#1 Absolute Best Way To HEAL Your THYROID

Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to talk  about the absolute best way to fix thyroid issues  

and we're also going to cover why a lot  of the standard advice and treatment for  

thyroid actually makes things worse so after  watching this video you will know enough to avoid  

the pitfalls and also to start taking some steps  in the right direction and when you have a thyroid  

problem it can run too fast or too slow if it  runs too slow that's about 95 percent of the cases  

and it's called hypothyroid and the symptoms  associated with that are things like fatigue  

and depression constipation dry skin weight  gain puffy face hoarseness joint pain  

muscle aches muscle weakness elevated cholesterol  heavy or irregular periods thin brittle  

slow heart rate or bradycardia sensitivity to  cold impaired memory and also we're going to  

talk a good bit about the enlarged thyroid gland  called a goiter and I've talked in other videos  

about the symptoms so we're not gonna stay on this  but I just want to show you that if it can affect  

all of these different things then it's because  it's involved in so many different things at so  

many different levels in the body it's a super  important gland and sometimes it seems like we  

treat thyroid as a female only disease  as if only women had this problem because  

so many of the cases are female but trust me  it's not like the ovaries that only women have  

them if you're a man you have a thyroid  and a lot of men have trouble with this  

so in terms of diagnosed thyroid problems there's  about five percent of adults that have a diagnosed  

condition and most of those are female because  females tend to go and complain about those things  

more than men they say i am tired i don't feel  so good I'm sensitive to cold and if you complain  

about those things they're going to check your  thyroid but if you don't then they probably will  

never look so even though there's five percent of  adults that are diagnosed I believe the prevalence  

is much much higher and the people coming through  my office I believe there's somewhere around 30 to  

50 percent of people who have some thyroid issues  and it doesn't mean that you have a full-blown  

autoimmune disease or that you have markers way  off the chart but people can have trouble and be  

affected by thyroid problems at a much more subtle  level so men need to be very aware of this as well  

because just because you don't complain  doesn't mean that there isn't a problem  

getting your thyroid checked out and taken  care of can be very frustrating because  

the standard treatment model usually falls very  short so to understand this we need to understand  

how the body makes thyroid hormone it all starts  with the hypothalamus and that's a little walnut  

size gland that sits at the base of the brain and  it is your master regulator it's your thermostat  

and it regulates pH and hunger and thirst and most  of the hormones and oxygen levels and so forth  

and it releases a hormone called thyrotropin  releasing hormone and that's just an instruction  

to the pituitary to make some tsh and tell  the thyroid to go to work and TSH stands for  

thyroid stimulating hormone and if you look at  this range that's the first problem 0.5 to 5.0  

is considered normal that's a huge range that's  a 10-fold difference between the high and the low  

so you could vary you could swing widely within  that range and still be considered normal  

in my experience the good area a healthy area is  to be around 1.8 to 3.0 a much much more narrow  

range and this TSH is the only thing that they  test standard if they test anything at all I've  

seen a lot of blood work come back where they  don't even test that but it is extremely rare that  

they test anything except the TSH when they want  to evaluate the thyroid but realize the TSH is not  

even a thyroid hormone it's a pituitary hormone  that depends on how much TRH the hypothalamus  

releases but then based on the TSH the  thyroid goes to work and it makes thyroxine t4  

and that is thyroid hormone but we're not done  there because this t4 isn't active it has to be  

converted in the liver primarily there's a few  other places it gets converted from t4 to t3 and  

now it's activated and it can go out and fit into  the receptors and drive things and speed things up  

the way the thyroid hormone does and then there is  a feedback cycle called negative feedback which is  

a good thing even though it's called negative so  this t4 gets into the bloodstream and it gets back  

to the hypothalamus and if there's too much of  the t4 then the negative feedback is going to  

tell the hypothalamus to back off on the TRH so  that the TSH comes down if there's not enough t4  

then the hypothalamus is going to increase  the TRH so that we get more drive in this  

stimulation pathway so the standard treatment  is to only check TSH and if the TSH is high  

that means the thyroid is underperforming we  don't have enough t4 so then they give you  

Synthroid they give you synthetic t4 and now  this t4 feeds back to the hypothalamus and they  

regulate the amount of Synthroid based on the TSH  so they if they give you too much then this TSH  

gets too low if they don't give you enough then  TSH is still high so this is basically the only  

mechanism it's the only treatment that they look  at one marker which is not only a thyroid marker  

and they give you a synthetic hormone which is  appropriate in many cases and then they try to  

regulate and calibrate the level of TSH but we're  going to talk about how many more steps there are  

to this and why this is so inadequate now this  crazy thing right here is called harrowers chart  

and why do I show you a crazy picture like this  is it so that you have something to memorize  

no it is to help you see the complexity of things  to understand that the thyroid affects virtually  

every other organ and every other type of tissue  in the body and harrower henry harrower was  

a physiologist who is called the founder the  father of modern endocrinology the study of  

hormones and he felt the thyroid was so important  that he stuck it right in the middle and if you  

look at all these different lines those are ways  that the different glands affect each other so  

if it's a solid line it's a stimulating pathway  if it's a dashed line it's an inhibiting pathway  

and the next thing we want to understand is that  how complex this system is and once you see how  

complex it is you understand that you can't just  look at TSH is the pituitary signal to the thyroid  

well what about all the other players here and  it also explains why someone can go to the doctor  

and they have a high TSH and they give them  some synthetic hormone and they feel better  

for a couple of months but then after a while they  don't feel good anymore they feel just as bad as  

they did before and it's because there are so many  other factors that are influencing how you feel  

and how your body works so it's not just about TSH  yes we want to look at TSH but it's one component  

that we want to understand and this is why it's  so important to have a holistic view of the body  

where every component every tissue every gland  every system is equally important one of the first  

things we need to understand is the difference  between the health of the tissue and how healthy  

the markers look the blood work the things  we measure so you could have a thyroid tissue  

that is perfectly healthy that the cells in the  thyroid are doing really really well but they're  

getting the wrong messages or there's some other  factor that is throwing off the blood markers  

so it looks like you have a problem and you do  actually have a problem of hyper or hypothyroid  

but it's not a problem with the thyroid tissue  and it could work the other way as well that you  

do have a problem with the thyroid tissue with the  cells but it's not resulting in unhealthy markers  

yet or there may even be some markers that are  offsetting each other to where it still looks  

normal and when it comes to the health of the  tissue we need to understand that the thyroid  

tissue the cells are extremely sensitive  there's all kinds of toxins and pathogens  

that can start breaking down and affecting the  thyroid and interestingly one of the compounds  

called iodine that is absolutely necessary for  the thyroid to do its job this compound iodine  

is actually very toxic but not only that it has  some even more toxic siblings so in the periodic  

table there's a column where they have compounds  called halogens and they are closely related they  

have very similar properties and they're all very  highly reactive and they're very toxic and these  

are things like fluorine and chlorine and bromine  and there are a few more but these are the main  

ones that we run across and of course the fluorine  and the chlorine are added to our drinking water  

and bromine is a very common chemical added  to food and industrial products now as much as  

70 to 80 of all the iodine in the body is actually  living in the thyroid you find it in the thyroid  

tissue and like i said iodine is necessary for  the thyroid to produce the thyroid hormone it  

has the receptors and all the chemical components  to process this but it also means that it's gonna  

tend to attract the fluorine and the chlorine and  the bromine which are even more toxic so if we get  

those in the water or in the food then chances  are they're going to end up in the thyroid and  

as a result the thyroid tends to have a lot of  autoimmune issues because when we have toxins  

and we have these things breaking down the tissues  then the body needs to clean up when the thyroid  

cells break and they get out in circulation  they end up in places they're not supposed to be  

and then the body needs to have an autoimmune  response it needs to clean that up and if there's  

a lot of destruction going on then the body can  overdo that response that cleanup and that's  

where we get an autoimmune attack and to make  things worse there are some additional factors  

like your gut health if you have leaky gut if you  have a poor microflora if you have food allergies  

then all of these factors tend to confuse your  immune system and exaggerate these responses  

and further promote these autoimmune attacks  so again you want to differentiate between  

the tissue health and the marker health  and all of these things we talked about  

you can think of them as attacks like bullets  shooting holes in your thyroid that the thyroid is  

getting physically damaged and when that happens  then you're promoting that autoimmune attack  

now goiter relates directly to what we just talked  about is it the tissue or is it other factors  

so a goiter is an enlargement of the thyroid  gland and the thyroid has to have iodine for every  

molecule for every unit of thyroid hormone that  the body makes it has four binding sites for  

iodine that's why it's called t4 and if we don't  have enough iodine in the environment if we don't  

have supplements we don't have iodized salt and we  live someplace where there's very little iodine in  

the soil in the environment in the food now we're  deficient there's virtually no iodine to go around  

the body is going to try really really hard to  grab every single molecule every atom of iodine  

so it's going to adapt it's going to increase the  amount of receptor sites it's going to hypertrophy  

it's going to grow and these things can get huge  they can get like footballs because the body is so  

desperate the tissue just keeps growing but here's  the question is that an unhealthy thyroid no the  

tissue is perfectly healthy the thyroid is healthy  it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do the  

only issue is that it doesn't have any iodine so  as soon as we provide a little bit of iodine then  

the problem starts reversing now here's something  i get a lot of questions about goitrogens I see so  

many comments people hear conflicting information  they worry about this food or that food being  

a goitrogen and that means a food would have a  tendency to cause a goiter to cause an enlargement  

of the thyroid and then people ask me does this  damage the thyroid and I've read lots of articles  

where it says it damages the thyroid it interferes  with the thyroid and that you shouldn't eat  

these foods if you have a thyroid issue that  you should avoid them in general but especially  

if you have a thyroid issue and none of this  is correct here's what's going on these foods  

have chemical compounds that compete with iodine  for binding sites so that means if there is a  

deficiency of iodine and you eat these they're  going to increase they're going to amplify or make  

the deficiency worse so if you have a deficiency  that's not a good thing but if you're eating  

iodized salt or if you have access to iodine  supplements then these things are not a problem  

they compete they make it harder for  the body to use the available iodine  

but they do not in any way damage the thyroid or  interfere with the thyroid they compete with the  

raw materials that's all so goitrogens are only a  problem if your thyroid issue is due to an iodine  

deficiency and you don't have access to iodine  now here's another way that the standard model  

falls very short and we've all heard that pain  hurts but stress kills well how does stress  

now affect the thyroid well in the standard model  everything is kind of black and white they don't  

care where you are in this range from 0.5 to 5. if  you're in the green area you're normal if you're  

outside you have a disease and like we explained  earlier the way they look at it is that the higher  

your TSH goes the louder the pituitary has to ask  the thyroid the more hypothyroid you are the more  

underperforming the thyroid is the more TSH the  body has to make so the higher the TSH the more  

your tendency to be hypothyroid and on the other  end of the scale the lower your TSH the more your  

tendency is to be hyper thyroid well this is true  but it's only a very small sliver of the truth  

so we really want to think of this range not  in terms of black or white or or in and out we  

want to think of it as a gradient where there  is a sweet spot and then there are some other  

areas some yellow orange areas where things kind  of turn around a little bit and the sweet spot  

is from 1.8 to about 3.0 now what does stress  do to this system well when we have stress when  

the body has different priorities when we have  high cortisol levels which is a stress hormone  

now what that does it tends to make  the hypothalamus a little bit less  

sensitive so it's like the hypothalamus is  sleeping on the job if you will so we could have  

a low we could have a lack of thyroid function we  could have a lack of product t4 and then this lack  

of product feeds back and the hypothalamus is  supposed to increase the TRH so we get more TSH  

but if the hypothalamus is less sensitive it's  not noticing that we're missing t4 and therefore  

we could have a low t4 and a low TSH which  is opposite of the standard interpretation so  

stress can really mess with the regulation the  production but it can do more the stress will  

also interfere with the liver's conversion so  the liver has to do most of the work in turning  

the t4 the inactive thyroid hormone into t3 which  is the active and in that process some of the t3  

always ends up as reverse t3 and it's sort of  like the mirror image of what's supposed to be  

and now it's useless and the more stress you  have the more inflammation you have the greater  

the percentage of t3 that ends up useless you  have a conversion problem and if we magnify this  

little area down here between 0.5 and 1.8 and we  look specifically at an area between 0.7 and 1.2  

this is where i find that we have a lot of people  that have a low TSH that in the standard model  

the doctor would tell them that you're actually  heading toward hyper the patient comes in and  

says I think I'm hypothyroid I have these  symptoms I don't feel good and the doctor  

looks at the TSH and says no no no you're moving  toward hyper there is but you're still in the  

normal range so there's nothing wrong with  your net values but this is actually a case  

of functional hypothyroid so if you have a  problem and you want to restore thyroid function  

then you need to address any kind of factor that  affects thyroid tissue damage and that could be  

a lot of things various forms of toxicity like  metals chemicals pathogens inflammation we want  

to address autoimmunity if the thyroid is being  attacked if you have an issue with conversion  

and we'll look at how to spot that on blood test  then it's mostly going to be about liver and gut  

the liver does the majority of conversion from  t4 to t3 but the gut flora the healthy bacteria  

does a significant portion as much as 20-25  of your overall thyroid function depends  

on how healthy the gut bacteria is and how  well they can convert into that active thyroid  

hormone we also talked about how stress and  inflammation can interfere with that conversion  

and then we have everything else so faulty  regulation anything else that affects the  

hypothalamus or pituitary or anything else in that  signaling system could depend on all of the above  

and it could also be any of the factors any of  the glands any of the signals and pathways in that  

crazy harrowers charge so you could see that this  can get a little bit complex and you want to go  

a good bit beyond just testing TSH the first  step obviously is to know where you are the vast  

majority of people have no idea if they have  a thyroid issue or not and of the ones who do  

it is usually misinterpreted so first of  all get some blood work and you want to get  

the TSH and you want to get in addition t4 and  t3 at a minimum there are some more markers but  

you don't have to complicate it to start off  and you want to understand if your hyper or  

hypo or if you are where you're supposed to be  so if your TSH is high then you are hypothyroid  

trending toward hypothyroid if your TSH is low  like really low under 0.5 you are hyperthyroid  

and then we have this nice zone in the middle  called you or true it's called you thyroid and  

then there's this area that everyone misses in  between where you are functionally hypothyroid  

even a lot of people are going to tell you you're  trending toward hyper and here's how you spot  

if you have a conversion issue and this is really  really common conversion is taking t4 into t3 the  

liver or the gut bacteria just pops off one of  those iodines off the thyroxine turns t4 to t3  

and you measure t4 and what you look at is  where you are in the range right so these are  

in micrograms and these are in nanograms they're  extremely small amounts billionths of a gram and  

let's say that you are in the middle of the t4  range that you're making a healthy amount of t4  

but then you look at your t3 and you see that even  though you're officially inside the range you're  

still normal you look at the relative strength you  look at how much of this because if the conversion  

was working optimally then you would be  in the same place roughly in the range  

so if you're normal on t4 and really really low  on t3 that means it's not converting again the  

liver does the majority of this conversion a  portion of the t3 always ends up as reverse  

t3 but the more stress and inflammation you have  the greater the percentage of reverse t3 and this  

is another marker you can order this reverse t3  is not part of the t3 that you get on a t3 test  

so you could order the reverse t3 separately and  if it's super high then that would be a strong  

indication of stress and inflammation another  thing to look for in terms of conversion like  

we said is the gut bacteria if you're low on t3 it  could be that you have an unhealthy flora and also  

some of the micronutrients the first thing we want  to look for is not iodine it's zinc and selenium  

because they are necessary in the conversion  from t4 to t3 and now here's the big one  

when it comes to hypothyroid autoimmune  disease called Hashimoto's thyroiditis  

now there are some areas in the world where this  is not the main issue if you live in a place  

where there is little iodine in the  soil where there's no iodized salt  

where there are no supplements widely  available then in those areas the number one  

cause for hypothyroid is iodine deficiency  but today in most of the world where we have  

iodized salt and supplements available and  iodine is not really that scarce in the soil  

the number one cause is Hashimoto's thyroiditis  an autoimmune condition and why is it so important  

to understand if you have this because if you have  hypothyroid and they just supplement you with t4  

now they're making the blood markers better  they're compensating for your lack of function  

but they're missing the big picture the big  picture is that you have an autoimmune disease  

that is destroying vital tissue that is eating  away at your body and if you ignore that just  

because they can give you some thyroid hormone and  compensate a little bit then you're missing the  

big picture and chances are that one autoimmune  disease will continue to get worse and turn into  

multiple autoimmune diseases the other big reason  that you need to understand this is that there is  

a chance that if you take iodine which is the  number one recommended supplement for all sorts  

of thyroid problems you could make your autoimmune  disease worse because if you are low on iodine and  

you have an autoimmune disease and you supplement  iodine then you're going to provide a raw material  

to increase the activity of the thyroid which is  going to make the thyroid more visible to this  

autoimmune attack so i have had many many many  hypothyroid cases and i've never had a single one  

where the solution was right off the bat to  supplement iodine i then can come in later  

when we've calmed down this autoimmune response  but rarely is iodine a good idea in the beginning  

if you have an autoimmune disease so the way  to find out is to test an antibody called  

thyroid peroxidase there are a couple of  more and they usually bundle them together  

but I'll just mention this because it's the  main one it's by far the most common one  

to show up but now there's a lot of confusion  here as well because where I live in Georgia  

the lab results will come back and say that  anything under 34 units of antibodies is normal  

now think about this antibodies there's something  that's attacking tissue that's cleaning up things  

and you're really supposed to have zero or very  very close to zero there's always some breakdown  

of tissue that needs cleaning up and tagging  by antibodies but this line has been changing  

over the years and it's very very different  in different parts of the united states and  

in different parts of the world some other areas  they tell you that you have to be below 16 and  

some they tell you under nine and it turns out  that over time this has changed so a while back  

most labs reported under five as the normal range  so what's happening is that people are becoming  

more toxic more autoimmune issues more antibodies  and there's so many of them that have higher  

levels so in order to not classify everyone as  autoimmune they they've been pushing this level up  

and it's probably because most of these people are  not symptomatic or they're not very symptomatic  

but we need to realize what antibodies are  and while a little tiny bit is okay and normal  

we're not supposed to have as much as 34.  i think if you have somewhere in the teens  

if you're 15 to 20 you need to start  taking a really close look at this  

if you're under five then you're probably  okay I'm sure you notice by now that this  

thyroid situation can get a little hairy a  little complex so in terms of action steps  

my first recommendation is actually to find a  professional I know I explained a lot of things  

you can do for yourself in these videos and and  we'll follow through with that but if you can  

if you feel strongly you have a thyroid issue  I would recommend you find someone to work with  

if you can't find someone to work with then  we do have some long distance help we have  

a telehealth department we can help you with  some blood work and some consults at my clinic  

but i would recommend you have someone local  that can work with you closely some of the  

things you can do for yourself is what we  talk a lot about on this channel is go low  

carb high fat depending on where you are in your  metabolic health if you're very insulin resistant  

then everything in your body is just a little  bit screwed up and out of regulation if you're  

fairly healthy metabolically if you're not insulin  resistant then i would recommend a low to moderate  

diet low to moderate carbohydrate diet because  sugar and high insulin and blood sugar swings  

doesn't do anybody any good then i would strongly  suggest to not drink tap water if you live in an  

area where they add chlorine and fluorine to the  tap water and realize this also holds true for  

the shower because you can absorb the equivalent  of several glasses of water in terms of chlorine  

through your shower so if you can best deal would  be to get really clean drinking water and get a  

house wide filter for your shower so that every  tap every source of water is decontaminated in  

the house you probably want to work on doing  a liver detox and I've done some videos  

on how to do that how to restore the the liver  because these toxins the metals chemicals etc.  

they are what circulate and attack the thyroid  but also the liver is involved with the conversion  

from t4 to t3 like we mentioned you want to work  on gut healing if you have a leaky gut you're  

going to have a lot of allergies and inflammation  to promote autoimmunity and you want to restore  

your microbiome that's kind of the second step  after the leaky gut if you have that so probiotics  

can be great they're usually not the first step  again because you need to have a functioning gut  

for them to do any good they're not going to  harm anything but the benefit might be limited if  

they don't have any healthy place to grow  and you want to avoid allergens allergens  

set off autoimmunity they set off inflammation  and some of the most common allergens are wheat  

not just gluten even though gluten is in wheat  wheat is by far the worst of all the gluten grains  

you want also avoid corn and soy they're very  common allergens and you want to avoid pasteurized  

dairy most people do really well with yogurt and  butter most people need to avoid pasteurized dairy  

so avoiding those allergens would be step one and  then if you want to take it one step further you  

want to look into something called an autoimmune  diet or an autoimmune paleo diet so then  

you start off with paleo which means you avoid all  grain and dairy etc. but then you take it one step  

further and you also avoid things like night  shades and you get a little bit more specific  

in avoiding things with lectins because if  you have an autoimmunity you're probably  

very sensitive to different things and you want  to go one step beyond what most people have to do  

if you enjoyed this video you're going to love  that one and if you truly want to master health  

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