Hello everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Obviously I have been on a break for the last month or so and it feels good to be back. I have not had a lot to say over the last month, I felt like there was not much to say with all the terrible things that were happening. I live in the Minneapolis area. It was a tragic thing that happened here and I’m not going to go into it with you guys at all. This is not what this space is for and you can hear plenty of political opinions all over the internet and television. The political unrest, the censorship by google and the social media platforms is very disturbing to me. Facebook had turned in to nothing but a negative place to be for me so I did something I had been thinking of for awhile now. I deleted by account. I deleted all my social media accounts. Permanently. I didn’t take a break, I didn’t deactivate them, I deleted them all. And you know, I feel so much better. I had been holding on to facebook for some time because I was in some pretty cool groups on there. I have an addictive personality and I couldn’t just hop on to check my Help For Hashimoto’s group or my business page and hop off again. I got caught up in their “fake news” fact checking and got really really angry. It’s been a couple of weeks since deleting my accounts and I feel soooo much better. I figure if people want to get in touch with me, they will. If they don’t, they won’t and if facebook was our only way of communicating, then we weren’t that close to begin with so no real loss for me. I want to encourage you to begin to think more critically of what you are seeing and hearing on the news and on social media platforms. Our news outlets basically have to make their advertisers happy and it shouldn’t be too hard who their biggest advertisers are and how that skews what you see and hear about. Most of the bigger media outlets are so completely against our president. Love him or hate him, he is our president and you never hear anything good that he has done because the media outlets don’t share any of that. I have been reading what appears to be an unbiased, fact seeking newspaper called the EPOCH times where there is no bashing of either political side but reporting of the facts. Please get the facts, no matter what you believe. Question things, always. Rant over. Thanks for listening.
I had mentioned I had some labs done a while ago and I think I promised to go over them with you all. That is in the works. I plan to have someone go over my DUTCH test with me on an episode so you can understand more about it. And I am working on an essential oil episode too. In the coming weeks I will be chatting with a certified nutrition specialist about a book she wrote on thyroid disease too. So lots of fun things in the pipeline and as I have said many times before I am concentrating more on my newsletter- which will really be the case now since all my social media accounts are gone. Writing is time consuming and so I usually put it off because I have to write a lot for school. I only have about a year and a half left though so…. :) I’m also interning at a functional medicine clinic working with clients and getting hours towards my own certified nutrition specialist certificate. Each class I take now gives me so much new knowledge to pass on to you and to my clients. It is very exciting to me because I love helping people and I love helping people avoid all the crap I went through with my own thyroid disease and failure of conventional medicine to help me. My long term goals are to have a thyroid clinic in my area- all the functional medicine practitioners are at least an hour from where I live so I want to bring functional medicine to my almost rural community at an affordable price. Some of these practitioners charge up to $6000 for a package which prices out a lot of people, including myself. The biggest challenge we face is finding a doctor to prescribe our medication. I aim to fix that for my community and I wish I could fix it for all of you. Maybe with all this Covid stuff the rules on practicing will change and you won’t need to be physically seen by a doctor to get that first prescription. If they don’t change, I will work hard to educate doctors on how to best treat thyroid patients so they can feel their best. We can do a lot together to change diet and lifestyle but some of us will always need that prescription. I have hope for a much better future for the way we are treated as patients and for the whole world too. Sounds corny but I have to have hope because if I don’t have hope, what do I have? A deep dark hole and I don’t want that for any of us.
Okay, on to the question sent to me.
Hi Stephanie, I have a question that may be good for your podcast. I’ve recently been diagnosed with hashimoto’s by a doctor of natural medicine and I’m expecting to get my food sensitivity panel along with extensive blood work back in the coming weeks. after listening to almost all your podcasts and doing my own research, I believe that I’ve been suffering from it and adrenal fatigue for about 10 years. I’ll give you some background on my medical history first.
For about 6 years I was seeing my doctor and others numerous times for fatigue, joint pain, severe allergies to any and all chemicals/fragrance as well as to pollen, vision problems, blood sugar management, depression, brain fog, digestion problems, unexplained and extremely difficult to lose weight gain and frequently becoming so weak and exhausted/sick that I couldn’t get out of bed... I was given prescriptions to address the symptoms, and getting bloodwork done to check my vitamin and mineral levels but I was left with no results or answers.
I’ve been dairy free for about 3 years (self diagnosed based on symptoms) and gluten free (suggested by a different doctor) and both those things helped with many of my symptoms but didn’t fix everything going on in my body. In September 2019 I began eating vegan. The first few months were great because I was eating loads of vegetables, curries, and other nutrition packed meals but about 6 months in I got lazy with my meals and began to feel my thyroid “swell”. I finally went to see a Natural med doctor and got some answers.
As I’ve been waiting for my follow up apt I began the AIP to get a jumpstart on healing my body. I've been off coffee for 2 weeks now, 1 week full AIP and I’m feeling rather lousy and fatigued. I even have slight pain in my thyroid area. I’m eating lots of veggies (every meal) and meat (organ meats even), balancing meals, sleep, and light exercise. Could this be because my body isn’t used to eating meat or could it be something else?
What kinds of questions should I be asking my new doctor at my follow up appointment?
Thank you so much for any advice you can give! Your podcast has been incredibly helpful in my understanding of this disease and the things to be vigilant about.
Best wishes,
Ciera
I really appreciate
Thanks for writing in Ciera. I’m so glad you did and I appreciate you telling me that the podcast has been helpful because it is a lot of work to make! :) I’m grateful you listen!
I am guessing that your natural medicine doctor did an antibodies test and that is how you were diagnosed with hashimoto’s. If this is the case, make note of your antibody levels and use this as your baseline. As we know already, autoimmune thyroid disease is the cause of around 90% of hypothyroid cases in adults. Some of the symptoms of hypothyroidism are dry hair, loss of eyebrow hair, mostly on the outer third of eyebrow, a puffy face, enlarged thyroid, slow heart rate, arthritis, intolerant to cold, depression, dry skin, fatigue, forgetfulness, menstrual disorders, infertility, muscle aches, weight gain, constipation and brittle nails. This is not an extensive list but some of the more common symptoms that can wax and wane with your disease.
Many of us go to the doctor with complaints of fatigue, depression, brain fog, chronic constipation and GI disfunction and the feeling that no one believes we are sick. No one believes you are sick, including your doctor because in the early stages of this disease, a clinical exam will show things are normal.
Conventional diagnosis and treatment will test TSH and maybe T4 if you are lucky. If you have elevated TSH you get thyroid replacement hormones and are sent on your way. If you have “normal” TSH you will be offered antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, birth control or some other band aid for treatment because you are otherwise “fine”.
With alternative practitioners such as myself and hopefully your natural medicine doctor, you are given suggestions for diet, nutrition, lifestyle and other therapies. One thing you can look out for with your doctor is whether or not they are treating the whole you and not just the thyroid disease because it affects basically most if not all of the systems in your body so the whole body has to be looked at, not just the thyroid. Inflammation throughout the body must be considered, how it affects the brain, blood sugar management, liver function, immune system, endocrine system, your gut health and more.
Did your doctor run a full thyroid panel? Does your doctor take in to consideration that TSH levels fluctuate in Hashimoto’s? TSH can be different every time you get tested. This is why you need more than just a TSH test. When there is tissue destruction (autoimmune attack on the thyroid) this will increase the amount of T4 and T3 in your system but your TSH will be normal or low. The best diagnostic tool for Hashimoto’s is TPO antibodies though getting both TPO and TgAb tested is a good idea.
Remember I said that your antibody test is a good baseline for you. This is because the level of antibodies you have is not associated with how severe the disease is for you. You can know if you are in a relapse if your antibodies go up from your baseline.
Other things to consider are whether or not your Hashimoto’s is stable- no fluctuations in your TSH (low TSH) with normal T4 and T3 or high T4 and T3 (hyper). Once your condition is stable, you should not see your TSH levels rise above 3 (ish) or go much below 1.
If you are in an active and more aggressive state of Hashimoto’s you may need to continually increase your dosage of hormone replacement. When you are not getting enough hormone it can lead to all kinds of issues that include brain issues, GI problems (including gallbladder sludge and stones, less production of digestive enzymes and slower motility), breakdown of bone and muscle with less energy, exercise intolerance, blood sugar problems, temperature regulation issues and immune system dysfunction.
Potential triggers for autoimmunity:
gluten
intake of salt
intake of iodine
lectins
no diversity in your diet
glyphosate
inflammation causing foods (fried foods, etc)
grains
casein (dairy protein)
egg whites
cross reactive food proteins
insomnia, lack of rest
sedentary life, over exercising
smoking, alcohol consumption, drug use
poor relationship status, stress
environmental chemicals like BPA or BPA alternatives, mercury, etc.
GI infections like H. Pylori, candida overgrowth, lyme
There is no one perfect protocol for this disease and where you start working on it for you is different than how someone else will need to be treated. So in other words, the protocol is not linear. Ask your doctor if they have a specific protocol they use for Haashimoto’s. If they do and they use the same protocol for everyone, then you might not be getting the care you need. You may still have to see them though if they are your prescribing physician.
Be sure they are not throwing a bunch of supplements at you as well. You definitely will need some but you don’t need 10. The naturopath I saw when I was first diagnosed was, I think, just out of school and she used supplements like conventional doctors use medication. There was not a lot of dietary suggestions other than what came from my food sensitivity testing and I needed so much more. She was applying bandaids with supplements and you really want to avoid that unless it is something that needs a bandaid until you can really work on it.
It sounds like you are really sensitive to chemicals which is usually an issue with your liver being really overwhelmed and not able to process those chemicals very well which causes you to be really sensitive to them.
The inability to lose weight can be related to blood sugar dysregulation, or insulin or cortisol issues. These are the likely culprits though systemic inflammation or liver issues can also be the problem. You said you are feeling lousy and fatigued on AIP- my first inclination is that you might be eating too much protein and fat and not enough vegetables though you said you are eating veggies at every meal so I wonder if there is some sort of detoxification going on that is making you feel poor. And good for you for doing organ meats. I am not there myself- no desire at all. If you don’t feel better soon, take a look at how much you are eating- maybe not enough protein? This one is tough to answer without looking at a food journal.
You said you felt your thyroid swell while on a vegetarian and vegan diet - there is not a lot of research to support the idea that goitrogenic foods are the cause. You can cook your vegetables before eating them which can reduce the goitrogenic activity if you are concerned though. These foods, the goitrogenic foods, reduce oxidative stress which is what we want. You may want to look at how much salt you are consuming as that may be an issue for thyroid swelling and make sure you are not taking in any iodine. So watch the shellfish, seaweed and iodized salt intake.
I guess I didn’t give you any specific questions to ask your doctor which may be a bit of a bummer for you. Just be sure they are not using a protocol they use on everyone else and that their plan is individualized for you. There are just so many factors at play here and everyone is different in what they need. I hope this helps and I wish you all the best of luck in your health journey.
The average person sees their nutritionist 1.8 times. Maybe that is all you need to start feeling better? Maybe you need more. I can help you either way. The Covid-19 special is over but I’m still doing those one off consults because they were so popular. The price and the amount of time I spend with you has changed though. Instead of 15 minutes (which really turned out to be 30 minutes for most people taking advantage of the deal), you are getting an hour with me to go over your results and recommendations for $153. Follow up appointments will still be $37 for 15 minutes.
Here is what Ashley had to say about her results.
“Hello Stephanie!
Just an update. You gave me a consult two months ago. I've been following your guidelines. Well, I have lost 16 pounds so far and my painful bloating is completely gone!
I have energy and feel very clear-headed most of the time!
Thank you! I will send you another update in two months.
Just thank you so much!”
I’d say that speaks for itself. If you are someone who can take my advice and run with it, you may also have results like this. You have the power to change your health and your life and I am here to help you do that! Book now at www.outofthewoodsnutrition.com, go the to the Work With Me tab and scroll down to purchase the 60 minute consult with no package purchase for $153.00.
Please send me your questions at outofthewoodsnutrition.com by filling out the contact form or just email me at helpforhashimotos@gmail.com.
Until next time!
I love you guys.