What Even Is the THYROID?

Welcome back. It is hormone month. And today we are gonna talk about the root causes and cutting edge strategies to optimize your thyroid. So I'm gonna give you five root causes behind why the thyroid may not be working properly, and then I'm gonna give you five cutting edge solutions for it. When we think about the thyroid, a lot of times we have all the thyroid symptoms, yet we go into our regular doctor and we run a panel and it says, hey, your TSH is normal.

It's within range. What is that range? Typically it's anywhere between 0.5 to 5 and if you're on the low end or the high end, as long as you're in the range, typically they're not gonna associate any functional imbalance in the thyroid but that could be the furthest thing from the truth. If you're dealing with hair loss, low energy, weight gain, low libido, infertility, we gotta look at the thyroid. If you have looked at it, we gotta maybe look at it differently.

And so we're gonna walk through those five root causes of both hypo and hyperthyroidism and give you five cutting edge solutions to start turning things around. Hey, wanna drop this for you real quick. At the end of this month, the last Tuesday of the month, we are gonna do a infertility master class. If you're struggling with infertility or you're thinking about fertility in the future, if any of your friends or family members have dealt with miscarriages, infertility, can't conceive, this master class is gonna be for you.

Dr. Reed Jarvis and myself will be hosting this the last Tuesday, 6:30pm Eastern Standard Time. Go to our Instagram, Real Health Co, and look in our Linktree, download the form to fill out so that you can attend our infertility masterclass. All right, let's get into it, part one.

What are the five root causes behind why your thyroid may be your problem? Number one, we gotta look at autoimmunity. Did you know that Hashimoto's thyroiditis is the number one cause of hypothyroidism in The US Hashimoto's. It's I believe the most undiagnosed condition, and because of how medicine treats it, they don't typically look at it, but it is essential to look at.

The root cause behind the thyroid, even when your TSH levels are normal, could be that it is autoimmune, that your body's literally attacking it. And it could be Hashimoto's and it could also be Graves' disease, which is gonna create more of a hyper or excessive thyroid hormone response. Autoimmune attacks the thyroid over time and then it therefore starts to reduce hormone output over time. It takes a while but this is a rooted immune system dysregulation. The problem is not the thyroid, it is the immune system, okay?

So when your thyroid levels are normal, look at autoimmunity. Number two, if your thyroid levels are normal, did you know that most of your thyroid's job is not to make the active thyroid hormone, T3? It's actually to make something called T4. Your thyroid releases T4. T4 mainly goes to the liver and is converted to an active form of T3.

T3 then has the actual like hormonal thyroid effect on your cells. That is the process by which we have to look at the body and understand, hey, if we don't have enough T3, the issue may be not your thyroid, may not be autoimmunity, it could be the liver. The liver is responsible for thyroid conversion. So when we look at poor conversion of T4 to T3, we gotta look at the liver and the gut. Inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, and the liver have a massive impact on how well your body converts T4 to T3.

Number three, the issue could be stress. Did you know that there is another hormone in the body called reverse T3? Reverse T3 actually binds on the same receptors as T3 does, but it blocks those receptors from hearing T3. Okay? And reverse T3 is an inactive form of T3.

When we look at ratios between reverse T3 and T3, if reverse T3 in excess of its normal range, you will have a functional thyroid issue. Your T three levels may be normal. Your TSH levels are gonna be normal. Your T four levels are gonna be normal, and you don't have autoimmunity. What's the issue?

Your body is creating too much reverse T3. Reverse T3, an excess amount is due to stress, trauma, and inflammation. Stress, trauma, and inflammation. But it is the inactive form that puts the brake on your whole thyroid system. Too much reverse D3 could be the problem.

Question. When was the last time you went to your doctor and they tested reverse T3? Well, if they aren't, it needs to be tested. Number four, look at nutritional deficiencies. Guys, it's a big one.

Selenium is probably one of the biggest supporters to a healthy thyroid. Selenium and iodine, those are my two favorite. Now there's other B vitamins like B6 is very effective and zinc, but these allow your body to actually even make T4. So in order for the thyroid to synthesize T4, we need selenium, zinc, iodine, iron, B vitamins. And so maybe we don't even look at the thyroid yet.

Why don't we just do a basic blood panel, look at the CBC panel and look at any anemia. If you're iron anemic, you're gonna have a thyroid problem. You're gonna have a functional thyroid issue. If you're B vitamin depleted, you will have a functional thyroid issue. If your selenium, zinc, and iodine levels, these minerals are low, you're gonna have a thyroid issue.

So what do we do? All right, we're gonna get into those cutting edge strategies here in just a second, but we have to look at nutrient deficiencies as a fourth major cause behind why the thyroid may not be working properly. The last one, what's your toxic load look like? Number five, toxicity is a major issue to thyroid health. What are the big influencers?

Mercury, fluoride, BPA, phthalates and parabens are major hormone disruptors. If we look at BPA heavy metals and even just fluoride, the thyroid literally loves those heavy metals and toxins. It absorbs them at such a high level. I was gonna sneeze.

Oh.

I didn't sneeze. All right, we're good. When you're looking at toxins that block iodine uptake and interfere with hormone signaling, these are the main toxins to associate. So obviously we remove plastics, we get mercury out of the body, but hey, when we look at the thyroid, toxins play a massive role in how well the thyroid itself is functioning. So let's get into it, part two, five cutting edge solutions to start getting the thyroid healthy.

You ready? First one goes with the first root cause. We got to address autoimmunity. We got to focus on the gut healing. We've talked about that.

We've talked about extensively how to heal the gut. Okay? Go back to the digestive system and the immune system series and we'll talk all about the gut. Okay? What are some simple things?

If you have a functional thyroid issue associated with autoimmunity, you gotta get rid of gluten. Gluten is a massive interfere with thyroid function. We see molecular mimicry at its finest when we look at gluten and we look at thyroid. What does that mean? It means that when your body reacts to gluten, it will counter react, cross react with your thyroid.

Removing gluten decreases the immune effect on your thyroid. Another thing to think about and this is just like a bonus for you. If you have vitiligo, if you have vitiligo which is the white patches on your body, right? It's an autoimmune issue. If you have vitiligo you typically have Hashimoto's.

If you have Hashimoto's, you typically have vitiligo. So if you're standing there and you look and you see those white patches on your arms, legs, face, wherever and you have vitiligo, make sure you get your thyroid checked. There's a common connection between vitiligo and Hashimoto's. Number two associated with addressing autoimmune conditions is to reduce inflammatory triggers, all right, stress, infections, Epstein Barr plays a big role here. And then you've got to test.

Autoimmune Hashimoto's, got to test. What do you test? You test your TPO, your thyroperoxidase antibodies, and your thyroglobulin antibodies. Your TPO and your TG antibodies. Number two, support the conversion of T4 to T3 with nutrients.

What nutrients to take? Support the liver. This could be milk thistle, N acetylcysteine, glutathione. If you listen to my podcast long enough, you would know that these are massive influencers on how well the liver functions. You've gotta take selenium.

Research shows about two hundred micrograms per day of selenium, about twenty five microgram milligrams a day of zinc, and magnesium and B6 are great thyroid converting nutrients. There's a product called Thyroid Synergy from a company called Designs For Health. I am not affiliated with them but this is a product I use in my office. So if you wanted an all inclusive one product, thyroid synergy works really, really well for most people. Ladies, don't forget about protein.

Why is protein so important for the thyroid? Because protein is actually what's needed to transport your thyroid hormone. Protein deficiency, okay, anemia, iron anemia, so iron deficiency are major issues with conversion of your thyroid hormone from T4 to T3. Alright. Number three, reduce your stress.

Stress management. What do we do here? Right? When we look at cortisol levels being elevated, it will cause your body to make more reverse T3. So you gotta prioritize sleep, get adjusted, okay?

Get adjusted once, twice, three times a week in those seasons of high stress. Be intentional about your breath work. Take adaptogens like ashwagandha and rhodiola. These are awesome adaptogens to help your body combat stress. And then test.

Look at a cortisol stress test. It's where you just spit in a tube four times throughout the day and you see what your cortisol pattern looks like. Am I high, am I low? Am I high in the morning, low in the evening, low in the morning, high in the evening? And these are all very helpful tools to understand more about how you handle stress.

For this month in the office, this is a side bonus for you, we're doing as a hormone month, 10% off all hormone lab tests, all hormone lab tests, ten percent off, and all of our supplements that are hormone based buy one get 150% off, buy one get 150% off and that includes the thyroid synergy. Number four, do some functional lab testing. Go to your practitioner, nurse practitioner, medical doctor, DO, DC, whoever and go beyond TSH. So what would I include? I would include free T3, free T4, reverse T3, and thyroid antibodies.

That is a great general thyroid panel. You can add cortisol to that because that's always helpful. But when you look at understanding the thyroid more and addressing it, you have to test to know where you're at, okay? And the last one, number five, detox the thyroid environment. Detox the thyroid environment.

What does this mean? It means remove chloride, chlorine, fluoride from your water, from your toothpaste, right, because those halogens love the thyroid and create a lot of endocrine disruption there. Avoid plastics and petroleum's. Ladies, get BPA phthalates for impairments out of your body and then just gentle detoxification daily. What does that look like?

It looks like sweating, saunas, activated charcoal. Those are great ways to help the body just daily detox. When looking at the thyroid, it doesn't have to be complicated. It's complicated when we just look at TSH and say you're fine, yet you have all the thyroid symptoms. That's a problem.

Go beyond TSH and understand more about how the thyroid actually works. This guide, our thyroid guide will be on our resources page at realhealthco.com. realhealthco.com, go into our resources tab and you'll see, is my thyroid a problem, okay? And you can learn all about the thyroid, what we talked about today, send it to a friend, give it as a resource, and make sure you sign up for our infertility master class the last Tuesday of the month, 6:30pm Eastern Standard Time. Go to Instagram, sign up, register.

If you have infertility, miscarriages or know anyone in your life that's trying to optimize fertility, this is the seminar for you. All right, thanks again for listening to another episode of the Real Health Podcast.

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