about how to get these toxins out of the body. Last week, I think it was I mentioned how you may need to heal your gut using something called the five R program and I couldn’t remember what the five R’s were. This is the week we dive in to what it means to heal your gut and why it is so important. 

Healing the gut is not only important as far as removing toxins from the body goes but it is so important for autoimmune disease in general.

 In functional medicine we are taught to start by healing the gut. A side note here is the gut can’t heal if you don’t provide it the right tools to do so which includes a diet change. You can’t eat fast food and work on your gut at the same time. You will be wasting your money. So diet changes first- like gluten free, dairy free for Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism (and Grave’s disease too) then work on healing the gut. They kind of go hand in hand. 

The first step in the 5R program is removing all the stuff that is causing gut issues- stress, food intolerances and any microbes that should not be there such as parasites, bad bacteria, overgrowth of yeasts, etc.  You can do lab testing via a stool test to find out if there is specific bugs here but you don’t have to. It is probably cheaper just to go on a protocol because most of us if not all of us have some kind of bug in us that should not be there. If you have uncontrolled cravings you likely have some kind of bug/parasite issue because they will cause you to crave what they need to survive. They are very tricky buggers. I would say if you think you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) you probably want to be tested for that because a general gut healing protocol won’t likely take care of that. 

Once you have removed all the problematic stuff, you need to replace what is either not working optimally or missing altogether from your digestive tract. So here I am talking about stomach acid, ox bile replacement or support for gallbladder and/or pancreatic/digestive enzymes. You may only need one or you may need all. It is quite common for people with hypothyroidism to be producing low stomach acid so it is something to consider. In general we need support with digestion. I’ve discussed digestion in detail before so I won’t go in to details here. Pancreatic enzymes come in handy to help us break down fat and carbohydrate. The idea behind taking them is not to take them forever or need them forever but to help the body heal itself so it can begin to make them on its own again. 

We need an enzyme called lipase to breakdown triglycerides and other larger fat molecules. The job of bile is to emulsify fats like dishsoap does to fat when you wash a pan. It breaks it down. That has to be working well in order for your body to be able to assimilate the fat from your diet and get your fat soluble vitamins. So if you have a stool test done they might look for fat in your stool- you might even be able to tell by looking in the toilet after you go to the bathroom. If you have shiny or greasy stools or floating stools those are indications that you might not be digesting fats. You need healthy bile which comes from consuming healthy fats and breaking them down. This, again, is where supplementation comes in handy. It can help your body until your body can do it on its own. You need bile to get the toxins out of your body through stool. Often ox bile is used to help with fat digestion and cleaning up the bile but you can start by taking artichoke leaf, milk thistle seed, dandelion root, or bitters. 

Protein digestion is also very important because you need protein to be properly broken down for the phases of detoxification but also if you have leaky gut or intestinal permeability, you need to have protein broken down so it doesn’t “leak” through the gut and inflame your immune system. You can try bitters before you try a stomach acid supplement. I like Urban Moonshine bitters but you can ask for bitters at a restaurant and drink that before you eat. If the restaurant has a bar they likely have bitters. But you can also consume bitter greens like endive, dandelion, wild lettuces, milk thistle, chicory or even potentially a little coffee. It is acidic and may stimulate your stomach to produce acid. There isn’t a whole lot of science to back that up though. 

You definitely don’t want to do a stomach acid supplement such as Betaine HCl if you have ulcers or an H.Pylori infection. You need to get those cleared up first. 

When food is not digested well it results in fermentation in the colon. Gas, bloating, feeding the “bad” bacteria and it means you are not assimilating the protein or the carbohydrates you ate. 

Constipation is common in hypothyroidism- fiber is the answer. We all should be getting 50 grams a day of fiber and drinking lots of water to ensure that fiber can do its job. Fiber mops up toxins and takes them out through stool. So, get your veggies in. The fiber in veggies helps with the third step of feeding the good bacteria in your gut. 

Once you have replaced digestion to good working order it is time to re-establish your gut bacteria with prebiotics and probiotics. There was a study done that found a link between inflammation in the gut, the microbiome and chronic fatigue syndrome. Fixing leaky gut and feeding those good bacteria can play a role in lessening CFS. Pretty cool. The biggest thing you can do to increase the gut bacteria is to eat lots of plants and a variety of plants and if you need a fiber supplement go for things like pectin, rice bran, chlorella, matcha green tea. All will pull toxins out of the gut. Mostly though, eat a lot of plant foods.  You can also take probiotics, make your own yogurt (dairy free is ideal for hashimoto’s patients) and there are a ton of recipes online if you google dairy free yogurt recipes. 

Repairing the gut is then next step. We do this with specific nutrients like L-glutamine, Omega 3 fatty acids, B vitamins, Zinc (carnosine), Vitamin E, Aloe vera or DGL. Specifically zinc is needed for wound healing and new cell growth. The lining of your gut turns over every 7 days or so and if you are deficient in zinc do you think you will have such a turnover? Maybe, maybe not. Be careful just taking a zinc supplement because you can deplete copper stores. You also need to reduce gut inflammation in order for the gut to heal which is why I said you also need to make diet changes to ensure your body has all the tools it needs to do this. 

Ok. Lastly, this is a functional medicine ending to repairing the gut. You need to balance your life. Reduce stress, get enough sleep, exercise, consume a healthy diet and find things that bring you joy! 

Head over to my website and tell me what you do that brings you joy. Leave a comment under this podcast post. Let’s start a conversation about how we can bring more joy to our lives. While you are there you can sign up for my newsletter for recipes and more sent right to your inbox. 

That is it for today. Thanks for joining me. Please leave me a rating or review on apple podcasts. It really helps more people find the show. 

If you or someone you know is struggling with Hashimoto’s or autoimmune disease, I am taking new clients and specifically allowing 2 new clients a month. Head on over to my website and fill out the contact form and we can see if we are a good fit for each other. 

What you need to know about detoxification.

Welcome to episode 74. 

This week I am going to give you a simple primer on the phases of detoxification in your body. This is important to know so you know how the food you eat actually might be affecting how you feel and the process of disease. When the body is out of balance due to your detoxification  systems not working well or at all, you will feel sick and it will affect your thyroid. We are made of many systems and they all work together. Our current medical system has developed specialties for each of our systems. Maybe you see an endocrinologist for your thyroid- they deal with the endocrine system. We have gastroenterologists who specialize in our GI tract. We have cardiologists who specialize in our heart health and so on. The missing piece here is that all of these systems work together and when one is out of balance, it is likely that others are also out of balance and that can create systemic dis-ease. 

When your detoxification system- and interestingly, there is no conventional medical specialty for this system. The only way this system gets attention is from scientists who are developing pharmaceutical drugs because all drugs get processed through this system and that is kind of what I am going to talk about today. It is important stuff because when things go wrong here you can end up with cancer, heart disease, liver problems and more. 

Okay. Let’s get started.  I mentioned a bit last week that there are three phases of detoxification. Phase I, Phase II and Phase II. We will go through each of these and I will try to make this as simple as possible to understand. The basics of this system is we take in a toxin- and most toxins are what we call fat soluble meaning they like to hang out in our fat tissue. Toxins can come from the outside- from our environment, from the air we breath, from our food, from our clothes- pretty much anywhere. It is unavoidable. 

Those toxins come in and  some will be eliminated through our stool or sweat without going through phase I but if they are not eliminated they go to the liver and through phase I detoxification. The liver will process them and then they get eliminated through our urine or our stool. Now, many people with hypothyroidism and mismanaged medication have constipation so these toxins are not being eliminated right away through the stool. They are getting reabsorbed in to the body. Not good. We want to get those out. 

In the liver, in phase I- it is called biotransformation- this means the substance is transformed or changed into something else so it can be prepared for elimination. We have enzymes in our liver that break down these foreign things called xenobiotics. This process creates free radicals which are molecules that are unstable due to missing and electron and create oxidative stress. They damage tissue in the body if they are not neutralized. We do that with antioxidants. 

You have likely heard that things like blueberries are a good source of antioxidants. There are special components of blueberries and other fruits and veggies that help neutralize these free radicals that our body has created. Also - before they create damage in the body they are supposed to go through phase II where they are further changed by other molecules in the body joining with them (molecules which are created through our consumption and breakdown of protein) and creating these harmless water soluble substance that will be sent to the kidney for elimination through urine or through the GI tract for elimination through stool. The elimination part is phase III. 

In order for this to happen we need to provide our body with nutrients. For phase I we specifically need B vitamins, especially riboflavin, niacin, B6, folate, B12, flavonoids (these come from the colors in our veggies), you need some good healthy fats to build healthy cell structures and you need glutathione which is the body’s master antioxidant. 

Before these broken down and more harmful products from phase I can move on to phase II they need the antioxidants and those require the use of things like vitamin A, vitamin C, selenium, copper, zinc, CoQ10, things called thiols which are found in garlic, onions and cruciferous veggies like broccoli, bioflavonoids (found mostly in citrus fruits, black currents- if you have bleeding gums you could be missing bioflavonoids in your diet). 

Next they move on to phase II where the biggest nutrient needed here is protein. Protein, when broken down provides all the amino acids needed for this second phase to work really well and this is important because if this phase is not working up to the speed of phase I, you have all these really harmful compounds that will be moving throughout the body, damaging tissues and wreaking havoc on the body. 

This means you need to be not only eating quality proteins but you also need to be breaking them down and assimilating them. Now quality proteins in the scientific literature means that you are getting all the amino acids needed for the body to operate- typically the essential amino acids and there are about 20-22 essential amino acids meaning our body cannot produce them and we need to get them from our diet. We can get them from plants or animals but easiest is from animals. 

Once these compounds are changed again in phase II they get set for elimination and in order for that to happen well you need a few things to be working really well there too. The transformed compounds, and those that didn’t get transformed are sent to the river of bile that flows through our digestive tract which will then be eliminated through our stool. This means that you need to be producing healthy bile from your liver. Past episodes will talk more in depth about that but basically you need to be consuming healthy fats- not canola oil or vegetable oil or trans fats. You have to minimize fried foods and consume olive oil, some coconut oil and eat avocados. These help build healthy bile which will help keep your gallbladder healthy so you can excrete all these toxins in your stool. You also will excrete through urine but first the toxic byproducts are shuttled to the blood, then they are filtered through the kidneys and then excreted through urine. This means you need to be drinking enough water so you are peeing this stuff out. 

How do we support these phases with food? Phase I foods include things like mushrooms, eggs, asparagus, almonds, turkey, chicken, salmon, lamb, beef, sardines, brown rice, sweet potato, beans, broccoli, leafy greens, fish, undenatured whey protein, turmeric, avocado, garlic, foods high in vitamin C and selenium, all the plant foods, sunflower seeds. 

Phase II foods are all about protein and digesting and assimilating that protein. So you must have good digestion and you probably should heal your gut if you have intestinal permeability or leaky gut. That would be important. How do you know if you have good digestion? What are your stools like? Are they well formed, sort of sausage shaped? Do you have much on the toilet paper when you wipe? If you do have a mess on your toilet paper and they are not well formed you likely need to work on your digestion. You might need a stomach acid supplement, you might need a gut healing program, you might need more fiber. Is your gallbladder doing its job? If not, that needs to be taken care of too. Do you have gut dysbiosis like an issue with candida or an issue with an imbalance in your microbiome?

If you have any genetic mutations such as MTHFR or COMT you will need extra help feeding the proper nutrients to your body so the detoxification system can do its job. If you have issues with these SNPs- they are related to methylation which is part of the detoxification process and you might have higher homocysteine levels on a blood test, you might have low B12, low folate status and low methionine (an essential amino acid). The short answer for this issue is to make sure you are consuming a lot of leafy greens, a mediterranean type diet can be really helpful and you want to be sure you are getting all the b vitamins but you don’t want to take them in too high amounts. You want to not smoke or drink too much coffee and avoiding alcohol is beneficial. Some medications can affect your folate status, particularly methotrexate. 

I talked a little bit about glutathione being your body’s master antioxidant. It is pretty important and there are some things that go in in the body that can cause it to be depleted so you want to make sure you provide the raw materials to keep your glutathione status healthy. Protein, brassica veggies, turmeric, fruits and veggies (cruciferous especially at 5-10 servings a day), green tea, N-acetycysteine, omega 3 fatty acids, salmon, resveratrol, allium veggies (chives, leeks, garlic, onion), vitamin C and E and whey protein. 

This is your very simple and quick primer on the phases of detoxification. I do not recommend doing a detoxification plan without first healing your gut and doing an elimination diet. You can’t start a detox while you are feeling really bad because it can just make you worse. You should always work with a practitioner who can help you navigate this. 

That is it for today. I want to thank you for being here and for listening. I do appreciate it. If you could leave me a review on apple podcasts it helps me reach more people. If you need some help with your health or you know someone who does, I am taking new clients and would love to chat with you. You can set up a discovery call on my website and click on the appointment tab where you can select a free 15 minute call to see if we are a good fit for each other. 

While you are there, sign up for my newsletter for recipes and other tips sent out every few weeks. 

Here’s to you until next week. 

What does detoxification mean?

Welcome to episode 73. Thanks for joining me. I am super grateful you all have stuck with me for 73 episodes. 

Please send me your questions to helpforhashimotos@gmail.com or head over to my website outofthewoodsnutrition.com and fill out the contact form putting in the subject line, podcast and then ask away. I’m here to help so you can live your best life and feel fantastic even while dealing with chronic illness and thyroid disease. This disease does not have to make or break you and let me remind you that you are not your disease. You are a person who deserves love and kindness and to feel good. It isn’t going to magically appear just because you know you deserve it though. You do have to make choices day by day that are going to bring you out of dis-ease and in to wellness. What you put in and on your body and what you have going on in your head all do play a role in your health and in disease. Those small and seemingly insignificant choices we make on a daily basis add up to a lot over time. Cutting 125 calories of crap from our diet over 2 ½ years can result in significant weight loss. Reading 10 pages a day of a book can result in you reading more books than you ever imagined over that same period of time. The point here is with a little change here or there you can and you will start to feel better. It is all up to you. Are you in?

Okay. Now let’s get down to business. This is another show about detoxification because I want you to be really clear what it means and what it does in your body. Again, this is not a discussion about cleanses or water fasting or any sort of fad type of detox. This is what is happening on a daily basis in your body and how you can provide your body with the tools it needs to work optimally for you to feel your best. 

Detoxification can be defined as giving the body what it needs to break down and excrete the toxic compounds we take in through our day to day life and to break down and excrete the toxic compounds created by our own body and it breaks down external compounds we have been exposed to. At the same time detoxification is about taking the steps we need to do to reduce our exposure. 

Detoxing or cleansing has been around for 100’s and 100’s of years as part of a healing practice. Think about the season of lent in the catholic church. You are giving up something and bringing something else in to your life. The point of it is to look at your life with curiosity and self examination. When you change the kind of food you put in to your body to something more healing, your life will change too. This can also be called detox but biotransformation is a better name in my opinion. It is access to greater change and healing. 

We have three phases of detoxification within the body. Phase I, Phase II and Phase III. Phase I & II have been studied a lot in conjunction with pharmaceutical drugs and how they are metabolized in the body. Phase III is elimination of toxins in your cells but also elimination from the body via urine, sweat, feces and so on. 

There was a study done on women with chronic fatigue syndrome- possibly some of you have been diagnosed with that in addition to Hashimoto’s? These women took a detox supplement powder along with doing an elimination diet. So they took this powder that had all the nutrients your body needs and it was mixed with water or something. Along with the powder they consumed an elimination diet that was loaded with phytonutrients (a component of plants that are beneficial to our health). They took the Medical Symptom Questionnaire from the Institute For Functional Medicine before the program and then again when the program was done. This specific detox program which is food based reduced the participants medical symptoms significantly. There is a clear benefit here but I want to stress that you should not do this on your own. Get support from a practitioner because you may need to heal your gut before doing something like this or you may need to make sure you are pooping regularly etc. 

A program like this can help you get rid of brain fog, pain, help you understand what foods you should avoid, give you more energy, clear up your skin, reduce medications and stress and inflammation and can help you recover or go in to remission. This is kind of a big deal. Is it worth it to you to do the work to get to this place? If so, I am your girl. These are my favorite kinds of clients to work with. 

The work you may need to do to get to this feeling is not only clean up your diet, but your home, your personal care products, your mind and even your relationships. Your results will all depend on how much work you put in as with anything. There is no magic and I am sorry to say that because I too wish there was a magic pill here. 

So where do you begin if you want to do something like this? First make sure you are pooping 1-2 times a day. This is really really important. You don’t want to go to the work of cleaning up the body and then not be able to get rid of all the garbage because it will just go right back in to circulation and make you sick. Not good. You also need some energy to get through something like this so if you are low on energy as many of us with hypothyroidism are, you will need to do some work on that first. You may need to do some supplementation to support your body through this as well. 

Your gut needs to be in good shape before detoxing so working on healing your gastrointestinal tract is important. If you have intestinal permeability you have a good chance that these external toxins are escaping in to the blood stream along with proteins that have not been broken down etc. We need to have a very acidic stomach- not usually the case in hypothyroidism and as we get older so we need to possibly supplement with stomach acid in order to break down our foods. Your liver needs to be working well because much of the breakdown of toxins happens there. You need good bile flow which means you need to have a proper functioning gallbladder. If you have referred pain in your shoulder blades or if you put some pressure on the area under your right rib cage and it is painful or uncomfortable, then you have some healing to do there too before implementing a detoxification program. 

We know that mercury is a big player in autoimmune disease and Hashimoto’s right? Well 80% of the mercury in our body comes out in our stool. If we have leaky gut and are not pooping regularly this can be a real problem. You can be pooping daily but if you are not pooping out what you ate the day before that means you have slow motility and that is not good either. You might want to do a transit time test- eat some beets or like a half a cup of organic corn or take 5-7 activated charcoal tablets in the morning. Write down what time you take it, then watch your stool. Write down what time you first see one of those things in your stool (you will likely see red in your stool with beets) and then write down the date and time you last see them. The time between when you first ingested the stuff and the last time you see it in your stool is your transit time. This should be around 16-24 hours. Anything longer than that, there is a good chance you are reabsorbing some toxic materials. Anything less than that and it is likely you are missing out on absorption of nutrients.   If your poops are not perfect you likely need to do a gut healing program before you begin. Again, this is something you should do with a practitioner- it requires some diet change and supplementation but is so worth it. 

What kinds of nutrients do you need to help your body detoxify?

 Fiber- most of us don’t get enough of it. Get your fiber from a variety of plant foods and avoid supplementation if you can. Fiber is in veggies, nuts, legumes (beans), fruit and grains. The more fiber you eat the more toxins you will naturally pull out of your body. If you need help through supplementation you can take psyllium which works great but be aware that taking it for too long can result in developing an intolerance. It will reduce transit time, it can help lower blood sugar and LDL cholesterol and it is pretty safe. Biotics Research makes a really nice psyllium product called Colon Plus that works well. When I first started doing this, I was still in school and had a practice client who had not pooped for a month. She started on this product which I tested her for and she called me up to tell me she pooped 5 times in one day and she was feeling fantastic.  So it really gets things moving. 

Aloe vera can be used for up to 2 weeks to stimulate your eliminations but it doesn’t really taste great. It is anti-inflammatory and can be cooling to our system. 

Prebiotics- you can get those from fiber containing foods. They reduce inflammation and IBS symptoms, they are good for your colon and allow our body to assimilate vitamins and minerals. They can also promote feeling full and weight loss. Prebiotics feed the beneficial bacteria in our gut allowing for the population to remain strong and healthy. 

Probiotics- many strains help our body detoxify things naturally so building up a good, strong healthy gut is important. 

What organs are involved in detoxification?

The liver- the super detoxifier. So much goes on in our liver and detoxification is one of the really important and big jobs it has. We need to support the liver with antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and herbs. Milk thistle is well known to be supportive of the liver and helping it eliminate toxins from the body. It is an antioxidant and supports the production of our master antioxidant, glutathione. N-Acetyl Cysteine is a powerhouse of a nutrient too. It has been studied in the prevention of the flu. It prevents or combats oxidative stress, protects the liver and is what is given to people who OD on acetaminophen. You can take 1000-1500mg per day depending on your needs. 

Just like in constipation, when stools sit in our colon too long, toxins can be reabsorbed. The same thing happens in the kidneys. We have these tubules in our kidneys where resorption of toxins can happen and it is all dependent upon a more alkaline pH in the body which we get by consuming a ton of fruits and veggies. 

We also detox through our lungs just by breathing. So deep breathing practices can be very helpful. Avoid perfumes, even essential oils can be problematic for some people, and incense. 

We detox through our skin too. Emotionally you can think about whether or not you feel good in your own skin but in addition to that- what are you putting on your body? We talked about what to put in your body but what goes on your skin is equally important. You want to avoid aluminum in your deodorant and clean up your make-up and skin care. Think about shampoo, conditioner, hand soaps, dish soap, laundry soap. Household cleaners and on and on. It gets overwhelming for sure but start with one area and clean that up and then move on to other areas. Little by little. 

If you have access to a sauna to sweat that is really helpful in moving toxins out quickly. Use a dry brush on your body before getting in the shower and start working on self love. 

The limiting thoughts and beliefs we have about ourselves and our ability to heal can be a real thing. What are you thinking about most of the time? For me, for years, it was how much I hated this disease and how it made me feel so terrible. I had a lot of toxic thoughts, still do in some areas. It is a daily practice to work on changing those thoughts in to something good. What kinds of thoughts are controlling you? Take a moment to think about that. Our thoughts are powerful. The toxicants that we take in, like actual chemicals, can change our mood and behavior making us angry, irritable or moody. Toxic thoughts can do that too. 

We need meaning and purpose. We need to believe in something greater than us- whatever that is for you. We need to feel peace. This is all part of the functional medicine model. Having purpose is good for our health. My dad lost all sense of purpose once he couldn’t drive anymore. Once his car was sold- that was it for him. He now spends most of his time sleeping. It is really sad. 

Anyway, starting some kind of spiritual practice can be really helpful- whether it is prayer, meditation, saying a mantra or even just journaling your gratitude. When I am feeling really terrible I will go for a walk and just say out loud as I am walking: “I am grateful for these feet that can move on the ground, I am thankful for my eyes that can see, I am grateful for my hands that can feel the breeze, I am thankful for ears that can hear the birds…”. You get the idea. Just small things to be grateful for and about halfway in to the walk- about 20 minutes- I start to feel lighter and much better. Little things. Find some time to just be quiet for a minute or two even if it has to be while you are on the toilet. 

Who needs to do a detoxification program?

Pretty much everyone these days. If you are obese or overweight, been on a diet your whole life, if you eat processed foods at all, if you use any kind of personal care products, if you have inflammation, live in a city or the country, if you are a Vietnam vet- actually any veteran could use a detox and if you travel a lot. These are just a few of the reasons someone should consider a detoxification program. If you have symptoms of fatigue, fibromyalgia, diabetes, brain fog or other brain/cognition issues, neurological issues, asthma, allergies, chemical sensitivities, autoimmune disease, chronic infections, infertility or hormone imbalance. The list really goes on and on. 

Do you think you need to clean things up in your body?  Shoot me an email and we can discuss it. Just go to the contact form on my website and fill that out. You can also just schedule a free 15 minute consult under Book An Appointment on the bar at the top of my webpage. While you are there, sign up for my newsletter and get recipes sent directly to your inbox. 

Please leave me a rating and or review on Apple Podcasts so I can reach more people and help others navigate the tricky waters of autoimmune disease. If I can help one person have to go through all I have gone through, it makes me so happy. 

I’m going to leave you with this mantra: I let go of everything that I no longer need. 

How to test for toxins in your body

We talked about toxins last week and how some particular toxins can affect the body. How do you know if you have an issue with toxins? Functional medicine can be helpful here when you use their timelines and you work with a practitioner to gather information about your health. 

Your practitioner should ask you, “When was the last time you felt good or when was the last time you remember feeling really good?”

There should first be a focus on your symptoms before you spend a dime on lab testing, except your obvious thyroid labs of course. Your practitioner should take a very thorough history and plotting your life on a timeline with you. Plotting all your toxin exposure on a separate timeline can be very helpful for you to be able to see just how much of a burden your body is under. 

Some of the things that are involved in your toxic burden are genetics, things like polymorphisms in your genetic make up called SNP’s. Things that you come with at birth, maternal heath habits and health history. What was it like while you were in the womb? Then think about things you were exposed to as a child or exposure over time to a particular toxin. For me it might have been mercury through a mouthful of amalgam fillings. Next we are thinking about how disease gets triggered. You have a lifetime of exposure to something- for me it was second hand smoke, then I had a root canal as an adult- maybe you had something else. The point is you get this compounding effect and something in your body is triggered. When my son died, I am pretty sure the trigger for the thyroid storm was stress. I didn’t handle stress very well at all back then and didn’t learn how to really manage it until the last couple of years if I am being honest. So stuff is brewing and finally your body breaks. The final straw could be something as simple as gluten. It really depends on you and your bio-individuality. That is why the timeline is so important in helping you figure out your root cause. 

Next you look at what keeps the symptoms going over time. What is making things worse? It could be not enough water or vegetables in your diet or chronic constipation which is common in hypothyroidism and is sure to keep you in higher toxic burden. Maybe it is mold. 

I will share some of my timeline I had to do for my class as an assignment. Each functional medicine timeIine starts with prenatal exposures so we always start there. My mom had rheumatic fever and was on penicillin for ten years so she basically had a completely destroyed gut microbiome before I was born. She grew up on a dairy farm- probably exposed to some chemicals in the fields there and diesel fuel as well. I was born in the early 70’s and it was okay for women to smoke while pregnant so I had that exposure in the womb as well as the occasional bit of alcohol exposure. I had second hand smoke exposure my whole life, ate a Standard American very processed foods diet all while growing up. Both my parents worked so there was a fair amount of convenience foods though my mom did cook meals from scratch most of the time. I consumed a ton of sugar as a kid and young adult- not so young adult as well. I had a mouth full of amalgam or silver fillings, lots of hair perms in the 80’s and early 90’s, regular alcohol use for at least 10 years, Round up exposure for sure over the years but a time frame is hard to pinpoint. Lots of household cleaner chemical exposure as a kid too. My mom used to choke while using a certain cleaning product that took lime off the shower every single weekend. New furniture and new carpet and new construction off gassing over a lifetime, several flu shots in my past until my kids put up such a fight over getting them, we quit going. The use of plastic food containers, heating food in plastic containers in the microwave. Chlorine and fluoride exposure in drinking water, non stick cookware.  

You can see how seemingly small things add up to a lot of exposure over time and can contribute to dis-ease. Plotting all this out can be super helpful for you and your practitioner to see where your exposures were and are and you can start to make small changes over time. 

Some other very important things you need to consider before labs are things that play a role in your overall health and not just your physical health but your mental and emotional health as well. 

How are your relationships? Hashimoto’s and thyroid disease in general can create some loneliness. You don’t look sick but you feel like crap or have zero energy so you don’t make an effort to be with friends or family. You maybe start to stay home more than socialize and people don’t understand. You might feel depressed and certainly there are many of us who have been told by our doctors that we are depressed and there is nothing wrong with us. 

How is your stress level? Not just your physical stress but financial stress, are you a caregiver? cortisol issues, any kind of thing you or your body perceives as stress. 

Diet- what do you eat and drink? Processed foods, foods with little to no nutrient density? Artificial sweeteners? Chemicals, food dyes? Do you eat fish that has high mercury levels?

Are you exercising? All you have to do is just move to start with if you don’t feel like you can do much. Maybe you are working out too hard, too long or too many days a week. That is stressful for your body too. Maybe you are dehydrated or you use energy drinks or caffeine to help you get up and go. 

Are you sleeping? Many of you are not. I spent my college years not sleeping- of course. I recovered on the weekends by sleeping in. Then I had kids. I didn’t sleep through the night for probably 6 or 8 years. Then my blood sugar was a mess and my thyroid problems started so I had a lot of insomnia, tons of fatigue. Then my husband started snoring and having sleep issues. He actually chokes in the night and then flails about, kind of punching his way to a breath so I got woke up by that with a shot of adrenaline and couldn’t sleep. I am 49 this year and I had had enough of the no sleep so I now sleep in a separate room and am sleeping hard and through the night and it feels wonderful. Not so great for my relationship- so that part of my functional medicine matrix paperwork is suffering but I am sleeping and sleep is important to me. I cannot function without it. My brain doesn’t comprehend when I don’t sleep and being in school, brain function is important. I made a choice but so did my husband when he let the doctor tell him he didn’t need a sleep apnea machine because he was borderline.  That is probably more information than you needed but I want to keep it real here. The other important parts of sleep are things like keeping electronics out of your bedroom, keeping the room cool and dark and making sure you have down time. What do you do to relax?

What kinds of dis-ease can be attributed to toxin exposure? Well just about anything but I’ll run down some general things: 

• Poor digestion, constipation, IBS

• Infections, either chronic or things that are recurring, autoimmune disease in general, skin problems, cancer

• Fatigue

• Multiple chemical sensitivities, kidney problems, elevated liver enzymes

• Cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, asthma or things like COPD

• Hormone problems, thyroid problems, type 2 diabetes

• Bone loss, leaky gut

• Brain fog, anxiety, depression, feeling a lack of purpose

For toxic exposure in particular, once you pinpoint the types of exposures you have had, you can then think about potential lab work that might help you set a baseline for measuring how you are moving these toxins out of your system. 

Without addressing your thyroid issue or autoimmune disease, and just thinking about removing toxins from your body, you want to be sure that you have great digestion and you are pooping at least 1-2 times a day so that once you get the toxins mobilized, you can eliminate them without causing you to feel sick.  You will work on avoiding any more significant exposures, probably make some lifestyle changes and then work on a diet plan to clean up your body’s insides. 

Once you do that, then maybe test to see if you are assimilating nutrients meaning- is your body using or able to use the vitamins and minerals you are taking in through your diet. 

But you can take the Toxin Exposure Questionnaire from the Institute for Functional Medicine to get a picture of where exposure is in addition to plotting your life on a timeline. Every one of us has a toxic burden. We want to figure out if your toxic burden is one reason you have thyroid problems or autoimmune disease. So besides doing the questionnaires and having an interview with a practitioner you can have some lab work done. I want to emphasize that the other work should be done first and lab work can come later. 

You can have blood, urine, hair or stool testing done pretty easily to measure some of your toxic load. Maybe have a heavy metal lab test done if you have skin issues, heart disease, high blood pressure (and you know it isn’t from a crap diet), peripheral neuropathy, chronic headache, sleep issues, memory problems or issues with concentration. Anemia, regular abdominal pain, cancer. Any of these can be due to chronic heavy metal exposure. 

Some labs have toxicity panels- I think Genova, Great Plains Labs and a few others offer these types of tests. They are not super cheap though so be sure it is something you need or want. They can test for things like BPA, organophosphates, PCB’s, pesticides, and more. Say you used a ton of plastic over the years- maybe you want a baseline for BPA so you can measure how well your new diet and lifestyle changes are doing at excreting this out of your body. This would be a reason to have a blood test done. 

You can check with your doctor to have a full blood work up done too for things like your blood sugar, maybe mold, your thyroid panel, sex hormones, some doctors do adrenal hormones, homocysteine which measures the level of inflammation in your body, I think you can even get a glyphosate test, red blood cell count, liver enzymes. All those can help you learn more about where your body is at even if they are in the “normal” range. The high end of normal can be indicative that something is going on that you might want to pay attention to. 

IMPERFECT FOODS

Can exposure to toxins cause Hashimoto’s?

Welcome to episode 71. We are discussing toxins today and detoxification. I might have mentioned before that I was on a forum once and I suggested to someone that they may want to work on detoxification in their body in order to help their thyroid work better. I was shunned by the moderator with some links to prove that detoxification is a myth and that it doesn’t really work. I had to explain to this moderator that I was talking about our body’s natural detoxification system which works really hard for us every day. 

We are exposed to a significant amount of man made chemical pollutants in our drinking water, our food supply and the air we breath. We also have to consider all the products we bring in to our homes as well as any pesticides we might use on our yard. The exposure is everywhere. This is not a doom and gloom episode, though it might feel that way. I think education is important because when you know better you do better and that is the case with anything. These toxins are not going anywhere. Some will be here longer than humans so we have to know what to do about them and how we can keep our body as healthy as possible. In other words we have this body burden that we need to be mindful of. 

It is estimated that we each have around 700 contaminants within our body and most of those have not been studied for safety. 

What is a toxin then?  That could be considered anything inside or outside of the body that keeps us from having good health. There are toxic things- physical, mental, emotional, chemical- that are poisonous to us. There are toxicants- a kind of poison, usually man made that is put into the environment by humans. 

Maybe you have heard the term xenobiotic. This is a chemical or organic compound not recognized by the body. Xenohormesis on the other hand is a stress compound made in plants that are beneficial to our health. The prefix xeno means foreign. 

We can be exposed to toxins through heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants (POPs- chemicals that stay in the environment for a long time because they are resistant to biodegrading), toxins from foods like GMO’s, hormones, antibiotics, fat loving toxins, aflatoxins, sugar, food allergies, xenoestrogens (a synthetic or natural compound that imitates estrogen). 

One of the big problems we have is the constant exposure to this stuff builds up in our body over time and leads to dis-ease. We have the exposure from the environment, genetic susceptibility, dose after dose of chemical for long periods of time- basically our lifetime which makes the toxins potent and that leads to disease. 

How do toxins affect us?

It often starts with some kind of problem with the immune system and then extends into neurological issues, endocrine system issues or gastrointestinal problems. One toxin can cause multiple issues in the body. 

If you have not responded to specific therapies that are known to be effective for your condition, if you have allergies, infections, autoimmune disease or you have known exposures to toxins from jobs, hobbies, home exposure, whatever- then you probably have an issue with toxicity of some kind. 

Toxin exposures and how it relates to health. 

People with the highest levels of PCB’s were more than 4x more likely to have high antinuclear antibodies than people with low levels of PCBs. These levels are linked to higher rates of autoimmune disease. 

Having high mercury levels in blood or urine were associated with high antinuclear antibody levels. This is coming from the NHANES study done between 1999-2004. 

Chlordane- a chemical used as a termiticide, even when applied per manufacturer directions exposes the homeowner to it for decades and is causing incidence of the development of antibodies against self, specifically against smooth muscle tissue. 

Chlorpyrifos- info from the EPA website: 

Chlorpyrifos has been used as a pesticide since 1965 in both agricultural and non-agricultural areas:

The largest agricultural market for chlorpyrifos in terms of total pounds of active ingredient is corn.

It is also used on soybeans, fruit and nut trees, Brussels sprouts, cranberries, broccoli, and cauliflower, as well as other row crops.

Non-agricultural uses include golf courses, turf, green houses, and on non-structural wood treatments such as utility poles and fence posts.  It is also registered for use as a mosquito adulticide, and for use in roach and ant bait stations in child resistant packaging.

This chemical causes high antibody levels anywhere from 1 to 4.5 years after exposure causing antibodies against the parietal cells in your stomach- this means low stomach acid production and anti-thyroid antibodies as well as hepatitis. 

Formaldehyde— exposure causing antibodies against brush boarder in small intestine, mitochondria and smooth muscle tissue. 

Lupus- has a huge association to certain pharamceutical comounds and with environmental chemicals. Focus here is on the environmental chemicals since that is what I am studying. A neighborhood in Hobbs New Mexico had higher than normal exposure to chemicals like benzene, xylene, toluene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, mercury and more due to living near an oil field waste dump and a very high rate of Lupus- about 870 people per every 100,000. 

Mercury- Those same New Mexico residents were 11x more likely to have inflammation in the joints and they were 19x more likely to be diagnosed with lupus. They had problems with dizziness, balance issues, extreme fatigue, sleep problems, concentration issues and more. 

Antithyroid antibodies are linked with high blood mercury levels. Having blood mercury levels above 1.81 ug(microgram)/L means a 2.2x higher chance of developing thyroid autoimmune disease. Eating mercury containing fish just once a week can give you that level of mercury. 

Heavy metal exposure in general is a problem. These metals will bind to oxygen and other things in the body messing with all the enzyme activity that goes on every second. Chronic exposure can lead to CVD and related disorders, peripheral neuropathy, sensory disorder, anemia, abdominal pain, cancer, skin issues. Dental amalgams are a big culprit for mercury exposure. 

Regular and ongoing exposure to hair dye has been associated with higher rates of lupus as well. People who use nail polish have a 10x higher risk of developing lupus than those who don’t. 

Smoking also puts you at a higher risk of Lupus. 

Living with PCB contamination in your area will give you increased risk of antinuclear antibodies and anti-thyroperoxidase antibodies. Antinuclear antibodies are a general test for autoimmune diseases. 

From EPA: PCBs belong to a broad family of man-made organic chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons. PCBs were domestically manufactured from 1929 until manufacturing was banned in 1979. They have a range of toxicity and vary in consistency from thin, light-colored liquids to yellow or black waxy solids. Due to their non-flammability, chemical stability, high boiling point and electrical insulating properties, PCBs were used in hundreds of industrial and commercial applications including:

• Electrical, heat transfer and hydraulic equipment

• Plasticizers in paints, plastics and rubber products

• Pigments, dyes and carbonless copy paper

• Other industrial applications

Chemical sensitivities are on the rise. This is also known as multiple chemical sensitivity, environmental illness, idiopathic environmental intolerance or toxicant induced loss of tolerance. About 20% of the population has this issue. 

You can have negative physical, mental, or emotional symptoms with minimal exposure to chemicals. Pesticides and solvents are the main culprits in bringing this on with new construction, gasoline and petroleum products a close second. Those of us with this issue may have a genetic SNP or two that lower our ability to break down organophosphate pesticides or solvents. 

Obviously avoiding toxins is going to be very helpful. It is your first line of defense. Clean up all things you can to the best of your ability and finances. Good air filters with a minimum efficiency rating value MERV of 7 on your ventilation system at home. This particular rated filter will help reduce dust particles which are  big culprit in at home exposure to toxins. Getting a good quality air purifier will be even better than a filter. There are things called sham units (no filters) and fully functional air purifiers. Using a reverse osmosis water filter will remove most groundwater contamination. Avoid high mercury fish, see a dentist that doesn’t use mercury in their office and if you need to remove high levels of mercury find a doctor that can use chelating agents.  I will go in to more details on how to clean things up in a future episode but using a sauna or sweating through exercise can be a great way to get toxins out of your system very gently and taking antioxidants or eating a rainbow of fruits and veggies will go a long way to helping your body clean things up and keep you healthy a million other ways. 

How to tell if you are drinking enough water?

Why does coconut and avocado give me diarrhea?

HI everyone. Welcome. Thanks for joining me today. I want to thank you for listening and for being a part of this. I do this for you whether you are listening to better understand what is going on with someone in your life or you are listening to get information about your own health. You have to be an advocate for yourself and your health and sometimes you have to fight for it. Help me reach others, won’t you? I recently spoke out about keeping our right to have choices in our health care and not be forced to take on any medical procedures for the greater good, especially when those procedures have zero liability. Please leave me a rating and/or review as some trolls have made a point to give me one star on iTunes which means people won’t find the podcast as easily. I would really really appreciate it if you could help me out with that. Let’s keep our right to choose to listen to what we want, read what we want and do what we want with our body. It is important that we don’t start forcing anything on anyone. Some of you know what it is like to only be able to get Levothyroxine when you might feel so much better on a natural desiccated thyroid hormone. We need to work with one another, work together instead of be divided, to keep our freedoms. Especially our freedoms over our own medical choices. Thanks for listening. Now, let’s get to a listener question.

Hi Stephanie 

I have tried to do AIP once (I have hashimotos and low cortisol). So when I tried AIP I got severe diarrhoea, I am pretty sure it's the fat content, I surmise that  it's because I have been on a diet most of my adult life, all of which have been low fat. 

I cannot stomach anything coconut based or avocado. Just the smell makes my stomach turn and if I try to eat either, I wretch. 

Is there a way I can still do AIP without coconut and avocado, and not end up running to the toilet? 

To add to the mix I am recovering from binge eating disorder. 

Thanks in advance 

Sarah

Thanks for writing in Sarah. I have to say, I think you are right about the fat content of the AIP diet. Elimination diets like that one can be a great option to find out just what foods you are sensitive to and it is okay if it’s not working for you. I’ve got some things I want you to think about:

Do you have pain between your shoulder blades? Maybe not all the time but occasionally? If so this is a sign that your gallbladder is not able to do its job, likely due to not having free flowing bile. If you have thick and viscous bile, it will be even more thick and viscous in your gallbladder because it is concentrated there. This is not a 100% for sure sign as pain there can be related to other things like nerve impingements, frozen shoulder, bursitis and more. Just something to think about.

Sounds like your stomach is getting upset. This is again related to bile production and the ability to digest fats or break them down. It might indicate you need some gallbladder support. Maybe some enzymes with lipase in the formulation or even bile acids- often referred to as ox bile. It will help you break down your fats and allow you to consume some of those healthy fats and then make healthy bile in your liver. When your bile can’t emulsify fats (think of how a dish soap can dissolve grease on a pan- same idea with bile and fat in your gut) that can irritate the small intestine.

Are you seeing greasy or shiny stools in the toilet? If so this indicates that there is a decreased output of bile from the gallbladder which will cause fat to remain undigested in the small intestine leading to greasy or shiny stools or floating stools. Again, bile salts can help get things working again.

As far as the coconut and avocado go- you don’t have to eat them. AIP can simply be about eliminating the required foods and then reintroducing them one at a time to figure out which foods your body doesn’t like. It is not meant to be a lifelong diet. When doing AIP, your vegetable intake should be really high. You should be eating veggies at every meal and a lot of them. You can get your fats from olive oil. In fact, you only need less than a tablespoon of fat daily to get enough fat in so you can easily skip coconut and avocado. Now I have said in the past that some people continue this diet long term and you can as long as you get all your nutrients in. Going low carb on this diet can really mess up your energy levels, especially if your body isn’t processing fat very well right now.

Since you are recovering from a binge eating disorder, you are walking a slippery slope with this diet because it is so restrictive it can trigger old thoughts and feelings. Since I don’t know anything about what your current diet looks like, it is hard to tell you where to start, but- I would consider easing in to this if you do it at all. Before you eliminate a bunch of foods, start adding in some nutrients. Add in bone broth, soups, lots and lots of veggies. Then start by eliminating the big gluten grains- wheat, barley, spelt. Get good at that for some time while continuing to fill your body up with those healing foods- broth and veggies. If you can do organ meats, go for it. They are not my thing but they can be good for you too as long as they are from clean animals raised on pasture- low on chemicals in other words.

Work on getting good rest/sleep and managing stress while eating all the veggies. Did I say you need to eat veggies? You do. Women in general need more carbs, especially at certain times of the month. So honor where you have been with your disordered eating and don’t make your life all about the food. If this diet doesn’t work for you, that is okay. There are other elimination diets out there.

I’d like to say too that eliminating the beans and legumes for a time on AIP may be helpful for some people but those foods are really nutrient dense and it’s okay to eat them. Obviously soaking and sprouting beans is helpful but please don’t feel guilty about eating them.

I’ve learned so much about food in the last 9 months in this masters program and I just want you to know that it’s okay if this diet doesn’t work for you and it’s okay if you find another way to heal. I think so many of us, including myself, get caught up in all the social media personalities telling us what works for them. We need to remind ourselves that what works for some people doesn’t work for everyone.

I did AIP- I didn’t feel good on it because I didn’t eat enough of anything except bacon and a lot of coconut and a lot of avocado and not enough protein and definitely not enough veggies. I crashed hard and had really low energy for years. When you have low energy to begin with you get in to this vicious cycle of not enough energy, not enough energy to make the food, not enough energy to eat and so on. On days where I ate enough protein and carbohydrate (in the form of veggies upon veggies), my energy levels started to come up and I started to feel better. Then when I slacked off, I felt like crap. My body, in particular needs more carbs. I feel better on them. I eat rice and regular white potatoes now and my body loves me for it. I’m able to be active again and it feels really good.

Bottom line- do what works for you. That’s all any of us can do. Find your individual version of AIP and go with it.

I hope that helps you! Thanks for writing in.

Do you have a question you want answered about Hashimoto’s or even about nutrition in general? Please send me a message at either helpforhashimotos@gmail.com or fill out the contact form on my website. OutofThewoodsnutrition.com . I look forward to hearing from you!

Again, please leave me a rating and/or a review on apple podcasts to help me reach more people. Let’s take back our health together.

Until next time.

I feel worse after changing my diet.

Welcome to episode 67. I missed last week. Sorry about that. I was writing a paper on sarcopenia for my sports nutrition class. I’m now in week 8 of 11 and cannot wait for this class to be over. The class is a little demoralizing so 3 more weeks to go after this week and that cannot come soon enough. Makes you want to run right out and get enrolled in this nutrition program doesn’t it!? Anyway, I’m grateful you are listening. Let’s get to this weeks topic/listener question. 

Hello! I am a new listener and I really appreciate the podcast, thank you for doing the work to put it out.

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's after my first son was born - he turned 5 in August and I have been very fortunate with how it has very minimally affected me. I am an athlete and have an overall very healthy lifestyle and recently, after a conversation with an NP at a kid's birthday party about autoimmune disease, I thought that perhaps I should be doing more with my diet to try to minimize or, if possible, stop the degeneration of my thyroid.

In that effort, I have gone gluten and dairy free and have done pretty well with it for about 4 weeks now, it terms of preparing food and keeping those things out of my diet but I'm writing to you because I have to say, I really feel worse now than I did before I started changing things.

My two primary complaints are significantly increased migraines. I've been having a few a week for the last few weeks when previously it was mainly just the last week of my cycle. I mentioned that I am an athlete earlier because I suspect part of the problem is that I might not be eating quite enough with the elimination of gluten and dairy, do you have other thoughts on this?

I also feel like my heart is just a little bit racy and out of breath which makes me feel....blah. I wouldn't say I feel fatigued, I still have energy for the things I want to do, I just feel like I've lost my power...if that makes sense? 

My inclination is to stop taking my levothyroxine which I have never had a problem with before now. I wake up in the morning feeling good and then 10-15 minutes after taking it, I start to feel stressed. I would like to make an appointment to have my meds adjusted but before I do that I wanted to get input from you in case you wanted to suggest other questions to ask or points to bring up with my Dr. 

I really appreciate your help, thank you so much! 

Hi Beth, 

Thanks for writing in. This is a really good question and timely since I am in a Sports Nutrition class right now. Going gluten and dairy free were the right thing to do though replacing those carbs in your diet may be what you need to do. Depending on what you do for exercise and from your picture on the Gmail it looks like you are a runner. You want to be sure you are fueled properly for your workouts but here is the thing. The running- it is creating a stress response, like a fight or flight response for you which will eventually create problems with your adrenals. Athletes need some source of carbohydrate for fuel. Carbs turn in to glucose in the body which are an immediate source of fuel for you as you are exercising. You probably have no problem storing glucose in the muscles- that is called glycogen. We all store glycogen in our muscles but those of you who have more muscle are able to store more glycogen for fuel when you need it, such as in exercise and in Beth’s case, running. Physiologically, as the duration and intensity of your exercise increases- so how long and hard you workout, your body will quit using fat for fuel and will burn only glucose or sugars. This is not what my ketogenic diet people will want to hear, but it is what the science says. 

The current recommendation for an athlete’s carb intake is 2-12g/kg of body weight daily- take in to consideration that this study that determined this amount probably only tested men so I would play around with the lower end- 2-6g/kg of body weight. Though if you are doing a long run, you may want to go a little higher than that. It is something you have to play around with. Generally, hashimoto’s patients do better on a higher carb diet- lots and lots of veggies and you need a fair amount of starches in your diet on your workout days- again, something you have to play around with. Use rice or sweet potato and make sure you are getting in at least 100g of protein per day, especially on workout days. Shoot for 1.2 or so g/kg of body weight in protein and supplement with a powder if you have to- for a 10km run, my book recommends 6-8g/kg of carbohydrate as well. Designs For Health Pea Protein is what I use because I struggle to get enough protein in- most of us do. Now because you are an athlete, you will be able to tolerate some sugar too, especially on running days so you may want to do some kind of sports drink. Be  mindful of digestive upset due to too much sugar though you can do a mouth rinse which works well for some. If you are exercising less than an hour, you may not need to replenish your carbs with a bunch of sugar but because you are dealing with hashimoto’s you might need to do a banana, rice or sweet potato or something like that. 

You gave up gluten- wheat products typically have B vitamins in them, and B vitamins are helpful for migraines. This is one possible clue. It sounds like they are hormonal if they are happening around your cycle. Our endocrine system not only includes our thyroid but it also includes our reproductive glands and when one is out of whack, the others will be also. My thoughts on this are 1. it is possible your thyroid is getting better with the elimination of gluten and dairy which is balancing your sex hormones too and things might just be wonky for awhile. 2. when the adrenals are exhausted, that can trigger migraines as well. There is not a lot of research on migraines and exercise except to say that it is thought that regular exercise can help reduce them- though I know a few people that is not true for. Menstrual migraines are either cycle related or something called pure menstrual migraines- a migraine associated with the onset of menses. Cycle related migraines are ones that happen throughout your cycle. The menstrual migraine is thought to be because of the quick drop in estrogen that occurs with your period starting each month. These usually don’t have an aura that comes with them, they are more severe and debilitating and treatments with conventional drugs like NSAIDs don’t work as well. Of course I cannot find any research that gets to the WHY of this issue. Why are you getting migraines? I can’t say for sure. My first inclination is that you need some liver support to help clean things up in house so the body can do its job well. 

I would see if you can go back in and have your labs done again because it sounds like your medication dose might be too high based on how you describe the way you feel. I don’t recommend stopping it altogether as that can be dangerous- I did that and completey f-d up my body for a good year, so don’t do that. If you feel like crap after taking your meds, your adrenals (also part of the endocrine system) are being impacted and you can try to do half doses but really you need to be taking it easy and working on getting your adrenals back, as well as keeping hormones balanced. So you want to make sure that you are managing your blood sugar. If you are not eating enough, that will be a problem. Insulin is there to bring sugars to your cells, when you have too much sugar in the blood at once, you get a surge of insulin which leads to that crash an hour later- the rollercoaster. Cortisol on the other hand will raise your blood sugar along with epinephrine (adrenaline) and the hormone glucagon. We have several mechanisms to raise blood sugar but only one, insulin, to lower blood sugar. If you are not eating enough, going too long between meals, cortisol will take sugar from your muscles and your liver to raise your blood sugar. Cortisol is also involved in the stress response which will raise your blood sugar too. I wouldn’t bet you are dealing with insulin resistance as an athlete but for those of us who are not athletes, if that sugar has no where to go it will be stored as triglycerides- aka fat. 

Without knowing more about how much you workout and how hard in addition to what exactly you eat and what your labs say, this is about as much as I can say. I hope it helps. 

Thanks so much for listening. Please leave me a rating and review on iTunes. It helps me reach more people. The more reviews I get, the higher up in the rankings the podcast gets which means more people will see it when they are searching for something to listen to. Let me know what you like and don’t like so I can make this the best listening experience for you. 

Sign up for my newsletter and outofthewoodsnutrition.com and if you have a question for the podcast you can write me at helpforhashimotos@gmail.com. 

Again, thanks for listening. I do this for you. 

Can eating celery cause a goiter?

I have a multi modular goiter due to having Hashimoto’s.  My concern is I’ve read regular celery consumption can fuel a goiter to grow bigger and possibly cause hyperthyroidism. 

Have you heard of this ?  My tsh is on the low end 0.89 being more hyper than hypo so I really don’t want to push myself towards hyperthyroidism.

Pls advise you thoughts I would greatly appreciate them.

Mickey

Buffalo, New York

Thanks for your question Mickey. There is almost zero research on celery and celery juice and the Medical Medium is getting his information from spirit so we have no way of backing it up. I have not heard that regular celery consumption can fuel a goiter to grow bigger. I do not think that celery is goitrogenic, I looked up goitrogenic foods and it is not on the list. What could be the issue is the chemicals sprayed on to the celery because even organic crops are sprayed- just with less toxic chemicals. 

Goitrins, thiocyanates, and nitriles are all goitrogenic chemicals derived from natural plant pesticides called glucosinolates. An enzyme breaks these chemicals down during digestion into goitrogens and goitrogenic byproducts. 

Other things that can affect goiter are antibiotics, medications for irregular heart beat, bromides (from pesticides, plastics, and brominated vegetable oils- found in that yellow drink representing mountains), Dioxins, heavy metals (mercury, lead, etc), Over the counter pain meds such as ibuprofin, acetaminophen, benzodiazapines, paint fumes, perchlorates, pesticides and thiocyanates found in cigarettes. 

The reason that goiters appear is because your thyroid is enlarging itself so it can take up iodine that is missing from the diet. If you don’t have enough iodine, you will have low T4 and low T3. This would also trigger TSH production and your TSH is on the low end- some practitioners like to see it between 0.5 and 1-2 so I would pay attention to how you feel and watch this very carefully. Goiters also have genetic and environmental factors but not much is known about this. 

Celery is a super food really. It has anti-inflammatory properties and is excellent at preventing things like CVD, jaundice, liver diseases, urinary tract obstructions, gout, rheumatic disorders, and in rats it has been shown to improve their fertility. Celery lowers blood sugar and blood lipids (so cholesterol), and blood pressure. There is some experimental research to show it has anti-fungal and anti-bacterial properties. The seeds help treat bronchitis, asthma, and skin issues such as psoriasis. Celery root is used for treating colic. I could go on an on. Real food is amazing. 

So my gut is saying it isn’t the celery necessarily. Do you feel your thyroid is enlarging? If so I would consider having it checked. 

If you are dealing with hyperthyroidism, the treatments are kind of barbaric if you ask me. They kill it off with radioactive iodine or they give you a nasty drug to slow it down or they take it out. Not good choices. These are also all just bandaids to the problem. You must always the question why? Why is your body creating a goiter? Why is your TSH suppressed or low? Always ask why. 

What does hyperthyroidism look like?

One paper I found defines subclinical hyperthyroidism biologically- a concentration of TSH below the normal with free T4 and free T3 within the normal range. It is then divided by how severe it is. 

Grade 1: TSH around 0.1 and 0.39 mU/L

Grade 2: TSH less than 0.1 

Subclinical terminology suggests there are no symptoms and we know that symptoms matter most when it comes to treating our thyroid disorders. 

Clinical signs of hyperthyroidism are: 

Now this is important- Serum TSH concentration below the reference range, but corresponding to a normal concentration for this person because the normal values only refer to 95% of the population. As with everything in the body- there is bioindividuality. You may be an outlier in your lab work. And you may have to fight for yourself to get proper care. 

• Low TSH due to pituitary gland not working properly

• Low TSH concentration observed at the end of the first trimester of pregnancy

• Treatment with high doses of glucocorticoids or dopamine

• Low TSH concentration observed in some disease-free thyroid diagnosed subpopulations; smoking, elderly and certain ethnic groups (of course, the ethnic groups are not mentioned in the information I found)

• Low TSH concentration observed in the context of iodine overload

It is common to see low TSH after pregnancy, in toxic multinodular goiter and in a single autonomic nodule 

Graves disease is also a factor in low TSH- when all the sudden you are having hyper symptoms. 

Now, goiter is not just for hyperthyroidism. 

Goiter with hypothyroidism can result from iodine deficiency and lack of selenium and iron intake. 

I found a study with goiter being treated by Traditional Chinese Medicine that was pretty interesting. 

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners have been treating goiter for hundreds of years and have a substantial amount of clinical experience.  In the theory of TCM, Qi is the vital energy important for physiological processes in the body. A Qi deficiency of the spleen and stagnation of Qi from the liver can cause phlegm, eventually leading to the development of goiter.

Based on their perspective they use an herbal protocol that restores and enhances, the flowing of Qi as a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of goiter.

The Chinese Medicine Hospital of Shaanxi created a Qi-promoting herbal regimen called Xing Qi Hua Ying Tang (XQHYT), of which showed great promise in treating goiter in clinics.

This study showed that treatment with XQHYT contributed to reduction in the size of goiter and reduction in clinical symptoms.

XQHYT, which consists of astragalus (30 g), white peony root (15 g), bupleurum (9 g), Citrus aurantium (15 g), chuanxiong (10 g), tangerine peel (10 g), wide wood incense (9 g), dried rind of unripe mikan (9 g), Prunella vulgaris (15 g), Fritillaria thunbergii (12 g), Fructus trichosanthis (15 g), calcined oyster shell (30 g), and honey-fried Glycyrrhiza uralensis (6 g)

 Astragalus, one of the major ingredients of XQHYT, was reported as able to reduce clinical symptoms of patients with Graves’ disease.  C. aurantium was shown to have protective effects on thyroid. The extract of P. vulgaris was shown to reduce goiter size in clinical patients.

Based on this information, if you have goiter or hyperthyroidism/Graves disease, seek out a doctor of Chinese Medicine or a Licensed acupuncturist who uses Chinese herbs in addition to getting care from your doctor. 

That is it for today. As always, thanks for listening. Please share this with anyone who thinks it might help and if you could be so kind to leave me a rating or review it will help me reach more people. 

I am taking new clients right now. If you or someone you know is dealing with unmanaged chronic illness or autoimmune disease, please send them my way. 

Join the Help For Hashimoto’s facebook group and get support there as well. You can sign up for my newsletter at HelpforHashimotos.com and if you did sign up and have not gotten your ebook, please let me know. I have been having trouble with the server that collects my email addresses. 

Have a wonderful health filled week! 

References:

Bel Lassen, P., Kyrilli, A., Lytrivi, M., & Corvilain, B. (2019). Graves’ disease, multinodular goiter and subclinical hyperthyroidism. Annales d’Endocrinologie, 80(4), 240–249

Yang ML; Lu B, Journal Of Alternative And Complementary Medicine (New York, N.Y.) [J Altern Complement Med], ISSN: 1557-7708, 2018 Apr; Vol. 24 (4), pp. 374-377

Root Chakra, Throat Chakra and how they relate to Hashimoto’s

Chakra/energy systems

• We are all made up of energy. This has been proven and scientifically accepted as we can see with the use of diagnostic imaging, EKG, and other medical diagnostic tools. Think MRI and CT scans that use the electrical signatures of the body to create an image, or EKG that records the electrical pulses of the heart.

• From a Western medicine perspective, which is more anatomically focused we look at energy in the form of electrical messages. Specifically, for the purposes of this talk, we are looking at the electrical messages that travel along nerves.

• The nervous system has two main parts: the Central Nervous System that contains the brain and the spinal cord and the Peripheral Nervous System, that connects the brain and spinal cord to the rest of the body. There are different categories of nerve bundles within the peripheral nervous system, but for the purposes of our talk today and for simplicity, we are focusing on the autonomic nervous system that controls the involuntary actions of the body. This system is divided into two categories of sympathetic and parasympathetic. When we look at where the major nerve networks lie within the parasympathetic nervous system, we see they are located along the spine and at specific glands. The brain is then connected to these via the vagus nerve.

• The vagus nerve is one of the body’s communication pathways. The vagus nerve runs from the colon to the brain carrying information from the body’s organs and glands to the brain to be deciphered.

• That was a lot of information, what’s the take away? When we are looking at the body’s communication pathway for electrical messages, we are looking at the vagus nerve (the big-dog) that is fed information from major nerve plexus or ‘network hubs’ that is located along the spine next to the body’s major glands. So let’s pin that.

• From a metaphysical perspective, energy or life force, travels in and out of the body

• There are 7 energy centers along the spine called chakras.

• Chakras are aspects of consciousness, and they interact with the physical and energetic body through two major vehicles, the endocrine system and the nervous system.

• Why is this important? Because when we overlay a diagram of the vagus nerve and the major nerve ‘hubs’ that I previously described over where the chakras are located, we see that the chakras are in the same place as those physical hubs and glands. Its beautiful how what we perceive as polar opposite approaches to healing are actually talking about the same things; medicine and energy healing. It’s the same canvas (the body) different interpretation of the scenary.

• Each chakra or energy system has a corresponding gland as well as several other associations such as color or musical note. It is the frequency, whether it is sound, smell, color, etc that the energy system responds to.

• Emotions are energy in motion, and energy preceeds matter. Emotions they carry their own frequency, and so emotions can have a large impact on these energy centers which can then manifest into a physical condition.

Throat - hypothyroid

• The throat chakra is associated with the color blue. In this energy center, we are looking at expression of truth. Speaking our truth, expression through our voice. This center is connecting our higher selves with our heart chakra which is all about compassion. Combining the two, for a healthy throat chakra we want to speak our truth with compassion and express our authentic self. Telling lies or gossiping would negatively impact this center.

• The thyroid is the gland located in this center. Therefore, it is impacted by stagnation of the energy within this center.

• For energy workers, it is commonly accepted those with hypothyroid conditions also have stagnation in the throat chakra typically due to not speaking their truth or not being able to express their authentic selves.

• This is most commonly seen in women, as we have been told to ‘be seen and not heard’, ‘speak quietly’, ‘don’t say ugly things’, or have had our power taken away in other ways resulting in suppression and oppression.

Root - Hashimotos

• This energy system is associated with the color red. Here were are looking at our most basic, primal needs being met. We are looking for safety and security. This is the first energy system to mature. So think of an infant. They need to have their needs met. Food, water, shelter, survival. Even pack loyalty, which translates to where in your immediate family do you fit and who is going to meet your needs and where do you feel safe. We are creating our foundation from which we will build our identity.

• So when we are looking at Hashimoto's, we are taking the thyroid condition a step further in that the body’s immune system is treating it like a foreign invader.

• For me, I believe the reason for the difference between how the body reacts to hypothyroid (think lack of use of the voice to speak and express) to Hashimoto’s (the body trying to get rid of that which no longer serves or is viewed foreign) is because of the involvement in stagnation at the root chakra.

• Our body’s first line of defense is the immune system. Keeping us ‘safe’ from what would harm our body. So, dysfunction in the immune system would be reflective of stagnation in the Root chakra.

• Let’s then combine the two stagnations and illustrate how that would manifest into Hashimoto’s. As I mentioned, the Root chakra is the first to mature, from conception to about age 7.

• Can you think of a time during those ages that you NEEDED something. Doesn’t matter how important it seems now, but at that early age it was super important to you for whatever reason. And you were told no in such a way that you felt completely shut down, that you were not being heard, that you wanted to make them understand why it was so important to you, but you didn’t feel safe talking about it anymore. You were silenced.

• At the Root chakra level, your needs were not being met, you did not feel safe using your voice, and at the Throat chakra level you were silenced from communicating your needs.

As a practitioner, that statement is it in a nutshell: ‘I did not feel safe communicating my needs’.

Now, will everyone that has that type of experience develop Hashimotos? No, certainly not! We are all individuals, with unique needs and unique experiences on several different levels. But at an energic level, this is something I am taking into consideration clients.

What to do?

• Journal! That is my go-to first recommendation when dealing with energy is to journal how you feel, what is your experience. I find that is a very powerful tool to help people get to answers and experiences they cannot come to on their own.

• For the Root, there are several supportive tools which carry a frequency that will help you connect to the Root, but it will not do the work for you!

  • Essential oils cinnamon, cedar, clove

  • Stones ruby, bloodstone, black tourmaline

  • The color red, a red scarf, red candle, red shoes, consuming red colored foods.

  • Minerals because they are of the earth, literally consuming what the earth has to offer

  • Protein, because while consuming animals, we are consuming the vitality of the earth

  • Root vegetables, because they have spent their entire lives living in the earth. They are intimately connected and tend to be high in minerals.

• What is the work? Once you are able to connect to the Root center, to remove stagnation you need to identify, recognize, and face the fear. You then can journal about the fear, write a letter to your inner child regarding forgiveness, tell that child you are safe. Are you not safe in your present? Do you not feel secure? Those feelings need to be faced and dealt with.

• What about the throat? We can’t forget about the throat!

  • Essential oils rosemary, lavender, geranium

  • Stones turquoise, aquamarine

  • The color blue is associated with the throat chakra, so things that carry the blue frequency like blueberries and blackberries for food.

  • Moist foods to help lubricate the throat help to support this area as well like herbal teas, soups and stews, or moist fruit like watermelon.

• Since this area is all about expressing your authentic self and speaking your truth I recommend practicing speaking your truth, and for those with Hashimoto’s, expressing your needs. For some it might start slowly. They may have lost connection with what they need and the first step might actually be divorcing martyrdom. Recognizing those situations where you said yes, when you wanted to say no.

Honoring your boundaries can be extremely difficult for those that have the outlook that their needs do not matter compared to others. So, recognizing your needs and practicing say no. Maybe instead of giving an answer right away, your default answer is ‘that sounds interesting, let me get back to you’ giving yourself space to explore if it is what you actually want to do. If you want to decline, do not make up an excuse! You are not doing yourself any favors by lying. Simply say ‘No thank you, maybe next time’ or something along those lines. As you practice more and become more comfortable speaking your truth and asking others around you to honor your needs, you can begin to elaborate more so that others understand your boundaries. If you are speaking from a place of love, you are honoring both yourself and those you are communicating with.

Above all, know that words are powerful. Always speak from your heart, from a place of love. Love for yourself and for others. When we are expanding our voice and power of will (Heart and Throat chakra), remember every thought, every word, and every action is an act of power that has consequences on a biological, environmental, social, personal, and global scale.

In practice, I am a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner first. I work with clients to identify areas that their body is calling for support. I help them answer that need through diet, supplements, oils, and lifestyle changes such as strategies to manage stress. But, through working with clients, I cannot ignore the need to address the emotional and energetic support needs of the client. I have found that when these are recognized and addressed, healing can continue to move forward. This is why I continued my education to include energy work.

Jennifer’s Food and Spirit Practitioner training is the perfect bridge that allows me to address diet while addressing the energetic profiles. Understanding how each of the energy systems work, what helps clients connect to these centers, and educating them what physical and emotional symptoms present when an energy center needs support. This training has equipped me with tools that I can then explore with clients to see which one resonates with them that will allow them to balance and remove stagnations.

Jennifer’s passion lies in helping clients reconnect to themselves and tap into multiple resources benefiting the client mind, body, and spirit. It’s like learning a new language. Deciphering the physical and emotional messages that your body gives you to let you know it needs help. Once you are fluent, you will find you have a life partner that loves and values the beauty and uniqueness of you.

www.thesproutedpath.com

Do I really need to be taking a collagen supplement?

Welcome to the show. Today we are talking about collagen because it is all the rage on the internet and even in some health food stores. This is coming from a lecture in my Sports Nutrition class which I am not enjoying in the least. I am learning a lot but it is really hard. There is a lot expected of us from the teaching staff many of whom are knee deep in scientific research for a living. I hate reading scientific research studies. I know they are important but that doesn’t mean I have to like doing it, especially about a topic I am not interested in. 

Okay, on to collagen. Glycine is an amino acid that is part of collagen. It is not considered essential because we can make it in our body from other amino acids but it doesn’t mean it isn’t an important one. It isn’t something that we get a lot of from our diet as it is found in high amounts in collagenous proteins- so in meat, gristle, and connective tissue basically. In other words it is found in collagen. 

Glycine plays a role in many many body functions, one of which is collagen turnover. It is also a neurotransmitter - those are chemical messengers that send signals from one nerve cell to another specific nerve cell such as a muscle cell or a gland cell (thyroid is a gland).  It helps your body make methyltetrahydrofolate- MTHF which helps your body detoxify, it plays a role in lowering homocysteine levels in the body too.  High levels of homocysteine in the blood lead to inflammation of blood vessels which can lead to heart disease. Hypothyroidism that is mismanaged is a risk factor for heart disease. 

The Standard American Diet will give you around 2 grams of glycine per day and a very conservative estimate on how much the body needs per day is at least 15 grams.  Now the body can make about 3 grams per day if your body is working as it should for a total of 5 grams per day and maybe a bit more if you are getting enough protein. 

You can do that by eating collagenous proteins- things that gel up when cooled. I find that collagenous gooey stuff in a beef roast, salmon skin, chicken skin and making broth with knuckle bones and chicken feet. It is also in the hooves of animals but, you know, most of us are not eating that kind of stuff. I do make a bean and ham soup with ham hocks which have quite a bit of collagen. So there are ways to get it from your diet. Just be sure the whole animal sources you are getting them from are from a trusted source, pastured, organic is best due to the potential heavy metal burden coming from conventionally raised animals. 

We are likely running at a deficit in collagen for our whole lives as one of my course facilitators puts it. We are not getting enough right from the start and there are researchers hypothesizing that this deficit is what contributes to the aging process in things like wrinkles and osteoporosis (another issue those of us with mismanaged hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s have to be concerned with).  Wrinkles and osteoporosis don’t present an immediate threat to our survival so our body has not evolved to make collagen production or non production an issue. 

You can also just supplement with hydrolyzed collagen which has been shown to partially absorb right in to the blood stream through the small intestine and it will tell your body to make more collagen. It has been studied in athletes where consuming collagen peptides with vitamin C does cause your body to make more collagen. It has also been shown that it can help with joint pain and increasing the ability to move a joint better in osteoarthritis or just arthritis. 

There has even been a study done on diabetics (insulin resistance can be an issue for many of us) which found hydrolyzed collagen lowered blood sugar by about half so if you take collagen peptides or consume collagen in supplement form and you don’t feel well on it, this could be why. Another potential reason is if you are not a good methylator- have MTHFR issues, you may not do well on it either. 

You can take 2 heaping tablespoons of collagen each day with some vitamin C or ascorbic acid. 

I’m currently taking Garden of Life Collagen but you can get Vital Proteins via a link on the sidebar of my website or you can do Great Lakes Gelatin which is a good brand and frankly is the most affordable. I will link to that one too. 

Thanks so much for listening. Do you take collagen? Shoot me an email and let me know how you use it. 

Come join me in the Help for Hashimoto’s facebook group and sign up for my newsletter at helpforhashimotos.com. I just sent out information about resistant starch with a really good recipe link for a great way to get more of it. 

Until next week! 

 Create an account with Fullscript here for Garden of Life Collagen Peptides (other brands available too) and ascorbic acid or chewable vitamin c. 

Great Lakes Collagen- Amazon 

How to heal your body with your mind with Beth Daniel Jones of Healing Solutions

We are going woo woo today talking about energy medicine and how to identify and clear blocks to healing in the body. When you have a thyroid problem it can be related to not being able to speak your truth. Are you speaking your truth? Learn more at www.besthealingsolutions.com

Food Sensitivity Testing and more with Reed Davis of FDN

AIP diet and vacation; feeling apathetic and tired all the time.

Hi, 

I am two weeks in to the AIP diet and am planning a vacation in December to an all inclusive resort. Will I undo all my hard work on this diet if I go off plan for a week? What if I have a glass of wine? How much damage will it do? 

Sarah,

Hi Sarah. Thanks for your question. You will be three months in to AIP which is a good amount of time on the diet. Some people only need that long to see a real benefit. The trick will be reintroducing foods while you are there. Your body will have had a good amount of time to heal which means your body will have the ability to give you a proper response to your reintroductions while on vacation. OR you could do a few reintro’s a week before you go in case you have some major digestive, skin or emotional reaction. This way you will be able to deal with it before your trip. Otherwise I would not really stress out too much about it because you want to enjoy your trip and sometimes stressing about what to eat is worse than eating the actual foods you want to. I would be mindful of not eating gluten and dairy since they are often a problem for autoimmune thyroid patients and if your symptoms before the diet change were not too terrible then you might be just fine. Just take it one meal at a time and play it by ear while on vacation. Make sure you are eating a lot of vegetables and fruits and enjoy an occasional glass of wine.  Have a great vacation. 

How do you know if your Hashimoto’s is the cause of your apathy (lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern) and fatigue?  I know others who do not have any problem. My husbands wife has it as well and is thin, walks, does yoga, stays up past 10, etc. I am getting worse. I am tired and now apathetic about not getting anything done. I am eating anything because no matter what, I will gain weight. Is it hashimoto’s or something else? My doctor can't find any reason for me to be so tired. I just want to do nothing all day. I do work, so Monday-Friday I have to get up to the alarm, and then plant myself on the couch when I get home. This is existing, not a life.

I found a study linking major depressive disorder (depressed mood, low self esteem, loss of interest or pleasure in activities you used to find enjoyable) and the hypthalamic-pituitary-thyroid (HPT) axis. The amount of dysfunction in the HPT axis was related to how severe the depression was. Lower T3 and TSH was an indication of thyroid dysfunction in major depressive disorder. This study found a correlation, not causation but is still something to consider (1). 

Some other things to consider with apathy are your hormones. If you have an imbalance of estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone this can affect the neurotransmitters in your brain. Estrogen imbalances will have an effect on serotonin receptors in the brain. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that gives you a feeling of well being and happiness as well as helping you learn, have memory and more. Estrogen imbalances will mess with dopamine too (a hormone and neurotransmitter related to motivation in reward-motivation behavior) and thyroid hormone is needed for all neurotransmitter receptors in the brain. 

Some questions you should be asking yourself and your doctor: 

• Is my medication doing it’s job?

• Do I need more T3, am I converting enough T3?

• What is my diet like?

  • Are you on a gluten free, dairy free diet?

  • Are you sensitive to any other foods?

• Is my cortisol high in the evening and low in the morning?

• How is my stress level?

• How is my sleep?

• Am I on a blood sugar roller coaster?

Something is not right, obviously you know that- the way you feel is no way to live and let me say to you that it is not your fault, you cannot just push through it and I hope you have some good support. You don’t deserve to feel this way. I have been there. My first inclination is to ask if you are on natural desiccated thyroid hormone like Armour or if it is a T4 only medication like levothyroxine because it sounds like you need T3 and if you are not eating a healthy diet, that needs to change. 

(1) Jia Y, Zhong S, Wang Y, Liu T, Liao X, Huang L. The correlation between biochemical abnormalities in frontal white matter, hippocampus and serum thyroid hormone levels in first-episode patients with major depressive disorder. Journal of Affective Disorders. 2015;180:162-169.

Are heavy periods and hypothyroidism related?

If I take Armour Thyroid will it interfere with drinking celery juice everyday?   Julie

Hi Julie, 

First of all, it depends on how you are taking your meds and when you are taking them. Do you take it first thing in the morning with water? Or do you take it sublingually (under your tongue)? Most thyroid meds need to have time to absorb when taken orally so I wouldn’t drink your celery juice and then take your pill. Personally I take my Armour by chewing it up and putting it under my tongue and letting it dissolve directly in to my blood stream. Then you don’t have to wait to eat. I can’t speak to how this works with T4 only medications though. 

Celery in general is really good for us. It has never really been a favorite of mine but I do eat it- mostly as part of the onion/carrot/celery base for soups but I have been drinking some celery juice too. I cannot stand the taste by itself though so I have to do a mixture of celery, cucumber, lemon or apple. 

Celery is anti-inflammatory, especially protecting the digestive tract from inflammation. Celery contains pectin which forms a gel like substance and can help move things along so to speak. It can also help lower cholesterol. 

Celery is a good antioxidant containing vitamin C and flavanoids. You should eat your fresh celery within 5-7 days to be sure you are getting all the good stuff before it loses all the nutrients you are buying it for. 

It is high in vitamin K, molybdenum, folate, potassium, B vitamins, fiber and several minerals. 

Celery can decrease oxidative damage (damage to cells) too. So all in all it is a really good thing to have in your diet. Go ahead and enjoy it. 

I had a question a while back about how menstrual cycles are affected. I misplaced the actual question because I got so busy with school but if I am remembering right, it was about heavy periods. If you asked this question which would have been months ago and this is not correct, please email me at stephanie@outofthewoodsnutriiton.com and clarify what you wanted to know. I’ve been down a rabbit hole of scientific research which is really time consuming so I spent the better part of yesterday trying to find some good information on how hypothyroidism affects a woman’s menstrual cycle. If you are a guy who is listening- this is for you because you likely know a woman or two and it won’t kill you to know this information. 

It seems like everything I research boils down to not enough free T3 when it comes to problems and hypothyroidism. 

How does thyroid problems, specifically hypothyroidism affect a woman’s period?

• not enough thyroid hormone, ovaries might not make enough progesterone which helps keep flow low

• not enough thyroid hormone, you might not make enough of the coagulation factors that prevent heavy bleeding

• not enough thyroid hormone, you make less sex hormone binding globulin and are exposed to more estrogen which can lower progesterone. progesterone thins the uterine lining and prevents heavy menstrual flow.

Weeks AD. Menorrhagia and hypothyroidism. Evidence supports association between hypothyroidism and menorrhagia. BMJ. 2000 Mar 4;320(7235):649.

Menorrhagia is the medical term for heavy menstrual periods which can be common for women with hypothyroidism. It has been suggested that diagnosing hypothyroidism as a cause for menorrhagia is not happening as often as it should be. One study tested for thyrotrophin releasing hormone (a signal from the brain to release TSH which tells the thyroid to make T4) in 67 women with heavy periods that had normal blood levels of thyroixine (t4) and TSH. The women treated with thyroxine saw an improvement in their periods/flow to what is considered normal. So if you are on medication and still having heavy periods, your medication may not be optimized. This was me from the get go. I finally went to the doctor for heavy periods and she put me on the pill plus an IUD and then offered to remove my uterus because I was not a good candidate for ablasion. Once again- we should always be asking WHY. Why do you have heavy periods. Let’s stop getting bandaids for our problems and get to the bottom of the problem. Finding the root cause. 

Another study shows that low plasma levels of thyroid hormone shift the hemostatic system - the system that prevents or stops bleeding aka prevents hemorrhage- towards a hypocoagulable and hyper fibrinolytic state. Coagulation means that blood becomes more gel like instead of liquid. Hypocoagulable would mean that clots are slow to form. 

fibrinolysis means there is the break down of clots. Fibrin is a mesh like substance in the body that is broken down by the process of fibrinolysis. It is the body’s way of keeping blood clots from forming and becoming an issue. 

High levels of thyroid hormone in the blood create more coagulation and less breakdown of fibrin. In general, low T4 can lead to higher risk of bleeding and therefore higher blood loss.

Our body works well when all systems are working well together. Much of this dysfunction with periods really starts with managing blood sugar. I really wish I knew what I know now 30 years ago. So much of my life was just messed up. I almost said wasted but it wasn't really wasted but I did spend a lot of time not feeling good. Like just feeling unwell. Low energy, bad skin, sick all the time. Food is medicine guys. I can’t say that enough. 

Low plasma levels of thyroid hormone shift the hemostatic system towards a hypocoagulable and hyper fibrinolytic state. Coagulation means that blood becomes more gel like instead of liquid. Hypocoagulable would mean that clots are slow to form. 

Fibrinolysis means there is the break down of clots. Fibrin is a mesh like substance in the body that is broken down by the process of fibrinolysis. It is the body’s way of keeping blood clots from forming and becoming an issue. 

High levels of thyroid hormone in the blood create more coagulation and less breakdown of fibrin. In general, low T4 can lead to higher risk of bleeding and therefore higher blood loss. 

How does Hashimoto's affect pregnancy? Episode 59

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. 

Is gluten sensitivity a real thing?

Hi there. Welcome to Episode 58. Thanks for joining me. I missed you last week. 

I had one heck of a week with school Each week we have discussion posts we have to do research on and I spent about 11 hours trying to find research on my topic. I have to be honest. I did not do my best work the first time around when I posted on my topic. I was about 6 hours in to finding hardly anything in the way of research articles to back up my words. I posted anyway and then had to basically redo the whole thing. So I had to spend another five hours. I was so frustrated and in tears just so upset about the whole thing. This research shouldn’t take that long. I actually contemplated dropping the class. I would have been out money so I opted to stay in the class but next quarter I am dropping down to one class a quarter until next summer when I will take two 2 credit classes for a total of four credits instead of the 7 credits I am currently taking. 

It is also summer. My poor daughter is stuck not being able to do much because I am in school plus seeing clients part time. Everything in my life is being done half way so I had to drop school down to one class. I just completely forgot about the podcast last week.  It is tough to get work done when my kids are home. Lots of mom guilt going on here! 

Anyhow. I am learning about all the foods in Whole Food Nutrition and Supplementation and this week we are learning about grains. 

Grains are something that I don’t personally do well with. I have had a few gluten free sandwiches over the last couple weeks. A sandwich is just quick and easy and sometimes I miss having a darn sandwich. I also paid for it. I immediately got a scab on my chest and the other night I felt like there was some kind of poison just underneath my skin on my shoulder that I itched until it became a scab too. This was a common thing for me when I ate gluten. I am sure the stress of school just exacerbated the whole issue because I can do a sandwich here and there and I don’t have that issue. Last week we also had really horrible gluten free pizza in addition to a couple sandwiches so I really stressed my body. 

Alright.  Let’s talk about Non Celiac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS)and how that affects those of us with autoimmune disease. 

It is an actual thing but not a lot is known about it. Here is what I learned from an article in the Journal of Gastroenterolgy 2015 called NonCeliac Gluten and Wheat Sensitivity. 

Since around 2005 the gluten free diet became quite popular and it has been going strong since then. As of 2015 when this article came out around 100 million Americans were eating gluten free this and that each year. 

Some people don’t think a gluten free diet is healthy unless you have celiac disease. I’m not sure how that makes sense to anyone since people with celiac disease seem to do just fine not consuming glutenous grains. 

There is some thought that NCGS plays some kind of part in IBS, chronic fatigue, autoimmune disease and more. 

Wheat is everywhere. Most of us grew up on it. Bread, pasta, cake, cereal, cookies and so on. It is a filler and it is in the beauty industry. 

If you have an allergy to wheat, your adaptive immune system is involved.  Your T regulatory cells are activated in your intestinal lining. In an actual allergy, you have a histamine response and the immunoglobulin E or IgE cells get involved. In celiac disease (1% of the population) your body creates antibodies against something called transglutaminase-2. 

In NCGS, you can have a reaction to gluten without it being an allergy or celiac. In my case, I don’t know if I have celiac as I was never tested. I felt better off gluten and that was enough for me. If you have symptoms and they improve on a gluten free diet then it might be likely you have NCGS. You may not experience damage to your microvilli like you would if you had celiac disease and there is no IgE reaction but you can have GI symptoms like cramping, bloating, diarrhea or no GI symptoms at all.

The example given in the article is a case of a woman with diarrhea 3x a day with bloating. Her appetite was good and she was of normal weight. She was on an antibiotic for 6 years for acne. She didn’t have any parasites or anything like that. Her symptoms did not improve with removal of the antibiotic or when she was given anti-diarrhea medicine. She lived like this for two years. 

She then tried a gluten free diet and within 4 days her diarrhea was gone. She did a 6 week gluten challenge- or went back on gluten for six weeks. They tested her intestines with a biopsy after 6 weeks gluten free and everything was normal. She went back on a gluten free diet and all symptoms were gone again. 

Now NCGS is defined in the medical literature and it looks like this: 

I am quoting from the article: “a clinical entity induced by the ingestion of gluten leading to intestinal and or extra intestinal symptoms that resolve once the gluten-containing (food) is eliminated from the diet and when celiac disease and wheat allergy have been ruled out.”

There is some question still about the validity of NCGS so defining food sensitivity and food intolerance has become an issue. 

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases define it as: 

Food intolerance: when the body lacks a particular enzyme to digest nutrients, nutrients are too abundant to be digested completely, or a particular nutrient cannot be digested properly… symptoms are mostly gastrointestinal and secondary to sugar fermentation by our gut microbes, causing gas/bloating/abdominal pain/diarrhea or constipation or a problem with FODMAPs (fermentable oligo- and disaccharides, monosaccharides and polyols or lactulose. 

Food allergy: When as stated earlier, your body has an immediate immune response to something you ate. 

Grains and wheat are not huge sources of FODMAPs and the authors make clear that in the case of NCGS, FODMAPs are not causing inflammation in the gut and are not causing NCGS or IBS. 

There are proteins in grains that are only in grains that are thought to be the reason so many of us are developing NCGS and so we should maybe be using the words wheat sensitivity rather than gluten sensitivity.  For me this makes sense if my food allergy testing from Genova Diagnostics was correct all those years ago because it showed I was more sensitive to wheat than to gluten. 

When you experience symptoms of NCGS they can happen in a matter of hours or take days after you consume gluten containing grains and they go away quickly when you take the offending food away. They are saying the most common symptoms are stomach related- pain, gas, bloat, constipation, diarrhea. Others will have headache or migraine, brain fog, chronic fatigue, joint/muscle pain, tingly extremities, numbness in leg/arm, eczema, anemia, depression or a lessening of your autoimmune symptoms or antibodies. 

NCGS can be related to or affect schizophrenia, autism, allergies and autoimmune diseases. It is not thought to be all that uncommon with the prevalence of it being underestimated. The article states that many people with digestive distress may not relate their problems to gluten and NCGS. It appears to be more often occurring in woman and young to middle aged adults. 

We know for sure that the antigen(something that creates and immune response)  gliadin in gluten is a big player here. Gliadin does a lot of stuff in the body related to the immune system, causing cell death and most notably creates openings or spaces in the tight junctions of our small intestine. It doesn’t appear that people with NCGS are having more intestinal permeability than the average person though I don’t think a lot of testing has been done. They do have some higher levels of some immune system cells leading researchers to believe the the innate (quicker to respond) immune system is responsible. 

What are you supposed to do with this information? We know the proteins in wheat are similar to the proteins of our thyroid. If we have inflammation and antibodies- our immune system can attack our thyroid tissue. This is important to know. You have nothing to lose by removing gluten and eating more real whole foods. You can remove it for a month and try reintroduce it and see what happens. Take note of symptoms mentioned like brain fog, headaches, fatigue, joint/muscle pain. If you are experiencing those, you can try to eliminate gluten and all processed foods really and see how you feel. And remember. It took some time for you to “get sick” and really notice your symptoms. True healing takes time. Not just a couple weeks though you might find yourself feeling better, your body needs time to really heal. 

That is it for me today. If you have a question you would like to address send me an email at helpforhashimotos.com or fill out the contact form on my website Helpforhashimotos.com. 

I am currently taking new clients and would love to help you navigate your way through diet and lifestyle changes. 

Take care. 

Why do I still feel horrible on my thyroid medication?

Can CBD oil help Hashimoto's?

Welcome to episode 56. 

I have a question that I think could be good for your podcast. I was recently diagnosed with hypothyroidism (presence of TPO antibodies but only at 10) and came across your podcast in my research. 

I was wondering what you thought about the use of CBD oil to treat autoimmune diseases, Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism. I haven’t found a lot of research on it, but I’m always interested in anything that has the potential to reduce inflammation. 

Thank you!  Tiffany

Well Tiffany, this is a good question. I’ve tried CBD myself and have not found much of a difference but that doesn’t mean you won’t.   

Let’s talk a bit about what CBD is. Cannabis sativa L. plant has around 750 chemical compounds of which more than 100 are cannabinoids. THC which is what has a psychotropic effect on you when you take it, and cannabidiol or CBD are the most plentiful chemical compounds in the cannabis plant. 

Both of these have a lot of therapeutic effects and when taken together, they work together. CBD has been found very useful for treating all kinds of chronic illness including seizures, cancers. 

CBD has no mind altering properties to it but it does have really great anti-inflammatory properties so in the case of autoimmune disease in general it may be very helpful. CBD is also a great anti-oxidant, anti-seizure, helps with inflammation in joints, muscles and fibrous tissues, helps keep you from vomiting or being nauseous and has properties to it that make it antibacterial. 

CBD is found in hemp seeds and fiber but probably so low that you would have to consume a fair amount of the seeds to get the effects of the cannabinoid. 

We have receptors all over the body for cannabinoid which causes a physiological response to CBD and other biologically active compounds found in cannabis along with the cannabinoids our own body naturally produces. 

In 1992 a whole entire system called the endocannabinoid receptor system was discovered. This means we make our own cannabinoids. 

Some studies show that CBD is not toxic even at high doses but it can affect how your liver processes some drugs- actually stopping metabolism of other drugs causing you to need more and more of the drug.  Other studies have shown it can affect your fertility. Low doses may be stimulating and high doses of CBD can cause the opposite effect. 

Let’s talk a bit more about the endocannabinoid receptor system. 

We are made up of trillions of cells. Those cells make up tissues which make up organs which make up systems. We have a cardiovascular system, and immune system, endocrine system, nervous system and so on.  The cells that make up your nervous system will talk to another system through neurotransmitters, hormones, cells and even drugs to cause things to happen in the nervous system as well as other systems. So stress of any kind will affect the nervous system which will also affect the immune system and the chemical messaging endocannabinoid system. 

This system helps the nervous system cells talk to each other and their environment which has a goal of achieving balance or homeostasis throughout the body.  Apparently it plays a general role in our health but especially is important to our brain and immune system. 

This endocannabinoid system influences to some degree the immune system to help protect us from autoimmune disease and to reduce inflammation. 

I found one study particularly for cannabinoids and autoimmune disease but when I pulled it up it was all in Hebrew, literally. There is a ton of research on it for schizophrenia and other brain type disorders as well as pain management. 

Where cannabinoids may be helpful for us is in regulating the immune system, in how they affect the brain and as an anti-inflammatory. It helps to keep the immune cells in our brain in check but other studies show it can raise the Th-1 response and if you are Th-1 dominant that can be a problem but that it can also help the immune system behave. 

So as with everything, you can give it a try and pay close attention to how your body responds. It is not the panacea it is made out to be, that is for sure. 

Also, be aware that many products on the market are testing negative for CBD according to a 2015 study and 70% of online CBD products are testing negative or are mislabled.  Get it from a trusted source. Personally I cannot recommend any products. 

How do I know if my disease is in remission?

hello, 

My name is Yolanda, and I’ve been suffering with hashimotos for almost 8 years now. My question is regarding thyroid antibodies. I’ve never had high antibodies yet I was diagnosed with hashimotos after an ultrasound to my thyroid. I had 2 small modules that have now disappeared, and also my thyroid has shrunk considerably, I imagine because of the medication. 

I take 90 mcg of NP Thyroid plus a bit of t3 and LDN at night, which has been a godsend for my insomnia. It’s not that I’m complaining of not having high antibodies but it makes it harder to know if I will ever be in remission, given that that is usually how people measure their level of sickness. 

I’ve read that a small percentage of people don’t show high antibodies and yet still have the disease. Should I approach my hashis from a different angle? Any insight on why and how this happens would be of great help.

Hi Yolanda, 

Thanks for writing in. This is a good question- all questions are good questions though! 

since I currently have access to loads of scientific research I found a study called A comprehensive score to diagnose Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis: a proposal. 

I the study they kind of explain how ultrasound diagnoses hashimoto’s. 

Sometimes this disease is diagnosed with labs, antibody tests or with labs and an ultrasound. With ultrasound they are looking for echogenicity which means a uniform thyroid gland- it looks the same on both sides- no damage or issues. 

Antibodies are used as a tool to predict disease development.  TPO antibodies are only found in 12-26% of people tested and thyroglobulin antibodies are found in around 14% of people. 

Ultrasound findings would be things like Diffuse hypoechogenicity which as far as I can tell means there is a nodule on the thyroid. An irregular echopattern from the ultrasound waves indicates hypothyroidism. 

I couldn’t find a lot of information about this with the amount of time I have to spend on it. 

I found another study called Comparison of thyroglobulin and thyroid peroxidase antibodies measured by five different kits in autoimmune thyroid diseases. 

In it they discuss how diagnosis or finding hashimoto’s is done with TPO antibodies which is the better test of the two antibody tests. The other test is thyroglobulin antibodies.  There isn’t a lot of information to compare the two tests in diagnosis. In those tested, Hashimoto’s patients were more frequently testing positive for thyroglobulin antibodies than TPO antibodies.  

The kits mentioned in the title are testing kits. 

This information doesn’t feel very helpful to me. I’m not sure why your antibodies are lower. It could be that something else has caused damage to your thyroid gland. 

I would pay close attention to your symptoms and notice how you feel. If you are not doing dietary changes then you should consider that first and foremost. Food is medicine and what we eat is information for our cells and helps them operate optimally or keeps them from operating optimally. 

Antibodies will fluctuate from day to day because   your immune system varies from day to day so you have to keep that in mind. A blood test of any kind is just a snapshot of what was going on in your body at the time your blood was drawn.

I’m sorry I couldn’t find a good answer to your question. I think you have to not worry about relying on a lab test to know you are in remission. Go by how you feel, how you are sleeping, what your energy levels are. Those things matter more than a blood test. 

You will always have to manage this with diet and lifestyle. That will never change.