When I was working on my final capstone paper for my masters degree I went to the bookstore fishing for potential references and I was just looking at 100’s of books selling a promise of feeling better. I probably have had 30 or more of those kinds of books over the years- selling health and happiness.

Even cookbooks, especially the paleo ones. They say I found health through food. Food is medicine… etc. I certainly don’t disagree that food is medicine and that it can heal but what do you do when the food you eat isn’t enough?  You turn to supplements because they too offer a promise of feeling better and sometimes they do help you feel better because your body is deficient in something and giving it that particular nutrient helps it work better. Sometimes they work. Even the title for my final paper discussed how nutrients can help the thyroid.

I get an email almost daily from a company selling gut health supplements. That is all they do- they tell a story in their emails and then sell you a $60 bottle of digestive enzymes because that will cure it all. And they probably work for some people or they wouldn’t keep selling them. But what happens when you do all the things and you still don’t feel better?

Do you start to feel bad and blame yourself? Do you double down and work harder and buy more supplements? Curcumin maybe because everyone says that is going to help everything? But as one of my professors from school says, “You can’t have a curcumin deficiency” meaning there are no biochemical processes in the body that require curcumin to function.

It is a bandaid, which may be needed, but it isn’t a cure all. I think I had an epiphany in the bookstore just staring at all those books promising a better life. We can read all the books in the world and take all the supplements but if we are not doing the inner work that also got us sick and is keeping us unwell, then we will only get so far.

This is your friendly reminder to give yourself some grace when you are doing all the things right, even when you are not. Thyroid disease is complicated. There is a lot of research on this disease but sometimes I don’t think the right things are being studied- like finding a way to measure how we feel or recognize that lab values are sooo wrong when the upper limit of a normal TSH is 10.

Some of you feel like a sloth at that number. Remember that you are a cellular being- you are made up of cells the basics of which are carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen and a few other elements in smaller amounts. Those are atoms. When you put some atoms together you get a molecule. Glucose or sugar is a molecule, amino acids are molecules that make proteins (the kind you eat and the kind you are made of), B vitamins are molecules.

I mentioned protein- when you put a bunch of molecules of amino acids together you get a protein which is a macromolecule (macro meaning big). If you hear a nutritionist talk about macros, they are talking about macronutrients which means big nutrients (protein, fat, carbohydrates).

So further on down the road, macromolecules eventually come together to make a cell and cells come together to make tissue like skin, vessels, your gastrointestinal tract, muscle and more. Those tissues will come together to form organs like your stomach, pancreas, liver, heart and organs make systems like the cardiovascular system, endocrine system etc. All of this comes together to make an organism, us.

This is where the books promising health fail you. They are not digging deep enough, partially because it is a lot of work and has to be done one on one but also because it doesn’t sell a lot of books. And the problem with figuring out what is causing your thyroid to not work is there are a lot of things that can go wrong.

It regulates your metabolism which is involved in weight but it regulates the metabolism of everything else in the body too which affects energy levels and everything else.

If you are not losing weight with hypothyroidism, it is because of this metabolic function not working.  Even after doing all the things, you might still be struggling with this and those books don’t know why or they place the blame on you.

You didn’t follow the program close enough, you missed a step, you didn’t do this or that.

I paid over $1000 to a chiropractor one time who had the answers and they said they had a doctor on staff but never offered me to see him for my medication (and I never asked because I was too scared) but they had a protocol that they used on everyone. They hooked my fingers and toes up to a machine that read something- I can’t even remember. They put me on the RepairVite diet for 3 weeks (which I followed strictly because I am a good patient), they had me on oxygen while I used a hand bike to exercise and increase my oxygen) and when after going there weekly for 12 weeks I still didn’t feel better he told me I should go have my thyroid levels checked again, he just didn’t know what to do.

I paid thousands to a naturopath who sold me hundreds of dollars in supplements each time I saw her and told me to lay off the sugar, eat flax seeds and coconut oil and my energy still suffered. To be fair, I desperately needed many of the supplements she suggested because I was extremely nutrient deficient and my gut was a mess. The supplements helped me get to a certain point. She then tried to get at my emotional well being and that is when I ran for the hills. She knew my energy levels went beyond physiology and I wasn’t ready to deal with that. I searched for a different practitioner that would keep throwing supplements at me and I would keep throwing money at them.

I think the big problem with how we are treated by doctors is that science can only take you so far - at least the physiology part of it. Some of us who have struggled to feel better have some emotional work to do. Maybe even, if you dare go there, some past life stuff. This is woo woo and not for everyone and I recognize you may think it is all BS. I respect that and I hope you can hear me out. I’m sure I spoke of this before. Therapy never got me where I needed to be and I’m game for trying anything except eating organ meats and fish.

Before I get to the woo woo I want to tell you about this idea called psychoneuroimmunology that I read about in the Epoch Times paper, which can be found in scientific papers and is all about taking care of your mental and emotional well-being. If you don’t care for your emotional and mental health, you may not ever fully put your condition into remission.

I hired someone to help me with this emotional stuff. I’ve discussed before that my mothers side of the family all has one form or another of thyroid disease. I’m positive they are all autoimmune but my mother and grandmother were only ever diagnosed with hypothyroidism. My one aunt has Graves for sure, my other aunt has Hashimoto’s I believe, my uncle has Graves, but my grandfather had no thyroid disease. He was domineering and emotionally abusive to his family - they didn’t have a voice.

Looking back on my life I grew up without a voice- very shy, very quiet, very afraid to speak up because I was afraid of being seen and made fun of. I looked so different from everyone else growing up (at least in my childs mind) because I was taller than everyone, I was pale as a ghost and I had red hair. I just felt like a weirdo so I’m sure that didn’t help my self confidence growing up.

I kept my circle of friends small. When I did speak up as a kid it seemed to backfire and I was very sensitive, still am, to other peoples energy. I never felt good enough. I never felt smart enough, I was never brave enough to speak up. That carried over in to my young adult life and I made decisions that were safe, that kept me small and silent. I let fear keep me small with no voice. That eventually led to, you guessed it, hypothyroidism.

I was repeating the familial cycle.

I had some hole in me I was trying to fill with food, people, things and that wasn’t working. I worked with someone doing some visualizations and was able to fill that hole with what was missing and I can’t articulate in to words what that is exactly but for the first time in my life I felt like a whole person. That little child that felt awkward and shy was no longer there.

I still take supplements, I am less crazy about my diet (but when I go too far off the rails, my body reminds me to get back on), and more sure than ever of myself and my ability to help others.

You see rather than covering up why I can’t help you get further, I refer out to others who can fill in those missing pieces and let you get there when you are ready. And that is just it- you have to be ready to do the emotional work that can be tied to thyroid disease.

It is okay if you are not ready, you will do it when the time is right. It is a big step to take because it means being vulnerable. The books don’t talk about that and the supplements don’t fix emotional vulnerability. You have to be willing to go after that for full health and well being to be a part of your life.

There is research on this but not in relationship to thyroid disease. Bottom line is that if you are still not feeling well after doing all the things the books and programs and functional medicine superstars are telling you to do then you may just have to dig a little deeper because as I say time and time again, there is no one size fits all protocol for everyone.

Do you have support? We don’t usually look sick so people might see us as lazy when the reality is we are just so tired all the time we have a hard time getting off the couch. Maybe you have relationships in your life that are toxic. This alone causes stress and inflammation.

Maybe you hate your job or people you work with. This also causes chronic stress and inflammation that can keep your body from healing properly.  Maybe you are lonely or isolated and just don’t interact with other people that often. Having in person interaction on a regular basis has been shown to be good for our health.

Are you in a hole of negative thinking or around people that only spew something negative? The less optimism in your life, the harder it is to heal. You can make a new habit of changing these negative patterns in your life. What you think about you perpetuate. Retrain your brain to think more positively.

We also need to challenge our brains to help keep depression and inflammation at bay. Find ways to mentally stimulate your brain by reading, playing games, doing puzzles or whatever it is that you can find that you like to do. For me, it was getting my masters degree that really saved me. That was a huge workout for my brain. You and your brain can learn new things and you can change the plasticity of your brain by changing the way you think. Having gratitude is one way to do this. Write down 5 things you are grateful for in a notebook before you go to bed or do a little meditation- I’ve mentioned before I will say what I am grateful for on walks sometimes when I need a little pick me up.

Find ways to laugh. I try to watch or listen to comedy whenever I can to make me feel better. Find things that bring you joy, even if it is something small. Be social. This one is hard for me. I am not good at being in social settings, especially if I don’t know a lot of the people in the room but being with people is good for us. We are meant to engage in social activities.

Meditation is well studied and known for its positive health effects. Even if you can do it for 5 minutes a day to start. Just sit in a quiet place and breath for five minutes. Each time you notice your mind wondering, just bring it back to your breath. It will eventually help reduce your stress and improve your inflammation and your autoimmunity.

So, all that to say that those generic protocols will help a lot of you but for those of you that it doesn’t help, don’t fret. Your biochemical make up maybe needs a little more than a generic protocol. My goal is to be able to help you figure what is missing. I have the tools to do that. Healing your body from any chronic disease takes patience and time.  And you can work on the emotional stuff when you are ready.

I am here to help you before you are ready and after. I don’t push you to do anything you are not ready for. You got this. You can feel better. I will walk along side you as you do the work. If you need the hand holding, my 3 month package is for you. You get a ton of support there and biweekly appointments to discuss anything and everything. You can schedule your free call to see if it is a good fit on my website under the Work With Me Tab.

Thanks for listening.