Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
Functional Medicine & Natural Healing Podcast
The Complex World of Thyroid Disorders and Natural Remedies
Are you walking around with a hidden health problem? It's time to tune in to our latest episode where Dr. Gabe Ariciu and I uncover the secrets of thyroid disorders, diagnostics, and natural healing techniques. We dig deep into the role of this small yet mighty gland and its significant impact on your metabolism. You'll soon discover why thyroid dysfunction is so widespread in the U.S and learn about the standard tests and treatments available.
After listening, you'll have a clear understanding of the symptoms and root causes of hypothyroidism, such as Hashimoto's and hormone imbalances. You'll also gain an insight into the effect of certain antigens on your immune system, including food, toxins, heavy metals, and estrogen from plastics, each of which can contribute to thyroid dysfunction. We pull no punches as we emphasize the importance of doctors focusing on the root causes, not just the symptoms.
Throughout the episode, we explore the complexities of thyroid health and the many factors that can influence it, including diet, chronic infections, and hormone dominance. We'll give you strategies for managing these factors and discuss why tackling these health issues is crucial before trying to reduce thyroid medication. We round off with a powerful message about the importance of tailoring and sticking to your health journey. This is one episode you won't want to miss!
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Welcome to the Functional Medicine and Natural Healing Podcast, where we share the secrets to upgrade your digestion, improve your hormones, restore your immune system and detoxify your body. I'm your host, dr Houston Anderson. Now let's get started. The following discussion is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or disease process. Please discuss any medical treatments or medical interventions with your personal physician. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm here with Dr Gabe Arichu and we are going to talk about things thyroid today. This is one of Dr Gabe's favorite things to do, or something that we're forced to do all day, every day in the office, because it's trendy and because it's important. Why don't we go ahead and get started? Give us a little bit of info on the thyroid, doc Sure.
Speaker 2:The thyroid is a little butterfly shaped gland that we got down here in the bottom of our throat near our larynx. It's really, really important, kind of in an acupuncture way. I kind of like thinking of it. In that sense it's related to fire, because it's controlling and regulating your metabolism. Without the thyroid, creating thyroid hormone, you don't really have an accelerator on your metabolism, or a regulator because it accelerates and slows it down, depending on what is needed. It's crucially important.
Speaker 1:I love that you put that brake pedal on there too, because I think that everyone thinks like more and more and more with the thyroid. But it's really about balance. With the thyroid Pretty prevalent in America, the numbers are pretty, maybe unreliable. We know that a lot of women have it, a lot of men have it. Up to 20% of women are suffering from it Functional thyroid disorders. Honestly, if we're to go at people that just have symptoms or have an altered hormone level to some degree in any way, shape or form, that's probably half of America. At any given time. You catch a cold, you eat unhealthy for a while, things like that. All of a sudden, your thyroid is going to have dysfunction. Once again. We'll get into whether it's an actual root cause or whether it's a symptom as we go on today. Can you tell us why? You're giving me an idea? You think you have a thyroid problem. You go to your primary care. What are they going to look at there?
Speaker 2:Typically you're going to see maybe one lab ran, sometimes two. Usually they're going to run. If they're going to run a thyroid at all, they're going to run PSH and then T4. If you know what's going on with your thyroid, that's not overly bad to track things, which we'll talk about. You're going to miss a whole lot of things if only a TSH is ran, because how often do both of us see a TSH normal, but then the other markers that we like to run or not? It ends up being a bit problematic. Things get missed. Hashimoto's gets missed all the time, partly because, well, what are you going to do with it from a medical standpoint?
Speaker 1:Correct. Yeah, I see that too. You said the TSH, the T4 usually ran. Now I am seeing more like a TPO antibody being run, sometimes rarely DCF Thibraglobulin antibody. Rarely DCF Free T3, reverse T3. You don't see many of these labs that are being run by the doctors very often. But, yeah, like you said, let's say that you show up with TPO antibodies, which means you might have Hashimoto's. What are they going to do about it? They essentially diagnose you as that. That's your permanent condition. There's no way for you to get healthier. They're just waiting for it to be so problematic that they either medicated at the current time or they cut it out or irradiate it. So, once again, those are aggressive things. So they don't want to be aggressive. Their version of preventative is just like let's wait and see, and some of you guys, yeah, may get better just by waiting. It does happen, but it's not the most active way to do it. So, medication-wise, typically they're going to use what? Centroid level? Thyroxine is a generic. What else do you see?
Speaker 2:If they're going to counteract the inflammation side of things, you might see methotrexate or some of those ones where they're trying to do a little bit of immune suppression if it's Hashimoto's, but yeah, usually it's centroid level thyroxine if they're going to do anything at all, or, like you said, they're just going to kind of track and wait and see how things go. And I think that's really one of the main reasons why TPO isn't often ran or any of these antibodies, because what are they going to do about it? It's going to happen and so all they're going to do is wait until your thyroid hormones out of range, your TSH is out of range, and then give you some hormone.
Speaker 1:So let's be clear on that. Doc, have you seen people's thyroid heal?
Speaker 2:I have seen you go into remission. You don't really see a major change, the change that people want to see in the antibodies. They think it's going to go completely back to normal. I always kind of relate it to them like the Epstein-Barr virus antibodies You're always going to have a little bit of antibody out of range, but ideally it should be lower. It's definitely lower. You shouldn't have, like you know, ranges over the thousand or whatever it is where their thyroid's just actively being destroyed. But you're gonna have it out of range just because that's what's going on now their bodies actively creating those antibodies. But it shouldn't be where they're constantly feeling the Fatigue and all the symptoms.
Speaker 1:Their thyroid should function relatively normal right, yeah, and so something to know about antibodies is that they do have half-lives right and they're slow. So I think a lot of people might go see a holistic practitioner run their TPO antibodies day one or something like that, and then come back, you know, even three months later, and say, hey, they're still there and everyone's like, yeah, see, they never go away. But the reality that I've seen over time is that the healthier you get, obviously the lower they're gonna be. But even if you were perfectly healthy in a week, it still takes time for your immune system to down-regulate those antibodies because they're acting as a protective mechanism. So that's something that I got to remind my patients that oftentimes at a year and a half I see that they are down to zero or less than 10, whereas. But in that first year it's very unlikely that they're gonna get to a zero, you know, in in three weeks or something like that.
Speaker 1:Cool studies out there. There's a lot of things coming and I think we'll do a second thyroid podcast more and some of the details that we've seen in practice. We want this to be more of a broad spectrum, one sub in holistic medicine. What are you gonna do different than just prescribe a thyroid medication, doc. What are you thinking?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, I want to run a full panel. We need a full panel. You need the free and Total T3, t4 hormones. You got to get a good broad example, like I just went over a thyroid panel today and you know a lot of the markers can end as well as their age and that they're female kind of point towards what would be most common Hashimoto's right, but there wasn't Hashimoto's. They had a relatively will functionally low TSH and functionally low T3, which kind of points towards possibly like a conversion issue. So that's the reason why that's important to run a full panel, because there's several different patterns that we could be looking at. As much as you know, we think Hashimoto's is everything, so therefore that's the only thing we see and it's like no, there's a lot more going on and sometimes you know how often are we treating a secondary thyroid issue without even knowing it, because because somebody's tired, because they have a viral issue.
Speaker 2:For sure, for sure. And so, yeah, somebody walks in my door and then they haven't had a full thyroid panel ran and everything points towards it. They got hair loss, thinning of the outer side of their eyebrow, things like that fatigue. I'm going to, for sure, run a panel on them and it's not that expensive really like, that's what's ridiculous. It's cheap and just get that panel ran so we know what's going on, and then from there we decide what, what is best, depending on the type of thyroid issues that's going on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. I think I think I get both in the office. I see people that come in with just their TSH and they're Disgusted by their doctor because they didn't run a full panel and and and I see both ways, like I. I don't want anyone to think that it's he doesn't have any value, right? I think a lot of people are just they're always want their t3, they always want the t4, the free, the, the reverse t3, the uptake numbers and all of those give us the differential information. I think we'll save most of that lab detail for the second podcast, maybe some common patterns and lab testing so people can kind of Diagnose at home a little bit better without having to call us. But but I do say like that, your TSH has value If you're doing everything else, and so that's the one thing that I always say. So I'll often run a TSH, we'll run a full panel at first and then follow up if the TSH is already at a five.
Speaker 1:My first goal is get that TSH lower. I could care less what all the other numbers are. Then, once that TSH is lower, now we rerun everything and see okay, are we optimized? Because you can still feel pretty bad with a normal TSH is our point. But if the TSH is already off, that's kind of enough to get started, because all of the other markers Unbeknownst to many people, all the other markers don't tell you exactly what the problem is. They just tell you you have another problem, right? So you can see a little bit of a t3, t4 conversion issue on your labs. But why is it there? Why isn't the liver converting? Why isn't the gut converting? Who's going to go and figure out that information for you? So that's where it's like like you can take whatever you have and get started. But then you know, if you've addressed some things and you don't feel better, definitely that's going to be pretty serious. Now hyperthyroid not too common. Do you see hyperthyroid very often in your office?
Speaker 2:This year I haven't actually seen it. Last year it was interesting. I had three or four graves in my office like I was surprised. It just seemed like one right after the other. But not this year. I haven't really seen much. But I have had people with graves disease come in and I mean you treat it relatively the same to Hashimoto's, it just has different symptoms.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the big thing I always say with graves it's hard, because if you ever get into like an actual a storm that's going on with graves, we're kind of limited in what we can do you do end up in the ER. The hospital we don't have medications that can you know instantly, kind of turn that off. And so that's why you'll actually see very few people come to a holistic practitioner for graves, because essentially, let's say that they're having a thyroid storm from Graves disease like their heart palpitations are so intense, their heart rate so fast, they're running to the ER as fast as possible and they never really have the time. Versus Hashimoto's or hypothyroidism comes on slow and they get more tired and more tired and it happens over the course of, you know, five to ten years even sometimes, and so they they're often, like you know, have time to kind of meet with one of us and kind of try and figure some things out like, hey, I just don't feel right, but oftentimes that thyroid storm can hit quick and you just end up in the hospital.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, for sure. Thankfully I haven't had to deal with that and these people were relatively well. They just wanted to see what kind of natural route could help them.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. That's awesome. Okay, what? What do you think the most common Patient presentation is for thyroid? Someone comes in and they suspect they have a thyroid. What is this? I'm just gonna say a female look like to you.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean they're 30s, 40s. Usually they're gonna be tired, they're gonna be sunk. Weight gain is oftentimes a thing. Hair loss, that or third of the eyebrow, that's kind of random. I don't really see it all the time, but it's definitely there when I see it Right. Sometimes there's gut issues, sometimes there's some mental health issues, like a little bit of anxiety or depression, but usually it's fatigue, hair loss and maybe I got issue. That's probably the most common.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very, very cool. And I would say, obviously the female coming in, her biggest complaint is weight gain, right, but the big thing there is that nowadays because I think a lot of the holistic community is aware of thyroid disorders A lot of people are coming in for weight gain but it really has nothing to do with their thyroid right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they're straight. I mean, what's the most common issue that we got in America? Insulin resistance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so that's gonna be a secondary thyroid issue. Correct, correct. So let's start talking about that. So what are some of the root causes, or things that you see, of causes of hypothyroidism, doug?
Speaker 2:So with hypo, number one is gonna be Hashimoto's. That's the most common. You're gonna see that a lot. We can go into detail on that. But the other one probably is blood sugar, insulin issues. I see that quite frequently, especially with a TSH that's below 1.8. That's pretty common. I mean not, like you said, we can go into detail on those labs later, but that and then hormones are gonna be at play, but again they're kind of secondary. You'll look at the thyroid and maybe there's some support that you need to give. But the solution is elsewhere, whereas with Hashimoto's and I mean technically even with Hashimoto's it's your immune system, it's not the thyroid. The thyroid is just getting the brunt of the attack, and so the immune system needs to be addressed. What is causing the immune system to be on high alert, which is very different from the medical community who says that there's immune system on haywire?
Speaker 1:It's like, yeah, your body's not dumb.
Speaker 2:It's just on high alert because it's been impacted by what we would call a foreign invader or an offender or something like that, an antigen that has repeatedly caused it to be on alert.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so common antigens there? Obviously infections, food and then toxins, right. And in today's toxic world, yeah, it could be heavy metals. That's a simple one that we would blame. It could be something like mold, but the reality is like, even like the plastics, the estrogen and plastics act as a huge problem there. In fact, I do find hormones, aka estrogen, to be a huge problem with thyroid. But I often wonder and I don't always differentiate if it's just estrogen and chemicals or actually systemic estrogen from themselves. Sometimes I don't really care because I'm just gonna detox it either way, but probably I should be looking into, like, what's the plastic load in the body, which is probably pretty high on so many people these days.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean it's ridiculous how often we're drinking water bottles in plastic, like plastic water bottles, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think just so we have. Autoimmune is the most important, Iodine deficiency is pretty important and as far as iodine deficiency, it's funny I know there's a lot of saying that like we don't get any iodine in our diet and stuff like that. I try not to go too far into like there's no way to be healthy without like taking a supplement, because I like people to be healthy without supplements, right?
Speaker 2:I'm generally speaking, for sure.
Speaker 1:But the amount of bromide, which is probably the most toxic competitor for iodine in our diets, it just keeps increasing. In fact, I saw a diagram the other day which is showing how much bromide is actually in the car plastics that you put your arms on.
Speaker 1:And I know I agree that like that all the car pieces are high in bromide. And here we are, we sit in our cars, rub our arms against it all day long. But I'll have to add that diagram somewhere, maybe on Instagram. But it was just kind of like weird. I was like, well, where do we get all our bromide? And we all think like gluten, right, Our brominated bread and flour. But it was weird to see like, oh, like you don't even think about so many places. So all these chemicals are being put into everything and specifically like your fluoride.
Speaker 2:You got your other ones too. You got your fluoride and chlorine as well, like going swimming in the swimming pool all the time. I mean, there's a lot of competitors to iodine, for sure.
Speaker 1:In Arizona. We all have swimming pools here. I don't, but we all do, and it's like you know. Everyone's always asking you I know, go to a saltwater pool. It has its own issues. Then you got a chlorine based pool. It has its issues too. So we kind of go there. Let's talk about the conversion issue. Where does conversion happen and why is there an issue, doc?
Speaker 2:So liver, gut and then periphery generally is where it's going to be done. And then the conversion issue comes down to between T4 and T3 or reverse T3 and T3. And typically you're needing zinc or selenium there. But that doesn't tell you why. Now it could be just simply you have a zinc deficiency or a selenium deficiency. It could be just absolutely simple. But it could also be like, especially with a reverse T3, it's kind of like homocysteine and some of these other big markers inflammation is going to increase. It Like, okay, that's a very general thing and we like to throw around inflammation all over the place and of course there's a million causes to inflammation. So that would be the big one when we need to figure out stress can cause it. There's a lot of things that will cause it. It's not a marker. I like to run reverse T3 just because we're generally kind of figuring out all the stressors to the body's system and that sort of thing. So. But general inflammation and stressors to the system will cause conversion issues, along with zinc or selenium deficiencies.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I love that. So if I go to like where, I would say if you go to a doctor that says they're like a thyroid doctor, that thyroid doctor should pretty much never talk about your thyroid because all of the conversion, all the activation, all of the problems that go wrong with the thyroid are elsewhere.
Speaker 1:So when you walk so your thyroid issues are relatively rare, really rare, in our offices, right, because once again a real primary thyroid issue is going to have its own almost like urgent kind of needs. You're gonna know, say you're a kid that develops one at like two years old. Things go wrong fast when it's a primary thyroid disorders, but yeah, so everyone wants to talk thyroid, thyroid, what about T3, t4? And it's like, look, that is part of the story, what we're monitoring while we treat everything else. And that's where a lot of people I always say medicine's a little bit more complicated than most lay people think, but a little bit easier than medicine makes it sound. It was laying right in that middle and I can't remember if I said it in the last podcast or not, but it really seems like it's like people learn enough to know they gotta run a full panel, but they don't know enough to know why they've gotta run that full panel.
Speaker 2:So yeah, similar to people who think that you should have a complete lab thing every year, a lab set every year, and it's like you're thinking it does more than it does, yeah, for sure, for sure, like it gives you all the secrets to your story or something. Yeah, and it's like how many people come in and ask it hey, can you run all the vitamins and minerals in my blood work? It's like it's not worth that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and once again, you can run them and it can be a lab point or a point of reference or something like that, but it doesn't tell you why you're low in the zinc, it doesn't tell you why you're low in that selenium, which are huge in thyroid conversion and stuff like that. The other thing that I was gonna say is just, once again, nowadays we're gonna talk about estrogen a little bit, but even more important than estrogen is testosterone therapy and that's why I believe, like testosterone for females is one of the most toxic hormones that someone can add. Testosterone directly increases SHBG, and SHBG and testosterone directly bind to those thyroid hormones. They're more affinitive, or in other words, they're gonna bind better to your thyroid hormones than estrogen. Estrogens more like it kind of stops the process from happening, whereas testosterone is like directly competing for absorption spots on the cells, and so I think that that's an important one.
Speaker 1:A lot of women like don't like that. I take away their testosterone. But the reality is, once you're getting healthy, you're not seeing that much. But yeah, testosterone, when we're back to testosterone, just like thyroid, people want a thyroid test, people want a testosterone test. But once you hear your testosterone test and find out this low. What are you gonna do about it? Right, it's not just like injections or pills. That's not the way it works, that's not holistic. But obviously you can do those things, but they're not gonna be nearly as effective as figuring out why you got low in testosterone in the first place, for both males and females.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what I had a patient recently on progesterone slash, testosterone therapy and level thyroxine.
Speaker 1:There you go.
Speaker 2:It's like oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:And it didn't change anything.
Speaker 2:That was the thing is like she's complaining of certain symptoms and it didn't change anything and I'm like you probably like might wanna think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a lot of people come in and they ask, like, how do I get off my thyroid hormone? And we'll do that in the Q and A another time but, like, can I get off my thyroid hormone? And I always say that my first goal and you can tell me how you approach this, doc but my first goal is to get you feeling well on your thyroid hormone. You're on level thyroxine, you're on synthroid. Let's make sure that you feel good, everything's functioning well while you're using that Band-Aid, and then we can talk about, like, okay, can you decrease that dose or how do you get off of it? How do you approach it, doc?
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, that's the same. I kind of approach a lot of medications like that, especially because I mean it's outside our scope anyway. So it's a little easier to go that route and then be like okay, time to go talk to your doctor. I think you might want to see about coming off of it, but go have that discussion, since you're doing so well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't found any problem locally with someone, when their TSH goes below 0.5, of their doctor saying, hey, let's cut back on that medication, right? Well, like you said, yeah, we don't manage those medications ourselves, if I made it sound that way. But long story short, like we're essentially trying to prove that what we're doing is working. You go and see, the lab says that it works. Now you're going to get off your medication because your lab no longer warrants it.
Speaker 1:So, and same thing, I always tell people with psychiatric medications, if they're going to work with their doctor, to cut it in half. Great, when they get half. When they go half on their medication, they should feel better rather than depressed or anxious. Right, they cut it in half and like I feel amazing, great, now you can disclose that to your doctor and you guys can work on what's the plan to get off it completely if you're feeling better on a decreased dose. So, yeah, medication approach is a whole complicated thing, but we want to get you healthy before you just start pulling medications off 100%, because I mean that can just drop the world from underneath you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. I mean, I actually had a lady yesterday that hasn't happened to me in a long time 32 medications, 32 prescription medications and aggressive ones, and, like my main goal, like there was like six for asthma, right, and I was like, okay, if I can just fix the asthma, we can get you off six medications. Now you're down to 28 medications, which is still a ton, but we can slow it. It's not a typical patient that walks in, but she was referred to applied kinesiology by other people and she said, hey, we have great docs, and so I can't remember what state they were in. But so she started searching for applied kinesiologists and ran into me. So it's pretty funny how that works. Nice, okay, let's say so. We've already talked about a little bit of Hashimoto's. What are some of those Hashimoto's trigger? Where do people need to dig into that autoimmune story?
Speaker 2:So I think number one foods, cause it's so easy to do on your own. I mean there's the six most common ones Gluten's, probably the number one that's implicated with Hashimoto's. Then you also have dairy nightshades, you have corn, you have soy, you have eggs. Those are the big ones. Now, obviously it could be a random other one. I haven't seen it. When it comes to a food, it's usually one of those. It's not bad, like, let's say, it is nightshades, which is your tomato, pepper, potato family. It's not a bad idea to go grain free anyway or legume free. Just start eating healthy because it's going to decrease the inflammation, but don't mistake one of those foods just because it's helping you to feel better as the main trigger.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that that's pretty important. I think everyone comes in because their neighbor got a thyroid pill and they just want that. But I do think that it's up to you oftentimes how fast you want to heal, how often and I'll even say, with weight loss. It's not quite cut and dry with weight loss, but it isn't with thyroid either. But if you go hardcore at your diet and avoid your actual food allergy and you clean up all the toxins in your environment, you're going to see a faster result generally speaking Not always, but generally speaking. If you go at it all in, you get a better result.
Speaker 1:Rather than someone coming in and saying like, do I really have to avoid gluten and dairy? It's like no, you don't have to. We might be able to dial in for you and you only got to avoid one. But the reality is if you just clean up really clean diet, you're going to see a faster result with thyroid and more people need to kind of have that attitude of like I know it's tough, but are you going to do this or not? We're going to take this, and that's kind of a hardcore approach and I'm nicer in the office, but on the podcast we don't have to be nice. So the reality is like are you going to do it or not? It's completely up to you.
Speaker 2:I mean I like the way you stated that because I have seen it. I've seen somebody where gluten was the main cause of their Hashimoto's. They removed it and it took them a good year because that was the only thing they really did. It took them a good year to finally feel energetic, and I wouldn't say they're all the way there by any means, but they're a whole lot better than where they were, and so that would be a big one. Go towards Paleo, remove gluten, remove anything else that's inflammatory, find the main cause. But then what are we going to do as doctors? We're going to go the extra mile and see what is going on with your immune system and the way that we're going to support the immune system. Like, how do I support the Treg cells to help them regulate everything and suppress the inflammation going on? Do they actually need turmeric, like it's so popular out there? Turmeric or resveratrol? It could Like, I've seen it and I've given it to help lower certain inflammatory compounds that your body's creating.
Speaker 2:That helps them get there even quicker. So diet can be a huge. And then I think the other thing we run into is how often is it just Hashimoto's alone, or do they have other issues?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a hard one. I mean, probably the biggest primary story that I see, that's other than Hashimoto's. So I'll just kind of give you my quick autoimmune spiel. I would say autoimmune is just those three main things that I talk about, right, it's foods, it's infection and it's toxins. Right, just to keep it super simple. It can be more complicated, but let's just leave it like that. And then there's autoimmunity, secondary to other things, but other than the autoimmune story.
Speaker 1:You're looking at liver health and how many people have fatty liver in America. It's like 40% of America has fatty liver and they don't have to be overweight. They can be a skinny female or a skinny male that has fatty liver. Now you're taking that conversion, which arguably it's 60% to 80% of your thyroid conversion, and you're just decreasing it. But you may only be decreasing it 20%, but 20% decrease in energy is significant.
Speaker 1:Whenever I talk energy in the office, I talk hours in the day. So let's say that you're awake 16 hours and then you drop from 100% 16 hours to 80% energy. You lose 3.2 hours of energy in your day. So like, instead of you being able to stay up till 10 with energy, you're only up till 630 or something like that with energy. Then you're like grinding it out the last couple hours.
Speaker 1:So I think that's more of an appreciable thing. So when I tell people I'm going to help them with their thyroid and it starts to get better, I'm like just expect a half hour here or there. You're not looking for it, your life's not going to change, your kids aren't going to be easier to take care of, your relationships aren't going to improve, jobs not going to get better. You're just going to have a little bit more energy to do it. So I think that's where I start with thyroid and then we start addressing the other things, because oftentimes people think the thyroid is causing everything and oftentimes it's other things causing the thyroid. Biggest one in the office that I pet peeve is constipation. So like that's like everybody. Oh, I'm constipated because my thyroid doesn't work. I swear. Every naturopath in Arizona says that and I just don't find that to be as critical.
Speaker 2:Not from thyroid. No Job-led are sure, Dutish is sure, but yeah, I just I don't see, I did have one guy.
Speaker 1:He's been with me for about a year. He's been pretty consistent on his visits, maybe every other month, and we finally he came in to get off his thyroid medication and but he also had this like chronic constipation. We fixed his constipation and everything was perfect and then all of a sudden he went to diarrhea. Right, and he goes to diarrhea and it was that thyroid drug that he was taking, because by the time we ran the lab the next time for a thyroid he'd actually been over-medicated. So now he was like his thyroid was perfectly fine and so it was causing loose stools because of overstimulating.
Speaker 1:So let me, let me just cover that last thing because it's another pet peeve of mine. I have a lot of pet peeves when it comes to thyroid because everyone's taking medication, thyroid hormone, in an overstimulation situation feels like stress and insomnia. So I see a little less of the thyroid-medicated patients these days, I think just because I'm getting less medicated people. That in general I would say like one of my old number one causes of insomnia, which is that people are on too high of a thyroid medication. They're trying to push that thyroid medication so far while ignoring all other things. So that's kind of how I see it there. What else do you think we can do for the thyroid doc?
Speaker 2:I think we covered a good portion of it. I mean, the big one that I have come across and I mean this is gonna be more on the pet peeve side of mine is, yes, hashimoto's is really important, but let's not neglect the other major things that affect the thyroid. And I mean we've already touched on this several times, but blood sugar gosh.
Speaker 2:I have seen it so often lately where somebody is not eating enough protein, they're eating too many carbs, and then we get pigeonholed into thinking I still my immune system attacking my thyroid, and it's like no, you're not eating enough protein and you're eating too much carbs, too many carbs, and you gotta fix that.
Speaker 2:And it's like it's a struggle for a lot of people to eat more protein when they realize how much protein they need to actually consume per day. And then for many people, because they haven't done it for years, you tell them well, you gotta eat like 100 grams or something like that. And I'm like what does that look like, doc? Like a pound of meat, and I think it's hard. And or we try to get the protein levels up via like protein powders or protein bars, and then the calories sink and if you don't have enough calories you're gonna be tired, so it ends up being super complicated when it should be super simple. So that's probably the other one that I see all the time that I'm trying to help people with is a blood sugar dysregulation that's leading to a thyroid problem. Whether or not they have Hashimoto's, it doesn't even matter, because this has to be addressed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you mentioned earlier about chronic viral. I think we need to be aware of that all the time. Estrogen dominance, right? So by the time someone comes in and sees a holistic practitioner for weight gain due to thyroid, that weight gain has probably led to estrogen dominance at some point in time.
Speaker 2:And it's just so common, like you were talking about so common have estrogen dominance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in fact I had a patient today that came in and actually it was just like wellness, like they didn't have anything wrong with them, and I was like, oh for sure I'll find an estrogen issue. That's always shows up on a female, that's like 35, 40, didn't show up and I was like, yeah, so surprising not to see it in a quick visit. But her signs and symptoms didn't indicate that. I just thought that I would find it right. But we go along with that muscle testing, and so that's the next thing that I'll say is like, not every doctor is well-versed in thyroid, not every holistic doctor is well-versed in thyroid. There's a couple of questions I always wanna ask is like one does that person believe that you can, at least to a large degree, put the thyroid into remission? And so I try to get that realistic expectation. So a couple of questions we'll follow up with on the next podcast. But like can you reverse nodules 100%? Yes, sometimes they go away on their own, sometimes you gotta treat them, sometimes they're a pain in the butt. All of those are true. Can you get off your thyroid hormone after two, five, 10, 20 years? Yeah, it just depends on how long you've been on it and how many problems you have. Let's say, you've got ulcerative colitis and fatty liver, so like severe gut issues and liver issues, and you're like I need to get off my thyroid meds now. It's not happening, right, you gotta get healthy. Before that happens.
Speaker 1:And I think that that's probably the biggest thing that I wanna share in this podcast is like don't go to your holistic practitioner trying to fix a thyroid without an intention to get healthy as a human, because that's the biggest step. And so people always wanna come in and they just wanna say thyroid so that they can lose 20 pounds. Well, another thing that I'll bring to your attention is like it's really one out of 20 women that I see like less than 5% are taking a thyroid prescription and losing weight. The rest of them take it, maybe feel better, but I don't see them lose 30 pounds. Have you seen the same thing, doc, or no?
Speaker 2:I mean everyone struggles with the weight issue and I mean it's a very common thing that somebody's coming in with, and it's not just another little pet peeve of mine too is the common thing that are told eat less and move more. It's like, oh, come on, if that worked, people would be thin, and it's just doesn't work. We keep repeating it and it's complicated. It can be really complicated because the thyroid, the insulin, hormones like estrogen, that sort of thing, so no, absolutely that's kind of how they're presenting. Even in my office, weight gain is always a difficult. Either they're already thin or they have extra weight and it's just super difficult to get it off and so they just need that extra help. Diet's not doing it alone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think. Yeah, it wasn't turning into a weight loss podcast, but we will say, like the people are always, like you know, I'm eating less than my caloric intake. I'm doing things like that. The thing is, when your cells, your mitochondria, get sick, when your cellular health is poor, those little calorie charts don't really make as much sense as they used to. They're all based upon algorithms and percentages and things like that. You step on the scale and measures like your impedances and stuff like that. They're all based upon percentages. They're not necessarily based upon who you are.
Speaker 1:They don't know if you have heavy metals and mold in your system and at that point in time, and assuming you have a thyroid issue, cells are turning slow. But let's say we have a thyroid working and the cells are turning at the right rate and they're making the right amount of ATP. You could still be years away from getting your body to like what it was when you were toxin free, and so there's just so much more to that weight loss story than just fixing the thyroid. The only other thing I'll say is thyroid is highly correlated with mood. So if you have the weight gain, you have all these symptoms and you have poor mood Sometimes that thyroid can help.
Speaker 1:I will say, like you know, I doubt you use it a lot, but I do use a thyroid glandular on plenty of patients. No hormones obviously in them, but I do use them and I do find that over time they do rebuild that thyroid. Most of my patients are gonna see nodules either stop increasing inside or decrease in size or disappear one of the two. So we do see that you do see a reversal of tissue damage as people get healthier. Now can we guarantee on? No, no, we can't guarantee anything.
Speaker 2:But the reality is that- that's always a struggle for a lot of people. They think, hey, can my thyroid bounce back? And they've been on level of thyroxine for years or Hashimoto's. I'm like we'll see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, my old like just to give people a number, I say if you've been on it more than five years it's a definite maybe right, like it's probably not Less than five years. I'm saying probably so. How long that takes it just depends. But it let's get depends on how much tissue destruction you have, how many nodules you've had.
Speaker 1:I have people functioning with half thyroids, either born with half a thyroid or had half a thyroid removed. So you don't have to have a full functioning thyroid gland to work. Great as a human, but there's more to that. So anyway, we'll cover a lot of the Q and A, because I think a lot of those will go into detail, and I think we'll do another one on just lab patterns. That would be really cool for people just to be able to just kind of self-diagnose at home or know what to bring to their doctor. But this is kind of that overview, you know, of those big things the blood sugar, the Hashimoto's, which is food toxins, and infections, the hormones which always do that. So you can focus on any one of those three things and your thyroid health will start to increase and then you might need more help with a doctor, to kind of dial it in Doc. Still able to get ahold of you on your website.
Speaker 2:Yep easy to get ahold of as usual.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool. So yeah, why don't you guys reach out to us if you have questions? A lot of us find us on Instagram. I have not been getting as many questions on Instagram, so I answer as many as I can, as frequent as I can, but I don't get a hundred anymore. So you know, you might actually get your question answered if you submit one on there. So follow us on Instagram. Anything else you want to say about thyroid before we leave? Doc?
Speaker 2:Oh no, I think we have it pretty well covered. It's definitely something that we see all the time, so if you need any help, please reach out. We're just willing to help in whatever shape or form. You're even posting a lot lately Just messing around on Instagram, so hopefully some of that helps too.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So those quick little thoughts and once again, don't follow tonight category of thinking either thing. There's two extremes thinking that a holistic doctor can fix everything, or thinking that the thyroid can never heal. Neither are true. You've got to figure out where you're at for you and what you're doing to improve your health, and as you do that, you'll eventually start to feel well. And people are just on different timeframes, hence why we call it the health journey. And it's not my journey, it's not Dr Gabe's journey, it's your journey to go ahead and figure out your own health and heal, and we both have our own journeys that we have to do each day. So thanks for listening to the podcast and we'll catch you on the next time, doc.
Speaker 2:All right, take care.