What to eat for breakfast, that is the question. Plus constipation, it’s making me crazy. Episode 22.

Decisions are actually a direct reflection of who you are and what your purpose is. Each one confirms the beliefs you have about yourself and the direction you are traveling.  -Bob Proctor

I have had a super stressful 5 days. I made some decisions this past week that I am strong and capable and loving which has helped me immensely to get through the stress. It’s not major in the grand scheme of things. Just life stuff but I am an empath and seem to absorb a lot of other people’s energy and so by last night I was exhausted. I took note of my exhaustion and let the kitchen be a complete disaster so when I got up this morning, there were three of us trying to find space to get some breakfast and it was a pain but my sleep and sanity are worth so much more to me than a clean kitchen. Breakfast got made and the kitchen will get clean. Probably right before dinner gets made. That is okay. I am worth taking care of at the expense of a clean kitchen and you are too! 

Let’s get to the questions. I have a couple for you today. Then I am off to study. 

What do you eat for breakfast? I'm pretty good at figuring out lunch and dinner but breakfast is a struggle. I'm allergic to eggs, dairy, soy, bananas, pineapple, berries and I try to avoid gluten. Also mornings are rushed and chaotic.

Breakfast seems to be a challenge for most people who are changing their diet. I also do not tolerate eggs which does make for a challenge because they are such a good source of protein. You still have options though. 

When I am in a hurry I do a protein shake and it differs depending on what I am in the mood for but here is a general template. 

½ banana- since you are allergic you can leave that out. If you need a little sweet maybe add a couple dates or half an apple or pear. I limit the amount of fruit I put in them usually so I don’t have blood sugar issues throughout the day. 

A few frozen slices of cucumber, a handful of greens. I buy a huge bag of organic greens from costco and freeze it. 

A few slices of zucchini- adds to creaminess. I also prechop and freeze that. 

I use full fat canned coconut milk and sometimes So Delicious unsweetened. That does have a lot of junk in it though so if you are hard core AIP or really want to heal your gut I would avoid the So Delicious for now. Full fat canned gives you creaminess and a little sweet taste and will be more filling. I have used Native Forest and Trader Joes brands for that. I prefer the Trader Joes blue can- coconut cream I believe over the coconut milk in the brown can. I was getting Native Forest or Natural Value on Amazon. I think it was Natural Value- the price got ridiculous for a case so I quite buying it. 

I also add a little bit of water to it and lately have been doing raw cacao powder and mint or sunflower seed butter. You can sub the cacao for carob if you are doing AIP. The taste is pretty similar. 

Sometimes I will do a handful of berries or cherries instead of cacao. 

When everything is frozen you don’t have to add ice but you might need to add some water. 

Add chia seeds or flax- like a tablespoon or two for some fiber or add frozen cauliflower rice for more fiber- maybe two tablespoons of that. 

I usually blend all that together really well then add in a scoop of Designs for Health Pure Paleo Protein which is just hydrolyzed beef protein and nothing else.  I blend that in with a few slices of avocado for more fat and then will eat that for breakfast a lot. It is quick when you need to get out the door quick. You can even just put all the ingredients for 5 of those a week in to their own individual bags and freeze them so all you have to do is dump it in the blender. 

This morning I had bone broth that I heated in a pan on the stove with 5 mint leaves, a slice of ginger and a slice of lemon. When it started boiling I added it to a to go mug with 2 Tablespoons of coconut milk from a can and mixed with a big pinch of salt. 

I eat leftovers for breakfast a lot.  This week I had AIP chicken and dumplings. I will link to the recipe in the show notes. I, of course, adapted it and will write about my adaptation eventually.  When I roast a chicken, I roast two so I can make broth and have meat leftover to do some kind of soup. That makes life easier.  

I do a lot of the chicken hashbrowns from the Healing Kitchen cookbook. That is a great recipe. I make a batch and will have 3 of those for breakfast with some kind of veggies. 

I make hash a lot too. Mixing in usually ground pork from a pig I bought last year with whatever spices you like- I do fennel (not AIP), garlic powder, onion powder, salt, sage, oregano, parsley and then whatever veggies I have on hand. I will mix in onion, zucchini, sweet potatoes, cauliflower, broccoli- all chopped about the same size but added at different times because the potatoes will take longer to cook than the broccoli. Then at the end I add in some dark leafy greens. 

I hope that helps. Just remember to think outside the breakfast box. 

Our next question comes from Nancy. 

Can we talk #2 for a minute? I look in the toilet and it looks like a rabbit should have been there, not a human. I manage 5-6 cups of veg a day and generally eat two salads a day. Shouldn’t that be plenty of fiber? In addition, I ALWAYS consume at least 64 oz of water a day. So, what gives?! I’m not on any narcotics. Also, I’m only going twice a week and that’s it. Often, at the end of the day my lower gut is distended, but no gas, hardly ever.

You are eating a lot of fiber and drinking a lot of water for having such an issue with constipation. Constipation is when stools are too hard, too small, infrequent, hard to move or when you feel like the bowel movement is incomplete when it is over.  If you have 3-5 bowel movements per week or go more than three days without a bowel movement, that is considered constipation. 

Most people have a transit time of 50-100 hours when they are constipated where the optimal transit time should be between 16-24 hours or around there. In functional medicine you might be considered constipated if you go more than 24 hours without a bowel movement. If you are passing rabbit stool everyday you still have a problem with constipation. 

The most common cause of this is lack of fiber and dehydration. This doesn’t seem to be the issue here based on your question.  When are you drinking your 64 ounces of water? Do you drink water when you are eating the veggies? That should help a bit. If not, this can cause the problem you are having. 

Figuring out what is going on here is a process of trial and error really. Here are some things that might be going on: 

1. If it is not lack of fiber or hydration, then the next step would be to try digestive enzymes when you eat. Try taking two high quality digestive enzymes with each meal for  a few days and see if that helps get things moving. I would also add in some raw fermented sauerkraut to your meals to help with this. That alone can be very effective. 

2. You may need to supplement with Betaine HCl/stomach acid. It is quite possible you are not making enough stomach acid which will affect your digestion. 

3. Are the little rabbit stools floating? This can indicate you are not digesting fats very well and you may need to do some work on your liver and gallbladder to help with that. 

4. You could have some gut dysbiosis going on- good bacteria is taken over by bad bacteria and the bad guys are currently ruling your digestive tract. They will pilfer all they need from what is traveling through your digestive tract leaving you will nothing but those hard stools to pass. 

5. Food allergies. Something you are eating could be causing the constipation, almost like it is stopping your digestion in its tracks. 

6. Lastly, low functioning thyroid is the cause of slower digestion for a lot of us. This can be tricky if your doctor isn’t willing to work with you on symptoms and proper lab tests. It could just be that your medication is not optimal. It is likely a combination of many of these though. The only way to know is to test them out. 

That is it for me. Thanks so much for listening. Please go to iTunes and leave a rating and review so more people can be helped. The podcast is growing every week and that is thanks to all of you so thank you for that. Leaving a rating and review will make it easier for people to find. 

Got a question for me? Go to HelpForHashimotos.com and fill out the contact form on my website and I will do my best to answer your question. 

You can also get my free ebook, Five Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Hypothyroidism on my site. It is a quick read with lots of good information for you. 

You can find me on facebook at Out of The Woods Nutrition and you join the private Help For Hashimoto’s Facebook group too. That is a positive and supportive place to go for people who are ready to do the work to get better. 

Also find me on Instagram @stephanieewalsntp

Thanks again. Here’s to another great week! 

Alcohol use and the thyroid. Episode 21.

The first step to thriving with Hashimoto’s is to make a decision to thrive

How does alcohol affect the thyroid

Alcohol affects T4 to T3 conversion

It can stimulate one part of the immune system, the TH2 cell production putting the immune system out of balance and weakening the immune system in general. 

It plays a factor in increasing leaky gut or intestinal permeability

It will contribute to feeding candida overgrowth as it is a favorite of candida to keep growing. 

• symptoms of candida overgrowth can be quite similar to hypothyroid symptoms with things like fatigue, brain fog/spacy feeling, and cold hands and feet

• it is quite opportunistic meaning it will take advantage of your situation to help itself grow and stay strong

• it also contributes to leaky gut

• a good diet of veggies and proteins can be helpful. A whole show could be dedicated to this topic. I will work on that for you guys. 

It will make handling stress harder or if you use it to deal with stress, you might want to think about working on that. 

It will take a toll on your blood sugar balancing, keeping you on the blood sugar roller coaster, and affect your sleep. Both of these will affect your thyroid in general as far as it functioning properly goes because your adrenal glands will be hard at work which will lead to adrenal fatigue or HPA axis dysfunction. 

If you are hoping to recover your health and your thyroid at all, blood sugar management should really be a top priority for you. Personally, I do not tolerate a lot of starchy carbs very well after years of mismanaged blood sugar, adrenal fatigue, poor sleep and a major sugar addiciton. Alcohol was never something I drank a lot of after I had kids so that didn’t contribute too much to my problems. I enjoyed a good party before kids quite often though but that was while my body was able to deal with it without being at the point of breaking down- or I guess it lead to the eventual breakdown of my metabolism maybe. Who knows. Anyway, blood sugar imbalances are a stress on the adrenals which will be a stress on the thyroid. It is all connected. 

The liver becomes back logged or congested when we consume alcohol and really from all the toxins we take in on a daily basis. It has a big job to do and when we consume alcohol, it stops all other things to process alcohol because it is essentially a poison to our system. 

Many of you maybe just want to enjoy a glass of wine here and there and all I can say is that decision is up to you. alcohol is not allowed on an elimination diet because of all the reasons mentioned. 

Regular consumption of alcohol will deplete your body of B vitamins and particularly thiamine which is B1. It will also cause depletions of glutathione (a major antioxidant in the body), minerals (remember how important selenium and zinc are to thyroid health), Vitamin C, the good or beneficial bacteria in your gut. I’m sure there are more as well because all the systems of the body are affected when one system isn’t working right.

I found a study called Impact of Alcohol Use on Thyroid Function and I will link it for you so you can take a look if you want. 

The study says that alcohol has been thought to suppress the thyroid gland function by making the cells toxic and indirectly affecting thyroid by stopping thyrotropin releasing hormone. This is the hormone released by the hypothalamus to tell the pituitary to release TSH. I hope I am getting that right. I have so much biochemistry in my brain right now there is no room for anything else.  The study also says that if you consume alcohol chronically or are in withdrawl from alcohol use the peripheral thyroid hormones will be affected by not being produced as much. 

Peripheral in a medical definition means relating to, forming or located near a surface. In this case I would say that they are talking about the forming of thyroid hormones which would mean you might present as hypothyroid. 

The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines heavy drinking as binge drinking of 5-7 days of the week with binge drinking defined as “a pattern of drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) levels to 0.08 g/dL. This typically occurs after 4 drinks for women and 5 drinks for men—in about 2 hours.”

Just know that one drink, one glass of wine, one beer, one whatever will affect your thyroid health in some way. Regular use will mean you may not be able to fix some of your thyroid symptoms. 

The study appears to be a review of other studies on the subject and they have compiled the information for us. I love those kinds of studies. 

The study does also show there may be some benefit in being protective against developing a goiter for the occasional drinker but not for the chronic drinker. 

I think the bottom line here is that alcohol consumption really affects the liver, adrenals and blood sugar more than the thyroid itself but those three things are very important to ensuring good thyroid function. 

I hope this helps. It would be fun to dive much deeper in to this subject sometime. I’m barely keeping my head above water this week so I just can’t dig around the research right now. 

That is it for me. Thanks for the question. If you have a question about your health you want answered please go to the contact form at helpforhashimotos.com and I will work hard to get you a researched answer that will hopefully have some science behind it. 

Join the Help For Hashimoto’s facebook support group. It is a closed group so your presence is private and so are your questions. It is small but growing and I would like you all to have a positive place to support one another. So many of the groups on facebook for thyroid that I have found are largely full of folks who are looking for a quick fix and I will tell you over and over again, there is no quick fix for anything. 

You can also find me at Out of The Woods Nutrition on facebook and my favorite social media place, Instagram at @stephanieewalsntp. 

Head on over to helpforhashimotos.com to get your free ebook, Five Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Hypothyroidism and if you would be so kind as to leave a review on Itunes, I would be really grateful. The more ratings and reviews we get, the more people can be helped. 

Remember that The first step to getting your life back is believing that you can.

Have a wonderful and healthful week. 

Rebounding from exhaustion. Episode 20.

Taking better care of ourselves makes us better people in the world

And only good stuff can come from that

There are no negative side effects to self-care

Welcome to episode 20, It’s been a good, busy week and I hope you are all doing very well. I’m keeping it short and to the point this week so let’s get started. 

We have a question from Maggie. 

How do you deal with things that are not within your control and maintain your health? I have worked really hard to eat the right diet, take supplements, do all my food prep, etc... but there's just some stuff you have no control over and it can WRECK all the work that you've done.

For example, I am two weeks in to AIP (autoimmune protocol or elimination diet) and last week I felt that I turned a HUGE corner in terms of energy, brain fog, anxiety, etc. So, I'm feeling SO great!!

But then Monday comes and I commute to my job... and by the end of the day I'm EXHAUSTED and cranky. I commute 1.5 hours each way... and somedays, like tonight, there's a lot of traffic which can make it nearly 2 hours each way. UGH.

What do you do to rebound? Is rebound possible? How do you manage the un-manageable?

-Maggie

First of all, congratulations for taking charge of your health and taking care of you! This is a really big deal. You are doing an elimination diet which is no small feat! That is amazing. It is a lot of work to do all the cooking for all those meals that have to be made from scratch in order for you to begin to heal. If you are exhausted at the end of a work day that is okay. It is okay. Plus you are only a couple weeks in and it is quite normal to feel really good in the first couple weeks and then have a day where you aren’t doing as well. 

You are feeding your body all this good stuff and it is taking it in and figuring out what to do with it. 

Let’s talk a bit about the elimination diet or autoimmune protocol. The elimination diet depending on who’s website or who’s book you are reading is a little different than the Autoimmune Protocol or AIP for short. So I’m going to just get very basic about AIP because I think it is a great diet. 

You are basically able to eat the cleanest meats, veggies and fruits you can afford, This diet removes all possible inflammatory or allergenic foods so that your body has the opportunity to lower the inflammation you may be experiencing. So that means things like grains (all of them), nuts, seeds, beans, dairy, eggs and nightshades are eliminated. Coffee and alcohol are out as well. So it is very, very clean. Nightshades are things like tomatoes, potatoes (sweet potatoes are okay), peppers and any spices made from peppers like paprika and chili powder. It also eliminates any seed spices like fennel and pepper. 

Depending on who you follow you do the diet for a minimum of three weeks and up to 3 months or longer depending on how long you have had your condition and how long it went untreated. Everyone is a bio individual so your healing time will be different than mine. The longer you went without doing anything about your condition or even knowing about it for that matter will determine how much damage has been done in other parts of your body. It is like a cascade effect because all of our body systems are intertwined and when one is dysfunctional it will affect other areas of your body. 

Your exhaustion could be a symptom of that. 

When I did AIP I found I didn’t eat enough. Could that be the case for you? Maybe. Let’s talk about that. 

AIP is a protein, fat and carbohydrate diet. You are getting protein from all the meats you are eating, fat from the healthy fats like olive oil, coconut oil,  avocado, pastured lard, and maybe olives. 

You should also consider if your body is used to eating a lot of fat or if your body can process it- break it down and get it to your cells. Not everyone can handle a high fat low carbohydrate diet. 

The carbohydrates- the veggies, fruits and starches- eating too many fruits will mess with your blood sugar levels causing their own blood sugar roller coaster so don’t be dependent on fruit to give you your sugar fix. Limit your fruits to 1-2 per day through the elimination phase and eat plenty of vegetables both cooked and raw. In fact, your body might do better with more cooked veggies right now than raw. 

Your plate should have a palmful size of protein at each meal and the rest of your plate should be veggies. 

Food journal if you can. I’m not so good at this but it really does help you to take a look at what you are eating and how you felt afterwards. It is called a food an mood journal. 

Let’s talk about how you are feeling when you are exhausted. If you are dealing with too much or too little energy, become hyper, jittery, shaky, nervous or speedy you may need to up your fats or your protein and scale back on the starches and the fruits. If you feel hyper but exhausted underneath or you have a big energy drop, fatigue, exhaustion or sleepiness, then you also need to adjust your meals to include more fat and protein and less of the starchier carbs like sweet potatoes, and the root veggies like beets, parsnips, rutabaga and things like that. They could be spiking your blood sugar and making it more difficult for you to deal with things like stress because a two hour commute one way is stressful in and of itself. 

The one really great thing about your commute, I hope anyway, is that you have a lot of time to reflect, practice breathing which will allow you to relax and be less stressed. When we create stories in our head about things and tell them to ourselves over and over, we eventually believe them to be true and our body responds accordingly.  That long of a commute is a great time to listen to an audio book- if you don’t want to do a subscription service, you can go to the library and check out CD’s of books but that would mean you need a CD player in your car- I guess they don’t all have those anymore. My car is old so I might be a little out of touch on that. Anyway, you can listen to podcasts- some of my favorites to listen to in the car that are not health related are The Quote of The Day Show by Sean Croxton, Armchair Expert and Ear Hustle. Personally I wish Brene Brown had a podcast but I have listened to one of her books but it wasn’t read by her. Anyway, you get the idea. 

Is your job in and of itself exhausting? Is it things that happen at work that are exhausting? Or maybe your thyroid is needing more support or less support and that is why you feel exhausted. Maybe your adrenals are needing support. We can often feel quite exhausted when they are out of balance or as some would say, fatigued. This is all about your blood sugar being balanced so you have to go back to what you are eating and if it is the right amount for you. 

We balance our blood sugar with our stress hormones. This means cortisol and adrenaline are involved in the process. Insulin stores sugar (and other things) for us and if our thyroid hormones are not in balance we will have issues managing our blood sugar which affects energy levels. If your energy continues to stay in the realm of exhaustion you should look at things like anemia which is common in Hashimoto’s. Anemia can be low iron but it can also have something to do with B12 deficiency, a folate issue, B vitamin deficiency (especially B6) or nutrient deficiencies. 

Are you calm and relaxed when you eat? Do you sit down, take a few deep breaths and chew your food really well? You might need a stomach acid supplement to help you digest your food. It is really common for people with Hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism to have low stomach acid which will mean your body has to work harder to break down your food so you can use the nutrients but it also means you won’t be getting all the nutrients from your food because it won’t be broken down in to microscopic nutrients like it would if you had enough stomach acid. 

Sleep is another thing. By now you should be sleeping well but if you are not, obviously that will take its toll on your energy levels too. 

That is it for me today. I hope you start to feel better soon Maggie! 

Check out my ebook, “Five things your doctor won’t tell you about Hypothyroidism” over at helpforhashimotos.com and if you have a question for me that you would like me to talk about on the podcast, please fill out the contact form on my website. 

You can also find me on instagram as stephanieewalsntp or on facebook at Out of The Woods Nutrition and join my private facebook group called Help For Hashimoto’s. Let’s empower you with the tools you need to get better! 

I’d appreciate it if you left a review for me on iTunes as well so more people can find me and get the help they need. So, please head over there if you like what you are hearing and let other people know too! 

I have a couple of guests lined up in the coming weeks and I’m super excited about them so stay tuned for that! 

Take care until next time. 

Zinc deficiency and thyroid problems. Episode 19.

Hi there! I had my labs done on Monday and thought I would share with you what they were and what I have been doing. 

My TSH has been quite low for about 6 months. This last test shows it at .006 uIU/mL which is down from .021 uIU/mL (microliter/milliliter) two months ago. My Free T4 is 1.55 ng/dL (nanograms/deciliter)  (.94 two months ago) and my Free T3 is high at 5.1pg/ML (picograms/ milliliter which is one trillionth of a gram) (3.1 pg/mL two months ago.) 

I don’t know if I am being too aware but I don’t feel as well at these current levels. I am getting headaches in the morning (sometimes they wake me at night) that go away in the afternoon and my whole body hurt yesterday. I feel a little bit achy today too.  So, obviously I am in a hyper state but I don’t have any typical symptoms of hyperthyroid. I am sleeping good, I am not losing weight, I do not have any tremors. I have had a racing heart twice- like super racing heart out of the blue and it lasts for about 30 seconds and then it is gone. It is a little scary. Not a regular thing though. I have been losing more hair than normal in the shower though- so I knew something was up. 

Before I tell you what I have been doing, I want to say that you should in no way do this on your own or even at all. I sort of experimented on myself so I could tell you all about it. Do not do this at home!! 

My latest medication was a compounded thyroid powder which I can’t get anymore so I started taking Biotics Research GTA Forte II which is a glandular porcine concentrate with zinc, selenium, copper and rubidium in it. I was taking half a dose of my compounded medication and 2 capsule of the GTA for about a month. Then I gradually weaned off the compounded meds and took 4 capsules of the GTA for about another month. When I was starting to feel off, I asked to have new labs done. These were the result. So I am backing off the supplement and I have asked my doctor to test my antibodies and Reverse T3 and I would like to have an ultrasound to see if my thyroid is all there and working. 

I will keep you posted. 

Today I am going to talk about zinc deficiency and the role it plays in the breakdown of the thyroid. 

If you are not a fan of red meat and you don’t eat much of it, you might be deficient. Zinc is a needed cofactor (which means it is needed for a chemical reaction to happen) for some enzymes that do repair work on the cells structure in the body. It is needed to help cells divide and grow and it plays a role in growth and in the immune system. 

So just from this we know we need zinc if we have hashimoto’s if it plays a role in the immune system because hahsimoto’s is an immune system problem which results in a thyroid problem. 

Zinc has a big role in wound healing as well. I always had longer healing times when I got a cut as a kid. Funny I remember that from my childhood. There is so much I can look back on now and pinpoint to reasons I ended up with autoimmune disease. It is thought to have a role in more body functions than any other mineral. One of these is detoxification. Many of us are dealing with amalgam or silver fillings which have mercury in them and can be a big source of problems. 

Dry patches on your skin is a very early sign of zinc deficiency and they can progress to acne, blisters that can have pus in them.  If you are deficient you might also not tolerate sugar very well. I think this is me. Your sex hormones can be out of whack and you can lose your hair. So if you are losing larger amounts of hair than normal this could be the problem. A deficiency might make it harder for your body to use things like vitamin A, D, your thyroid hormones. 

So why are we deficient? It is pretty common due to deficiency in the soil especially if you are eating conventionally grown foods or if you consume a mostly standard American diet which would consist of factory farmed meats and processed foods. Most things that come in a box are devoid of nutrients. 

Zinc and other minerals are considered micronutrients but for being micro, they play very important roles. We only have around 2 grams of zinc total in our body or at about 33 parts per million. It is water soluble meaning we don’t usually store it so we must get it from our diet. So cooking your veggies in water means the zinc in them goes into the water and not into you. Most of the zinc is lost in refining of things like wheat (which we should not be eating anyway). 

Zinc is found in abundance in oysters, red meat (especially beef, lamb and pork), liver, herring and egg yolks and cheese. It is better absorbed from meat products but you can get them from whole grains, beans and to some degree pumpkin seeds. So you have to take a look at your diet. If you are doing an elimination diet and eating plenty of red meat and liver you are probably okay. If you have been able to add back in some of these other foods then you are getting zinc from a variety of sources. Dr. Wilson Haas, in Staying Healthy With Nutrition, does not believe you will get enough zinc in your diet unless you really focus on eating those foods high in zinc. 

The problem with getting zinc from whole grains, nuts or seeds is that the phytates in them bind it up and making absorption of the zinc not as good. Phytates are in grains, beans, legumes, nuts and seeds- all of these things have something in common. The phytates on them are meant to keep the bean or seed in tact so it can replant itself when you eliminate it. The phytate is an energy source for the seed when it is sprouting. The phytate breaks down during sprouting so the one thing you can do to ensure better absorption of the minerals in the foods mentioned is to soak and sprout them before eating them. 

I don’t recommend supplementing long term without supervision of someone who can monitor your health. If you choose to supplement choose zinc acetate, sulfate, gluconate or citrate. Do not use zinc oxide. It is best absorbed on an empty stomach but can be taken with food to avoid feeling nauseous. Be mindful that too much zinc can disrupt the amount of copper in your body. 

Okay, so how does this relate to thyroid problems? Well, zinc is needed to convert T4 to T3. So if you are zinc deficient and you have your labs tested your TSH could be hight because T4 is not converting to T3 so the cells are not getting T3 and the message to the brain is make more T4 so the brain tells the pituitary to send a message to the thyroid via TSH to make more T4. Vicious cycle. Also, when this is happening, we are not able to break down proteins as well- not just protein in your diet but all the proteins in the body that do biochemical things. We also need zinc to form TSH so if we are making more of it because we are not converting T4 to T3 then we can be depleting it that way too. 

If you are on a stomach acid reducer such as prilosec, nexium or something like pepcid, you will be zinc deficient. This all starts with good digestion and needed enough stomach acid to break down the food in our stomach. 

Birth control pills also deplete zinc as well as B vitamins, magnesium, your gut flora, vitamin A and selenium.

It seems that many of us with thyroid problems are zinc deficient and could use some supplementation. Keep it to around 30 mg per day and make sure it is in divided doses and find someone who can test plasma levels or do hair tissue mineral analysis. 

You must heal your gut and clean up your diet as well as make sure you are digesting your food well in order to be able to use zinc and to maintain a healthy level in the body.  Zinc has been shown to close up the tight junctions that are open in leaky gut or intestinal permeability. It will also help adrenal dysfunction. 

That is it for me today. I have two chapters of biochemistry to learn in a day and a half so I have to get to studying. 

I thank you so much for listening. Join me over on the Help For Hashimoto’s facebook group, and join me on Instagram at StephanieEwalsNTP. 

Got a question about your thyroid? Send it to me at HelpForHashimotos@gmail.com  

Head on over to my website Help For Hashimoto’s dot com to get your free Ebook- 5 things your doctor won’t tell you about hypothyroidism. It is a quick read with some good info. 

See you next week. 

How do I lose this belly fat? Episode 18.

Any advice on losing weight with hypothyroidism? I work out 3-4 times a week, struggle to eat 1200 calories a day and still can not get rid of the belly fat. PLEASE HELP!! Joan T. 

First of all, you may be working out too hard. When your body is inflamed it needs some good old fashioned TLC in the form of gentle exercise. It might be a good idea for you to cut back on intense workouts and just start walking. Walk for 45 minutes a day 5 days a week. Do that indefinitely but do only that for a couple of weeks to give your body a break. 

Walking helps to regulate your hormones- all of them. Your estrogen, progesterone, insulin, cortisol and your thyroid hormones. Walking will help regulate insulin and cortisol which help to manage blood sugar. If you are working out 3-4 times per week with some intense type cardio you may be contributing to your inability to lose weight because 1. intense exercise increases intestinal permeability which = inflammation. 2. Cortisol will be raised with intense exercise and insulin will be affected as well. Insulin is our fat storage hormone. You may be causing your body to store more fat or at least hang on to what you have. 

Cortisol is a stress hormone and exercise= stress to the body. That is the point- it allows us to get stronger. It comes from the adrenal glands which sit on top of the kidneys. It helps us burn fat, raises or keeps blood sugar up and so much more. Cortisol is raised in response to stress and will be high regularly when we experience chronic stress. If you have high cortisol you may hold on to fat around your middle, you might sweat easily, have poor digestion, you might wake up and be tired and ache. Do you crave sugar after you eat?, do you have high blood pressure? Do you have trouble falling asleep?  These types of things can contribute to weight gain or hanging on to the weight and if you have high insulin it makes it harder to get rid of the belly fat. 

You say you are struggling to eat 1200 calories a day. My dear, you are not eating enough. Is this a low fat diet? You need to be eating at least 1800-2000 calories or more and you need to be eating lots and lots of veggies and some high quality fats along with quality proteins. Shoot for around 100grams of protein each day and a plate full of veggies at every meal, including breakfast. 

If you want to get rid of the belly fat- you start with the walking, eat 4 times per day for two weeks to give your body and your blood sugar balancing a break. Eat only veggies and proteins for these two weeks. Keep the starchy veggies to a very minimum if at all unless you are not getting full enough then eat a couple bites at your last meal. This may also help you sleep if that is an issue.

Restricting calories like that will cause your body to hang on to whatever fat it has- you are starving your body. This can cause your body to react by raising your blood sugar which can contribute to fat gain. You will release insulin in response to food or even to stress. If you are having symptoms of insulin resistance, you may experience feeling sleepy after eating, crave sweet things or starchy things after a meal, you may have belly fat or muffin top, and even brain fog. 

This is a good place to start in trying to fix your belly fat issue. Good luck to you. 

That is it for me to day. This is a short one. 

Send me your questions at helpforhashimotos@gmail.com or fill out the contact form on my website Helpforhashimotos.com

It would be so nice if you could leave me a review on iTunes so more people can find the podcast. I would really appreciate it. Thanks to those that have already left a review!! 

Join the Help For Hashimoto’s Facebook group. It is a closed or private facebook group so you can privately ask questions and get help on your health journey. We are small but growing so join us! 

You can find me on facebook at out of the woods nutrition and on instagram as @stephanieewalsntp where I post what I cook and eat. 

Thanks for listening. Until next week. 

Oops! I forgot to take my medication. Plus, how’s your poop? Episode 17.

ITunes Review: 

Stephanie, Thank you so much for a wonderful podcast. I love that you keep it real while answering difficult questions for us. You have a very calming and peaceful voice and I am always so encouraged listening to your podcasts. Keep them coming. We are listening and learning. 

What do you do if you forget to take your medication? 

Half life- a half life in the world of medications means the amount of time it takes for the concentration of the medication in your blood plasma to reduce by half.  Said another way- it is how long a drug stays in your system or the amount of time it takes for the effectiveness of a drug to reduce by half. 

If you are taking levothyroxine, the half life is 6-7 days and up to 9 or 10 days if you are dealing with hypothyroid conditions. If you have hyperthyroid conditions then it can be as little as three days. Nothing seems to be easy with this disease. 

Levothyroixine is a common treatment and most likely what your doctor will prescribe unless you have a doctor open or more knowledgeable in thyroid health. 

For practical purposes we will go with a 7 day half life for levothyroxine. When you take this medication, around 80% of it goes through your system over a longer period of time, like several hours. 

According to the Williams Textbook of Endocrinology, missing a day shouldn’t have a big effect on you. They also say that T4 is absorbed very well by the body so waiting an hour to take your medication before eating might not necessarily be required. Taking it on an empty stomach will give you a more stable TSH reading though. But since we all know that TSH should not be the gold standard, that maybe shouldn’t matter. 

The reason you usually have to wait 6 weeks to have your labs tested is because of this long half life. It takes about 6 weeks before your body has adjusted to a dose. 

However, if your digestion is not working well and we are going to talk about that in a minute, then you may have issues with absorption and of creation of T3 from your T4 only medication. 

There can be an issue in concentration of medication between manufacturers which can mess with your body. So, be proactive and let your pharmacy know that you do not want them to switch your medication without your knowledge. Remember that getting this dose right is like goldilocks- it needs to be just right. 

This same textbook also says that NDT is not a good choice for treatment and that TSH is the gold standard so- take it for what it is worth. 

A NDT like Armour has a half life of 2-7 days with the T3 having a half life of 4-6 hours. So if you take your medication with T3 in it at 8am then sometime between 12pm and 2pm you have about half of the original dose of medication in your system. Your cells will have used the rest of it. But it should last you about a day. This means half is gone in 4-6 hours, another half of the half (a quarter more ) will be used in another 4-6 hours and so on. 

T3 is used up faster because your body doesn’t have to convert it like it does T4. This is why it is a good idea to take a partial dose in the morning and a partial dose in the afternoon. 

Now let’s talk about what happens when our digestion isn’t working well because this is very important for our thyroid to work well. 

Thyroid peroxidase is an enzyme. It makes thyroid hormones by cleaving off an iodine molecule and adding it to the amino acid tyrosine on thyroglobulin which then makes T4 and T3. In order for this to happen, we need to have available to us: selenium, copper, magnesium, B vitamins, zinc, vitamin A. 

You should not just go and willy nilly supplement with these vitamins and minerals. There are many factors involved here and supplementing with some of these may make things worse in the long run. So it is a good idea to either do a lot of your own research or work with someone who knows how to work with your condition. 

Our gut or gastro intestinal tract is an important factor in our thyroid health but even before that, what we eat and how we break it down in our stomach is a key factor. 

Before we even talk about what you are eating, let’s talk about how you are eating it. Are you running through the drive through before or after your kids activities? Are you eating in the car or eating while you are doing something else?  Are you relaxed or stressed while you are eating?

Any of those scenarios will mean you are going to struggle with breaking down your meal before it even gets to your small intestine where most of the nutrients are absorbed. 

Digestion actually starts in the brain. We smell our food cooking and our brain signals the production of saliva so we can break down some of that food in our mouth while chewing. Are you chewing your food well? Like 20-30 chews per bite? Really breaking it down so the enzymes in your saliva can begin digesting the carbohydrates in your meal?

Once you have chewed well, you swallow and that ball of food goes in to your stomach and stomach acid and pepsin get to work digesting or breaking down proteins. 

Do you have acid reflux after eating? (there is more about this in the audio)

Once it is broken down in the stomach and reaches the right pH then the valve between your stomach and your small intestine opens and fats are broken down by the release of bile and nutrients are extracted in the small intestine and absorbed in to the blood stream. 

Here is where your gut health comes in to play since leaky gut or Intestinal Permeability are what contributes to autoimmunity. 

We need a balance of gut bacteria in our intestines to help us convert T4 to T3 there. If we are not eating right or digesting well then we will have an imbalance of bacteria and intestinal permeability. 

We can end up with parasites, overgrowth of candida and constipation- all with their own contributions to our failing health. 

When we have hypothyroid- we have a sluggish gallbladder which means we might struggle to digest our dietary fats and then we are making thick and viscous bile which further messes up the gallbladder function. When this is not working well, we are not detoxifying as well either. so we can’t break down hormones or toxins from our environment. 

How are you pooping? No one wants to talk about it but you must be moving stool through your body and going every 16-24 hours. Your BM should be the size of your forearm from your wrist to your elbow, it should come out with ease and you should feel relieved when you are done and not like you still have to go. 

Being constipated further contributes to the “bad guys” overgrowing in your Small Intestine and causing bacterial infections, you may experience chronic pain, inflammation, digestive issues, food intolerances and Hashimoto’s. 

With all of this happening, we can also have issues dumping estrogen and so it can accumulate. This can cause hypothyroidism that you won’t see on a blood test according to Datis Kharrazian in Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms. This excess estrogen will keep the thyroid hormones from getting to the cells- causing hypothyroid symptoms. 

So you see, taking supplements without first healing the gut is pointless. It is a band aid at best. The only supplement you may need at this point is some stomach acid- Betaine HCl so you can start to break down your food and get those nutrients to your cells, kill off some of the bad guys and bring things back in balance. 

You will see improvement in chronic inflammation from changing what you eat and the way you eat it. Start with your plate. With breakfast. Make some bone broth. That is the next recipe to go out in my newsletter so sign up for that. 

So reduce inflammation by cutting out gluten, dairy products, eggs, most other grains, soy products and yeast. Yeast can feed an already out of control candida overgrowth. These are some of the big allergens, in other grains it is best to avoid corn for sure. 

This gives your body a chance to calm down so it can properly react to foods. 

You need to be on an elimination diet for 3 weeks to 3 months depending on how sick you are, how inflamed, or how long you went untreated for Hashimoto’s. In addition to this, you can do something called a FIT test

What can you eat?  There are no notes for this. It’s only on the audio. 

Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms?

Against All Grain

Meals Made Simple

Cholesterol and thyroid problems. Episode 16.

Cholesterol Clarity

Statin Nation

Depression, swelling, weight gain, exhaustion, endometriosis, and feeling hopeless. Episode 15.

Your body is a mass of energy,  a molecular structure at a very high speed of vibration. Your brain is an electronic switching station. When you think you activate brain cells and that sets up a vibration in your body and that vibration is sent off in to the universe. You can actually photograph it leaving the body. People pick up a vibration and you feel it. When you are consciously aware of energy or a persons vibration you call that a feeling. You say, “I feel this way or I feel that way” If you are in a negative vibration, if you are focused on something that is not very nice, is pretty dark and you are putting yourself in a bad vibration.  When somebody picks that up they think, eww, they want to get away from you. they don't’ want to be around you. When you are focusing on good things, and on positive and up beat things, you are activating the positive pole in those brain cells and you are moving yourself into a positive vibration and people pick that up. 

You cannot trick it though. It is spirit never expresses itself other than perfectly. Religion calls it spirit, science calls it energy.  Albert Einstein says, everything is energy. That’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy, this is physics. If everything is here, if nothing is created or destroyed, the good you want is here. And what you want to do is get in harmony with it. Get on the frequency that the good you desire is on. 

Hi,

I’m writing in to you because I am both helpless and hopeless in my life with chronic illness. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and Hashimoto’s at 13 after gaining 40 lbs with no change in diet or exercise. I take synthroid 88. I also have endometriosis with which I’m forced to take hormones (birth control) to stop the growth. I had to have my left ovary and Fallopian tube removed last November because of how extreme my case is. I also have a small cyst on my pituitary gland. 

I am heartbroken because I cannot lose any weight or feel good. I hike and walk with my dog 3x a day as well as eat mostly plant based and almost completely off gluten. I experience flare ups that debilitate me, my face and neck swell, I can hardly swallow, etc. not to mention the pain that comes with them. I’m exhausted, depression and mood swings. I’ve also had what I think is fluid retention, my legs are full and have cellulite and varicose veins (I’m 26.) every day I grow more and more scared, confused, and lost in my conditions. I understand this is a Hashimoto's podcast but I figured id mention the other conditions bc they are all in the endocrine system. I simply want to feel healthy and my doctors never give me any answers. I’m on a ton of supplements. My stomach is a mess too. It has been 13 years of consistently feeling horrible in my body and about my body. I need help or guidance. I try to do all my own research but I’m exhausted, lost, and not sure what I’m doing wrong.

Amanda

Amanda, I am so sorry you are struggling. Let’s see if we can break down what’s going on and what changes you might be able to make. This is tough. You are dealing with a lot and that makes it hard to get through the day sometimes, I’m sure. 

I might sound like a broken record here but let’s first look at diet. You have to be completely off gluten first and foremost. You should probably avoid all grains for at least a month but three months would be ideal considering what you have described here. Debilitating flare ups, face and neck swelling and not being able to swallow. Your immune system is probably on fire and cutting out all gluten and grains will help calm things down. 

You are on a mostly plant based diet. What does that look like? Is it really high carb? Meaning lots of grains or gluten free pasta and breads? Or is it mostly veggies and plant based fats like avocado, olive oil or olives, coconut oil and coconut products? 

Your plate should be ¾ veggies at each meal and ¼ protein. So, why are you mostly plant based? How can you get more protein in your diet?  Are you willing to eat more animal based proteins? More fish and chicken perhaps?  I am not a fan of all plant based diets for healing or putting in to remission autoimmune conditions. For one, I have not spent a lot of time studying how to do it “right”. I know what has worked for me and my clients and eating a lot of veggies is really helpful but eating higher carb type diets do not help Hashimoto’s. The reason for this is they can contribute to blood sugar imbalances which makes everything worse when you have Hashimoto’s and you also have endometriosis which isn’t helped by blood sugar imbalances. 

Speaking of the endometriosis, you are on the pill to help control it. Very common conventional medical treatment. 

Endometriosis- for those of you that don’t know what it is- it is a condition where tissue that is like the lining of the uterus, grows elsewhere. The lining of the uterus is the endometrium and it thickens during a normal menstrual cycle. This lining thickens so it can receive a fertilized egg and if it isn’t fertilized, you menstruate or bleed. 

If you have endometriosis, the thickening happens outside the uterus and cannot shed like a normal cycle so it is stuck and can cause pain and inflammation. There can be scar tissue and can cause fallopian tubes to close leading to infertility. 

Things you can do outside of what your doctor is doing for you are: 

Take foods out of the diet that are inflammatory to you. The best and cheapest way to know that is to do an elimination diet like the autoimmune protocol. 

Remove soy, alcohol and foods that might be increasing estrogen in you. Grains, processed foods because of food additives, poor quality fats like vegetable oils and trans fats and anything cooked in them. Dairy and poor quality meats, tap water and water in plastic bottles. There can be estrogen type molecules in the water and the chemicals from the plastic leach in to the water. 

Avoid things like phthalates which are linked to a lot of health problems including messing with estrogen receptors. You find these in personal care products, candles, vinyl, laundry detergent, nail polish and plastic wrap with the #3 on it. 

Avoid diesel fuel and spilling gasoline on yourself. 

Birth control pills have high levels of estrogen- they are actually contaminating the water in some areas and affecting fish. 

Some essential oils can even be harmful to someone with estrogen issues. Jasmine, clary sage, geranium, lavender and tea tree. Use only eco-certified oils and know how to use them. 

You can take the supplement DIM which will help promote healthy estrogen metabolism which you can get from the cruciferous family of vegetables. Eat a lot of veggies and a ton of fiber which will help clear out extra estrogen. 

Milk thistle and dandelion root can help detox extra estrogen from your body. 

Regular exercise which it sounds like you are getting. Dont’ kill yourself working out though. Go for long walks- like 45 minutes to an hour as many days as you can squeeze in. It will help keep hormones, blood sugar in check. 

Avoid sugar. All of it. Eat some fruit- like one piece a day and that is it. 

Buy filtered water or Reverse Osmosis water and add back minerals with something like trace minerals. 

You need to be eating, again, lots and lots of veggies. Bone broth, leafy greens, blueberries, coconut oil, you can do flax, ground, in smoothies, chia- both of these are fiber. You need lots of fiber. 

Magnesium. Foods that have magnesium like pumpkin and sunflower seeds, avocado, banana, swiss chard, spinach and even black beans (not part of an elimination diet necessarily)

Eating fatty fish like salmon, tuna, sardines, anchovies, trout. Or supplement with the highest quality fish oil you can afford. 

Ok. On to the exhaustion. This can be related to unmanaged blood sugar and to adrenal fatigue. Also, Birth control pills- any contraceptive that is estrogen based will rob your body of good gut bacteria, magnesium, zinc, most of the minerals your body needs, B vitamins and vitamin C. This will exacerbate all of the stuff you are already dealing with. 

Good gut bacteria- Do you have intestinal permeability or leaky gut? Probably. There are trillions of bugs in our gut with several hundred different kinds of bugs living there. The “good” guys that live there develop our immune system to some degree and play a role in the response our immune system has against things that come through. These good guys thrive when we are eating real whole foods. They are able to keep the “bad” guys in check. They help us break down some foods, and help us use vitamins and minerals. They like fiber that cannot be digested before it gets to them. It is called insoluble fiber. This helps keep the lining of our intestines in tact. The bad guys grow when we have poor digestion, our immune system is off or even when we are stressed out. 

If you have ever been on antibiotics and have not taken a probiotic afterwards, you likely have compromised gut flora. A candida overgrowth can also affect the good guys. Stress will help the bad guys thrive as well.

You probably need a B Vitamin complex too.  Before you supplement with anything though, you need to make sure you are digesting your food. If your digestion is not working, it is pointless and you need to be taking high quality supplements. Not all are alike. This is one case where you usually get what you pay for, unfortunately. 

So, consider a more paleo type diet here Amanda- this is high in plants and protein should be at about 100grams a day. 

Let’s talk a bit about Levothyroxine (bascially the same thing as synthroid). Some studies show T4 only medications like this one, do not work for some. Some people continue to be symptomatic and we all know that most doctors are not treating symptoms, just labs. TSH and T4 levels are not reliable markers for whether or not your thyroid is doing well. Testing Free T3, Reverse T3 and the ratio between the two is most helpful.  “Signs, symptoms and body temperature are the best measure of cellular thyroid deficiency” according to the book “Evidenced Based Approach to Restoring Thyroid Health”. This book says that people with low tissue levels of active thyroid hormone but have “normal” TSH and T4 will benefit from a medication containing T3. It has been shown that T3 medications will improve fatigue, depression, weight gain, PMS, Fibromyalgia and the list goes on.   

If your gut is not healthy, you are likely not able to convert the T4 only medication to T3 which is what your cells need. If you have a TSH above 2 and are symptomatic, it is likely you need thyroid treatment. This book also says that if a patient is symptomatic, a normal TSH level should not be used as the sole reason to not treat a patient. 

Let’s move on to Hashimoto’s

This is the autoimmune disorder. Medically termed chronic lymphocytic thyroiditis. The thyroid is the most common organ affected by autoimmune disease. It is the most common cause of thyroid problems in the united states. It is also more prevalent in women than in men. Many of us have symptoms of hypothyroidism first and if we are lucky we are diagnosed with the autoimmune disease right away though in conventional medicine that doesn’t seem to matter. The treatment is the same and if I hear one more person say their doctor says that diet doesn’t matter I will blow a gasket. Diet changes would have saved my son. Diet changes would have changed the way my kids grew up. 

Undiagnosed or untreated thyroid problems are the underlying cause of a a lot of cases of depression. 

There are a lot of factors present in this disease and I am just going to go over some. 

Environmental factors like Heavy metals, especially cadmium, lead and mercury. Mercury affects thyroglobulin antibodies but seems to not affect TPO antibodies. Cadmium can affect fat tissue in that it will cause oxidation or free radical damage. Taking Vitamin C can protect against that. We also need selenium to remove cadmium from the body. This can deplete selenium which then affects the thyroid as we need it to neutralize the hydrogen peroxide that is created in the thyroid. 

Halogens are a big one. Chlorine, fluorine, and bromine. Chlorine stops iodine from getting in the thyroid, Fluoride decreases T3 and T4 and raises TSH in the blood. Bromine completely displaces iodine and increases TSH. You need high exposure to be affected but if you are drinking a lot of tap water, brushing with fluoride toothpaste, using fluoride mouthwash and have fluoride in your water supply- you are getting a lot. Bromine is in processed bread products, look at cleaning supplies too. It is everywhere.

Okay, I think that is where I am going to stop. I have to finish studying so I can take my exam for anatomy and physiology.  Amanda, I hope this helps you. Please, write back if you have more questions and keep me posted on how you are doing. 

Please head over to my website to get my free ebook- 5 things your doctor won’t tell you about hypothyroidism. I created a facebook group for support. It is called Help for Hashimoto’s. Join me there. It’s new so the only one in the group is me and one of my friends. Let’s grow it to something great. 

I sent out a great recipe for breakfast yesterday in my newsletter. sign up because that is likely the only place I will share recipes I have created. I do not develop recipes very often because I hate doing all that work and have the possibility of it not turning out. It takes a lot out of me to cook so I share good stuff when I make it in my newsletter. 

Send me your questions. Helpforhashimotos@gmail.com and find me on instagram and facebook. 

Thanks for listening. Please leave a review on itunes so more people can be helped. 

www.getbiotics.com use code DFILC163 Bioglycozyme Forte for blood sugar management, hydrozyme for stomach acid.

Are you your diagnosis? A little bit about selenium. Episode 14.

I was on this facebook group today for people with Hashimoto’s and autoimmune disease. Someone newly diagnosed was wondering about fatigue and being completely drained after workouts and wanting to nap even after 9 hours of sleep. I responded with take the exercise down a notch by trying to just walk for now and google the Autoimmune Protocol. Someone else responded with how they can eat what they want and exercise and that they get down sometimes and maybe a little tired but doesn’t everyone. She said she chooses to live her life, not her diagnosis.   

Article on green med info talking about using selenium and Myo-Inositol being used to put hashimotos in to remission and euthroidism which means your thyroid is working on its own. 

Selenium:

Before 1970 it was considered toxic but has since been classified as an essential nutrient needed in small amounts. It functions as an antioxidant. 

It is hard to get from foods because soil levels are varying so you never really know what you are getting especially if you are not eating local produce that is harvested in soil that is being managed properly. In the US the western part of the country may have higher levels than the eastern part with South Dakota having the highest levels and Ohio the lowest (According to Staying Healthy with Nutrition by Elson Haas.

We have less than 1mg of this mineral in our body and most of it is stored in the liver, kidneys and pancreas. Men need it more than women due to it being in their testes so it may have a function in sperm production. 

We lose selenium through eliminations and we should be able to absorb it through our intestinal tract at a rate of about 60%. This, of course will be dependent on your ability to digest your food well and also whether or not your gut is healed. We absorb it better when it is combined with amino acids- this means you have to be eating protein and breaking it down. 

Most selenium in foods is lost when they are processed like in white rice or flour. Food sources are liver, butter, fish and lamb, whole grains (out for most of us dealing with autoimmune disease), nuts- especially brazil nuts, shellfish, salmon, garlic, onions, mushroom, broccoli, tomatoes, radishes and Swiss chard can have good amounts of selenium if the soil is good where they are grown.  Many experts believe that Brazil nuts have such a varied content of selenium that we can’t necessarily rely on them. If you supplement, selenomethionine is your best bet at around 100-200 micrograms a day. Some suggest 200 mg for about a month and then a maintenance dose of 100 mg. Learn to listen to your body and if you are interested in knowing your levels, getting the plasma selenium test is ideal. Serum and whole blood will work too so if your doctor is able to test it, have them do it. 

Toxicity and deficiency symptoms are similar. Liver damage, hair loss, brittle nails with white spots and streaks. They can even fall out. These would be due to high soil levels.  If the supplement you are taking is formulated wrong, you can have muscle cramps, nausea, diarrhea, irritability, fatigue, loss of the hair and nails, pain, numbness or tingling of the hands and feet.  Deficiency will make you more vulnerable to infections, toxins, and other nutrient imbalances- again- this is where good digestion is key.  If you are taking anything to reduce stomach acid you will be deficient in selenium as well as many other vitamins and minerals. Most birth control pills will also deplete you of it as well. 

When you are NOT deficient you may tolerate cigarette smoke better as well as alcohol and poor quality fats. 

How does this relate to the thyroid? We need selenium to convert T4 to T3 which is the usable form of thyroid hormone that our cells need. Also, when TSH is produced and released, your body gets a message to make more hydrogen peroxide. This is needed to help make thyroid hormone in a round about way. It is needed to make some things happen in your body so the hormone gets made. We need antioxidants to neutralize the hydrogen peroxide after it does its job. Selenium is part of the process of helping glutathione neutralize the peroxide. 

In Isabella Wentz’s first book, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, she explains that if you are taking in too much iodine, more hydrogen peroxide needs to be produced which will mean you need more selenium to neutralize it. When you are already deficient in Selenium, you can end up with too much hydrogen peroxide which can cause inflammation around your thyroid tissue which creates an immune response, antibodies are produced and you have autoimmune disease. 

She recommends taking a selenium supplement on an empty stomach with vitamin E which helps our body absorb selenium better. 

Inositol 

Myo-insoitol is the same thing as inositol and is found in lots of fresh fruits and veggies so supplementing with it may not be necessary. High amounts are found in oranges, grapefruit and limes with blackberries, kiwi, cherries, peaches, apples being up there too. You can get it from brussels sprouts, beans, artichokes, cabbage, asparagus, dark greens, zucchini, bell peppers. As long as your digestion is working well you should have no problem getting enough from your diet as long as you are eating real whole foods. 

It was once considered B8 but since our body can make it, that distinction was taken away. Some still consider it to be part of the family of B vitamins though. It actually can help your body break down fats for digestion. It helps keep our cells firm so nutrients can get in and wastes can get out. It also helps brain cells work better. 

Caffeine can produce deficiency which can look like constipation, hair loss, high cholesterol and even eczema. Again, you can get enough from your diet so you don’t need to supplement. 

Link to Green Med Info article

Learn more about the nutrients our body needs here.

How do you push through the fatigue? Episode 13.

Q.  How do you push through the fatigue? I just want to get my life back on track.

Q.  I’ve got hypothyroidism/Hashimotos. Around noon I start getting tired and it can get to the point of dozing off. I've had every thyroid level possible checked and it's within normal range. We've actually checked it numerous times. I've had my b12 and folic acid checked along with my hormone levels, vitamin levels, and had a CBC done. Everything is good. I'm wondering if maybe we are missing something. Could I have something that we haven't checked for yet. I've also got bipolar2, depression/anxiety and ptsd which I take Topamax for. I also take Levothyroxine for my hypothyroidism.

First let’s talk about Topamax. I want you to know what you are on.  Your doctor should be testing your kidney and liver function and your blood should be tested to be sure you are able to process the drug well. They can become toxic very quickly.  

You should not drink alcohol while on this medication as it interferes with the effectiveness and it can make you sleepy as well as slow your heart rate. 

Antacids will keep you from being able to absorb this medication as well as any nutrients from your food. 

Fiber supplements can reduce the effectiveness of this medication. 

This drug will cause you to be low in folate or deficient in it. 

It has not been approved to treat PTSD but is endorsed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness to treat bipolar disorder and other mood disorders. 

Common side effects: 

Diarrhea, Dizziness, Double vision, Fever, Hair loss, Loss of appetite, Mood changes, Nausea, Reduced perspiration, Sinusitis, Stomach upset, Taste changes, Tingling or prickly skin sensations, Tremors, Uncontrollable eye movements, Urinary tract infection, Weakness, Weight loss.

With that being said, let’s move on and talk about fatigue. 

This is a super common issue for those of us dealing with thyroid issues and there are a number of reasons why fatigue could be your issue. 

Anemia.

You can have anemia from a deficiency of B12, Iron or folic acid. Your doctor may check your iron levels but do they check B12, folic acid and ferritin? Any one of these can contribute to fatigue.  And just because your lab says you are in the normal range doesn’t mean you are in the optimal range. j

Normal ferritin levels are between 12 -150 ng/mL. Mine is currently at 17 and I struggle with energy often. Some thyroid experts would say that optimal ferritin levels should be at 90-110 ng/ml for good thyroid function.  If you are still losing your hair- it could be an iron deficiency. 

And B12 values from your doctors lab may include values from people who were deficient in B12 so you can’t always rely on the lab values. “normal” is between 200-900 pg/mL but under 350 can give you neurological symptoms.  

Food sensitivities, not food allergies which is when your immune system reacts to protect you like when someone’s throat closes off in a nut allergy.  This alerts the IgE part of your immune system and happens as soon as a food is ingested. The IgA and IgG sections of the immune system will react to foods in what I would call a sensitivity or intolerance. These can cause us to be fatigued. 

IgA reactions happen in the intestinal tract which can cause inflammation there each time we consume a particular food. This will damage the intestines and can cause us to be unable to absorb nutrients from our diet. You may have symptoms like diarrhea or looser stools, constipation, reflux or you may not have any symptoms at all. You can end up with conditions like IBS, gas, rashes on your skin, acne, asthma, headaches, irritability and fatigue.  Celiac disease is in this category. 

If your T3 is low and you have high Reverse T3, this will affect your energy. T3 helps our cells make more energy. Reverse T3 makes T3 ineffective so that we are slowed down a bit. If Reverse T3 is high, we will not have any energy and one of the biggest reasons this might be high is due to stress. Another problem could be that you are not converting T4 into T3. This can be due to stress, or even nutrient deficiencies either due to low stomach acid or a compromised gut. You might find you need to be on a medication that has T3 in it. 

If your TSH is high, you will not have energy. Not all lab values are created equal here. You need to make sure that you are in a good range. Lab values for TSH are made up from a population of all kinds of people- those who are seemingly healthy and those who have undiagnosed thyroid problems and even the elderly who often have lower functioning thyroids.  The best reference range for most people is to have a TSH around .5-2 uIU/L. Personally,  mine is lower than .5 and I feel pretty good on that.  If you are taking NDT you can have a TSH that might look hyper and if your T3 is in normal range you probably feel pretty good. This can cause alarm with your doctor but try to have a conversation with them about it. 

How is your blood sugar?

This is a really really big one because it affects our adrenal glands which also have a role in energy. The good old blood sugar roller coaster will cause your adrenals to become weaker or cause the signaling between your brain and your adrenals to not work well leading to what is called adrenal fatigue or HPA axis dysfunction. For people like us with Hashimoto’s we may not tolerate those refined carbohydrates very well at all. Sometimes we get a big release of insulin when we consume sugary or refined “white” foods that others might not. So our blood sugar goes up really fast and we may have too much insulin in our blood which causes us to crash with fatigue and even anxiety or nervousness. This stresses our adrenals and leads to more fatigue.

Adrenal health is important for energy. If you are suffering from Adrenal fatigue you likely don’t have much energy to speak of even if this is the only thing you are dealing with. This is such a big deal and it takes some time to bring your adrenal health back in good standing. You need to avoid caffeine, keep your blood sugar balanced, make sure you are sleeping well and resting when you can, managing stress and probably supplementing. You can listen to Episode 7 of this podcast for more on adrenals. 

Having good digestion is key to energy. 

Many of us will be nutrient deficient and usually deficient in those nutrients that help our thyroids to function well. Just having hypothyroidism makes it harder for us to get our nutrients out of the food we are eating. This means the digestive system has to work a little harder to break down our foods and this can cause a lot of fatigue. We often have lower levels of stomach acid and most of us don’t eat when we are relaxed and we certainly don’t take the time to chew our food well. Right there is three strikes against us in the energy department. 

When we are not relaxed when we eat, we are not in “rest and digest” mode or what is called parasympathetic mode. This means we are in fight or flight mode which is not a good environment for good digestion. We already are not making enough stomach acid because we have symptoms of hypothyroidism, then we are not relaxed so we make even less. Then we are not chewing our food well- like 20 chews per bite to break it down. So, we have all this food in our stomach, not enough stomach acid and it is not being broken down. Our digestive system is working extra hard to try to break this stuff down- using all kinds of extra energy and that makes us tired. Then you have undigested food going through your intestines. You have leaky gut or intestinal permeability and these undigested food particles are then getting in to your blood stream causing your immune system to go on alert and inflammation occurs in the body. Fatigue is going to be a factor here. 

If you have low vitamin D, you can have fatigue. Get some sun. Lay in the sun for 10-15 minutes or go for a walk on a sunny day and expose as much skin as possible. Take a supplement of D3 if needed and make sure to have your levels checked by your doctor. Low D is a factor in autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s. 

A good diet will go a long way to helping you with your energy problems. High quality proteins and veggies along with a small amount of fruit. The big foods to eliminate for us are going to be gluten, dairy, eggs, nuts and I would try to eliminate nightshades to see if you feel better. This is basically called an elimination diet and is important for you to start to feel better, have more energy and bring your body back in to balance. 

You can find Hydrozyme at www.getbiotics.com use code DFILC163 to access. 

CoQ10 for energy. Does thyroid medication come from China? What is a flare? Episode 12.

No "transcript this time". Here are the links for the stuff I talked about though. 

Humco

WP Thyroid Website

Urban Moonshine Energy Tonic

Electrolytes

Trace Minerals

Here are the listener questions:

Hello Stephanie,

I've recently started listening to your podcast and the information you provide is extremely helpful! I too used to take WP Thyroid and can no longer obtain it so I thought I would try a compounded version of NDT along with the GTA Forte supplement that you are taking. Are you sure you are taking 100% natural desiccated thyroid powder from pig glands. I've been looking all over the country for a porcine powder made in the US. Most of what I have found is imported from China and some compounding pharmacists that I've talked with don't know the difference between NDT and chemically based T4 & T3 which is very scary. Please advise at your earliest convenience. Respectfully, Theresa

Hi Stephanie,

Firstly really love your podcast.

I  have hashimotos and am working with a gastro nutritionist who has recommended I take COQ10 for my fatigue. I have started to take this and have found this very helpful particularly around the afternoon slump. What are your thoughts on COQ10? Will this affect my thyroxine medication?

Lisa

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's about a year ago, and started on Levo. I was put on Armour Thyroid at the first of the year, and have done ok on it for the most part. However, every few months it seems as if I puff up again (puffiness around my eyes), start gaining weight, start losing hair. Are these symptoms of what they call a "flare" and how can I stop the symptoms? What should I do in the middle of a flair? Can I prevent them from happening at all?

Michelle

What are your thoughts regarding gluten? Episode 11.

What are your thoughts regarding gluten.... Why is it so bad? Why does it seem that decades ago this wasn't a problem? I have been gluten free for 2.5 years and can honestly say it gave me the most improvement out of anything I've ever tried. I have been sick since age 11 (and probably before that) and have tried everything and have been to every doctor. However doctors never told me to try quitting gluten!

A modified excerpt from The Autoimmune Fix by Dr. Tom O’Bryan: 

“A person can go a lifetime with the earliest symptoms of autoimmunity which can include joint pain, weight gain, brain fog, gut imbalances, depression, mood disorders and fatigue.
Autoimmunity occurs on a spectrum and it develops slowly, almost imperceptibly, overtime.
For autoimmune diseases the process starts as early as your 20s or 30s with multiple steps of declining health along the way. 
The biggest problem we have is that a medical diagnosis can occur only after there is significant tissue damage. By this time it takes longer and more work to fix the problem.

Currently in the United States the number one cause of morbidity and mortality which means getting sick and eventually dying of some kind of disease is your immune system trying to protect you. We now know that the only system of the body that addresses inflammation is your immune system and it appears that the triggers of the immune system are the number one reason behind getting sick and dying.”

Gluten sensitivity is one of the most common mechanisms for launching the immune system into action. Your symptoms are rarely the problem but more often a signal from the body of some other underlying issue.

So let me ask you this. Do you believe you have optimal physical mental and social well-being?

“The healthcare system in the United States is the most expensive in the world but reports consistently show that it grossly under performed relative to other highly industrialized countries. According to the new England journal of medicine, for the first time in the history of humans, our children will have a shorter projected lifespan than their parents. Our children will get sick earlier, get diagnosed with disease earlier, and die earlier than their parents from completely preventable diseases.

And for the adults of the world, we have bought into the idea that aches, pains and fatigue that limit us are due to the fact that we are getting older or under a lot of stress. Look at all the drug commercials on TV that Tell us that we can be happy and healthy again especially if we overlook the warnings at the end of the commercial that tell us we will die if we take this or that medication.”

Think of your body as a chain of interconnected organs and systems.  If you pull on a chain, it will break at the weakest link in the chain. Wherever your weak link is in your body, that's where inflammation will end up causing symptoms. Your weak link might be why you have a sense of not feeling well. Maybe it's your memory or it could be your thyroid. You might have been associating these symptoms with getting older. The truth is that  age does not have much to do with your sense of well-being.

We need to pull our head out of the sand stop thinking we are just fine and learn how to take care of our body. It takes an average of 17 years for research findings in the medical community to work their way down to your local doctor and you don't have 17 years to waste. The immune system has been researched a lot and new findings in medicine hat been found over the past 25 years. It takes an average of 17 years for research findings to get to your doctor so unless your doctors are completely up-to-date with the latest medical research they may not be aware of what cutting-edge science now knows about the immune system. There is a lot of science to show that changing your eating habits to avoid foods that trigger the immune system does not mean you are following a fad diet is the only way to address the information in your body so that you can heal. 

There is a spectrum for autoimmune disease. On one end you have no symptoms that just stick out at you and on the other end you have dis-ease and in between there is where all the damage accumulates until you have the dis-ease. The problem is that you might have elevated antibodies and feel completely fine or you may have elevated antibodies and be in a full blown thyroid storm. Either way- if you choose to do nothing about the elevated antibodies you are looking at continued destruction of you thyroid. So it doesn’t really matter if you have symptoms or not. Your immune system has been activated to protect you when there is any environmental trigger- gluten, mold, nuts… anything. This is normal and is supposed to happen. Your immune system is not supposed to attack your own tissue though. 

We are cellular beings, made up of trillions of cells. Our cells make tissues which make organs which make systems which make us- the organism.  Damage to the body starts at the cells. when there is damage to our cells, we have damaged tissue which leads to organs that are made up of damaged tissue so they are also damaged and then our systems are damaged which makes us sick with symptoms of thyroid problems and or Hashimoto’s. You can insert any chronic condition here too. Not just thyroid. 

The gift you have been given by having these symptoms is that you are now in control. You can do something about your symptoms. You don’t have to feel like crap. You now have an opportunity to nip those symptoms in the bud. To stop them before they cause complete destruction of your thyroid or before you have to give birth to a dead baby like I did. 

It is time to wake up and do something about what is going on with your body. This chronic state of disease so many of us are living in is not normal! 

Being tired all the time, pain, depression, not being able to lose weight, insomnia, anxiety, headaches, hair falling out, and the list goes on.  These things are not normal. You might have just gotten used to feeling so bad all the time that you forgot what it was like to feel good. 

Let’s talk about gluten and the role that plays in hashimoto’s and thyroid in general. 

Gluten sensitivity is high among those of us with autoimmune disease. We can have the same types of symptoms as people with celiac disease when they consume gluten containing foods. Things like anxiety, headaches, brain fog, chronic fatigue, weight gain, depression and a not feeling well. Your risk of dying early with gluten sensitivity is 72%. University of Chicago Celiac Disease Center says that 300 different conditions can be associated with gluten sensitivity. 

Here is a really simplified version of what happens when you consume gluten. 

When gluten molecules enter our bloodstream, your immune system will make antibodies against it. The antibodies go through your body looking for it and will sometimes get confused by tissues that look similar to the gluten proteins in your blood. For those of us with Hashimoto’s the thyroid is the victim and the tissue is being destroyed. All because we can’t give up bread or pasta. The tissue in our thyroid becomes inflamed from the attack and eventually dies off little by little until we have symptoms and we go to the doctor. 
Remember that gluten is a protein that is found in wheat, barley, rice, corn, quinoa, spelt and so on. It is thought that wheat, rye and barley are the toughest for us to digest well. Almost half the celiacs also have a sensitivity to corn too. The best way for you to know if you have a sensitivity is to eliminate it for a month and reintroduce it. 

Why isn’t gluten good for us?  The enzyme that our body makes that breaks down proteins in the food we eat doesn’t work so well on gluten containing grains like wheat. The way the proteins in wheat are made up, the enzymes we make can’t really break it down like other things we eat. So we don’t really get a whole lot of nutrients from the wheat because we can’t break it down properly enough to use the vitamins and minerals contained within. 

You can actually develop an autoimmune disease like Hashimoto’s because you are gluten sensitive. 

Gluten is causing intestinal damage and permeability so we are not breaking it down well, it is keeping us from absorbing other nutrients and the proteins from gluten and other things are getting in to our blood stream causing more inflammation.  There are not a lot of good blood tests to test for gluten sensitivity so the best test is the elimination diet. Take it out of your diet for 3-6 months and reintroduce it to see how your body reacts. 

The longer you eat gluten, the more likely you are to develop an autoimmune disease.

Why is gluten such a problem for us?  Most bread used to be fermented in the form of sourdough which breaks down the gluten protein making it easier to digest. Most bread you buy in the store is so overly processed and the wheat is sprayed with chemicals that end up also affecting our gut. 

How do i become gluten free!? I wish I could get hypnotized!
How do i become gluten free with a toddler and a husband who is not gluten free? Everyday I keep telling myself not to eat junk then 5 min later i get a craving and eat I have no self control.

This is not about self control first of all. Your body will crave what is harming it because you get a dopamine hit from the damage being done. It is your body’s way of protecting you.  You have a toddler who is not in control of what he or she eats- that is easy. They can eat what you make for them and they can eat just like you. You are actually at an advantage with a toddler because you can introduce foods to them that you maybe never were introduced to like liver. They can learn to like liver because they don’t know any better. Get the book Nourishing Traditions and start cooking. :)

You probably already eat meat, fruits and veggies so you are half way there. There are a million recipes on the internet for gluten free diets- just look at the paleo world. So many delicious recipes out there. I wasn’t a fan of many veggies when I went gluten free and I found myself eating new things all the time. Some of them I liked and some not so much. 

It can be really overwhelming so you just start with one meal. Maybe lunch or dinner and make one gluten free meal for dinner. Make enough for leftovers so you have an easy lunch. Do some kind of meat like chicken or steak or hamburgers (no bun) and make a salad and another veggie to go with it and you have a gluten free meal. 

Buy some applegate lunch meats and roll them up in a lettuce wrap for lunch with avocado, maybe mayo if you tolerate it, some lettuce and have some cucumbers on the side. There is lunch. 

Breakfast gets to be trickier for a lot of people because we are taught that we must have breakfast food for breakfast which is a total load of crap. Have leftovers for breakfast. I spent so many years trying to make breakfast n’oatmeal out of spaghetti squash and riced cauliflower only to be super disappointed in the taste. 
Don’t try to replace old favorites with gluten free versions. Don’t trade one junk food for a gluten free version. That will not help you heal. Start with real whole foods. 

As for your husband it really depends on how supportive he is. If he is supportive, he will eat what you eat while he is with you. My husband was not the best at this. He complained at what dinner was sometimes but I did my best to ignore his complaints and made food that made me feel better so I could be there for my family in a better way. Now, he will eat a burger without a bun and will eat what I put on the table without any complaints. He had to or he would starve. 

Good luck. 

Hi,

I am recently diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. It’s been less than a week since my diagnosis. I’ve just started taking Levothyroxine daily and Vitamin D2 weekly. I also have been a vegetarian for over 13 years. It will be difficult for me to reintroduce any kind of animal protein into my diet, aside from eggs and dairy. I wonder if there are any alternatives to taking supplements? I’ve read about how to get “complete proteins” from combining veggies/beans/and grain. I’m basically starting from scratch, with no real knowledge or thought previously put into my diet. Should I focus more on how I combine ingredients to create more beneficial meals?

Thanks,
Mary

First of all, Vitamin D3 or cholecalciferol is what you should be taking instead of vitamin D2. Please make sure your doctor is monitoring your levels as you can get too much of it.  

Here is the thing with Hashimoto’s. Gluten will probably be a problem for you as I have just explained. Vegetarian and vegan diets can be carb heavy, meaning more pasta, bread, rice, beans etc. Those are all things that will mess with your blood sugar which will also need to be addressed. Soy is a complete protein but is not great for us. It was only ever meant to be consumed in a fermented state as a condiment.  It might be fine to consume some organic miso or tempeh occasionally but I would not rely on it for a protein source. 

All of the grains, beans and dairy can perpetuate intestinal permeability or leaky gut rather than heal it. 

Pea protein is a good alternative source of protein which you could include in smoothies. Look for a brand that has no other ingredients in it. Have a couple smoothies per day adding in a couple of handfuls of greens to each of those smoothies. 

Many people with hashimoto’s are going to be intolerant to eggs, nuts and seed which are all good sources of protein. Nuts and seeds are very hard on the digestive tract and eggs are one of the top allergens. 

Datis Kharrazian book, Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms has an elimination diet that allows for rice, millet, quinoa, buckwheat or tapioca keeping in mind your blood sugar levels when consuming these foods. 

You will have to work extra hard to get enough protein so that is where a pea protein powder will be good for you. You will want to avoid soy, nuts, nut butters, all dairy products, eggs, wheat, oats, rye, barley, spelt and kamut, tomatoes, tomato sauces, corn, alcohol, caffeine (includes coffee, tea, pop, chocolate). You should do this for a minimum of a month and then you can reintroduce some of these things to see if you have a reaction. 

When you do legumes, make sure you soak them for 24 hours. This will help them digest better. Same with any grains you plan to consume. Soak them, then prepare them. Then you can combine them to get a complete protein source. 

You need to consume some healthy fats like olive oil, olives, avocados, avocado oil, coconut products and make sure you are getting lots of variety of veggies both cooked and raw. Also make sure you are drinking lots of water. 

If you are willing to add in fish, this would be beneficial at least once a week. Just be mindful to buy wild caught fish if you do. 

You will want to load up on veggies at every meal along with some fat such as avocado. You will want 5-7 servings of veggies each day. 

You have to remember that Hashimoto’s is not a problem with your thyroid but a problem, first with your immune system. You have to figure out what is causing the inflammation and keeping your immune system on high alert. Doing this type of elimination diet will be quite helpful. 

You might want to have your B12 levels checked by your doctor and supplement with that accordingly. Same with your iron levels which are commonly low in people with hashimoto’s or thyroid problems. 

Udo’s oil is a vegetarian source of Omega 3 fatty acids that will be beneficial and make sure you are taking a good quality probiotic being sure to switch up the strains of bacteria every couple of bottles. 

Nutrients you will need to be sure you are getting are: 

iodine, 
zinc, 
tyrosine(found in fish, eggs, nuts, beans, oats and wheat), 
selenium (fish and eggs will be your best sources here), 
fat soluble vitamins A, D, E and K (you can supplement this. Biotics Research has a product called Bio-ADEK-Mulsion that you can get at getbiotics.com and enter in code DFILC163 to order it, 
choline (eggs, peanuts, rice, spinach, beets), 
the omega 3’s (Udo’s oil), 
amino acids (which come from proteins and you can get them from tempeh, lentils, black beans, quionoa, pistachios and pumpkin seeds), 
B vitamins you can get from many fruits and veggies
iron (lentils, tempeh, lima beans, quinoa, brown rice, oats- I would avoid oats, pumpkin seed, pine nuts, pistachios, sunflower and cashews, dark leafy greens). 

I hope this helps. 

Links in this post are Amazon Affiliate Links. I make a small commission from your purchase and it doesn't cost you anything extra. 

High T3, low T4, recommendations on supplements to feel better. Episode 10.

Welcome to episode 10. I hope this day finds you well and that everyday in every way you are getting better and better. 

Let’s get started. I got a question from Jordan. 

Hello Stephanie,     

    I'm very intrigued by your podcasts and enjoyed the free EBook! I was diagnosed with hashimotos auto-immune 2 years ago I've been on levothyroxine and my t3 remains high my T4 remains low but my tsh is always within normal ranges! My hair is terribly dry, brittle and gray and at the ripe age of 30 I'm heading to being bald! My bowels are Terrible to the point I was believing I had Celiac's or a gluten or wheat allergy until I listen to the podcast! I'm extremely overweight and I'm working hard on that as I'm 60lbs down! I have several of the symptoms of the adrenal fatigue except once I fall asleep I stay asleep and want to sleep hours upon hours! I'm writing to you to see if you could recommend to me some vitamins or suggestions so I can feel better. I'm a single mother on a extremely tight budget!  Thank you for your time! 

        Jordan

In the early stages of hashimoto’s people can have symptoms of both hypothyroidsim and hyperthyroidism. You can have palpitations, tremors, be really thin and have anxiety. You can have the dry brittle hair that is falling out and you can feel like you are going crazy. 

In hashimoto’s, your immune system is attacking the thyroid gland causing bits of thyroid hormone to be released in to the blood stream making you feel like you are experiencing hyperthyroidism. 

So what is happening? What will the issues be that you may have?

• food sensitivities

• nutrient deficiencies

• adrenal fatigue

• possibly an infection in your gut

• poor detoxification- you are not able to clear out toxins

Any or all of these will keep your immune system on high alert and continue the attack on your thyroid. 

The high T3 is probably what is causing your hair to fall out. This can be indicative of high antibodies and since you have a diagnosis of hashimoto’s this could be what is going on here. You can ask to have your thyroglobulin antibodies along with the thyroid peroxidase antibodies tested. This should confirm why T3 is high. 

Low t4 can indicate disease in the thyroid or a problem with the pituitary gland or the signal that tells your thyroid to make more thyroid hormone. Your TSH is in the normal range, you said- I assume that is conventional range. If it is above three, functional medicine would consider that high. So, The pituitary gland would release TSH if t4 is low and a high TSH level would probably mean the thyroid itself isn’t working well and you would have hypothyroidism.  If t4 is low and TSH is not high then the pituitary gland is not signaling correctly. This is something you would want to discuss with your doctor. 

You also need to take a look at all of these things to bring down the inflammation and hopefully put your hashimoto’s in to remission. 

You may have deficiencies in the micro minerals like selenium, zinc, vitamin D, iron, B12 and B vitamins in general. First and foremost though you need to see if you have low stomach acid.     

Let’s start with Selenium: 

Many of us with hashimoto’s are deficient in this micro mineral which can be one of the things that causes us to get hashimoto’s. It helps to break down and make neutral the free radicals made during thyroid hormone production. If we are low on selenium, damage to the thyroid can occur and our ability to convert T4 to the T3 (which is what our cells take in) is affected. Take around 200 micrograms of this one. It has been shown to help reduce thyroid antibodies. 

Vitamin D:  

This helps to regulate our immune system and remember that hashimoto’s is an immune system problem first and foremost.  Your levels should be around 60-80 when you have it tested for optimal immune system regulation. 

D3 is the more absorbable form and you should make sure that it is in a capsule or liquid form with some kind of high quality fat like olive oil or MCT oil (a broken down portion of coconut oil). It is a fat soluble vitamin so you need to take it with fat for your body to use it. 

Good food sources for vitamin D are cod liver oil, fish, eggs and sunlight

B12-

If you have major fatigue, you should have your levels of B12 tested. It plays a role in digestion too so you want to make sure you are, again, making enough stomach acid. Most of us with hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism have low stomach acid. 

When you have low stomach acid, you don’t digest your food well which means your body has to work harder to break it down which requires energy. 

One of the possible causes for the low stomach acid is a B12 deficiency. And a B12 deficiency can cause low stomach acid. Vicious cycle. If you don’t have enough stomach acid you can’t get the nutrients including B12 and iron out of your food. You won’t be breaking down your meals as well and this can lead to food sensitivities. 

Betaine HCl with Pepsin. This is stomach acid in capsule or pill form. I recommend starting out with around 150mg pill to see where you are at. It will help you digest and break down your food better so you can use the nutrients in your food. 

Next, Probiotics. 

Intestinal permeability plays a pretty big role in autoimmune disease. One of the things linked to it is having your gut bacteria out of balance. Having more “bad guys” than “good guys” can cause gut issues and anxiety. You have about 100 trillion bacteria in your gut. 

Start with a 10 billion CFU per capsule and increase every couple of days until you see or feel die off symptoms. The die off is the bad guys dying out and the good guys taking over. The bad bacteria will release toxins that might make you feel bad for a couple of days. This can also exacerbate the inflammation and immune response so make sure  you have good eliminations and are drinking plenty of water. 

One of the best ways to get a lot of good bacteria in to your digestive tract is by consuming fermented foods like sauerkraut- not canned sauerkraut but the raw fermented kind found in the refrigerator sections of stores or find it at farmers markets. Or make it yourself. It is so easy to do and really inexpensive. 

Here is a good explanation of what leaky gut or intestinal permeability is and how it affects the immune system from Sean Croxton: 

“think of a window screen. And I say, “It’s a hot day. You open up the windows. And the good air comes through to cool the place off. And it feels nice and good and what not. But it keeps all the bugs, the flies, the gnats and the mosquitos out of the house. And that’s how the gut works. It’s very selective about what it allows through into the bloodstream or wherever.

“But if some kid came over to your house and started poking big holes in your window screen, then what happens is you open up the window. And gnats might come in. Flies might come in. What do you do? You start grabbing a magazine and like whacking away and stuff. And that’s what your immune system does, right? It says, “Wait. This isn’t supposed to be here. So let’s start whacking away.” And now we’ve got a problem. We’ve got an overactive immune system.”

Glutamine- 

This will help heal your small intestine where intestinal permeability happens. It helps to repair the lining of your small intestine where new cells are made every 3 or so days. 

Zinc can also be helpful in repairing leaky gut and in helping you make enough stomach acid. 

If you are dealing with any kind of adrenal fatigue: 

This would mean your brain is not communicating with the pituitary gland to help your adrenals manage stress. This is called the HPA axis and it also helps to regulate the immune system. When we are stressed, this system doesn’t work well. 

If you are dealing with adrenal fatigue you may feel: 

• overwhelmed

• tired even with 8 hours of sleep

• like staying in bed in the morning

• a craving for salty foods

• daily things are too much to handle

• brain fog

• little to no sex drive

• like you can’t make a decision

Adaptogenic herbs like American Ginseng, ashwagandha, Asian ginseng, Cordyceps and Chaga mushrooms, and/or holy basil and licorice root may be helpful. 

You should work with a practitioner to find out if you are in need of supplementation here. 

Some things that can help you manage your hashimoto’s is your diet. 

• Being gluten free, dairy free or try an elimination diet to help you figure out which foods you are sensitive to. This will also naturally help you balance your blood sugar which will also help give your adrenal glands a break.

• Make sure you are eating protein of some kind at every meal, including breakfast and eat breakfast within an hour of getting up. Don’t skip any meals and don’t do any fasting.

• Eat 4-5 meals per day for a week or so to give your blood sugar regulation system a break.

• Have a snack of protein and fat or a starch before bed. Make sure any carbs you are eating are eaten with protein.

• Avoid caffeine

A word of caution on supplements. Please don’t go buy them at your local big box store or the corner pharmacy store. Don’t buy them on Amazon either. I suggest at the very least to buy from Vitamin Shoppe or from your local food coop or even Whole Foods. You should work with a practitioner that can help you find just what you need though

The reason for this is there is no regulation on supplements. They don’t have rules in manufacturing or labeling. Some supplements won’ t even have the ingredients stated on their label or the dose can be way off. Some might have gluten or dairy in them and you might have a sensitivity to it. This is one case where quality really matters. 

A practitioner should be able to find what is most bioavailable for you since there are multiple chemical formulations of certain nutrients and some work better than others. Some are more expensive than others to manufacture. 

You also need to make sure you start with low doses so as not to over do it.  You just don’t know how your body will react to a new supplement. Starting slowly with lower doses will help you catch a reaction to it before it gets too bad. 

There is no magic supplement that will fix the hashimoto’s or anything for that matter. Some of these will definitely help you on your journey to healing or remission or whatever you want to call it. 

My top picks would be Hydrozyme from Biotics which is a lower dose stomach acid supplement and diet changes first and foremost. You can get that by going to www.getbiotics.com and using my practitioner code DFILC163. 

When starting a dose of stomach acid, remember to take a few bites of your protein based meal, take a pill, take a bite of food, take a pill and you do this until you feel a little burning sensation. Then you know to take one less than what gave you the burning sensation. 

Thanks so much for listening. Please tell anyone you know who has been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s to listen in and if you would be so kind as to leave a review on iTunes so more people can find this podcast that would be great too. My goal is to help as many people as possible to feel better and beat this disease. 

Got a question about your thyroid or hashimoto’s? Please send your questions to helpforhashimotos@gmail.com or head on over to my website and fill out the contact form there. 

You can find me at www.outofthewoodsnutrition.com or www.helpforhashimotos.com  I’m on Instagram at @Stephanieewalsntp which is where I post the most and on facebook at Out of The Woods Nutrition

See you next time. 

Endocrinologists, medication, and first steps to take when diagnosed. Episode 9.

So today I had my 3rd consultant appointment to tell me I have hashimotos disease. (I got told this by the doctor 3 months ago) all he said was, its fine, Nothing to worry about and its very common in women, thyroid is fine, no need for anything else other than ill see you in 9 months time......now i feel like an idiot for having bad days of constant tiredness and pain.

After receiving the results from my full thyroid panel that was ran by my gynecologist, she referred me back to my regular doctor. She spent 10 minutes confirming that I do have Hashimoto thyroiditis and hypothyroidism. She said that I need synthroid and I should follow-up in 3 months. Nothing was explained to me. No recommendations for supplements. No recommendations for diet. I had to request an endocrinologist referral, which will take weeks. So my question here is should I begin the synthroid, figure out what supplements I need, diet, etc or wait to start synthroid until I meet with endo? I’m lost. Also, the closest functional medicine doc is 2 hours from me and doesn’t take insurance.

It seems this is quite common for a lot of us. We go to the doctor and they tell us to take the medicine and come back in three months or so to be tested to see if we are at the right dosage.  I personally got nothing at all from an endocrinologist. I had to pay out of pocket to see him and he was worthless to me. Just because your thyroid is a part of the endocrine system does not mean you will get the proper care from an endocrinologist. I am sure there are great ones out there but I have found they are particularly difficult to work with you on treating symptoms and not just your labs. Plus they have a standard for their labs and they will go by that and nothing else. If you are lucky to find an endocrinologist who will work with, great. If not, fire them and keep looking. You are the customer in this situation. You have a right to find someone who will listen. Unfortunately I realize that some of you have horrible health insurance and don’t have the ability to look around much so I have a plan for you! 

First of all, you have to remove any triggers for the disease. This will be different for each of you. Once you find our what your triggers are then you will have to repair that which brought your body out of balance and led you to your autoimmune condition. Why is your immune system out of balance? Why did this happen. These are questions you need to ask yourself and do a little digging. 

Make a timeline of your health. Look back to as far as you can remember and write it all down in a timeline. Infections, times where you were severely stressed out, antibiotic use or other medications you took, were you on oral contraceptives? Any accidents? Have you ever been exposed to any toxins? How about heavy metals? Do you have amalgam fillings?  Once you make a timeline you can see where things might have started to go wrong and then how to fix them. Obviously you can’t do anything about an accident or the fact that you took antibiotics but you can manage stress, take probiotics and other nutrients such as b-vitamins. i strongly recommend working with a practitioner on this to get it right. You don’t and shouldn’t just take any old supplement just because someone says you should. Don’t waste your money on things you may not need. 

Next, know that synthetic T4 only medication is not the only one on the market and it doesn’t work well for some people. Ask your doctor to let you try natural desiccated thyroid hormone like Armour or WP thyroid or any one of the other ones on the market. 

Also, you must take a look at your diet. This is always the very first place you should start. What are you eating?

A gluten free diet is a must in my book. There is so much research now on the effects of gluten and what is now believed to be the glyphosate in the wheat products that is destroying our health. Gluten also affects our gut health in that it plays a role in leaky gut or intestinal permeability which allows undigested foods or proteins to exit our intestines and go in to our blood stream setting off an immune reaction which can lead to food allergies or sensitivities. 

You may have to eliminate other foods too. Most people also have to eliminate dairy products and some of us don’t tolerate a whole bunch of foods. An elimination diet is a good first step really but if that seems overwhelming to you then start with gluten free and work your way there. Removing these foods that are causing inflammation in your body will allow your body to calm down and begin to repair itself. It will also provide your body with a chance to properly react to a food that is harming you so when you reintroduce foods you should be able to tell if something is working well for you. Foods can affect our mood, our energy levels, our digestion, our skin, our brain and more. Keeping a food journal is a good way to really pinpoint what foods are not working for you when you reintroduce them. 

The quality of your food is also very important. People often say how expensive it is to eat healthy and I’m not gonna lie. It can be costly to eat all organic and shop only at food co-ops. I have been very fortunate to be able to do just this but I also don’t have a lot of extra money for anything else. I have made high quality foods a priority and will continue to do so because it is important to me. It may not be important to you and that is okay. You can do a lot of good for your health by shopping at a regular conventional grocery store. Just don’t shop the center aisles of the store. In other words, buy real whole foods and if you can, shop with the environmental working groups list of dirty dozen and clean fifteen. This is a list of produce that is recommended to be bought organic and a list of produce that is okay to buy conventionally grown. A big way to save money though is at farmers markets. I got a head of cauliflower for $1 and all kinds of things at much cheaper prices than were in the store. I also buy most of my meat from local farmers at a significant savings. So if you can do some of that kind of thing it is really helpful in saving money. 

Next, if your adrenal glands are not working properly, you will not see improvement in your thyroid health. When we are stressed our cortisol can be low or high or fluctuate between the two. Last weeks episode was about adrenals so you can give that a listen for more details. 

You also need to heal your gut where 80% of your immune system lies. Cleaning up your diet, making sure you digest your food well, maybe taking a stomach acid supplement. If your stomach is not acidic enough you will not digest your food which will start the cascade of inflammation through the digestive tract and the body. A good diet is essential here and probably some supplementation. You should work with a practitioner on this. 

Lastly, removing toxins. This is big. Maybe you have a heavy metal issue. Maybe you need to clean up your personal care products and your household products. Perfumes have too many chemicals in them to count so those should be avoided. Air fresheners are full of chemicals. Anything you put on your skin will be absorbed in to your blood stream so you need to be mindful of that. 

I could probably spend an hour on each of these subjects but I like to keep these episodes kind of short since many of us have brain fog and low energy.  

You should take the medication that your doctor prescribed and see how you feel. Some people are sensitive to fillers in some of the medications. Synthroid contains cornstarch. Some generic brands have blue food dye in them. Many people do better on natural thyroid hormone replacements like Nature thyroid and Armour but everyone is different.  It is common for people with Graves disease to do better on T4 only meds like Synthroid rather than meds with T3 in them because they will have developed antibodies to T3 and T4. Because T4 is synthetic in synthroid there is less of an autoimmune effect in those cases. 

If you are taking synthroid or other synthetic T4 only medication and you show a normal TSH lab test but dont’ feel any better this might be what is happening: 

If you have hashimoto’s, long term inflammation of any kind including stress you can end up not being able to convert T4 to T3. You pituitary gland wont’ communicate well with your thyroid gland and/or your cells won’t respond to the thyroid hormone that is brought to them.  You may also have issues with your blood sugar, a gut infection, food intolerances and so on. 

If you are taking or feel better on natural desiccated thyroid hormone then: 

you probably couldn’t convert t4 to t3, you were sensitive to something in the medication, you may need t3 because those cells of yours are not taking in the t3 brought to them or the cells just like t3 better. 

If you have high cortisol, low progesterone, inflammation, nutrient deficiencies- these all will play a role in your body’s ability to take in whatever medication you are taking. 

Something else to consider is that if your autoimmune condition is managed you might not need medication at all. When your thyroid gland is significantly damaged then you will probably be dependent on medication and not taking it can be life threatening. 

Either way, you have to manage the hashimoto’s with all that was mentioned today. It is a lifestyle folks, not a quick fix. Healing or recovering or putting hashimoto’s in to remission takes time. The better you do with diet and lifestyle the better your thyroid will perform for you. 

To me, it is all worth it. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening. Be sure to share this podcast with anyone you think could use it. My goal is to help as many of you with hashimoto’s and other autoimmune conditions as possible. 

Be sure to pick up my free ebook, 5 Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Hypothyroidism on my website www.outofthewoodsnutrition.com or www.helpforhashimotos.com  

You can find me at Out of The Woods Nutrition on Facebook www.facebook.com/outofthewoodsnutrition and at @stephanieewalsntp on Instagram. 

Please send me your questions about thyroid and hashimoto's or anything autoimmune related to helpforhashimotos@gmail.com or fill out the contact form on my website. 

Again, you can get $15 off your first order with www.paleoonthego.com with the code GETCLEAR

Also, I would appreciate it if you left a review on Itunes for me so more people can find this podcast. It would really help me out! 

Thanks. 

Links (some are affiliate) to stuff I talked about: 

Eat Wild

Make-up and Skin Care

Mrs. Meyers

Branch Basics

Hot Logic

Acid blockers, digestion, and elimination. Episode 8.

Terrible heart burn !!What helps? Has anybody had any issues with Omeprazole or any acid reducer.

OMEPRAZOLE: aka Losec, Prilosec, Prilosec OTC and Zegerid

classified therapeutically as antiulcer agent and pharmacologically as a proton-pump inhibitor

Used for maintenance of healing in erosive esophagitis, duodenal ulcers with or without H.Pylori. Short term treatment of active benign gastric ulcer. The OTC or over the counter is for heart burn occurring more than or equal to 2x a week. 

What does it do?  it binds to an enzyme on gastric parietal cells in the presence of stomach acid. It diminishes the accumulation of acid in the gastric lumen with lessened gastroesophageal reflux and helps heal duodenal ulcers. 

Binds 95% of protein and is metabolized by the liver with a half life of 30 min to an hour. Half life means how long it takes for half of a medication to be eliminated from the blood stream.  

It says to use cautiously in liver disease, in geriatric patients due to increased risk of hip fractures in patients on high doses for longer than one year and in pregnancy, lactation or children. 

Acid blockers like the ones mentioned and also things like mylanta, maalox, tums alka-seltzer, tagamet, pepcid, zantac etc all will lessen the amount of stomach acid you have in your stomach. So how will you break down your food? That is what it is there for.  The acid blockers change the pH of your stomach which is supposed to be very acidic at around 3 I think. This low pH is how we break down our food, especially protein. Protein gets broken down in to amino acids which become neurotransmitter. Stomach acid breaks down our food so we can extract the nutrients we need from it. 

Low stomach acid, which happens naturally as we age and most of us with hypothyroidism don’t make enough of it can lead to anemia, candida, fatigue, constipation/diarrhea, tooth decay, hair loss, and a higher risk of developing food sensitivities. 

So you have less acid when you take an acid blocker but you also have a deficiency of good bacteria, calcium, coq10, folate, glutathione, iron, magnesium, melatonin, niacin, potassium, B vitamins, selenium, vitamin A, C, D and zinc. 

Hypothyroidism can lead to hypochlorhydria or too little stomach acid. This is what often causes acid reflux. When food is not digested well by the acid in your stomach it will putrefy, ferment and become rancid in the stomach. Our small intestine doesn’t like to let undigested or poorly digested food from the stomach enter there so it backs up in to the esophagus, irritating the tissue there and causing heart burn. 

Coffee and nicotine reduce the pressure on the esophageal sphincter so you end up with more reflux.

The food is not as acidic as it should be it doesn’t stimulate the gallbladder to secrete bile to emulsify fat and the pancreas doesn’t get signaled to release digestive enzymes to further digest the food. So you have this rotting food moving through the intestines which will eventually cause inflammation, maybe even an infection and likely leaky gut or intestinal permeability. 

The fat in the food isn’t being broken down by bile from the gallbladder so your cells are not getting any minerals. Zinc is a mineral which helps us produce enough stomach acid. Having hypothyroidism messes with our gallbladder function and it can cause it to become sluggish and it won’t release enough bile. Combine that with the SAD and you have the perfect storm for gallbladder attacks.  When the gallbladder isn’t working well, the liver also becomes sluggish and backed up so it can’t detoxify our hormones, toxins or other things. 

So as you can see, having less than good digestion is a real big problem for those of us with sluggish thyroids. Along with zinc, we end up depleted in tyrosine, selenium and vitamin A and D. When it is not working well it plays a role in autoimmune disease as well. Perfect. Look at all we have going for us!  We have a large amount of our immune system in our gut- around 60-80%. If our digestive tract is out of wack, inflamed, or if we are dealing with parasites then our adrenal glands will end up depleted. This will make your thyroid sluggish as well. 

It just keeps getting better for us. 

Ideal elimination from the time you eat a meal to the time it leaves you in the form of a bowel movement is between 16-24 hours. This is slower with hypothyroidism.  Constipation is anything longer than what your normal elimination would be. You can end up with malabsorption issues and toxins  and hormones get recycled which add fuel to the fire. There is a good chance you will be growing more of the harmful bacteria putting your good guys at risk for being taken over by the bad guys. Remember that we convert some T4 to T3 in the gut but we won’t do that as well when there is an imbalance of bad to good bacteria. 20% of thyroid function relies on the right balance of bacteria. 

Another biggie mentioned briefly earlier is the elimination of hormones, particularly estrogen. I am not a hormone expert but I do know that poor digestion means you can end up with higher amounts of estrogen that can lead to hypothyroidism that doesn’t show up on a blood test. This information came from Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms from Datis Kharrazian. He says that “excess estrogen binds the thyroid transport proteins so that thyroid hormones cannot get to the cells to do their jobs, causing hypothyroidism symptoms”

There are a lot of things you can do to eliminate acid reflux and keep things moving along smoothly. 

Food sensitivities or allergies can cause reflux or silent reflux which often has a cough with it. 

Look at your diet. As per usual, gluten free, dairy free and an elimination diet are the first place to start.  Remove also, eggs, corn, soy and yeast. This will give your immune system a break. A chance to calm down and your gut can repair itself.  These foods should be eliminated for 3-4 weeks. The longer the better.  Typical food reactions can look like skin rashes, eczema, acne, fatigue, joint pain, bloating, gas, heartburn, constipation, diarrhea and even nasal congestion. You can have anxiety, irritability, headaches and more. 

Manage your blood sugar. 

Stress. Don’t eat when you are stressed, take a minute to calm down, sit at the table without a phone, book or anything else. Take a few deep breaths, say grace if you like or whatever. Then take a bite of your food and chew it really well. Like 20-30 times per bite. 

Don’t drink a lot of water and avoid anything bubbly with dinner. The phosphorus in pop can put you in to sympathetic or fight or flight which will automatically turn off stomach acid production. 

You can take digestive bitters about 20 minutes before dinner and if that is not enough you may need to supplement with stomach acid. Something called Betaine HCl. I like a product called Hydrozyme from Biotics Research. I recommend buying it from a practitioner, not off of Amazon. 

To find out how much you need you take a bite of food, chew it well, swallow it and then take an HCl supplement with a small amount of water. Take another bite of food, chew it well and take another pill. Keep doing this until you feel a little burn, kind of like heartburn or like you just took a shot of alcohol. If you felt the burn at 3 pills then you know you only need 2 at each meal. Eventually you can get enough healing of your body done that you will start to make more stomach acid and you won’t need to take as much of the supplement. 

You can check in on your digestion by keeping a food journal. Write down everything you eat and drink and how you feel afterward. Keep track of your bowel movements. Look at them. Do you see undigested food in your stools?  What shape are they?  You can google the Bristol Stool Chart and see where you are at and where you need to be. Your eliminations should be solid, about the length of your forearm from your elbow to your wrist. It should come out with no straining, you should not feel like your elimination wasn’t complete and you should not have much on the toilet paper after you wipe. 

If you want to test your transit time you can take some activated charcoal pills, like 5 of them or you can eat about a cup of beets, or take 2 tablespoons of sesame seeds. Take them first thing in the morning, don’t chew the seeds if you use them, just swallow them. You want to be able to see them when they come out.  Write down what time you take them and what day you take them. Then keep track of your bowel movements. Write down the first time you see the seeds, beets or charcoal (your stool will be black with charcoal and reddish with beets) and write down the last time you saw them in your stool. The difference between the time you swallowed them and the last time you saw them is your transit time. Remember we are looking for anywhere from 16-24 hours.  Also, ideally you might go two times a day. 

That is it for me today. If you have any questions about this episode or you would like to submit a question for the podcast, please feel free to leave a comment on my website, www.outofthewoodsnutrition.com or www.helpforhashimotos.com or email me at helpforhashimotos@gmail.com

You can find me on facebook at www.facebook.com/outofthewoodsnutrition or on instagram at stephanieewalsntp. 

Thanks so much for listening. I really appreciate it. If you enjoy listening to this and want others to have access to it, I would appreciate it if you left a review on iTunes for me. My goal is to help as many people with thyroid problems and Hashimoto’s or other autoimmune diseases and I can’t do that without your help. Please help spread the word.

The first step to getting your life back is believing that you can!

Thanks again. See you next time. 

Do you have symptoms of worn out Adrenal glands? Episode 7.

Today we are going to be talking about the adrenal glands. I had a question from someone asking me what the adrenal glands were so here you go! 

Adrenal fatigue symptoms: 

Being a night person, hard time falling asleep, slow starter in the morning: 

All signs that your cortisol rhythm is out of balance causing cortisol to be high at night and low in the morning. It should be the opposite. 

Do you tend to be keyed up and have trouble calming down?

This is a sign of increased adrenal output or hyperadrenalism. Having high cortisol with low DHEA can cause this. In the beginning stages of adrenal breakdown, the body’s response to stress is to increase the cortisol output from the adrenal glands. If the stress never stops, this process doesn’t stop and you will eventually have adrenal fatigue. 

Do you get a headache after exercising?

This means your adrenals are slow to put out cortisol. Chronic stress will cause the cortisol levels to drop leading to a decreased ability to control blood sugar and eventually low blood sugar, irritability, headaches and so on. Exercise can cause your blood sugar to drop and if cortisol output isn’t there then blood sugar won’t be regulated properly leading to symptoms of low blood sugar. 

Do you feel wired or jittery after drinking coffee?

This may mean you have issues with high cortisol output, you need liver support or you just have a sensitivity to coffee. Caffeine is an adrenal stimulant though and it can contribute to excess cortisol output. 

Do you clench or grind your teeth? This is a classic sign of increased stress and high stress levels lead to an increase in your sympathetic nervous system or the fight or flight response. This will increase your total cortisol output. If the stress isn’t resolved, adrenals will start to break down and adrenal fatigue comes to visit. 

How about chronic low back pain that gets worse when you are tired? Our pelvic supportive muscles are neurologically related to the adrenal glands. You maybe need some connective tissue support. 

Do you get dizzy when you stand up quickly or feel dizzy in general?

This is a sign of low adrenal function. Our adrenal glands are responsible for keeping blood pressure in the normal range for those few seconds it takes us to go from lying down to standing up. Having a drop in blood pressure by 10 or more indicates a need for adrenal support. 

Do you have arthritic tendencies? Achy joints and there is no sign of arthritis? Consider your adrenal health and your gut health. Both can be responsible. 

Do you crave salty foods or do you salt your food before tasting it?

You may have a possible need for electrolytes. Our adrenal glands help manage stress but they also help keep our minerals balanced. Aldosterone is a mineral corticoid which causes our body to reabsorb sodium and chloride. When aldosterone levels are compromised, we excrete more sodium and chloride than is needed giving us a salt craving. I often tell my clients to salt their water if they are having adrenal issues. 

How about afternoon yawning? This can mean adrenal insufficiency, and slow or hypo functioning adrenals glands. It is also a sign you need B1 or thiamine and an indication of low thyroid function. 

Pain on the inner side of your knee? Tendency to have shin splints or sprained ankles? Adrenal dysfunction causes weak ligaments in the body. Ankles are most affected in a lot of us. 

Do you need to wear sunglasses even when it is cloudy outside? The ability of our pupils to constrict in bright light is partially related to adrenal functioning. When the adrenals are tired, they won’t constrict easily or at all. 

The purpose of the adrenals is to help us cope with all kinds of stress including the stress caused by blood sugar dysregulation.

The hormones secreted by your adrenals affect the way our body uses carbohydrates and fats, the conversion of fats and proteins in to energy and how fat is distributed in our body (especially around our waist and the sides of our face). They play a role in heart health and in digestive function. Adrenal hormones are anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant which helps minimize reactions to things we are allergic to from things in food to our environment.  After menopause they make our sex hormones. 

How is your ability to respond to chronic illness? Adrenals have a hand in that too. 

Again, blood sugar dysregulation/erratic blood sugar levels is closely related with low adrenal function. You might have a tendency towards allergies, that arthritic pain and get sick more often.  You might even find yourself with fears you can’t explain, anxiety and depression, inability to concentrate and tougher time recalling memories.  Find yourself less tolerant of things or get frustrated easily? Insomnia? 

Things that affect the adrenals: 

• Financial problems, loss of job

  1. Death of loved one

  2. Stress, chronic, repeated, psychological, fear

  3. Poor food choices, SAD diet

  4. Perpetual negative thinking loop running in your head

  5. No relaxation time

  6. Lack of sleep

  7. Chronic or acute infections

  8. Allergies, environmental or food (do you eat something you are sensitive to?)

  9. Lack of exercise OR too much of it

  10. Caffeine

More signs and symptoms of adrenal fatigue: 

• Hard time getting up in the morning

  1. Fatigue not relieved by sleep

  2. Lethargy or lack of energy

  3. Everyday tasks take a lot of effort

  4. Low sex drive

  5. Can’t handle stress well

     • road rage, anxiety all the time, yelling at your kids for no reason, compulsive eating, smoking, drug use

  6. Takes you longer to recover from being sick, injured or going through a traumatic event.

  7. Mild depression- seems pointless to make an effort at anything

  8. Less happiness or feelings of enjoyment

     • you don’t feel interested in much, don’t do much for fun

  9. Worse than bad PMS

  10. You cannot skip a meal, need snacks all the time

  11. Less tolerant of others

  12. Slow to wake in the morning- by 10am or so you feel better, slow down around 3pm and feel alive after 6pm

  13. You are not very productive

You have to look at these symptoms together. You probably have more than one which will suggest you are dealing with adrenal dysfunction. Having more than three of these is indicative of a problem. 

How do you recover?

Take a look at these symptoms on my website under this podcast and see where you can make some changes. You absolutely will have to make some changes in your life if you want to recover from adrenal fatigue. Supplements can help and you may need to supplement to kick start your adrenal recovery but they will only be a bandaid if that is all you plan to do. 

We all have stress and those of us with chronic illness have that on top of our every day stress. Remember that chronic illness, autoimmune disease, with an overactive immune system is stressful in and of itself to our adrenals. Then add on the standard American diet and you have more stress in the form of blood sugar dysregulation and digestive distress. Do you have food allergies or sensitivities? Probably if you have autoimmune disease. 

Look at your lifestyle: 

Remove the stressors: 

• What robs you of energy? People in your life, food sensitivities, no sleep

  1. Are you getting fresh air?

  2. Do you drink alcohol? Eat junk food? Smoke? Caffeine/coffee?

  3. Chemicals in your environment?

     • laundry

       1. skin care

       2. household cleaners

       3. clean water

Learn some deep breathing techniques, meditation and just do it. Even one minute a day to start will be helpful. Notice the stories you tell yourself in your head. Are you having an argument with your spouse or friend in your head? Your stress response will be the same whether it is in your head or actually happening. 

Sleep- the big big issue us Hashimoto’s sufferers deal with. We need to sleep to recover our adrenals. If you want to heal your adrenals, you need to go to bed and be asleep before 11:00 hits. Go to bed or start getting ready for bed at 9:00. No joke. Let the dishes go, let everything go and just work on healing your body for a while. If you can, sleep until 8:00 or 9:00. This is not always possible but do the best you can.  Normal adrenal function allows for cortisol to rise from 6:00-8:00 in the morning. With adrenal fatigue the rise isn’t as high and the drop in cortisol is faster. Lower cortisol means it takes longer to really feel awake. 

If you can’t sleep and are waking up between 1:00 and 3:00 in the morning, then you have a blood sugar issue. Your adrenals have kicked in to raise your blood sugar which causes you to wake up and it takes awhile for you to get back to sleep. 

Eating a protein/fat and unrefined carb type snack before bed can help you to stay asleep. You can also include some starchy carbs in your evening meal which should help you to fall asleep and stay asleep. 

Get some exercise. Low intensity to start. Walk for an hour as many days a week as you can. Yoga, especially restorative yoga can be very helpful. Wear the blue blocking glasses at night starting around 7pm. This will block the blue lights from TV and other screens which will aid in melatonin production. 

Eating: You must eat within an hour of waking up in order to prevent the adrenals from getting involved in raising your blood sugar. Even if you don’t feel like eating, eat something. Protein, fat and a small amount of starchy carb will help significantly. Maybe something like some chicken or turkey, a couple slices of avocado and a couple bites of sweet potato and maybe a small pile of veggies like cucumbers or carrots. 

Supplements that might be helpful in recovering your adrenal health. Remember, if you are only doing supplements they will be a band aid. You need to change your diet and lifestyle and use supplementation to help you along the way. 

• Vitamin C- very essential nutrient to the whole adrenal process. Ascorbic acid along with bioflavonoids. Look for a C complex. Go for highest quality of any supplement that you can afford. Buy from a reputable source.

• B Vitamins- A B complex with methylated folate- important in energy production

• Magnesium Glycinate- is like a spark plug for the adrenals. Very helpful with energy production.

• Trace Minerals and Electrolytes

• Essential Fatty Acids- fish and fish oils.

• Adaptogenic herbs and other herbs-

• Licorice Root- anti-stress, increases energy. Very helpful in many ways to the adrenals. Avoid in the late afternoon and evening.

  1. Ashwaganda- a nightshade but a great adaptogen. It will help the body function more in the normal range no matter if you have high cortisol or low cortisol. Can be stimulating for some people.

  2. Korean Ginseng- helps with energy.

  3. Siberian Ginseng- take no later than lunchtime- is stimulating

  4. Rhodiola- prevents stress induced adrenaline activity

  5. Holy Basil- gives us a sense of well being, helps normalize blood sugar

This is not an overnight fix. It didn’t take you overnight to tax your adrenals. Plan on 6 months to 2 years of recovery. You will see improvement over time unless you don’t change things in your life that got you here in the first place. You can get your life back but you have to put in a little work to get there. 

What does all of this have to do with the thyroid?

Chronic immune stimulation as in the case of unmanaged Hashimoto’s causes long term high cortisol (stress). You have to manage the autoimmune disease in order to also manage the adrenal gland stressors.  Low thyroid function or hypothyroidism is often the after affect of adrenal stress. Chronic adrenal stress will affect the communication between the brain and the adrenal glands. They hypothalamus and the pituitary gland are less effective with chronic adrenal stress and therefore cannot communicate with the thyroid as well.  The thyroid hormone also won’t be able to get the cells like they need to to do their job. T4 will not convert to T3 as well. The cells won’t be as sensitive to the thyroid hormone when it reaches them and the immune system cannot regulate itself as well. 

Obviously diet is a big part of this. You have to be eating high quality protein, fat and carbs in the form of veggies and a small amount of fruit. There are blog posts on my website for each of those topics as related to health in general so you can go over there to read more. Just search protein, fat, or carbohydrate. You have to keep your blood sugar stable and eat every 3 hours or so if you need to until your adrenals and blood sugar become more stable. Have protein and fat based snacks and avoid all juices for now. Don’t eat any higher glycemic foods/ food higher in sugar without eating protein or fat with them. Avoid artificial sweeteners, partially hydrogenated fats, any foods you are sensitive to, refined sugar and the other things mentioned earlier like alcohol, smoking/nicotine and caffeine. 

This week, tell yourself each day: “everyday in every way, I am getting better and better”.  You have got this and I have got your back. 

Thank you so much for listening. Your support means a lot. Please share this podcast with anyone you know dealing with thyroid problems, autoimmune issues or chronic illness. Much of the information here can help more than just those of us with Hashimoto’s. 

If you haven’t already, you can get my free ebook, 5 Things Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Hashimoto’s on my website. You can also find me on Facebook at www.outofthewoodsnutrition.com or helpforhashimotos.com and on instagram at stephaniewalsntp.  

I would love to answer your questions about Hashimoto’s or other chronic conditions. Please send your questions to helpforhashimotos@gmail.com or go to my website and fill out the contact form and put podcast in the subject line. 

Thanks for joining me, see you next week. 

Natural desiccated thyroid hormone vs. synthetic, dry brittle hair, and having invisible illness. Episode 6.

I have Hashimotos and recently my hair has turned extremely dry and brittle. My doctor increased my medication a month ago, but still no change in my hair. I definitely feel as though it’s caused by something with in me as opposed to any products I may be using on my hair since those have not changed. Any suggestions would be sincerely appreciated!

Jody

Losing your hair and or having dry brittle hair are common symptoms in hypothyroidism. Some things that might be causing this for you are: 

1. is your thyroid medication/treatment optimal?

   1. all the cells in our body need thyroid hormones to function properly. T4 only medications like levothyroxine and synthroid might not be working well for you. Maybe your body doesn’t do well converting t4 to t3 which is what your cells use. You might need a T4/T3 combo medication.

   2. Make sure your doctor is testing TSH, Free T3, Free T4, Reverse T3 and the antibodies- TPO and TgAb. Functional medicine lab ranges according to Datis Kharrazian for TSH are 1.8-3.0 mU/L (milliunits per liter). Personally, I have felt best when mine is a bit below 1.0 which is common for those of us on Natural desiccated thyroid hormone. Free T3 functional range is 1.2-4.9 mg per deciliter, free t4 functional range is 1.0-1.5 ng/dL (nanograms per deciliter. If you lab results are not in these measurements, you can google how to convert them in to these numbers. Don’t worry about taking notes on this either, all of this will be on my website at out of the woods nutrition dot com. The antibodies should be at zero but that doesn’t mean you don’t have the autoimmune thyroid conditions of hashimoto’s or graves disease. Our immune systems fluctuate- when you have your blood test they might be considered within range- so don’t rely on antibodies testing alone to mean you do or do not have the disease.

   3. What are your iron levels like? Ferritin is our storage iron. If that is low it can result in hair loss and probably are related to dry hair too but more so hair that is falling out. Having good ferritin levels encourages hair growth and having low levels means your body will put hair and nail health on the back burner to ensure that the tissues that really need iron get it first. Liver is a great way to get your iron. Personally I can’t stand liver in the form of pate or cooked so I take either an iron supplement occasionally or I take Vital Proteins liver capsules which are not cheap. I have liver in my freezer and have not taken the time to dehydrate it and put it in capsules which would be way more cost effective.

   4. If you are not making enough stomach acid, you will not be breaking down your food, protein in particular, so you will not be getting all the nutrients you need from your diet which will affect how supple your hair is. Are you eating enough protein? Hair and nails are made of protein. If you are deficient either because you are not eating enough or because you are not breaking down your food well enough you will be deficient and your hair will pay the price. I recommend starting out on a low dose of HCl aka Betaine Hydrochloric Acid with Pepsin to help you break down your food. Something like 150mg to start with and go up from there………..

   5. Something your pharmacist won’t tell you- some thyroid medications can cause hair loss. So, the very thing you are depending on to feel well is causing your hair to fall out. The package insert for your medication will also tell you that you should not be taking it if you are suffering with adrenal insufficiency- adrenal fatigue.

   6. If you have hashimoto’s you have an autoimmune disease and that means you are likely susceptible to having more than one autoimmune disease- most commonly 3 AID and the likelihood of having a total of 7 over your lifetime. These things don’t happen overnight either. Your body suffers internally for years before another disease becomes symptomatic. This is why it is soooo important to address diet and lifestyle issues. We don’t just all of a sudden get sick overnight. Our body is like a car- pick your dream car or even the one you are driving now. How you care for that car today and for the time you drive it will determine just how long that car runs well for you. You have to put the right kind of fuel in to it. You have to change the oil and have other fluids checked. Your car wants to run well for you but it will break down if you don’t give it what it needs to run properly. Our bodies are the same. You only get this one chance to be here now. Your body does what it can daily to maintain homeostasis or balance. It works really hard to keep us alive and running well. What we fuel it with really does matter. A calorie is not just a calorie. You will get so much more out of 100 calories of veggies vs. 100 calories of cookies.

   7. Speaking of fuel- how is your blood sugar? According to Izabella Wentz: Blood sugar swings- due to high refined carbohydrates and not enough good quality protein and fats will cause T4 to be converted to Reverse T3 which keeps T3 bound up so the body and the cells can’t use it. This can cause us to lose hair too. Again, I know you were more concerned about dry brittle hair but the two go together.

   8. Are you digesting your fat well? Are you eating a good balance of omega 3 and omega 6 fats? Get a high quality fish oil and eat some healthy fats like olive oil, avocados and coconut oil to get a good mix of omega 3 and omega 6. The ratio of those should be around 1:1 and most of us get about 1:20 with omega 6 being the 20 because it is in a lot of processed foods and restaurant foods in the form of canola oil and soybean oil.

   9. Some people believe that supplementing with collagen can help your hair. We make less of this protein as we get older so you can try it to see if it helps. I would give it about a month.

   10. I would lastly look at your hair products. It doesn’t sound like this is an issue for you as you said you didn’t have a problem before and you had not switched products. My favorite hair products are Intelligent Nutrients- they are good for your hair and for the environment. I do think you are right though, your hair problem is internal. I would encourage you to use a food journal to keep track of what you are eating and how you feel and you may notice that you might need to change some things.

Good luck Jody, and please let me know if any of these suggestions helped you! 

Hi! Your podcasts have been great so far...thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been diagnosed with hashimotos for the past two years. I am 34 years old.

I decided to visit the doctor two years ago when I started having body aches and unusually dry skin. I was extremely tired all the time, however I thought that was natural due to having a newborn. I soon realized it was much more than being a “tired mom”.

I was put on levothyroxin. Seemed to even my levels out until recently. Started having stronger symptoms again and revisited the doctor. Taken off of levothyroxin (synthetic thyroid medication) and placed on nature throid (natural thyroid medication). What do you believe are major differences in a synthetic vs natural thyroid prescription?

Thank you again for all of your honest, transparent, and giving information.

CM

We have a similar story. I was diagnosed after my second child was born. I went in for a literal pain in my behind which turned out to be sciatica and when the doctor asked me if I needed anything else I told him I felt extra tired but thought it was because I had a toddler and an infant. He did a TSH test- standard for conventional medicine and my TSH was at 150- so clearly I had an issue with hypothyroidism. He put me on levothyroxine and I never felt good after that. My periods were heavy, I was cold all the time- like chilled to the bone and my adrenals were shot. 

Your question is about the differences between synthetic medication like levothyroxine and natural desiccated thyroid hormones like Naturethroid. I will get to that but I want to first address why things leveled off for awhile but got worse and your medication had to be adjusted. 

1. You were diagnosed with hashimoto’s which is first an issue with your immune system and second and issue with your thyroid- likely hypothyroid symtoms. When the autoimmune disease is not treated with diet and lifestyle modifications, your immune system can remain on high alert and can continue to attack your thyroid tissue killing it off. This often gives us the feeling of going between hypo and hyper symptoms. Maybe this has happened to you, maybe not. Anyway- one of the reasons for needing your dose to be increased is because more of your thyroid has been killed off. I guess you never said that your dose was increased but just changed to a different medication. Still, this is something to be mindful of.

2. Now, on to the differences between synthetic and natural hormone medications.

   1. NDT was used in the 1800’s to treat patients with hypothyroid symptoms. The medication is made from pig thyroid glands and this is why it is called natural. It also contains all the thyroid hormones present in our own thyroid tissue. Desiccated means that the pigs are bred for the purpose of getting the thyroid. It is removed with a specific protocol, frozen, minced, dried and made into a fine powder. It is defatted and batches are combined to get a uniform mixture of T4 and T3. The benefit of the natural desiccated medications is that you get what your body would have normally provided for you had your own thyroid stopped working properly. This means the right ratios of T4 and T3, and T2, T1 and T0. There is not a lot of research on T2,1 and 0 but they are obviously there for a reason so this might be why some people really feel so much better on NDT. The dosages are often referred to as grains. One grain equals 60 mg of NDT In Armour which is made up of 38mcg of T4 and 9mcg of T3. You can find conversion charts from manufacturers for most of the NDT medications on the market.

      1. Armour, NatureThroid and Westhroid are the most common prescriptions. My favorite was WP thyroid until I couldn’t get it anymore but have found great success using a compounded thyroid medication which is just the thyroid powder and cellulose which I open the capsule and put under my tongue. This is called taking the medication sublingually. It bypasses your stomach, gut and liver and goes right in to the bloodstream. This works for me, but doesn’t mean it will work for you. You can try it and see how you feel after a week on it. I take my meds in divided doses. Half in the morning when I wake up and half in the late afternoon. Western Research Labs or RLC labs is the manufacturer of your medication. You may be able to get all the ingredients of your medication on their site. Also be aware that your pharmacy can switch your medication without telling you if they run out of what is prescribed. You can ask your doctor to write your prescription to be dispensed as subscribed or you can let your pharmacist know that you do not want them to switch your meds. The main reason NDT meds are different is because they contain more than just T4. T3 plays a big role in cognitive abilities in the brain and how the brain functions. Got brain fog? Maybe you are not converting T4 to T3 or maybe you are lacking in T3. NDT might be what is the key to your brain fog, depression and mood problems for us. If you don’t feel any changes in those things, maybe you are not on a high enough dose or your body isn’t using it well. This is where diet changes can help. T3 is supposed to be better absorbed by the gut than T4. Studies show that 95% of T3 is absorbed within the first 4 hours of taking it and will happen even faster on an empty stomach. Back when Armour was first being used, they were making doses of medication based on symptoms and relief of those symptoms. Novel idea huh!?

      2. In 1926 synthetic thyroxine was created. Synthroid was made. To market this great money making drug- the maufacturer sold physicians on the idea that it was better than NDT. Research was funded to prove it was better than NDT. Unfortunately the study didn’t show Synthroid to be better than NDT. The research study was not published and the Dr. performing the research was discredited. A journalist caught on and broke the story and there was a lot of trouble for the manufacturer in the 90’s. The FDA pulled the medication due to irregularities in formulation. It was even marketed and sold in the US without formal FDA approval. In 2013 28,000 bottles of 150 mcg of Synthroid were recalled due to being a lower dose than stated on the bottle. Your doctor likely is just used to prescribing this medication because that is what they are taught. They have been told that NDT causes heart problems which is really a load of crap. Too much can lead to atrial fibrillation, osteoporosis, insomnia, heat intolerance, tremors, and more. My body takes awhile to get used to a NDT Medication change and that is why dosing it twice a day is recommended. Fight for the chance to try this kind of medication if you don’t feel well on synthetic only medications. The synthetic medications are really about money. Synthroid is the 4th most prescribed medication in the US at 70 million prescriptions a year. The profit from Abbott Labs funds endocrinology groups and their meetings as well as clinical research grants. Do you think they are going to publish studies that show their medication doesn’t work as well? Probably not. Pharmaceutical companies have more to gain by you being on a synthetic medication that keeps you sick vs. the Natural medication that makes you feel better.

I want to also talk about how it feels to have a disease that isn’t visible. I was talking with my niece and her husband last weekend about thyroid. Somehow the subject came up and my nieces husband said something about if your thyroid isn’t working right you are basically screwed or something like that. I had to laugh because he is so right. We don’t look sick but some days we just feel terrible. It is hard on us and hard on our families. My parents don’t understand, especially my dietary restrictions. They quit inviting my family over for dinner. My mom never makes an effort to understand how this has affected me. I don’t hold that against her- she is doing the best she can with the tools she has. So she says things like, let’s go out for pizza- you can eat a salad. Oh that sounds like so much fun to eat a salad while everyone else is enjoying pizza. It’s never- “let’s go to a restaurant where you can really enjoy the food”. She has thyroid problems too but all I ever hear is “I am so glad I feel so good”- what is normal for her is to feel tired and have a headache or just say she doesn’t feel good. She lays on the couch most afternoons and she had a headache everyday of my life in the morning. Sometimes we think we feel good because normal is to feel bad. 

Here are what some people are saying about what they want people to know about hashimoto’s. 

BA says:  In my case support... You don't "look" sick... My husband truly truly is trying to understand it all. He sees what it does to me but doesn't understand why. Thinks with diet and exercise I'll be just fine...

LH says:  Digestive issues, fatigue, stress,

GH says:  That everything can be great and you look and feel wonderful then you suddenly crash and feel like death. For weeks.

TF says:  Like one minute I lost 60 pounds, was working out every day at the age of 50 and living my best life and out of nowhere this monster hits me and now it’s horrible. I don’t know from one day to the next what is coming. I don’t even understand most of it. this disease is so extensive and complicated

TC says:  Why food makes us sick? Hurt? Not sleep?

KT says:  Always test your thyroid ANTIBODIES! All my “usual” thyroid labs were in the normal range, but antibodies off the charts... so grateful I finally had a doc test them!

TW says:  The fatigue is real, I’m not lazy. I don’t “want” to take a nap, I have no choice. What is needed? Research. Education of MDs and endocrinologists.

SJ says:  Extreme fatigue, and excessive weight gain ! 100 lbs, which I've been unable to loose for 20 years. Insomnia as well , and digestive issues ( gluten intolerant ). HASHIMOTO'S IS A BEAST !

TB says:  Research to determine which diet is the best for Hashimoto's. Extreme fatigue and brain fog are real!

SD says:  Educating MD's who are still treating all of our symptoms seperately, telling patients they are overweight because they eat too much and don’t exercise enough, and prescribing thyroid replacement that is man made instead of natural desiccated thyroid (NDT). Quit my doctor of 21 years 8 years ago and found a naturopath. Best decision of my life!!!

MH says:  More education, more testing. Doctors to understand test results vs symptoms and please don’t say” well you are  borderline even though you have these symptoms, so we will not treat you.”

TM says: Our tired is not their tired , it’s not even in the same realm . Our weight gain is not our fault . We are not lazy, we’re tired.

CE says:  Our inflammation is unlike others due to the constant aches we endure along with insomnia, depletion of vital nutrients, and gut problems.

AO says:  It may seem invisible but our body is having a nuclear war. New symptoms and concurrent disorders are constantly showing up, that don't seem to be related sometimes, and there hasn't been enough research to do anything but regulate diet and control some symptoms. It IS disabling for a large amount of people. With mine I had to quit work and can only last 2-4 hours of any type of work before I am too exhausted/weak/ill to function.

RS says:  More knowledge/awareness for everyone...So doctors stop running basic labs, so that people are more aware of symptoms and can ask for the correct labs, so loved ones can be more supportive of those with AI diseases, and so everyone realizes how vastly important our diets effect our health. The majority of people who find out I have Hashi’s have no clue what it is. I don’t look sick, so they don’t understand how I can go from 100 to bed ridden for days, or understand why I eat the way I do if I don’t have “food allergies.” People just don’t understand any of it, even my family and closest friends.

Coffee with my meds, lethargy, depression, achy body, and fatigue. Episode 5.

I’m curious about dealing with achy body, lethargy, headaches, allergies, insomnia, fatigue, depression, being overweight. How do you lose the weight and feel good? Is this even possible? It’s discouraging having hypothyroidism and hashimotos and just wondering if somehow things got better?

I’m 33. Tired everyday, achy in my body, stiff, no energy, headaches, no desire for much of anything, 70lbs overweight, most days I just want to stay in bed. I’m feeling hopeless.

achy body—- copper toxicity, avoid dairy, oxalate issue. 

oxalates are: naturally occurring in foods like legumes, nuts, seeds, leafy greens cruciferous veggies, blueberries and dark chocolate.  These foods contain oxalic acid. They are considered an antinutrient to protect plants from being eaten by animals, bacteria and insects. They can be bitter tasting and impair digestion and absorption of nutrients. Oxalates bind to minerals and keep our gut from being able to use them. While oxalates are in alot of foods, most foods really, too many of them can cause inflammation and pain. 

Maybe you are particularly sensitive to this antinutrient. Maybe you eat these types of foods in excess right now?

You can try to avoid the higher oxalate foods mentioned and make sure you cook, soak, ferment and sprout much of what you eat as this will reduce the oxalate content. 

You sound like you need to heal your gut and take a good look at your diet. It wasn’t clear if you were gluten free and dairy free yet. If not, I would definitely start there and see how you feel afterwards. 

What does healing your gut entail? 

gut repair protocol with something like GI Revive from Designs for Health or Repairvite from Apex. you have to do what we call, weed, seed and feed the gut to heal it. You have to weed out the bad stuff like microbial pathogens, usually with a supplement protocol, you seed the gut with probiotics and feed the gut with good quality foods that help keep the beneficial bacteria healthy.

Take this one day at a time. If you struggle to get out of bed, just make yourself get up, drink some lemon water and walk around your living room. You need to get moving, walking so your body can start to move fluids around. 

Drink 2 liters of water a day. Start now. Don’t guzzle it but sip it all day long. Your body will thank you. Water keeps our cells communicating with one another, keeps our blood fluid and free flowing and also helps us to get rid of waste products in our body. 

How is your blood sugar? Are you tired in the afternoon, more than usual? Do you sleep through the night or wake up around 1-3 am and can’t fall back asleep? This is your blood sugar being dysregulated and so you will have to look at what kinds of foods you are eating, how much and how often. Overwhelming, I know so before you do that, take the gluten and dairy out of your diet. It is a must for Hashimoto’s. 

I get feeling hopeless. I am sorry you are feeling that way right now. You can feel better. Take it one moment at a time, one bite at a time, one sip of water at a time, one step forward at a time. After awhile, a little becomes a lot. You just have to look forward.  

Most people seem to take levothyroxine in morning on empty stomach, but I can't wait for coffee. Does it really affect meds that much? I don't eat anything else, and take my coffee with a squirt of liquid stevia and unsweetened vanilla almond milk. The nurse at my doctors office insisted that I use nothing but water because my tsh won't stabilize. I'm thinking of waiting until after coffee and a small breakfast, maybe around 10-11am, because I don't often eat in the late morning/early afternoon. I tried taking it at night for a brief time, but was waking at 230-3am thinking it was time to get up. I can't do middle of night or set alarm early because of trouble falling back asleep once I wake. 

Coffee interferes with intestinal absorption of levothyroxine.  A 2008 study found that taking T4 medication with coffee or drinking coffee shortly after taking T4 medication like Levo.. lead to less of the medication being absorbed. They also found that Maalox and Bran taken with medication lowered absorption even more than coffee. 

When it comes to your thyroid, coffee does more than reduce absorption of medication. Most of us with thyroid problems have blood sugar regulation problems too and coffee makes this worse. This causes spikes in cortisol which tire out our adrenal glands and mess with our immune system.  High cortisol slows down the production of thyroid hormone even more than we are already dealing with. So if you have adrenal fatigue or any autoimmune thyroid condition, you will want to avoid this. 

Coffee also causes us to crave sugar and carbs mostly due to messing with our adrenals. When they are tired our body wants some energy which can come in the form of sugar and carbs. 

Coffee contributes to hormone issues which we already have with hashimoto’s and hypothyroidism. It is playing a role in estrogen dominance- either too much estrogen in relation to progesterone or and imbalance in estrogen metabolites.  Also it plays a role in PMS, heavy periods, cellulite and breast cancer. Estrogen dominance stops the conversion of T4 to T3. 

I did not know coffee is a gluten cross reactive food. Half of us with gluten sensitivity will also react to coffee along with milk products, corn and most grains. Their protein structures are all similar and our immune systems are on high alert so we can react to these things too. 

Coffee can contribute to and cause osteoporosis, insomnia and poor sleep especially if you don’t metabolize caffeine well. If you find you can’t drink caffeine containing drinks past 1pm or you are wide awake at night then you probably don’t metabolize caffeine well and should avoid it. 

One thing you can do if you can’t take them at night is to take them as soon as you wake. So, when you wake up, have them by your bed if you can and take them before getting out of bed. 

A research study in Italy found that tirosint, a gelcap version of levothyroxine was absorbed well even with coffee. 

If you are on Armour or other natural desiccated thyroid hormone you can take it under your tongue. Personally I am on a compounded medication and I sprinkle it under my tongue in the morning and eat after it has been absorbed, about 20 minutes later. 

It is tricky with adrenal fatigue because you want to eat within an hour of waking when trying to heal the adrenals so making this work with medication means some planning needs to be done. 

You might want to ask yourself if you are on the right medication. If this isn’t working for you to wait an hour then ask your doctor to try something new. Remember that you are the customer at your doctors office. If you don’t get what you need as far as being listened to then go to someone else. Save your money to seek out a functional medicine doctor if needed. 

Are you making enough stomach acid? Hot lemon water, ACV or HCl supplementation might be needed when you take your meds. 

PPI’s, antacids, calcium, magnesium, aluminum and iron can suppress stomach acid leading to less absorption. Take other medications 4 hours after thyroid meds. 

If you are on an acid blocker or PPI, you may want to take a good look at getting off of those. Most cases of acid reflux or heartburn are because we are not making enough stomach acid.. 

That is it for me today. I want to thank you for listening and I want to quickly say something about this disease. 

It can leave us apathetic to where we just don’t care. You have to care. You have to fight that feeling. You only have this one opportunity to be here right now so we need to make the most of it. Please don’t let this disease steal anymore of your life than it already has. Don’t let it have you. Take control and start moving forward even if that means you get up and walk around your house or down your driveway or down the street. Just get up and move and drink water and make one good food choice today. Your body will thank you. I promise. It wants you to be well, and I want you to be well too. 

That’s all. 

Please leave a review on iTunes if you would and share this podcast with anyone you know who has a chronic illness, especially a thyroid condition. 

Have a question you want answered? Send it to helpforhashimoto’s at gmail dot com or go to my website, www.outofthewoodsnutrition.com and fill out the form there. Put the subject, podcast in the subject line. I look forward to hearing from you.

Low energy, depression, diet changes, vitamin & mineral deficiencies, and more. Episode 4.

In this episode we address low energy, feeling bad all the time, anxiety and depression caused by hypothyroidism, diet changes, vitamin and mineral deficiencies and the role they play in our thyroid health, what lab tests to ask for and what they mean. We also discuss noticing our symptoms and why that is important. What supplements do you need? We also talk about why having someone other than your conventional doctor on your team is helpful. 

Weight gain with diet changes, exhausted after exercise, nightshades, and AIP. Episode 3.

I have been eating nothing but raw vegetables and water for 6 days. I have gained 3 pounds. I am at a loss. I have taken more D3 and B12. I have added magnesium to my diet. I am exercising even though I am exhausted all the time. I have resorted to taking sudafed because it makes me have energy.......please help. I have been to 2 different endocrinologists and they refuse to help. I have been gluten free for 6 weeks. What else can I do?

1. with raw veggies only for 6 days…. How much were you eating. It could be that you were not eating enough and your body was starving and holding on to weight.

   1. If you were not eating enough it could deplete the adrenals and then you have an issue with cortisol. This is our main stress hormone and when it is working normally it can be anti-inflammatory and key for fat burning. It also helps keep our blood sugar and our blood pressure up. So, if you were not eating enough, your blood sugar would be low and cortisol would be released to save the day. This can be a problem if it is constantly working to help manage your blood sugar whether too high or too low. Cortisol is supposed to be low in the evening to get us ready for sleeping and higher in the morning so when we wake up we feel ready for the day. If this is not you, then you probably have an issue with your cortisol being out of balance. When cortisol is low it can affect your ability to tolerate your workouts, meaning you are exhausted after a work out. Exercising too hard can wear out your adrenals and to work on healing them and getting them working properly again you need to slow down the workouts to basically just walking up to five days a week for an hour.

      1. If you have low cortisol you will have symptoms like:

         1. needing a pick me up in the morning or afternoon to keep you going such as coffee or in your case, sudafed to ramp you up.

         2. cravings for salt in general, or sugar or starches between meals

         3. you feel burnt out or don’t handle stress well

         4. you feel like you need sunglasses even on a cloudy day

         5. Your blood pressure is low or you get dizzy when you stand up quickly from a sitting position

         1. If you have high cortisol

            1. you might have extra fat around your mid section

            2. you feel tired even after sleeping a full night

            3. you have poor digestion

            4. you might wake up tired and achy

            5. you have trouble falling asleep

      2. High cortisol issues and low cortisol issues can happen at the same time. They can sort of wax and wane. It is higher when we are dealing with chronic stress which can be physical or emotional and physical stress can include what is going in internally with your body and thyroid issues. When stress is chronic (and the diet and exercise you describe would be very stressful for you right now) you can get puffy, wired and tired, and you may gain weight.

   2. This could have been detoxifying to your body and released something that your body couldn’t get rid of so you gained weight because we store toxins in our fat tissue.

      1. If your detoxification pathways are not open (liver, skin, lungs, eliminations) and this diet of raw veggies over the last 6 days really cleaned things up internally but those toxins had nowhere to go then your body could have shuttled them in to your fat tissue.

      2. All raw veggies can be hard on our digestive tract too. You might consider starting with some bone broth and cooked veggies before continuing with all raw veggies. You can steam veggies, cook them in broth (the most soothing to our digestive system), roast them, grill them or satue them in some healthy fats like coconut oil or olive oil. Broth will have minerals and collagen that are soothing and even healing to your digestive tract, especially the small intestine.

   3. Were you avoiding fat because you were worried it will make you fatter? This is not always true and consuming a small amount of healthy fats everyday is necessary for our cells to be healthy. Each cell is made of a layer of fat and we need healthy fats to make up the building blocks of our cells. This helps waste be removed from our cells and get nutrition in to our cells.

2. It would be nice to know amounts of D3 and B12 you are taking.

   1. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin with defieciency being a contributor to autoimmune disease. We make vitamin d from cholesterol in our skin cells when we absorb UVB radiation from the sun. We need vitamin d for many processes in the body including the regulation and absorption of calcium, phosphorus and magnesium and for our bones to mineralize and grow. It plays a role in regulating the release of serotonin which we need for our mental/emotional health and for good digestion. It also helps us heal and helps to regulate our immune system but it doesn’t work on it’s own and supplementation with a high dose is not in and of itself a solution. WE need to take it with other fat soluble vitamins (A, E, K —-D protects against A toxicity and A protects against D toxicity and large amounts of A&D increase the need for K—-consuming liver is a great way to get all of these from food.) and we can’t use or assimilate our fat soluble vitamins with out taking them with fat. There was a study done around 1980 with Wheat Bran showing the possibility that it can prevent us from absorbing vitamin d, creating a possible deficiency.

      1. food sources of vitamin d besides liver are:

         1. salmon

         2. sardines

         3. tuna

         4. eggs (if you tolerate them)

         5. shiitake mushrooms

   2. B12

      1. we need this to help with the metabolism of carbs, proteins and fats in our cells and it is really important in making and regulating DNA, making fatty acids and in energy production.

      2. We need good gut bacteria to be able to use most of the B12 we take in so getting it from food is always best. Also, you can only get B12 from animals (unless you supplement) like shellfish, and meat products and it is produced by the animals gut bacteria.

         1. sardines have the highest amount of B12 per serving

         2. then salmon, tuna, cod, lamb, scallops, shrimp, beef

3. Exercise- if you are exhausted, then don’t exercise. Go for a walk. This will help your adrenals heal. Anything you do while working on healing your adrenals should not be debilitating, grueling or super competitive. Yoga, tai chi, kick boxing, swimming, walking, even dancing. Do something enjoyable and start slow and work your way in to it. Most important is to do it at your own pace. You might be overexercising.

   1. Again, when the adrenals are off this can lead to weight gain.

4. You have been gluten free for 6 weeks. This is great. Gluten is not the friend of someone with Hashimoto’s or thyroid issues so staying off it is a good first step. What else can you do, you ask?

   1. you can eat at least one pound of veggies, cooked and raw, remember I said cooked will be gentler on your digestion. Eat a wide variety keeping in mind the autoimmune protocol and nightshades (peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, etc) being inflammatory for some of us with thyroid issues.

   2. consume about 25 grams of protein each meal for four meals or work in 100 grams of protein in a day.

      1. one serving of salmon should have around 22 grams of protein and a small chicken breast should have around 28grams

   3. Get some healthy fats in your diet

      1. avocado, avocado oil, olive oil, olives, coconut oil, coconut milk, nuts if you tolerate them, ghee if you tolerate it.

   4. Fruits in small amounts and stick to berries mostly but get a variety.

   5. Spices and herbs are also great. Be mindful of pepper and seed based spices if you are doing the autoimmune protocol.

5. Avoid

   1. gluten and grains

   2. dairy

   3. sugar

   4. alcohol

   5. Coffee won’t help your adrenals

I’m trying to find the limits/dimensions of my food sensitivities and figure out how to navigate eating out and would like to start introducing nightshades but am a little confused because my dietician says if you’re sensitive to one nightshade, you’re sensitive to them all. (I am gluten, dairy and sugar-free. I was full AIP for months, but have started reintroducing foods.)

For context, my three exposures:

1st and 2nd - I ate 1/4 of a fresh tomato and about 20 hours later felt extremely anxious (8 or 9 out of 10) and one of those times I had heart palpitations.
3rd - I took a chance and ate meat marinated with bell peppers. No reaction, which was great. Maybe being in the marinade isn’t enough exposure? Or maybe because the meat was cooked? Curious what is going on. 

1. Nightshades:

   1. contain a couple thousand different species of plants, most are inedible and poisonous. Eating too many of these can kill off our cells and contribute to a leaky gut and really eating too many can actually be poisonous. It is thought that low level exposure can contribute to health problems over time.

   2. Which foods are considered nightshades?

      1. bell peppers, hot peppers and spices made from them

      2. tomatoes

      3. ground cherries/gooseberries

      4. eggplant

      5. goji berries

      6. pimentos

      7. potatoes

      8. tomatillos

      9. ashwaganda (a popular herbal adaptogen for adrenals)

2. Reintroducing foods.

   1. How many months did you do full AIP?

   2. Waiting until you are in feeling your best and your labs look good to do reintroductions is ideal. This gives your gut a chance to heal and bring down any lingering inflammation.

      1. also making sure stress is well managed is important. Don’t do reintroductions during a stressful time in your life. It can likely set your recovery/remission back quite a bit.

      2. If you have been aip for a month or longer you can consider reintroductions if you have good digestion, you are not getting worse rather than better and you can manage your hashi’s/thyroid problems well. You may still need medication and that is okay.

      3. Don’t start with foods you know you have an allergy to.

      4. If you have a reaction to something, it is likely you need to work on healing your gut more.

   3. How to reintroduce a food

      1. Start with one food, you pick it but here is a suggestion of where to start:

         1. egg yolks

         2. legumes (green beans and peas)

         3. spices

         4. oils made from nuts or seeds

         5. ghee

      2. Eat the food you pick 2-3 times in one day and then don’t reintroduce another food for about a week.

         1. start with less than a teaspoon or so of the food you picked and then wait for about 15 minutes. If you notice any symptoms immediately, stop and wait a week or so to try again.

         2. no reaction, have a small bite, wait 15 more minutes, then a slightly bigger bite, wait for a couple of hours and pay close attention to how you feel.

            1. symptoms can be digestive, changes in energy, cravings, sleeping issues, headaches, dizzy feeling, runny nose, more phlegm coughing, clearing your throat, itching, aches, skin rashes, mood issues.

            2. you can eat a bigger portion at a meal on the day you reintroduced it if this reintro went well.

         3. wait 4-7 days before introducing another food if that went well.

         4. If reintroducing a spice, you can reintro it in smaller amounts than I just suggested as it is consumed in small amounts.

      3. You might find that you can tolerate a food on a rotation type basis or just every once in awhile but not everyday. This is okay- it helps ensure you get some variety in your diet.

      4. Keeping a food journal can be very helpful to try and pinpoint where something went wrong.

3. I have not read anywhere about all or nothing with nightshades. Based on the way reintroductions are suggested in the autoimmune protocol community though, it looks like sweet peppers and paprika are introduced in stage three and the rest of them in stage four.