Barbell Shrugged - Physiology Friday: [THYROID] Function, Dysfunction, Brain Chemistry, and Autoimmunity w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash and Dan Garner

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

In today’s episode of Barbell Shrugged: The Thyroid’s impact on weight gain What is the function of the thyroid What causes thyroid dysfunction The relationship between hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and thyroid Thyroids role in autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto’s and Grave’s disease How gut health affects the thyroid How Vitamin A regulates the thyroid Parathyroid and thyroid connection How birth control can affect thyroid function Thyroid’s role in impacting brain chemistry The thyroid’s role in your menstrual cycle To learn more, please go to https://rapidhealthoptimization.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram  

Shrug Family this week on Barbell Shrugged. Physiology Friday is back and today, Dan Garner's gonna be rocking out on all things thyroid. So for many of you ladies out there that may have some thyroid issues, this is the jam and I know that this isn't just for the ladies, I know there are plenty of men out there that have also questions about thyroid,

maybe there's some autoimmune issues that are coming up. This is the episode for you and as always friends, if you'd like to take the next steps and come and work with us at Rapid Health Optimization, head over to rapidhealthreport.com. That is where you can see Dan Garner, Dr. Andy Galpin, doing a free lab lifestyle and performance analysis. And you can access that free report at rapidhealthreport.com.

Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. My name is Anders Barger, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Bash, Dan Garner in the house. Today we are talking about thyroids and man, this comes up so much. I hear so many people on when I'm talking to them, getting people into the rapid health optimization program that complain about thyroid issues. And if there's a single thing that all of them have in common, it's that their doctors tell them their thyroid is jacked up and they have no real solution on how to heal any of the issues caused by having a dysfunctional thyroid. And it makes me even wonder what is a dysfunctional thyroid

and like what is the role of the thyroid to begin with? And then what kind of like makes it dysfunctional because it seems like a lot of people have this issue. Okay. So in the word, the dist podcast, you guys might have to rein me in because the thyroid's involved in so much stuff. So, well, I think probably a good way to start is probably just to bring them in. That was not, I was losing their mind over thyroid. I'm going to go do a bunch of work and I'll come back in an hour. And he'll still be talking.

Dan will still be like halfway through biochemistry on thyroid. Intro. He'll be done with the intro, maybe. Yeah. I can even go, I can even make it a little bit cleaner to start things off, but energy and weight control. Those are like two of the largest things when people put on weight, they're like, Oh, my doctor said my thyroid's jacked up and then he just gave me the medicine.

Um, let's get into the function of the thyroid first. How does it become dysfunctional? And then we can get in some of the symptoms of that. Sure. Yeah. I mean, so the symptoms you kind of already said a couple with fatigue is definitely a symptom. Hair loss is a symptom. And typically you hear like, Hey, I haven't really changed my eating patterns, but I seem to be gaining weight.

These are all, you know, the early windows and signs of hypo thyroidism, hyperthyroidism is when I start talking about biochemistry and start talking this fast, going over the thyroid, that's more hyperthyroidism when metabolism is extremely high. Okay? So, hypo, basically in absence of, hyper, in abundance of. So, you can have hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism, but it's kind of like just like a quick, I suppose, overview for anybody who's currently unfamiliar with thyroid signaling pathways. You basically got this cool little butterfly-looking organ in the middle of your neck, and it's going to go through a similar pathway that we've talked about a bunch on

this podcast before beginning with the hypothalamus and the pituitary. We talked about the hypothalamus-pituitary adrenal access before, we've talked about the hypothalamus-uitary adrenal access before. We've talked about the hypothalamus pituitary gonadal access before. This time it's the same kind of thing except the thyroid. So, the hypothalamus pituitary thyroid access. And what you're looking at in this pathway, if it's functioning optimally, is your hypothalamus is going to secrete TRH, which is thyrotropin-releasing hormone. That hormone is going to go down into the pituitary.

The pituitary is going to receive that signal and then send thyroid-stimulating hormone down to the thyroid. If this successfully takes place with hormone secretion and receptor sensitivity and availability, then that that thyroid stimulating hormone will hit the thyroid and you will begin to make thyroid hormone. It's been estimated that there is a 94% secretion and creation of T4 hormone and only a 6% secretion or creation of T3 hormone. And the reason why this is is because T4 is inactive until it's converted to its active form of T3. Now in this kind of ballpark though, there are T1 and T2. We just don't know a lot about them yet. So there's still more to learn in this area of endocrinology as there is anywhere really in research.

But what essentially happens is that hypothalamus pituitary thyroid access will take place. We'll create a whole bunch of T4 and then a little bit of T3. And then your liver is going to make some cool proteins called thyroid binding globulins. Those things are going to make their way up to the thyroid and act like a bus that carries thyroid around the body. That binding is like a vehicle. We're gonna take this thyroid over to the bicep, and then we're gonna take it here to the lay-dig cells of the testes.

Then we're gonna take it here to the heart. That binding globulin acts as a vehicle and transporter for thyroid all around the body. But that's basically kind of the quick rundown of how the hypothalamus, the pituitary and the thyroid create that hormone. The liver is supposed to create the correct amount of binding globulins to act as vehicles. And that would be considered homeostasis for the thyroid. But whenever you get that many organs involved in something, there's certainly dysfunctions that can happen. So we can get

into those if you guys have any questions on that. I want to zoom out real quick. You're just mentioning dysfunction. Like if somebody is like if someone comes to me and they're in their 350 pounds and they say, well, I have blood sugar problems. That's why I'm overweight. And like they're kind of blaming like a something that probably was potentially cause or at least dramatically affected by being overweight, having blood sugar issues if you're 350 pounds, they're blaming that problem for being overweight, whereas maybe it's being overweight that caused or really affected that problem.

Like, to what degree, if somebody is really tired all the time or if they have weight control issues, is it the thyroid causing them to be tired and to be overweight or is being tired and overweight causing thyroid problems? What's the chicken or egg issue here? Well, thyroid problems approximately affect 7% of the population in the U.S. So that's a decent percentage, but it's also not a huge percentage compared to the amount of people who say they have a slow metabolism, they can't lose weight. So, I think in many cases, you can call it a chicken and the egg for that 7%, but for the 93% of people who aren't afflicted with these issues, I think that they have a very well-functioning metabolism and that is not a chicken and the egg situation

because they're simply less adherent to the diet for lack of a better phrase. But there are certain physiologic contexts that can, I guess, increase one's susceptibility to running into thyroid problems. Like for example, the hypothalamus is supposed to be secreting thyroptopin-releasing hormone to the pituitary. However, high levels of inflammation have been demonstrated to reduce TRH output, as is low levels of dopamine.

So low levels of dopamine and high levels of inflammation can absolutely impact the hypothalamus' ability to signal the pituitary. So it might not even be actually a thyroid problem at all, but rather a signaling problem. And then there's that other signaler right in the middle, which is the pituitary. So it might not even be actually a thyroid problem at all, but rather a signaling problem. And then there's that other signaler right in the middle, which is the pituitary. The pituitary is supposed to secrete

thyroid stimulating hormone to tell the thyroid to make more hormones. However, this can be impacted by cortisol levels and something known as lipopolysaccharides that we've discussed before in Gut Health podcast, because that is when gut bacteria, one of the most inflammatory substances in physiology period by the way, that is when it actually gets into circulation when it belongs in the gut. It becomes an endotoxin, something that belongs in a normal healthy state of physiology,

but just not in the circulatory system. So, it becomes its own toxic problem. Lipopolysaccharides and cortisol have both been demonstrated to suppress pituitary output. So, it's still not a thyroid problem. It is a signaling problem. And everything I just mentioned to tie back in to what you're saying is very lifestyle-related. Dopamine synthesis, inflammation, cortisol, lipopolysaccharides, the choices we're making with stress, sleep, our diet, our gut health, these are all things that make their way to the thyroid. And a lot of people don't know,

15% of hypothyroid patients have less than three bowel movements per week. Like the more and more and more we learn about how important the gut is with respect to thyroid function, the more we realize how lifestyle related out of this stuff actually can become. So it's chicken and the egg in some scenarios, but as a coach who's worked with thousands of people, a lot of times people just aren't adherent to the diet. Yeah. If the thyroid, pituitary, and hypothalamus are so closely linked together in this kind of like axis that

everything has to flow through. When a doctor says your thyroid is jacked up and that's the reason all this stuff is happening, is that... I hate to use the word irresponsible. It's incomplete. and all this stuff is happening. Is that? I hate to use the word irresponsible. Does it's incomplete? Yeah, it's an incomplete. That's a great word. Thank you. Yeah. By being incomplete, is that something that people should look at? And like, I know when people get diagnosed, they always like just like attached themselves to it, but there's more to the story and finding the root cause. So what is like the process of finding? Well, is it actually your thyroid? Is it the pituitary? Is it the hypothalamus? Is it the gut health signaling to those three? Like how do we, how do you actually like get in there?

Obviously the broad broad categories like go do labs, but like wait, how does that there's too many pieces in that puzzle to just say it's, it's, it's your thyroid and then someone punts and now you leave your friends. Yeah. How do you diagnose? Yeah, how do you diagnose which is the three? Well, I mean, symptoms are the reasons that would prompt you to get labs in the first place. So if you are authentically have quite a bit of fatigue, you have trouble recovering from exercise, you have some hair loss like me and Anders, you have... It's definitely my thyroid for sure. It's my thyroid too, dude.

It's definitely my thyroid for sure. It's my thyroid too, dude. RF, you're gaining weight despite eating the same things. Then yeah, this would prompt you to do labs, but be more exploratory in your approach. Because the possible areas of dysfunction are multifactorial. We talked about the hypothalamus being impacted by inflammation and dopamine. Talked about the pituitary being impacted by cortisol and lipopolysaccharides. The thyroid itself can be impacted by autoimmunity. So Graves' disease or something like Hashimoto's can both really impact thyroid function. So that would be another area of intervention.

Another area of intervention would actually be in the proteins. So like I talked about in the beginning of the podcast, that the liver is supposed to make proteins in order to carry thyroid around the body. However, just like sex hormone binding globulin binds up testosterone and then testosterone is not able to bind to any receptors, so it kind of becomes useless, thyroid binding globulin binds to thyroid hormones and then it's not able to bind to any receptors either. So although that vehicle is beneficial because we need to deliver thyroid hormone around the entire body to do many, many, many things, if we have too many vehicles, then all of our population is stuck in vehicles and they're

not able to go to work that day. So the liver can actually overproduce transporter proteins and it does this in a state of high estrogen. So if somebody is estrogen dominant, they will produce a lot more binding proteins. So it's actually the wrong situation. If somebody has very high estrogen but then hypothyroid symptoms and then they're taking thyroid hormone, that actually never addressed the estrogen dominance or the proteins. We're just making more thyroid hormone to try and overcompensate for a lack of completeness towards our overall investigation here. And then another big area which kind of travels back to the gut health statement that I talked about previously, is T4 to T3 conversion. So this is a, and this is kind of where the reigning in might begin to take

place because there's a lot I want to talk about. Dr. Andy Galpin here. As a listener of the show, you've probably heard us talking about the RTA program, which we're all incredibly proud of. It's a culmination of everything Dan Garner and I have learned over more than two decades of working with some of the world's most elite performers, award-winning athletes, billionaires, musicians, executives, and frankly, anyone who just wanted to be at their absolute best. Arate is not a normal coaching program. It's not just macros and a workout plan.

It's not physique transformation and pre and post pictures. Arate is something completely different. Arate is incredibly comprehensive and designed to uncover your unique molecular signature, find your performance anchors, and solve them permanently. You'll be working with not one person, but rather a full team of elite professionals, each with their own special expertise to maximize precision, accuracy, and effectiveness of your analysis and optimization plan. Arate isn't about treating symptoms or quick fixes. It's about unlocking your full potential and looking, feeling, and performing at your absolute best, physically and mentally, when the stakes are the highest. To learn more, visit aratelab.com. That's a-r-e-t-e lab.com. Now back to the show.

So when you get a thyroid hormone and it's brought to the liver, your liver will actually, you can make, you can just unbind T3. T3 can go do its thing or your liver can make T3 sulfate or T3 acetic acid. A lot of people don't know T3 sulfate or T3 acetic acid. A lot of people don't know T3 sulfate and T3 acetic acid, but basically they're inactive forms until fully activated by the gut bacteria or bile. So this is actually, you could actually have a perfectly functioning, and this is the crazy thing with thyroid and why I think it afflicts more people than we actually know, because you could have normal hypothalamus TRH, you could have normal TSH from the pituitary, and then your thyroid could actually be spitting out normal amounts of T4. But because you're not converting T4 to T3 via gut bacteria, bile,

these other mechanisms, you could have low thyroid symptoms and a normal thyroid panel. So that's something to really take into consideration as well is conversion. And I don't think it's a mistake that hypothyroid people have such low bowel movements. I don't think it's a mistake that SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, those have impacted T4 to T3 conversion. The gut thyroid connection is unbelievably dependent upon one another.

So that's a huge one where people can have those symptoms, even though their lab work looks okay, and it just requires a deeper intervention, really like what we do here at Rapid, to be able to uncover and connect all those dots and be like, that's why. And just to kind of, well, I'm on this point and then I'll rate it in, is the idea also of receptor sensitivity. So, you kind of asked me, we're always blaming the thyroid. It's not always the thyroid's fault. I've already named many organs and systems already and we're early in this podcast.

On skeletal muscle tissue, we have thyroid. Thyroid actually binds to receptors. It doesn't even bind the receptors in the phospholipid bilayer. It binds the receptors right in the nucleus of cells. It's a hormone exerts its action in a beautiful way, but that receptor is dependent upon vitamin A. So if somebody is low in vitamin A, they don't have any problem in the thyroid chain except the endpoint of receptor sensitivity.

And then that can trip people off too. So if people aren't eating enough carrots, if you're not having enough sweet potato, if they're not on a multivitamin, and they have low thyroid symptoms with a normal panel, but they've never had their micronutrients checked, then yeah like these things are absolutely worth looking into to make sure you're chasing down the right enemy. Would it be incorrect to say that more women experience symptoms of thyroid issues? I only

say that because I feel like when I talk to people more often than not, women are the ones that this pops up. Is there a reason for that or is that even correct in my feeling of how this comes up in many of the conversations? No, it's correct. It's absolutely correct and it's been my feeling as well as a coach. I just had the experience that males do come to me, hypothyroid, just everyone has a thyroid, but more females come to me, hypothyroid.

It's actually this week that forced me to kind of that prompts me to look into it because I was actually doing a lab video this week and I was like, you know what, a lot of females come my way with hypothyroid symptoms and it's just, I'm not sure why yet. And then after that video, I was like, I should have had a reason, I should have had something to show for that. So, then I ended up looking into it, into it after and there's thyroid peroxidase antibodies, which play a role in Hashimoto's. And when you look at the totality of evidence, 17% of females have TPO antibodies, whereas only 8.7% of males have TPO antibodies. So, I don't know why that is, but I do know that that differentiation exists.

Twice as many females have these antibodies than men, and it's been my experience as a coach as well. Go ahead, Doug. I was going to say, so my wife has some amount of thyroid issues. I don't know all the details, but I know she's been taking levothyroxine for a long time. And then she also had surgery on her parathyroids. Like she got basically like three and a half of them removed. They were, they were overactive and it was causing calcium problems and a host of other things. Like, uh, you had mentioned parathyroid yet, but to what degree is thyroid related to parathyroid and how does that fit into this whole mix? Um, they're intimately connected. So parathyroid and how does that fit into this whole mix? They're intimately connected. So parathyroid, I think we could do a podcast just on parathyroid all by itself, but it's absolutely huge for regulation of calcium, regulation of magnesium,

and regulation of vitamin D, and regulation of bone density for all of those reasons. So they intimately work together. But I really think that that'd be something that we would unpack on a podcast all by itself, especially with removal and overcompensation. And I really think that we could tackle that another time because we've got so much to talk about here with the thyroid by itself. Okay. What is the parathyroid just in that? Now that we brought it up, just what is that? I've never even... parathyroid. The parathyroid is like four little nodes that are involved in secreting parathyroid hormone,

which regulate vitamin D and calcium in the body. Gotcha. Go ahead, Doug. Sorry. Well, here back on the thyroid then, like she takes levothyroxine, like why... which regulate vitamin D and calcium in the body. Gotcha. Go ahead, Doug, sorry. Well, here back on the thyroid then, like she takes levothyroxine, like why? You know, I really don't even know the exact reason why she takes it. Yeah, so- Why would, there probably more than one reason,

but why are some of the reasons that's likely the case? That's the most common medication because it's super safe. So levothyroxine is T4. So you're taking T4, but then assuming that other things downstream are happening the way that you want them to. So it is a pretty broad assumption because you're assuming that liver proteins are fine.

You're assuming inflammation's fine. You're assuming estrogen's fine. You're assuming the bile, the gut bacteria and constipation and bowel movements are fine, you're assuming vitamin A is fine. So this is just kind of a lot of assumptions, right? And granted, it's a medication that works, but it works via brute force because you're sending a hormone in there. It's like TRT. It's going to work via brute force because you're sending something in there, but it never really necessarily addressed why that needed to take place even in the beginning, okay? And especially

in the case of like in females with estrogen, I mean just birth control. Birth control increases estrogen which increases thyroid binding libelins. So I don't think it's a mistake that many women gain weight initially on birth control, because we've got more thyroid. And the body has auto-regulatory mechanisms to increase thyroid. You'll actually see in research that females will increase thyroid production by 10% to 20% after birth control. But the adaptation takes a while.

The thyroid's a weird one, you guys. You're going to make 85 micrograms of T4 per day, but the thyroid, to my knowledge, is the only gland or organ, rather, that stores hormones. So you make 85 micrograms of T4 per day, but you store 5,000. So this is, when you do the math, that's over 50 days of reserve that just hang out in the thyroid. So, I really like to do that full and complete picture because this is we've talked about previously on the podcast before. I think it was hormones for body composition, where I discussed how you're measuring a hormone to assess a pathway. A hormone is only ever the endpoint. It tells you nothing about the pathway that got to that endpoint. This is

especially true for an organ that has a reserve of hormone. So it's able to make that hormone kind of look normal for a pretty damn long time while you have no idea what's actually going on. So T4 is prescribed as a brute force method to get thyroid back in the body because it's critical for all systems of physiology, but it didn't tell you anything about the current reserve and it didn't tell you why you needed it in the first place. Well, what are the steps in? That's like, what are this? So you know, we've talked about so many things now, you know, with the hypothalamus, the pituitary, like, you know, what are the steps to find out what is the root cause? Like, you know, like, why does someone have thyroid issue and what can you do about it?

Yeah. So I mean, the initial step is to figure out what the root cause actually is, which is via lab work. A lot of people don't like that answer, but if guessing worked, then labs wouldn't exist and people wouldn't have hypothyroid problems. So, I'm really big on getting lab work done. It is quite straightforward. Like a hypothalamus, it secretes thyrotropic releasing hormone. We can't actually measure that. So, that's when we can't really measure, but you can look at inflammatory markers that would provide inferences toward hypothalamus health. Pituitary, we can look at TSH.

So I would order TSH. I would order T4. I would order T3. I would order something known as reverse T3. That's something we haven't discussed yet. Your body uses reverse T3 basically as a corrective mechanism. So if you have a bunch of T4, but not a high demand for T3, this T4 will actually go to your liver. And then some of it will get converted to T3, but then the other gets converted to reverse T3, which is a useless thyroid

hormones. Basically the body's way of saying, okay, we overproduced T4, you're pretty lazy today. So let's make some RT3 and compensate for this so that we don't have a metabolism that is inefficient. So that's just a part of the panel to make sure we're looking at that as well. So the TSH, T4, T3, RT3, and then definitely looking at T3 uptake as well, because T3 uptake is a surrogate marker for thyroid binding globulins. Where it's at, and this is kind of a sneaky thing I've done with labs before too. I wish that someone had taught me this earlier. T3 uptake, it's a surrogate marker for hormone binding proteins.

So if T3 uptake is actually really high, it represents that proteins are being pulled up, which actually lets you know about estrogen. So if somebody has this like really high T3 uptake, people don't think about sex hormones, but that actually in a big way represents estrogen status in the body. Or if T3 is low, then I know testosterone is doing just fine because testosterone actually suppresses these protein outputs. It was one of the ways in which testosterone helps get you leaner. There's more active available metabolic hormones and circulation. So T3 uptake is kind of a cool way to sneakily assess estrogen and testosterone at the same time.

Awesome. And then vitamin A, you just look for vitamin A, I guess. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can look, you can upload your diet into chronometer and then see how much vitamin A you're actually taking in or not. You could also just get micronutrient testing done as well. Vitamin A is measurable. So like my answer to this is because everything I just said

has a different protocol. The hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, if it's going to be auto immunity, if it's a conversion problem, if it's a binding protein problem, gut bacteria, bile, mitochondria, inflammation, these are all different pathways, but they lead you to the solution that's actually going to work for you. So it's worth the whatever money you spend on the panel. What about when someone throws the, you know, the T4 at you and just tries to force it? I mean, are there negative side effects of that? Like, I just, you know, like overcompensating, like testosterone, stuff it in there, I guess.

Yeah, testosterone is a little different because it in there, I guess. Yeah, testosterone is a little different because it's going in pretty active. So it's going in already as a form of testosterone. The way the body kind of, if something's too high the body always wants to balance things out. So if we have too much testosterone coming in your body is going to convert some of that to estrogen via the aroma taste pathway.

Your body can convert some of that to DHT via the 5-alpha reductase pathway. And then a lot of people don't know this too, your body, so if it's already exhausted estrogen and DHT, your body will make more androgen receptors so that it can actually uptake more of this testosterone reserve. Oh, beautiful. A lot of people actually think that testosterone, the abundance of it reduces receptor availability, but abundance of it, along with some other compounds, actually increases antigen receptors. So the thyroid is kind of a lot safer this way because we're not really injecting an unactive form of testosterone, but you are taking in an

inactive form of thyroid. So you're allowing your body to kind of do the checks and balances all by itself. And it's a lot safer that way. And that's why it's so widely prescribed. Right. So are there any dangers to it at all? Not that I'm aware of, no. I mean, the dangers that come from thyroid hormone are bodybuilders getting ready for prep and taking a ton of T3. So you can take T3 in isolation, it's called side of male, and you've got active T3 coming in the system, baby. So that's just gonna that regulates metabolism output that up that increases body heat and it allows people to get shredded.

That the T3 has a huge effect on getting jacked. So to bring this back to what this show is about, let's talk about Benchpress. What's important? Let's talk about Benchpress. Let's talk about what's important. Now we're back on human terms here, which is good. Everybody knows that. Yeah, yeah. I told you guys to rein me in. We haven't talked about bench press in 40 minutes. Okay. In a real way though, just let me get this out real quick just because I want to let him read them in.

T3 plays a role in satellite cell proliferation and differentiation. So, it plays a role in muscle growth through satellite cells. T3 also activates lytic cells in the testes to create star protein for steroidogenesis. So it helps us create more testosterone. It helps proliferate satellite cells. What got me on to this was actually the bodybuilders in T3 thing, because it impacts something known as uncoupling protein 3. Uncoupling proteins basically make energy less efficient. So you do burn more calories and create more heat, which helps get you leaner. So it helps, it impacts uncoupling proteins as well. T3 improves the rate at which you can convert type 1 to type 2 muscle fibers. And T3 also is placed one of the biggest roles in something known as Glut4 translocation. So that's glucose

transporter 4 actually getting a glucose molecule into the skeletal muscle so it can be stored as lean tissue as opposed to fat tissue. And lastly, T3 plays a huge role obviously in mitochondrial adaptations because of all of the energy production taking place. So between satellite cell proliferation, activating star, steroidogenesis taking place, the uncoupling proteins, the mitochondrial adaptations, the metabolic rate as a whole. This is something, it's so beneficial to have an optimal level of thyroid in the body, really no matter what your goal is. Because if you just want energy to be a businessman, you're going to need T3 for energy every day. If you want to get jacked, you're going to need T3.

If you want to get lean, you're going to need T3. If you want to get lean, you're going to need T3. This is all no matter what your goal is, the well functioning thyroid will either help you or hold you back. Dan, you better tell me something negative soon about side of male or I'm going to go buy some. Okay. So the so the bad thing is you're going to get so shredded that all these girls are going to be on you. Okay. I mean, Drew, I like that. We're saving you.

Drew, I like some of it. You might like some of it. so shredded that all these girls are gonna be on you dude. Okay. I mean. Drew, Drew I like that. We're saying that. Drew, I like some of it. You might like some of it. You're out of town right now too. He's not worried. He's not worried. He's not worried. He'll kill it.

He'll be divorced by Sunday. I can't say what she's saying. But like is there any dangers to Simonville or to me? Yeah. What you said right there. I'm not saying there's no dangers to drugs. I'm about to have a side-amyl needle in me soon, man. No, don't do that.

Don't do that. Okay, do a little bit of that, but don't do a lot of it. Okay. No, for real, because it is so metabolically active, when something's too metabolically active, it becomes the opposite of anabolic, which is catabolic. So if you have got way too much T3 in the system, much like some inflammation is great to stimulate anabolism, but chronic inflammation creates anabolic resistance, some T3 is great to stimulate all the things I just talked about, but too much of it creates a catabolic state in physiology.

So you can absolutely overdo it and you can induce thyroid resistance in your cells too. If there's way too much active hormone in physiology, the receptors can create a resistance to it. And this is something that bodybuilders and again, it's been a female, so a little bit more susceptible to it. If they've taken a thyroid drug in contest preparation, there's a longer recovery for the thyroid to get back online, depending on what the protocol was, because of receptor sensitivity problems. Wow. So did you end up on thyroid medication for life then if you're not careful taking T3

for bodybuilding? Yeah. You can be on a few medications for life if you're not careful in T3 for bodybuilding. Yeah, you can be on a few medications for life if you're not careful in competitive bodybuilding. That's one of them. Turns out it might not be that healthy to be 5% body fat and 300 pounds, who knows? I'm surprised more powerlifters haven't taken.

But you look damn good. You look ripped. And then you have those pictures forever. Yeah, exactly. The cost benefit analysis, Anders. Yeah, you're the only person that can sit in an elevator for the rest of your life, which is great. You just answered a lot of the questions I'm about to ask here, but if you could say them

in layman's terms for everyone that doesn't have a physiology background, because you just answered them with a lot of scientific jargon and whatnot. Earlier you said that a lot of people come to you and they say, I've been gaining a bunch of weight and I've been eating the same For people that you know They subscribe to calories and calories out if you're if they're eating the same and they're exercising the same like how are they actually gaining? Weight is that a is that an absorption issue? Is that a best metabolism issue? Is that that a line issue?

Is that yeah is that they feel like they're not eating more food, but they really are issue. Like how does all that play out? Raising little years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, you know, any honest conversation has to revolve around adherence as well, whether conscious or unconscious.

Like sometimes we do just take, you know, your tablespoon of peanut butter on our plan one day is an actual tablespoon and the next it's rounded. And after that, it's kind of a mountain and then it fit on a tablespoon so you kind of justify it in your head but the calories have have tripled over the course of the week in order to offset the appetite that you've developed through being in a hypocaloric state. So weight gain can absolutely take place purely due to adherence that's almost always how it takes place. But when it comes to your thyroid, you're not, it's not a discredit to energy balance.

It is a demonstration of energy balance because your energy out is now less. Your basal metabolic rate is the rate at which our body burns calories per day, basically simply to stay alive. So the levels of and sensitivity to things like estrogen, testosterone, leptin, cortisol, insulin, and thyroid hormone play enormous roles in this.

So if somebody's eating 2,500 calories per day, and then they've got a total daily energy expenditure, so we'll say their BMR was 2200 and their calories burned were 300, just for ease of math. So then their total daily energy expenditure is 2500 and they're eating 2500 exactly. But then they become hypothyroid over time. So now they're still taking,500 calories. However, their energy out due to reduced thyroid output and metabolic activity is decreased. So now perhaps their total daily energy expenditure is 2,000 instead of 2,500. So weight gain in the form of adipose tissue will take place over time even though they're

taking in the exact same amount of calories. And if somebody is in a hypothyroid stage, ask anybody who has problems with Hashimoto's. It's very, very difficult and very, very real, even in the presence of thyroid medication to reverse that. But that's basically how it breaks down. But the symptoms of thyroid... So thyroid hormone, there is a receptor site for thyroid hormone in every single cell in the body. That's very, very rare to say. Usually things, they work, they're all connected, but they do work within their little networks that they like to hang out in. Thyroids everywhere. It's everywhere. So when somebody begins to get hypothyroid, weight gains there because

we can see it, but gastric motility begins to go down. Fatigue begins to take into place. Your ability to build muscle and recover from exercise begins to suffer. There is system-wide symptoms when you are hypothyroid because when something has a receptor site on every single cell in the body, it becomes very easy to conceptualize that, okay, this is one little butterfly in my neck. However, it is controlling the speed at which all metabolism takes place. So like this podcast, we're talking about metabolism. Most people associate that with weight loss. Metabolism is the sum combination of all activity in the body. So we metabolize hormones, we're metabolizing enzymes,

we are metabolizing energy during exercise, we're metabolizing food, we're metabolizing brain chemicals. All of this stuff is all a part of the metabolic equation. Pyroids actually reducing all of that, all of that, because it's creating the activity what's happening in the mitochondria. And our body actually has kind of protective mechanisms here as well. There's different, it's known as deodinase. Deodinase is an enzyme that converts T4 to T3. We have different deodinase enzymes in the body than we do in the brain. So, if we go

hypothyroid, whether acutely due to some inflammation problem or chronically, we can actually keep up brain activity to a higher degree than we otherwise would have because your body preferentially uses those deodinase enzymes rather than what's happening systemically for the purpose of survival. I have a question going back a little bit. You're talking about how the thyroid stores either T3 or T4. Anytime I hear that the body is holding on to things, there's like a little trigger in my brain that says, hmm, that sounds like cancer in the future. We've got too much stuff being held. We're not discarding old things.

Is there any link to holding on to T3, T4 in the thyroid and cancer down the road. Not that I'm aware of, but I'll freely admit I've never looked into that. Yeah, that caught my ear when you said that of like, if you told me I was holding on to something and it was like cell growth, and be like, well, we need to get rid of that quickly or that's gonna turn ugly.

So I wasn't sure if those two things were linked together on that. Yeah, for sure. No, it's an excellent train of thought. I just would have no way to confirm or deny it because working with UFC fighters is a little different than working with cancer patients. Totally. And then the other thing, how are menstrual cycles? How do they play into

much of this? You talked about birth control, but is your menstrual cycle and having a very heavy flow, light flow, inconsistent, not hitting your cycle on 28 days or on a regular 21 to 28, whatever that person specifically is. How is that related to thyroid function? And is that like an early indicator of something being wrong? Your body would have a too resilient of a check and balance system for this. So that variation of menstrual cycle, basically, days 1 to approximately 12, you're going to have increases in estrogen, and then days 12 to 15, you're going to go through ovulation,

where some gymnastics happen with luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone, and then days 15 to 28 or 35, it's considered normal to have a cycle length of 28 to 35 days, you're going to move into the luteal phase where you're going to have an increase in progesterone. So I mean, on paper, mechanistically speaking, sure, estrogen could impact binding proteins in the first two weeks, but then that would be completely neutralized for the next two weeks with progesterone to being the new dominant hormone and estrogen dropping off. Also the body with respect to thyroid regulation,

the hypothalamus always knows what's going on. Like it knows whether to make more thyroid hormone if the skin gets cold. It's measuring temperature of the body, it's measuring hormones, immune system, neurotransmitters, measuring all of these things constantly. And then it's telling the pituitary what to do based on the measurement.

The pituitary is a good measure on the measurement. The pituitary is a good measure or two, but primarily of hormones, not of everything. The hypothalamus is like looking at everything. Whereas the pituitary is pretty good at measuring hormones. So it can see T4 and T3 and adjust accordingly. But with the master player there of the hypothalamus at the top, the two of them make a really strong team. And I say this because TSH has a half-life of about 30 minutes. So it is secreted and it's out of there and it's diurnal. So this is important too because it's diurnal and it's pulsatile. So you'll have a morning increase in TSH, but it'll be absolutely decreased later in

the day. Absolutely. So, if you have thyroid and you're trying to uncover what's going on with the root cause of your issue, get your blood done at the same time. That TSH, the consistency of that TSH reading because it's diurnal is very key. But the fact that it has a 30-minute half-life, it's palcetile, secreted daily, based on the existing data that the hypothalamus and pituitary have already collected in physiology,

the checks and balances throughout the menstrual cycle would even themself out in a healthy female. Dan Garner, where can the people find you? They can find me at Dan Garner Nutrition on Instagram, and then my courses, I talk about the thyroid and adrenal and all this stuff over at coachgarner.com. There it is. Dan Garner nutrition on Instagram. And then my courses, I talk about the thyroid and adrenal and all this stuff over at coachgarner.com. There it is.

What's your inside tracker link? Oh, that's right. So the inside tracker, you can look at a lot of these thyroid markers and it's inside tracker.com slash Garner. And that's good for Canadians and U.S. citizens. Coach Trapper Smash. Masterly.com.

I have one question. Who's smarter, you or Andy?ly.com. I have one question who's smarter you or any and Andy's smarter. Oh, it's a safe answer Smart answer that proves that he's smarter Galpin would have said himself Galpin would have said That proves that he's smarter. Galpin would have said himself. Galpin would have said himself. Yeah, I see what Andy was saying. All right, matchlee.com

or you can go to Instagram matchlee before us. There it is. Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. I am Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are barbell shrugged at barbell underscore shrugged and make sure you get over to rtalab.com. That is the signature program. Inside rapid health optimization,

where you can go and experience all the lab lifestyle, performance, testing, analysis, and coaching to help you optimize your health and performance. And you can access all of that over at rtalab.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.