Mark Hyman, MD
Warning Signs Of Thyroid Issues & How To Treat It Naturally For Longevity | Dr. Mark Hyman
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Do you feel fatigued, lethargic, and sluggish, especially when you wake up in the morning? Do you have poor-quality, cracked nails? Are you cold all the time? Do you have dry skin, coarse hair, or hair loss? Are you depressed? Are you constipated? Do you have muscle and joint pains?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you may be one of the 38 million Americans with low thyroid function.
In todayâs episode of a new series Iâm calling Know Your Numbers, I dive deep into thyroid dysfunction. I discuss why millions of people suffer with undetected thyroid issues, how conventional medicine misses the mark in measuring thyroid levels, how Functional Medicine treats hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism, and much more.
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Here are more details from the episode (audio version / Apple Subscriber version):
Symptoms and prevalence of hypothyroidism (4:29 / 2:29)
Autoimmune thyroid disorders: Hashimotoâs thyroiditis and hyperthyroidism (7:37 / 5:37)
What does a healthy, hypo- and hyper- thyroid gland do? (8:55 / 6:55)
Risk factors for thyroid problems (15:58 / 13:58)
Gluten and other drivers of thyroid problems (17:40 / 15:40)
How conventional medicine misses the mark with thyroid testing and treatment (22:15 / 20:15)
The Functional Medicine approach to thyroid testing and treatment (25:21 / 23:21)
Addressing poor thyroid function using diet, lifestyle, and supplements
diet (28:59 / 26:59)
is this a big problem one in five women and 1 in 10 men have low thyroid function heck yeah it's a big problem now do you feel fatigued lethargic sluggish especially when you wake up in the morning do you have poor quality cracked nails are you cold all the time do you have dry skin coarse hair hair loss maybe you're a little depressed or constipated you have muscle pains and joint pains have you lost your outer third of your eyebr maybe you have trouble losing weight no matter what you do well if your answer is yes to any of these questions you may be suffering from a condition that is super common underdiagnosed and potential lifethreatening called hypothyroidism this occurs when the production conversion or action of your thyroid hormones in your body is not working or inhibited resulting in too little active thyroid hormone in your blood now while the symptoms above might not sound like a major problem on the surface a problem with your thyroid can actually have catastrophic impact on your health and also on your weight it's often a hidden factor in many diseases including depression heart disease chronic fatigue fibromyalgia PMS or premenstrual syndrome worse menopausal symptoms muscle and joint pains irritable bowel syndrome constipation autoimmune diseases and obesity now when I see anybody with a chronic illness I always think that thyroid may play a role now is this a big problem well heck yeah it's a big problem one in five women and one in 10 men have low thyroid function 38 million Americans are suffering from this now from 20 9 this is interesting from 2009 to 2019 the percent of our population with low thyroid function went from 4.6% in 2009 to 11.7% so what is going on with a more than doubling of the prevalence of thyroid problems now the other issue here is that 60% don't even know they have a problem because it's like Oh I'm a little tired or I'm a little you know my hair's a little thin or you know I'm constipated or my mood's a little low you my sex drive is down or my cholesterol's little high and they don't connect the dots between what's going on and their thyroid in a retrospective analysis in 2022 from the Journal of the endocrine Society they found that untreated hypothyroidism went up from 12 to 14.5% and if it is untreated it increases your risk of heart disease heart attacks cogni Decline and even early death now what are the common symptoms of a poorly functioning or low thyroid condition well you're fatigued you're lethargic sluggish especially in the morning you have may have brittle or crack nails you might be cold a lot when other people are fine you're cold you might have dry skin mouth eyes coarse hair you might have horseness of your voice uh hair loss which is not uncommon especially the outer third of your eyebrows you might have depression constipation joint and muscle pain hard time losing weight cholesterol might be high your blood pressure might be low you might have irregular periods weird menstrual cycles severe PMS uh menopausal symptoms low libido and sex drive uh maybe trouble with memory Focus concentration now any of these can just seem kind of like normal things that happen as you get older but they're not they're un often untreated thyroid issues the other issue is that there's a lot of autoimmune thyroid condition going on um and 90% of the low thyroid conditions not just low thyroid it's an autoimmune disease and it's the most prevalent autoimmune disease we have in America it's called Hashimoto thyroiditis and essentially it's your immune system Mak antibodies that attack your thyroid as if it was a foreign body and it's it's much more common in women like I said you know one in five women one 10 men have thyroid issues but this is seven to time 10 times more common in women there may be some genetic or hormonal factors uh and it affects men as well though so it's can cause erectile dysfunction low sperm count infertility low libido hair loss so it also affects men uh high thyroid function or hyperthyroidism is not as common but it's when your thyroid makes too much thyroid hormone it's overactive and it's basically the opposite you're on speed your blood pressure is high you lose weight you're hungry all the time you can't sleep you're anxious irritable you have diarrhea it's sort of the opposite uh and that that common cause of this is Graves disease four out of five cases of high thyroid in America is Graves disease another autoimmune disease and this affects about one in 100 Americans and it can cause quite severe problems and and cause gler and be causing eye issues and and be quite issu is quite a problem now what is your thyroid where is it located well it's an endocine organ prod hormones it's a butterfly shape it's right in front of your neck here below the atoms apple and above the collar bone and it basically functions as a regulator the control center of your body it's like the master regulator of your metabolism think of like the governor on your car like if you have you know golf carts or those electric bikes only go to a certain speed but because it's got a limiter on it that's kind of what it is it's kind of the governor and the slower it is the slower everything is it slows your metabolism um it's really important so what does your thyroid gland do it regulates metabolism if your thyroid is working properly increases energy production fat burning mitochondrial function makes your body temperature in the proper regulation it can affect growth and development it's really important for fetal brain development nervous system development in fact the whole term cretinism it's a horrible term by the way but that was used to describe low thyroid in in U babies when mothers were hypothyroid and they gave birth to babies they would be quote cretans because of the effect of low thyroid during pregnancy on the fetus and their development it also regulates your heart function so heart rate cardiac output very important muscle function bone health brain function mood cognition uh the making of new brain cells it regulates uh your body's calcium and phosphate levels um and and it promotes the storage of calcium in your bones if you're hyperthyroid you can actually lose bones pretty quickly also as I mentioned really important in reproductive Health fertility hormone balance you know all the symptoms of PMS weird periods all common in people with low thyroid function and it also is involved in sort of a cross talk with your stress hormones your sex hormones your adrenal hormones so it's really it's really important it's not just isolated you've got this hormonal soup of sex hormones thyroid hormones adrenal hormones insulin they're all connected now uh when a healthy thyroid works properly what happens is that the brain the pituitary which is the command and control center gets a message from the hypothalamus it says uh okay it's time you know to release a little more thyroid you need a little more so the hypothalamus releases something called thyroid tropen releasing hormone or TR and that tells the pituitary to make thyroid stimulating hormone or TSH which is the test that is usually done by most Physicians now this is inadequate in and of itself to properly diagnose thyroid problems you need to look at the full spectrum of thyroid tests you don't get that you get instead of one test by your doctor you get five you get TSH the freet T3 free T4 and thyroid antibodies two different ones we'll go through those in a minute but your your TSH is really important because uh it stimulates your thyroid to produce a little more thyroid hormone so you produce mostly T4 and a little bit of T3 now T4 is the inactive thyroid hormone 90% of the thyroid hormone produced in the thyroid gland is T4 and then the T4 gets converted to T3 in the thyroid the liver the kidneys via an enzyme called five Prime dein you don't probably need to know that but it's important because this enzyme can get screwed up by a lot of things if you're low in selenium which is the main enzyme that activates it if you have heavy metals if you have yeast if you have Enon toxins H various factors will cause this enzyme to not work properly which causes low T3 now um most doctors even don't properly check these they check total T3 or total T4 you want to check the the free form which is the active form that's what we do in Functional Health the next thyroid hormone is is T3 or triiodothyronine uh thyroxin is T4 and this is the active form of the hormone this 10% is produced in in the thyroid gland but then the rest is converted in your peripherally in your tissues from T4 to T3 and T3 is the actual actor in your body it binds to the thyroid receptors on the nucleus of your cell so it really is a transcription factor for gene expression so important that's why it regulates everything and it it forms a complex with this thyroid response element on your DNA and at least to protein synthesis and it really important because The Binding of this requires vitamin d and vitamin A and so if you have low levels of these nutrients which is common your thyroid won't work properly and and T3 basically ensures every system in your body is working at the right speed your metabolism fat burning energy production your cholesterol memory your hair growth bow speed their weight everything when it's too high then you know the the feedback loop comes to your brain and says okay lower TSH and then it hals the TSH production so it's not telling your thyroid to make more so it's kind of a constant feedback loop of hormones now what's happening when your thyroid is too low when you have hypothyroidism we have too little T3 or maybe not a conversion of T4 to T3 or you have low T t42 T4 also I mean not t42 although there is a T2 um and so what happens then well your metabolism goes down you gain weight you have trouble losing weight you get cold you can't warm up your cholesterol's high your mood low your libido's low you don't want to have sex all the symptoms we talked about and when you when you have um this it's usually often caused like I said nine times out of 10 by an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto so we got to check those thyroid antibodies and it's amazing how many people have elevated antibodies we found that 12% of our people that we tested in over 20,000 people had elevated thyroid antibodies meaning they had an autoimmune thyroid condition that mostly was undiagnosed and this was shocking because it does affect everything um and it affects people's wellbeing and these are people who are doing function or typically are Health forward people and generally healthy so it's it was very disturbing for me to see the prevalence of this autoimmunity in the population and uh what measures thyroid peroxidase anybody their TP and it basically adds an iodine to the thyroid globulin to make thyroid hormone and when you have antibodies against this hormone this enzyme it basically inhibits the process of making thyroid um your immune system is basically making these other antibodies too called thyroid globuline antibodies IES and and thyroid globulin is the precursor of thyroid hormone so it's like the building block and then the thyroid globulin any body attacks the thyroid globulin protein and you can't make thyroid hormones so you end up with these two different antibodies through different mechanisms causing a Slowdown of your thid and what happens is you get into all these troubles that we mentioned and it's really fixable we have to get to the root cause now we're going to talk about what that is and how to deal with this just a little note on high thyroid if you have too much T3 or T4 because of another autoimmune condition called Graves disease it causes the opposite phenomena you get increased metabolism weight loss sweating nervousness heart racing palpitations trouble sleeping your eyes bulge out you're you're heat intolerant instead of cold intolerant you're irritable you have diarrhea hair loss sometimes too and maybe you lose your period you be shaky and tremorous and you might have a goiter so these are the common things you get with high thyroid now again that's very rare compared to Hashim MO one in 100 versus one in 10 although it seems like it's maybe more than one in 10 based on our data uh so who's most risk obviously women as I mentioned uh and um it's it's really common uh in pregnancy you see this a lot you get postpartum thyroiditis and and pregnancy increases the demand for thyroid hormone it can mess things up menopause you'll see this often um estrogen affects uh thyroid globulin and also so if it's estrogen's too high you get all sorts of things like PCOS fibroid endometriosis basically you get less T4 uh and you'll see also lower thy globin menopause where you'll have decreased thyroid hormone so there's various ways in which uh your sex hormones interact with a thyroid hormone that kind of mess things up but we we also know that that we see you know um the autoimmune thyroid condition associated with other autoimmune conditions like celiac disease and one of the biggest things and I've seen this I would say probably about 35% of the patients that I have have high level of gluten any bodies or antiglide in antibodies meaning they have some degree of gluten sensitivity or Celiac that's causing the Hashimoto so often getting off gluten will really help getting selenium will help and a lot of things we'll talk about in terms of treatment also you might have lupus or rhe arthritis or chogrin uh which is where you get dry eyes mouth and other things type 1 diabetes Addison disease which is an adrenal autoimmune disease pernicious anemia which is inability absorb B12 so you get all these different problems that are a result of some Trigger or some Factor that's causing the autoimmunity so the key in functional medicine is to get to the root cause and we're going to talk about that now there's some genetics involved there may be a family history of flid issues it's common as we get older um you know over 60 but the issue is why are we seeing this increased prevalence I mean it's it's in the population it's always been but it seems to be increasing so why is that one of the reasons I think is because of uh the type of gluten we have uh we basically changed the gluten in our environment from being these heirloom Wheats and Grains to a dwarf wheat which has much higher numbers of Glide proteins more inflammatory proteins more starch and sugar more likely to cause injury to the gut and leaky gut and this whole Cascade of autoimmunity um and and we see this link very clearly in the literature scientific literature and by the way all of the things that I'm saying are are referenced and we're going to include all these scientific references the show notes if you want to go ahead and have a look at those as well um so Celiac prevalence is like four times higher than those of autoimmune thyroiditis so it's it's a Well establish fact now if you have non Celiac gluten sensitivity not full-blown Celiac um you know it can cause again a lot of thyroid issues uh there's something called molecular mimicry where gluten um resembles something called trans glutaminase which is in the thyroid gland and it's also present in the gut and then it attacks the thyroid gland at the same time it attacks gluten so you get this kind of cross activity so you basically the gluten creates this autoimmunity is essentially what I'm saying the other big factor is you know thyroid is is like the canary and the co mine it it it very is sensitive to environmental toxins they used to put a canary in the coal mine and when the air was bad the canary would die and the coal miners knew to get the heck out of the coal mine because they were going to die too if they stayed there so our thyroid is kind of like our Canary and I've written an article about this uh I I'll post it as well as in the show notes it's a AR I wrote in a medical journal about thyroid but endocrine disrupting chemicals are common they're everywhere it's basically the Petri chemical Plastics in a 2021 review in nutrients uh these endocrine disrupting chemicals were found in food and food packaging and our water and our personal care products things like BPA phalates flame retardant pcbs and they basically interfere with our thyroid gland and they interfere with uh thyroid hormone transport in the in the body also heavy metals are another big one Mercury lead arsenic another big factor um if you see higher levels of mercury see lower levels of T3 hormone so I think it's really important for people to make sure that they they assest these things also air pollution not something we can do a lot about except have an air filter but a 2020 review found that there was higher levels of autoimmune thyroid disease and people who lived in polluted areas uh near petrochemical plants where there was uh maybe cement plants where they were contaminated with pesticides in their environment or pcbs uh also mold which is ubiquitous uh can definitely cause thyroid issues um also the thyroid gland and function depends on a lot of nutrients and there's so much nutritional deficiency in this country across the board this was based on National surveys and testing uh of the American population this is not my opinion you know there 90 plus perent of Americans are deficient in at least one nutrient at the minimum level the RDA you know probably 80% are deficient in vitamin D which is important for thyroid function 45% of deficient in magnesium omega-3 is proba Plus 90 plus% so the thyroid needs a lot of co-actors and helpers for example selenium helps convert T4 to T3 I and that comes from Brazil no for example iodine which is from fish and seaweed actually is needed to make the thyroid hormone it's it's um the very hormone is built thyroid hormone is built from iodine molecules also need zinc which helps make thyroid releasing hormone TSH thyroid hormone need Vitamin A and D to um synthesize thyroid hormone to activate the receptor and gene expression El needs B12 so these are really common problems we see a lot of zinc deficiency vitamin D deficiency and so forth also stress you know we know there's a huge interaction between stress response your adrenals and your thyroid gland they really work in tandem so too much cortisol can interfere with your thyroid hormone production and um and we see this people who have chronic stress will get hypothyroid symptoms uh and they will sort of downregulate this and we see this in chronic disease it's kind of hypothyroidism of chronic illness also even any kind of stress inflammation anything kind of infation by the way we are all inflamed our bodies are inflamed for eating Ultra processed food sugar starch and that's messes up thyroid hormone um production through in interfering with TSH secretion also a lot of people eat a lot of sugar and starch you get disbalances imbalances in your gut microbiome you get used overg growth that can really uh drive it as well and certain medications will interfere with it so you know conventional medicine is is not terrible at this but it's not great either and I and I could say this is one of the most satisfying areas of functional medicine for me because we can diagnose what's going on we are aggressive in diagnosing it based on any symptoms we screen for these questions and and many of these things we call subclinical hypothyroidism so you know it may not be overt but it may be not be fully expressed but it may be a partial problem with your thyroid gland is causing thyroid function and you might not know and it can often go undetected and undiagnosed in fact 50% of the time it's undiagnosed now conventional medicine doctors do not run a full thyroid panel really important they only usually do TSH and also it's important to know that doctors are kind of habits of creature we have these order forms or these basically sheets that we check off with thyroid hormone testing and there's panels on there that are you know decades old before we had newer assays that could measure free T3 measure free T4 they do things like like total T4 or um free thyroxin index or T3 uptake I mean just stuff it's just so out of date and it's just checked on the panel I'm like why are they doing this it's just like you know it's like a it's like using uh you know um basically a magnifying glass to look at the stars instead of a giant telescope so it's really important to do the right test uh when when they do test they they usually only test TSH and they often uh will not test anything else sometimes they'll Test free T4 but they don't test the most important hormone which is free T3 this is the one that does the work and they also don't test thyroid antibodies like thyroid peroxidase antibodies or antithyroid globulin antibodies these are the autoimmune antibodies that we're talking about so you know the reference range is also important to understand the reference range you know is goes from 05 to five that's a tenfold range now what's the optimal range probably like one to two and when you look at the American College of Endocrinology they said the optimal range might be now not five but maybe under three and a half the National Academy of clinical biochemistry says anything over two and a half is abnormal so the opal range is probably like you know 0. five to two at the most and and often the test will come back normal the TSH but it'll miss the fact that the T3 is low that there's thyroid an bodies it may be in the kind of upper range of normal so you have to look at the whole issue and this is why they go undiagnosed and untreated and they kind of wait till TSH is way out of range and then it's often too late or often you've already suffered for years so the other problem is when doctors will prescribe hormone they'll often prescribe the wrong one they give you the inactive hormone which is called levothyroxin or Synthroid and the problem is a lot of people can't convert T3 to T4 fully there's a lot of reasons for it the environmental toxins I mentioned nutritional deficiencies gut disbiosis um stress many things cortisol all these things interfere with this process so the patient may get a little better but doesn't feel fully well and so it's important to make sure you treat them the right way and I'll talk about that in a minute now from a fun FAL Meda perspective how does how do we look at the problem the first is comprehensive lab testing we have to look at the full thyroid panel TSH fre3 fre4 the thyroid antibodies really really important we also need to look at the root cause because there may be other things we want to look at gluten for example if the thyroids off we look at cortisol we look at other hor other things that may matter like inflammation CRP um and and white cell count we look at the sex hormones to see what's going on there we look at liver enzymes to see if there's toxicity you know for example your you have elevated liver enzymes and 75% of graves disease we look at the metabolic Health blood sugar insulin and heavy metals like Mercury and lead and arsenic we can test as well um iodine selenium these are things you can add on to your test isys function Health if you're concerned we also do the Celiac panel which looks at full range of tissue transglutaminase antiglide antibodies really important do the right test um maybe it can also be some infections some times like Lyme disease is a big trigger of autoimmune disease uh we might look at Celiac genetics so we do a lot of different things we look at food sensitivities because that can play a role s gluten and many other food sensitivities we might look at the stool test look at the microbiome and and leaky gut so we go for the root cause and then we treat with a personalized treatment of Lifestyle diet and supplements and medications if needed so we really look at the whole problem now what are the root causes of some of these abnormal biomarkers right you mentioned gluten which can cause these abnormal thyroid antibodies and that can you can even see abnormal antibodies but normal TSH or normal free T three and four and people are still having issues it still affects how they feel and if they're symptomatic I treat them this is my personal view now this is what I've seen after treating thousands of patients with this um you know sometimes your bar markers will be off in pregnancy they'll be off with chronic stress you'll have high cortisol CRP uh you're over exercising and you're high level athlete that can affect you psychological stress uh nutritional deficiency we mentioned mainly selenium iodine vitamin D vitamin A uh food sensitivities particularly Dairy soy we'll talk about gluten gluten and and soy and dairy um environmental toxins as we mentioned endocrine disruptors heavy metals imbalances in the gut and leaky gut various allergens mold various infections yeast overgrowth medications sometimes can affect it birth control use can definitely cause thyroid issues and it seems that based on large data from the anhes trials which was published in bmj open British medical journal if you were having a history of birth control for over 10 years you had four times the risk of having a low thyroid function uh sometimes uh iodine absorption could be affected by estrogen progesterone issues so estrogen excess can also cause thyroid cell um destruction and and why I'm saying this is because we often have a culture of high estrogen we have lots of sugar and lots of starch that causes our body to put on more fat fat produces estrogen not just your ovaries men can get high estrogen levels so it's really common also sometimes you're on lithium for psychiatric disorders that can cause thyroid dysfunction it's important to check that chronic use of anti-inflammatories like Advil a Le they interfere with The Binding of of T3 and four so I think there's some issues there if you're on chronic steroids like um cortisol like drugs like prazone that can cause suppression of TSH and various other drugs so um it's important to understand that you know there may be conditions related to some of these biomarkers we talked about and and how to kind of look at all those together and be paying attention to sort of the whole picture not just one test so how do you address poor thyroid function using functional medicine approach using diet lifestyle getting the root cause well the first is remove the bad stuff get rid of the inflammatory foods Ultra processed foods things that are in a box package can artificial sweeteners trans fats sugar sweetened beverages alcohol gluten would be the first thing to go also wheat barley rice spell camet Oats not oats or not help food trust me I'm written about this but they're not a whole food um a uh 2023 systematic review and metanalysis published in Frontiers endocrinology and like I said all these references are going to be in the show notes they showed that a gluten-free diet for six months reduces the thyroid antibodies and reduces TSH which is a good thing and increase T4 so this is just this is just a simple gluten-free diet having a profound impact on autoimmune thyroid disease so the impact of this gluten-free diet on thyroid function inflammation patients with h hypothyroidism is is really important also reduce your exposure to uh food sources of environmental toxins like Mercury uh containing fish Tunis swordfish shark king mackerel tilefish Chilean seab bass all the big fish and there's lots of guides we'll put a show note guide on on how to use for example the nrdc guide on on low mercury fish also past which is plastic P Packaging uh produce packaging package Foods pesticides which are on our food Use the environmental working group guides for reducing your exposures you can go to ewg.org and it'll link to Skin Deep for healthy skincare products and healthy household cleaning products what foods you should eat what you shouldn't eat like for example certain vegetables and fruits are worse um sometimes you might need to deal with food sensitivities like gluten and dairy U and even soy and trying eliminating those coffee and caffeine may be an issue uh certain foods are call goitrogens they can interfere with thyroid function but it's usually raw foods so raw soybeans or raw peanuts or um like a raw spinach raw turnips rudaba cabbage broccoli collars mustard greens kale people have kale juice like crazy I don't think that's a good idea because you're getting highly concentrated amounts so cook your Kale Cook your vegetables and cooking really reduces that so I I think I highly encourage people to eat these crucifers vegetables like broccoli collar scale but cook them okay and keep your serving of soy low like less than half a cup per day people are drinking like gallons of soy milk and so forth soy lattes I don't recommend that uh also eat real whole food uh get an anti-inflammatory diet get rid of the processed food the ultr processed food get lots of good protein fruits vegetables nut seeds um and whole grains can be fine if they're gluten-free sometimes paleo can be good for autoimmune disease with no grains or beans or dairy but you can have fish eggs meat fruits and vegetables root vegetables um the Autoimmune Paleo is a little more aggressive that takes out night shades like eggplant Tomatoes PE Peppers um takes out nuts and seeds as well as grains and beans and dairy and coffee and alcohol I don't recommend that that often only if someone's really stuck um sometimes other things can be helpful and increasing the conversion of T4 to T3 you know if you if you doing keto that actually might not be good for your thyroid it might be good for blood sugar but you need a little bit of insul to convert T3 to four it's all the right balance um so focus on balancing your blood sugar and um also you need to add in the right nutrients right you need iodine when that comes from where fish seaweed like guac Nori kbu iodi salt selenium which can be gotten from Brazil nuts about two a day some of the fish theh small fish Herring mackerel sardines uh scallops are good at selenium uh omega-3 fats also really important I called to smash fish small wild salmon mackerel and sardines and Herring on my favorite but I don't know if you like them tough tough for you but I like them oysters scallops walnuts flax seeds pumpkin seeds all are great source of Omega-3 vitamin D hard you need like a lot of Herring or a lot of Pini mushrooms but basically sunlight's great but taking vitamin D I think is really important considering how we live also B12 important for liver function vitamin A for The Binding I mentioned that comes from animal Foods primarily you're not going to get it from plant Foods you'll get beta kerene which has to be converted but liers the best source uh poultry also chicken turkey lots of fiber for your gut nut seeds all that's really helpful now supplements should you take supplements yeah I think sometimes is important now if you have heavy metals or you have something like that you need to be treated with proper metal detoxification and I won't cover that in this in this podcast but we will do a session on heavy metals um you can just take a basic multivitamin and mineral omega-3 magnesium vitamin D um so it's really important to know what your numbers are and you're testing to see you're on the right dose uh sometimes if you're having chronic stress sometimes the adap can help like riola ashwagandha which are basically to help uh reduce stress and improve thyroid function lifestyle practices are also really important so meditation yoga journaling walking nature breath work you know whatever whatever works for you iik steams and hot cold plunges also help me relax and distress uh making sure you prioritize sleep seven eight hours a night uh exercise make sure you do proper string training and muscle building that helps glucose control and make sure your hormones are properly balanced um and get rid of the toxins as I mentioned you know Buy Buy U foods that are low in toxins you can use the dirty dozen guide to avoid the most contaminated Foods uh that you should that you should not buy if they're not organic and then you can look at the Clean 15 which are maybe okay to buy if they're not organic as I mentioned the the skin care product uh guide the Skin Deep guide from the ewg is important I always filter water you know some of these chlorinated things and chlorinated water fluoride and water they can really interfere with thyroid function they're like kind of like in the iodine family so it can kind of screw up your thyroid function so also reduce your in indoor air pollution which is a big issue with an air filter I encourage to use a lot of saunas Hot Yoga hot baths to room toxins it was actually a study on red light therapy believe it or not that regenerated uh th folicular cells um there were 43 patients randomized control trial were who had autoimmune thyroid issues and um when they had 10 sessions of red light therapy they were able to reduce their their or eliminate their thyroid replacement uh over 30 days um after nine months they need a much lower dose um and their lower thyroid antibodies and their thyroid look better on ultrasound so M pretty impressive with red light therapy um and then if you need medication and often you do um sometimes you can't if you do all these things it can normalize but but you have to know what you're doing maybe work with a functional medicine doctor but you know most doctors as I mentioned canally just use the the T4 which is Synthroid levox Levi thyroxin and it really only leads to a partial Improvement for most people they don't check T3 and you need to take uh T3 as well so there are versions of T3 like caml that are short acting they're sustained release ones that are compounded I particularly like the desiccated p thyroid it's called Armor Thyroid or naturethroid there's a whole bunch of them out there traditional doctors don't like them they have this belief that they're not safe that they're unregulated that they don't the doses are variable that they cause all these problems but they really don't the one thing you have to know is if you're taking one of these compounds that is a natural thyroid basically it's like mimicking our own thyroid like bioidentical thyroid IT does suppress T TSH so you have because T3 feeds back to the brain to suppress TSH so if you're taking T3 you'll get a low TSH and your will think you're taking too much thyroid hormone so you have to go by the levels of free T3 and free T4 and you have to make sure you check in with your symptoms how do you feel if your heart's racing and you're anxious and you can't sleep well you're taking too much if you have uh you also want to check your bone density because taking thyroid can sometimes cause if it's too much can cause low bone density so you want to make sure your your bone is checked at Baseline and then overtime by the way men and women both can have thyroid problems so if you with hyperthyroidism there's some other things that can be used this is mostly just for low thyroid for hyperthyroidism it's a little bit different they'll use beta blockers to slow your heart rate they have anti-thyroid medication to slow the the thyroid down they use sometimes radio iodine therapy to basically nuke your thyroid or you know it's kind of a little riskier but then you need to be on thyroid your whole life after that which isn't the worst thing because I think of this as a natural molecule that our bodies make so it's important to recheck regularly your levels make sure you're balanced to do all the other bi markers we need to do that's really why so important and the function Health panel as part of your membership you get the full panel of tests that helps you identify everything from heavy metals and as I said I was really shocked to see in the 20,000 people that have gone through so far that the prevalence of antibodies was 12% which is a little bit high and it means there's a lot of people walking around who don't even know they have this issue it can be really hard to detect so um and regular medicine kind of sucks at actually do proper screening and testing and functional medicine is much better looking at the cause with Comprehensive lab testing a thyroid panel hormone panels toxin panels sex hormones inflammatory markers cortisol and getting the root cause so once you do that you can treat it all with um you know basic lifestyle things we talked about supplements and often you'll see Improvement we talked about red light therapy selenium can lower it getting rid of gluten can lower it so a lot of things will have an impact independent of taking medication if you love that last video you're going to love the next one check it out here these these used lifestyle interventions for people with Codine optimizing risk factors and they found uh significant Improvement in cognitive function in predementia patients this called predementia MCI or mild cognitive impairment
#Warning #Signs #Thyroid #Issues #Treat #Naturally #Longevity #Mark #Hyman
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For years I have been fatigued. Have Hashimotoâs , high BP, hair loss hoarseness and I cannot get an endo doc to put me back on natural thyroid. They only prescribe Levo. Iâm 80 and I just want to feel good.
Lugols 2% Iodine, I started with half a drop in water slowly worked up to 3 drops a day for over a year now. 3 drops = about 6mg. Not too high dose not too low dose. After listening to Dr Brownstein and other experts. Supplement with all the co factors and more, I eat 1-2 brazil nuts a day for selenium.
My theroĂŻd figures are TSH 0,04 almost not measurable anymore FT4 now 15.4
My age 70 years
Gained 6 stone since on Thyrax meds for theroĂŻd and Hashimoto.đ
Wonder what healthy numbers should be at my age.
Anybody an idea about that? Thank you Yvonne
Better if he made this shorter and just said the good and the bad and just simply give solution still great info though
Can someone list all the tests you need for proper Thyroid function? Any other recommendations?
Free T3
Free T4
Reverse T3
Thyroid Antibodies
TSH is a false test-IMO
Avoid Soya products.
I think of hypothyroidism as the brakes and hyperthyroidism as the accelerator but it's best to be on cruise.
I got HypoThyroid the week i gave in yo a TETANUS JAB! Never had any symptoms before that.
Food packed in plastic needs to be illegal. Im not buying it along with the lies preservatives bad salts etc no poisons
My partner has hashi, and felt much better after taking mounjaro/wegovy/ozempic for a few months.. any link?
Wish you would do a video on congenital hypothyroidism. My daughter has this is there is âno hopeâ or help from the drs just checking labs and levothyroxine her whole life. She still has some symptoms but they say her labs are normal so she should be ok đ
My TSH is 44.40, and my free t4 is .80. They wanted immediate start on thyroid medicine. I want to get your function test done to see what else I can do to heal this holistically. I have changed my diet and recently cut out gluten and trying for dairy
Can ANYONE cover how to bulk with HYPERthyroidism? There's almost zero content for my demographic of sufferers.
In the UK doctors refuse to do antibody tests – so we have to pay to have them done privately. Medichecks is NHS approved and does full thyroid testing – but why should we have to pay?
Incredible explanation, thank you so much Dr Hymanđđ»đđ»
Any advice for those of us who have induced hypothyroidism from cancer treatment? Because the cancer may be gone now but this hypothyroidism is a total BULLSHIT consolation prize of treatment… I didn't eat ANYTHING for a week (3yrs ago I could do that and loose 12lbs like thatđ«°) I just did the same thing because I gained 20lbs during treatment. Ate nothing for 7days but drank lemon/orange water & Gatorade. Weighed myself and I didn't lose an ounce NOT EVEN ANY WATER WEIGHT! This is insane! I don't even know who I am anymore đ€·ââïž what the hell did treatment do to me??đ€ UGH! Always a catch đ
I have Hashimotoâs and have done every single thing he talked about and have not lost any weight in 9 months. I donât know what else to do.
DEAR DR, WHAT ABOUT ARMOUR THYROID??
DOSES.
I HAVE BEEN YRS ILL WITH THYROID AND ENDO, INFERTILITY. ONLY ONE CHILD. MY MIRACLE.
NOW ALL KINDS OF GUT ISSUES AND PAIN.
THE PAIN IS WORSE WHEN ON FEET LONGER AND EAT TOO MUCH.
ALL LEFT SIDE.
FRONT THRU BACK. I AM NOT EATING HARD TO CHEW FOOD AT ALL.
CONCERNS LIKE THINGS YOU TEST.
HOW DO I GET TEST DONE LIKE YOU DO.?
I DID HAVE LYME TEST 5 YRS AGO. GOTTEN WORSE SINCE.
MOVED 2X.
DOCTORS HERE DO NOT CARE ABOUT AUTOIMMUNITY HERE.
IBAM LOOSING WEIGHT…NEVER OVERWEIGHT.
65, 5'6 92LBS.
SHOULD BE 126.
HELP… MAKING NOTES HERE. DOING A LOT OF WHAT U SAY.
NO TUNA IS SAD…BUT I DONT HAVE IT EVERY WEEK.
I've had Hashimoto's for about 40 years and have been taking Synthroid .112 for most of that time. Last year I tried taking Reduced Glutathione and later Liposomal Glutathione because I heard it was good for my fatty liver. I immediately started having heart palpitations and when my thyroid levels were tested, my TSH was 34. My endricrinologist switched me to Tirosint in case the Synthroid was a problem and raised me to .150. I'm still having problems. What do you think the Glutathione did?
Is it generally safe to add T2 when youâre taking Armour Thyroid?
OMG this is me!!
Can melasma be a symptom? Especially around perimenopause and/or menopause?
I have symptoms of hoshimototos & fibromyalgia. I am gluten sensitive or celiac, removed years ago. Tsh is 2 4, free t4 .69. My Dr. Wont run other blood tests. My 7 day cgm is 130 A1c 6.4. She says Im fine? I dont feel fine at all. Low vit D is 27. Thoughts? Cold, foggy, migraines, fatigue, body ache, peripheral neuropathy feet, brain fog, IBS.
Maybe you should focus on why…
How can I find a doctor who treats like you? Iâm in southern IL
I have all the symptons mentioned.
I have underactive thyroid discovered after having covid jabs.
My mood is very low
I have no thyroid đ
Was removed at age 17 Iâm 56 now đ
Have auto immune disorders
Iâm always cold and tired
Yellow eyes
Hair loss
Depression
High cholesterol
No Lobito
Bad memory
đ€đŁ
Thank you, Dr Hyman for this comprehensive thyroid health advice! I especially appreciate you confirming suppressed TSH when taking Armour or T4 & T3 suppresses TSH & to make sure the FT3 & FT4 are optimal & not out of range, my TSH is always suppressed since being thyroid-less & on Armour thyroid đ Can you have a podcast on how to take Armour thyroid if you have HPA axis dysfunction – low cortisol? It's a tricky balance and not sure if you can or how to optimize Armour if you have low cortisol and thyroid-less Thanks!
Any one know tsh 2.8 or tpo 12 ..? What mean
The Drs and gov r keeping us ill. It's disgusting
My aunty who was standing there had graves disease.
When they stop standing there it disappears.
It's not a thyroid disease until it's been making too many cells, and cancer cells,
About a month ago I watched a seminar on thyroid.
She said all these tests should be done, but which ones should I ask my dr to do? Thank you for your time.
Hereâs the list
TSH
Total T4/ T4 (TT4)
Free T4
Total T3/T3 (TT3)
Free T3
T3 Uptake
Reverse T3
Free Thyroxine Index (FTI)
TBG
Thyroid Peroxidase Antibody TPO
Thyroglobulin antibody
Thyroid Stimulating Immunoglobulin (TSI)
I have all the symptoms you mentioned
What if I have a combination of both. Is that hyperparathyroidism ? I'm too slim and nervous, but also cold depressed. I have many symptoms of both
We just found out that a young person in our family is off the charts, .o1 on the blood test, he has almost everything we can think of that is related, shakes, palpatations, shakes, irritability, sweats, high body temperature, stomach and bowel issues, etc. his neck is also very swollen and we think this may have been happening for at least a few years. he is 25. We are now doing the Ultra Sound and then will figure the next steps. Should we recommend to his doctor these additional test? It seems like a lot of this clip is more for Hypo and not Hyper… as he should stay away from iodine and salt….
Why do I suffer with every single symptom of hypothyroid except weight gain but I'm always told my many thyroid tests throughout the years are normal?
My Dr ran the full thyroid panel and didn't know what to do w the info….I'm subclinical
I'm on levothyroxine have. Been forcyears,now level is7.3,im already on 125mg.