Barbell Shrugged - [THYROID] Function, Dysfunction, Brain Chemistry, and Autoimmunity w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, Travis Mash and Dan Garner Barbell Shrugged #657

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

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   ————————————————    Please Support Our Sponsors   Eight Sleep - Save $150 on the Pod Pro and Pod Pro Cover

Shrug family, this week on Barbell Shrug, we are talking about the function and dysfunction of your thyroid gland. In this episode, you're going to learn about the hypothalamus, pituitary and thyroid gland relationship, autoimmune disorders that are associated with the thyroid. For many of you, you may have heard of Hashimoto's, how gut health affects thyroid function, vitamins and minerals associated with thyroid function, as well as effects of vitamin A on your thyroid. If you are a female and you have had any issues with your thyroid, possibly related to birth control, we're going to dig into that and a host of other things that come up when we speak about the thyroid gland, all the way down to things just as simple as

people gaining weight. Before we get into today's episode, we've got a lot fewer sponsors, but I want to draw your attention for you to get over to rapidhealthreport.com, R-A-P-I-D health report.com. If you go to that website, you can watch Dan Garner read my labs. Uh, and it is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in my life. So if you've been enjoying these shows, hearing Dan talk specifically about thyroids or gut health or hormones, um, wait till you see this monster at work, uh, actually reading labs and doing the dirty work, um, and understanding and, and how he prescribes nutrition supplementation and the work that we do inside Rapid Health Optimization. So head over to rapidhealthreport.com. You can

see him read my labs. You can see how that would be super cool for you. You can hop on a call with me and we can discuss optimizing your health, getting a bunch of labs run, doing a bunch of lifestyle tracking and how we can personalize nutrition, supplementation, training, sleep, stress management so that you have a strong, lean, athletic, happy life and we're going to go solve a bunch of those health issues that a lot of other people can't. We've got one more sponsor read before we get into the show, but make sure you join us over at rapidealthreport.com and enjoy today's show. This episode is brought to you by our good friends over at Eight Sleep Friends. You heard Mateo on the show. I am a couple of weeks

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Let's get into the show. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. 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. They have no real solution on how to heal any of 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 that this podcast, you guys might have to rein me in because the thyroid is involved in so much stuff. So well, I think probably a good way to start um it's probably just to bring him in that was i'm gonna 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'll 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 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 is 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 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 Leydig cells 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 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 cause or at least, uh, um, 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 in 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 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 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 access 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 stuff is happening. Is that, I hate to use the word irresponsible. Does that, um, it's incomplete. Yeah. It's an incomplete. That's a great word. Thank you. Um, 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 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 like how do we how do you actually like get in there obviously the broad term broad category is 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 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 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, 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 place because there's a lot I want to talk about. 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. 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 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 it's my ability to trust and have confidence in my health going forward. I really, really hope that you're able to go over to rapidhealthreport.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 rapidhealthreport.com, and let's get 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 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 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.

Um, 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, um, just to kind of, well, I'm on this point. Um, and, and 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 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's low in vitamin a they don't have any problem in the thyroid chain except the end point 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 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.

Um, 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 my like 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 males do come to me hypothyroid. Everyone has a thyroid, but more females come to me hypothyroid. It's actually 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 gonna say, so my wife has some amount of thyroid issues. I don't know 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 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 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 uh 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 sorry uh well we're 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.

There's 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 is fine, you're assuming estrogens 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, and granted, um, 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 gonna 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, 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. 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 thyroid you'll actually see in research that uh females will increase thyroid production by 10 to 20 after birth control but the adaptation takes a while the the thyroid's a weird one you guys like you're gonna 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 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 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 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 thyroid issue and what can you do about it? Yeah. So, I mean, the, 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, um, 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. Um, 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 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 BTSH, 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. Well, and this is kind of a sneaky thing I've done with labs before to decide, 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's one of the ways in which testosterone helps get you leaner. There's more active available metabolic hormones in circulation. So T3 uptakes 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 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 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 saying testosterone just stuff it in there i guess yeah testosterone's 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. 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 inactive 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. 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. 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 talk about it. Let him reign him in. Get in, Jack. T3 plays a role in satellite cell proliferation and differentiation. So it plays a role in muscle growth through satellite cells. T3 also activates LADEC 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 onto 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 helps it impacts uncoupling proteins as well. T3 improves the rate at which you can convert type one to type two muscle fibers. And T3 also is placed the one of the biggest roles in something known as glute four translocation. So that's glucose transporter for 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 sidemail or i'm gonna go buy some okay so the so the bad thing is you're gonna get so shredded that all these girls are gonna be on you okay i mean drew i like that we're saying i know. Drew might like some of it. He might like some of it. You're out of town right now, too. He's not worried. Max will be divorced by Sunday. I can't say what she's saying. But, like, is there any dangers to Cytomel?

Yeah. With what you said right there. I'm not saying there's no dangers to drugs. That's what I'm saying. I'm about to have a Cyt 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 of it. No, 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 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 and 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 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 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 power leaders haven't taken damn good you look rich yeah you have those pictures forever

yeah exactly cost benefit analysis anders yeah you're the only person that can get 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 ask here. But if you could say them in layman's terms for everyone that doesn't have a physiology background, because you 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 a, is that an absorption issue? Is that a, that's a metabolism issue? Um, is that,

is that a line issue? Is that a, yeah. Is that they feel like they're not eating more food, but they really are issue. Like how does all that play out? Yeah. 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 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 kind of 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, not a discredit to energy balance. It's it is a demonstration of energy balance, because your energy out is now less, your basal metabolic rate is the 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 2500 calories per day, and then they've got a total daily energy expenditure, so we'll say their 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 in 2500 calories. However, their energy out due to reduced thyroid output and metabolic activity is decreased. So now perhaps their daily total daily energy expenditure is 2000 instead of 2500. 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 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 go down, fatigue begins to take into place. Yeah, your ability to build muscle and recover from exercise begins to suffer. Like 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 some 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 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 diiodinase 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 onto 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. If you told me I was holding on to 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. going to turn ugly. So I was, I was, I wasn't sure if that those two things were linked together on on that. Yeah, for sure. No, it's an excellent train of thought. I just would have no way to confirm or deny it. Yeah. 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 the body with respect to thyroid regulation, the hypothalamus always knows what's going on. Like it's it knows whether to make thyroid more thyroid hormone if 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 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 TSH reading 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 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, I talk about the thyroid and adrenal and all this stuff over at coachgarner.com. There it is. What's your InsideTracker link? Oh, that's right. So the InsideTracker,

you can look at a lot of these thyroid markers and it's insidetracker.com slash Garner. And that's good for Canadians and US citizens. Coach Travis Mash. Mashlead.com. I have one question Who's smarter you or Andy The people want to know

On the record 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 Gu Galpin would have said himself. Guaranteed Andy would have said it.

Matchly.com or you can go to Instagram Matchly Performance. Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. I'm Anders Varner at Anders Varner and we are Barbell Shrugged at Barbell underscore Barbell underscore Shrugged. Make sure you get over to Rapidithealthreport.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 reports.

So rapithealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week. And it's a badass thing to watch this man do his job and read lab reports. So rapidhealthreport.com. Friends, we'll see you guys next week.