The biggest take-away from the seminar is that at this time in this country most thyroid problems are actually immune system problems. Our immune systems are attacking our own bodies, and one of their favorite targets is the thyroid gland. This is known as Hashimoto’s disease. Unfortunately this is rarely checked for in routine lab blood work… even when a patient has obvious symptoms of a thyroid problem. Do any of these symptoms feel familiar to you?
Too little thyroid hormone activity may make you:
– Tired, sluggish
– Feel cold – hands, feet, all over
– Require excessive amounts of sleep to function properly
– Increase in weight gain even with low-calorie diet
– Gain weight easily
– Difficult, infrequent bowel movements
– Depression, lack of motivation
– Morning headaches that wear off as the day progresses
– Outer third of eyebrow thins
– Thinning of hair on scalp, face or genitals, or excessive hair loss
– Dryness of skin and/or scalp
– Mental sluggishness
Or too much thyroid hormone activity can give you:
– Heart palpitations
– Inward trembling
– Increased pulse even at rest
– Nervousness and emotional
– Insomnia
– Night sweats
– Difficulty gaining weight
Notice I say thyroid hormone activity… this is the key to cutting edge understanding of thyroid problems. There are 10 metabolic steps involved in thyroid hormones doing their jobs properly, and only one of those steps is typically ever checked by conventional medicine. The doctor teaching the seminar has identified 24 common problem patterns with thyroid hormone function and figured out how to test for and treat most of these patterns. (His book for the lay person can be found at www.thyroidbook.com or Amazon.)
The second big take-away from the weekend was that since thyroid problems are usually autoimmune problems, is understanding that autoimmune problems don’t attack just one tissue in your body, they attack many. So a thyroid hormone problem is usually just the tip of the iceberg. Autoimmune diseases are the up-and-coming epidemic for the 21st century. The levels of hormone mimicking chemicals in our modern food chain and environment are really confusing the heck out of our bodies. Our toxic world is making our bodies flip out and start attacking our own tissues.
What can we do about this? The Health Challenge series I ran all last year taught you how to reduce the poison load on your body in general. Getting 4000 to 10,000 units of vitamin D3 each day as well as boosting your body’s supply of glutathione to protect your cells from autoimmune damage supports reducing immune system reactivity. (Glutathione has to be either injected or taken as a transdermal cream – as in Oxycell cream available at the office – as it is destroyed by the digestive tract.) Specialized specific protocols are utilized for each of the 24 thyroid patterns we learned about during that weekend.
Determining if you have a thyroid hormone problem is done through lab blood work. Typically your doctor will not order the tests needed (TSH, T4,T3, T3 uptake, TPO antibodies, and TGA – anti thyroglobulin antibodies) other than the TSH test, however I can order them if you need them done. I get a discount at Labcorp and can order all the needed tests for only $135.
Why don’t doctors check for these problems? Because why would you go looking for a problem you can’t offer any solutions for? Doctors limit themselves to treating only with approved pharmaceuticals, and there are no pharmaceuticals developed yet for most of the disturbed pathways we are talking about. Right now the only thing doctors have they can use for thyroid problems is replacement thyroid hormone. Their answer for autoimmune trouble is the drug prednisone, which creates many more problems than it solves. They don’t have anything for the pituitary, hypothalamus, or adrenal problems causing the thyroid problems. Nor do they have anything for problems with the carrier proteins that move the hormone to the cells, or for the enzyme problems with converting the hormone to its active form, or for problems with the receptor sites recognizing the hormones. Natural medicine does have support today for each of these issues – and so will the drug industry in another 20 to 30 years…but who wants to wait for them?
So yes there is hope. Some of the life changes needed to tackle some of the different thyroid problems can be challenging, but well worth the effort. If you are interested in ordering lad tests for your thyroid let me know either in the office or by dropping me a note at david@fairoakshealth.com … be hearing from you.