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

Episode Date: August 23, 2024

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://rapidhealthreport.com Connect with our guests: Anders Varner on Instagram Doug Larson on Instagram Coach Travis Mash on Instagram Dan Garner on Instagram

Shrugged Family, this week on Barbell Shrugged Physiology Friday is back and today we are talking about thyroid. Dan Garner is going to be digging into your blood work, the biomarkers specific to your thyroid and some ways that you can help improve any dysfunction that you may have going on. This could be all the way up to some sort of autoimmune issue that we see very often inside Rapid Health Optimization. As always, friends, make sure you get over to rapidhealthreport.com. That's where Dr. Andy Galpin is doing a free video on the three-step process that we use to unlock your true physiological potential. Essentially, how do

we make the best in the world better? You can access that free video over at rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. My name is Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Coach Travis Smash, 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 what is the role of the thyroid to begin with? And then what kind of makes it dysfunctional? Because it seems like a lot of people have this issue. Okay. So in this podcast, you guys might have to reign 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 kind of- I had to ring him in.

That was hot. I don't want to lose his damn mind over thyroid. Basically, I'm going to go do a bunch of work, and I'll come back in an hour. And he'll still be talking. And Dan will still be like halfway through biochemistry on thyroid. The intro. Yeah, exactly. 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. But let's get into the function of the thyroid first. How does it become dysfunctional?

And then we can get into some of the symptoms of that. Sure. Yeah. 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 um fatigue is definitely a symptom hair loss is a symptom um and typically you hear like hey i haven't really changed my eating patterns but i seem to be gaining weight these are all um you know the early windows and signs of hypothyroidism hyperthyroidism is when I start talking about biochemistry and start talking this fast, so 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. So we talked about the hypothalamus pituitary 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. Once, 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 going to take this thyroid over to the bicep, and then we're going to take it here

to the lady excels of the of the testes, then we're going to 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 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 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 caused 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 US. 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. For example, the hypothalamus is supposed to be secreting thyrotropin-releasing hormones to the pituitary. However, high levels of inflammation have been damaged, have been demonstrated rather, to reduce TRH output, as is low levels of dopamine.

So low levels of dopamine and low and high levels of inflammation can absolutely impact the hypothalamus is 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. 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 podcasts, 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 is 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 still, it's still not a thyroid problem. It is a signaling problem. And everything I just mentioned to tie back into 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 chicken and the egg in some scenarios. But as a coach who's worked with 1000s 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. Does that? It's incomplete. Yeah. It's an incomplete. That's a great word. Thank

you. Yeah. Shark family. I want to take a quick break. If you are enjoying today's conversation, I want to invite you to come over to rapidhealthreport.com. When you get to rapidhealthreport.com, you will see an area for you to opt in, in which you can see Dan Garner read through my lab work. Now, you know that we've been working at Rapid Health Optimization on programs for optimizing health. Now, what does that actually mean? It means in three parts, we're going to be doing a ton of deep dive into your labs. That means the inside out approach. So we're not going to be guessing your macros. We're not going to be guessing the total calories that you need. We're actually going to be doing all the work to uncover everything that you have going on inside you. Nutrition, supplementation,

sleep. And then we're going to go through and analyze your lifestyle. Dr. Andy Galpin is going to build out a lifestyle protocol based on the severity of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most of your concerns. And then we're going to also build out all the programs that go into that based on the most severe things first. This truly is a world-class program and we invite you to see step one of this process by going over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can see Dan reading my labs,

the nutrition and supplementation that he has recommended that has radically shifted the way that I sleep, the energy that I have during the day, my total testosterone level, and just my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidealthreport.com, watch the video of my labs, and see what is possible. And if it is something that you are interested in, please schedule a call with me on that page. Once again, it's rapidealthreport.com and let's get back to the show. Is it, yeah, by, by being incomplete, is that something that people should look at? Like I know when people get diagnosed, they always like just like attach 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? How do you actually get in there? Obviously, the broad category is like go do labs. But how does that – there's too many pieces in that puzzle to just say it's your thyroid.

And then someone puntsts and now you leave. 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- Definitely my thyroid, for sure, you have my thyroid.

It's my thyroid. 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. So because the possible areas of dysfunction are multifactorial. So we talked about the hypothalamus being impacted by inflammation and dopamine talks 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 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. 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 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 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, gut, the gut thyroid connection is is unbelievably dependent upon one another. So that's a 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 while 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 to receptors in the phospholipid bilayer. It binds to receptors right in the nucleus of cells, it's a 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 is that that's 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, but 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, uh, experience symptoms of thyroid issues? Um, I only say that because I feel like when, when I talk to people more, more often than

not, women are the ones that this pops up. Is that, is there a reason for that? Or is that, is that even correct in, 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've just had the experience that I met a males do come to me hypothyroid.

Just everyone has a thyroid. But more females come to me hypothyroid is 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 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 overactive and it was causing calcium problems and a host of other things like we hadn't mentioned parathyroid yet. But to what degree is thyroid related to 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, 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 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 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. Uh, well, we're here back on the thyroid then like the, like she takes levothyroxine. Like why, you know, I really don't even know the exact reason why she takes it. Yeah. Why would there probably more than one reason, but why are some of the reasons that 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 and 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. OK, and 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 their body has auto 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 is a weird one, you guys say you're gonna make 85 micrograms of T four per day. But the thyroid, to my knowledge, is the only gland or organ rather that stores hormones. So you have you make 85 micrograms of T4 per day, but you store 5000. 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, 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 end point. It tells you nothing about the pathway that got to that end point. 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 this? 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 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 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 overproduce T4, you're pretty lazy today. So let's make some RT three 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 was one of the ways in which testosterone helps get you leaner. There's more active available metabolic hormones in 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, just look for vitamin A, I guess. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you can look, you can upload your diet into a 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, a hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, if it's going to be autoimmunity, 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 whatever money you spend on the panel. So what about when someone throws 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's going in pretty active. So it's going in already is 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 aromatase pathway, your body can convert some of that to DHT via the five alpha reductase pathway. And then a lot of people don't know this to your body. So if it's already exhausted, estrogen and DHT, your body will make more

antigen receptors so that it can actually uptake more of this testosterone reserve. 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 cytomel and you've got active t3 coming in the system baby baby. So that's just going to, that upregulates metabolism output that increases body heat and it allows people to get shredded. T3 has a huge effect on getting jacked. So to bring this back to what this show is about, let's talk about bench press. What's important? Let's talk about bench press.

Now we're back on human terms here, which is good. Everybody. Yeah. Hold on. 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 him let him rein him in getting jacked um t3 plays a role in satellite cell proliferation and differentiation so it plays a role in muscle growth through satellite cells t3 also activates leydig 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 and T3 thing, because it impacts something known as uncoupling protein three, uncoupling proteins, basically make energy less efficient. So you do burn more calories and create more heat, which helps get you leaner.

So 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 plays 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. This is all, no matter what your goal is, a well-functioning thyroid will either help you or hold you back. Dan, you better tell me something negative soon about sadamel or i'm

gonna go buy some okay so that so the bad thing is you're gonna get so shredded that all these girls are gonna be on you dude okay i mean drew i like that we're saying i know drew you're out of town right now too yeah i'm not saying there's no dangers to drugs i'm about to have a side of my own 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 okay no no for real um 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 inflammations great to stimulate

anabolism, but chronic inflammation creates anabolic resistance. Some T3 is great to simulate 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 and physiology, the receptors can create a resistance to it. And this is something that bodybuilders, and again, it's been females are 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. Did you end up on thyroid medication for life? Then you're not careful taking 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 body fat and 300 pounds. Who knows?

I'm surprised more powerlifters haven't taken look damn good you look rich yeah you have those pictures forever yeah exactly benefit analysis anders yeah you're the only person that can put an elevator for the rest of your life it's great you uh you just answered a lot of the questions about i'm about to uh 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 in, calories out. If they're eating the same and they're exercising the same, like how are they actually gaining weight? Is that an absorption issue? Is that a gaining weight? Is that an absorption issue?

Is that a metabolism issue? Is that a nutrition 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 ears. 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 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 your plan one day as 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 justify it in your head. But the calories 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 is eating 2,500 calories per day, and then they've got a total daily energy expenditure, so we'll say their BMR was 2,200 and their calories burned were 300, just for

ease of math. So then their total daily energy expenditure is 2,500, and they're eating 2,500 exactly, but then they become hypothyroid over time. So now they're still taking in 2,500 calories. However, their energy out due to a reduced thyroid output and metabolic activity is decreased. So now perhaps their daily total daily energy expenditure is 2000 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 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 of 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. Thyroid's everywhere. It's everywhere. So when somebody begins to get hypothyroid, weight gain's 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, 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. Thyroid is 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 protective mechanisms here as well. There's different, it's known as diadenase. Diadenase is an enzyme that converts T4 to T3. We have different diadenase 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 deiodinase 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, 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 onto something and it was like cell growth, I'd be like, well, we need to get rid of that quickly or that's going to 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 like having a

very heavy flow, light flow, inconsistent, like 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 one 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. It knows whether to make more thyroid hormone if the skin gets cold. It's measuring temperature of the 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 measurer too, 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 th tsh reading uh because it's diurnal is very key but the fact that it has a 30 minute half life it's pulsatile secreted daily based on the existing data that the hypothalamus and pituitary have already collected in physiology the the checks and balances throughout the menstrual cycle would even themselves out in a healthy female. Gotcha. Dan Garner, where can the people find you? They can find me at Dan Garner nutrition on Instagram. And then my courses, uh, I talk about the thyroid and adrenal and all this stuff, um, over at coach Garner.com. There it is. Uh, 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 dot com slash Garner. And that's good for Canadians and U.S. citizens. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead dot com. I have one question. Who's smarter, you or Andy?

Dan. The people want to know. On the record. Andy. question. Who's smarter, you or Andy? Oh, God. This is on the record. Andy. Andy's smarter. That's a safe answer. That's a smart answer. That proves that

he's smarter. Galpin would have said himself. Galpin would have said himself. Guaranteed, Andy would have said it. Matchly.com or you can go to Instagram Matchly before us. Alpen would have said himself. Guaranteed, Andy would have said it. Matchly.com or you can go to Instagram Matchly Performance. There it is. Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner.

We are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to RapidHealthReport.com. That is where you can see Dan Garner actually walk through all of my labs and give the exact description on how I got off 40 ounces of coffee every single day of my life. Improved energy, better sleep, and it's a badass thing to watch this

man do his job and read Lab Report. So, rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.