The Dr. Hyman Show - A Root Cause Approach to Hyperthyroidism and Graves' Disease

Episode Date: July 19, 2021

A Root Cause Approach to Hyperthyroidism and Graves' Disease | This episode is sponsored by Rupa Health and Paleovalley The thyroid gland is a small gland located in your neck that is part of your end...ocrine or hormonal system. It produces two major thyroid hormones, and the overproduction of these hormones is termed hyperthyroidism. Sixty to seventy percent of individuals with hyperthyroidism suffer from an autoimmune condition called Graves' disease. So, what is driving these issues and how can that information be used to treat the root causes of hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease? In this episode, Dr. Hyman sits down with Dr. George Papanicolaou to discuss how they work with patients to treat the root causes of hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease. They discuss topics including environmental toxin exposure, the role of gut health in driving autoimmune disease, using thyroid hormone replacement therapy, and much more. George Papanicolaou is a graduate of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and is Board Certified in Family Medicine from Abington Memorial Hospital. He is also an Institute for Functional Medicine Practitioner. Upon graduation from his residency he joined the Indian Health Service. He worked on the Navajo reservation for 4 years at the Chinle Comprehensive Medical Facility where he served as the Outpatient Department Coordinator. In 2000, he founded Cornerstone Family Practice in Rowley, MA. He practiced with a philosophy centered on personal relationships and treating the whole person, not just not the disease. He called that philosophy “Whole Life Wellness”. Over time as the healthcare system made it harder for patients to receive this kind of personal care Dr. Papanicolaou decided a change was needed. He began training in Functional Medicine through the Institute of Functional Medicine. In 2015, he established Cornerstone Personal Health – a practice dedicated entirely to Functional Medicine. Dr. Papanicolaou joined The UltraWellness Center in 2017. This episode is sponsored by Rupa Health and Paleovalley. Rupa Health is a place for Functional Medicine practitioners to access more than 2,000 specialty lab tests from over 20 labs like DUTCH, Vibrant America, Genova, Great Plains, and more. You can check out a free live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com.  Paleovalley is offering 15% off your entire first order. Just go to paleovalley.com/hyman to check out all their clean Paleo products and take advantage of this deal. In this conversation, Dr. Hyman and Dr. Papanicolaou discuss: Characteristics and symptoms of hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease Common autoimmune issues that cluster with hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease Thyroid supporting nutrients The link between autoimmune disease, gut health, gluten sensitivity, and Celiac’s disease Traditional vs Functional Medicine approaches to testing, diagnosing, and treating hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease Hormone replacement therapy  Patient cases they have treated with hyperthyroidism and Graves' disease Additional Resources: The Functional Medicine Approach To Hypothyroidism And Hashimoto’s Disease https://drhyman.com/blog/2021/03/11/podcast-hc47/ Is An Underactive Thyroid To Blame For Your Mysterious Symptoms? with Dr. Elizabeth Boham https://drhyman.com/blog/2020/03/13/podcast-hc1-2/ Is Your Environment Harming Your Thyroid https://drhyman.com/blog/2017/06/16/environment-harming-thyroid/ House Call Highlight: Wired and Tired: Fixing Adrenal Burnout https://drhyman.com/blog/2021/05/28/podcast-hc58/

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. I don't think that there's one person with an autoimmune disease I've treated that hasn't had some gut issue that had to be dealt with that was part of reducing their autoimmune process and getting them into remission. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Hyman here. Now so many of my patients ask me how I manage to work multiple jobs, travel frequently, well, not so much anymore, and spend time with my family and still focus on my health. I know it can seem hard to eat well when you got a lot going on, but the trick is to never let yourself get into a food emergency and to stay stocked up with the right things to support your goals. So recently I discovered Paleo Valley Beef Sticks.
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Starting point is 00:02:25 each individual person and body needs is testing, which is why I'm excited to tell you about Rupa Health. Looking at hormones, organic acids, nutrient levels, inflammatory factors, gut bacteria, and so many other internal variables can help us find the most effective path to optimize health and reverse disease. But up till now, that meant you were usually ordering tests for one patient from multiple labs. And I'm sure many of you can relate how time-consuming this process was, and that it could all feel like a lot of work to keep track of. Now there's Rupa Health, a place for functional medicine practitioners to access more than 2,000 specialty labs from over 20 labs like Dutch,
Starting point is 00:03:03 Fibrin America, Genova, Great Plains, and more. Rupa Health helps provide a significantly better patient experience and it's 90% faster, letting you simplify the entire process of getting the functional medicine lab tests you need and giving you more time to focus on patients. This is really a much needed option in functional medicine space and I'm so excited about it. It means better service for you and your patients. You can check it out and look at a free live demo with a Q&A or create an account at rupahealth.com. That's R-U-P-A health.com. Now let's get back to this week's episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's Pharmacy with an F, a place for conversations that matter. And today we're talking about, on our special episode of House Call with Dr. George Papanikola, one of our extraordinary docs at the Ultra Wellness
Starting point is 00:03:56 Center here in Lenox, Massachusetts, we're going to talk about thyroid. And most people struggle in this country with low thyroid. It affects one out of five women, one out of 10 men. But there's another condition called hyperthyroid as opposed to low thyroid, high thyroid, that is a real problem for some people. It affects less people, but it's really a problem. And traditional medicine approach really hasn't changed in 50 years.
Starting point is 00:04:19 And I've discovered with functional medicine that there's really a whole new way of thinking about it that can get to the root cause. It can often reverse it or even cure it and I've had a few patients have been really effective in using this model so welcome back to the podcast George it's great to have you and today we're going to dig into a couple of really interesting stories about how you know our autoimmune diseases are so prevalent and Graves and hyperthyroid is even one of them.
Starting point is 00:04:49 And how we treat it with traditional medicine but also how we think about it differently with functional medicine. So talk about what is really driving this problem and what is Graves, what is hyperthyroidism and what does it do to people, how do they feel and how do people know they have it? Right, so hyperthyroidism and what does it do to people? How do they feel and how do people know they have it? Right. So hyperthyroidism is when the thyroid gland is producing way too much
Starting point is 00:05:11 thyroid hormone. That's T3 and T4. And so when they're being overproduced, then you're going to have symptoms that are going to cause you to lose weight, feel sweaty, have palpitations, be anxious, have thinning hair, lose your hair, have thinning nails. Graves' disease happens to be the most common. It's about 60 to 70% of people with hyperthyroidism are graves. It happens to about 1 in 200 people, women more than men, 10 to one. And it usually peaks around in the ages of 40 to 60 years old but it can happen younger. So that's like the overview of Graves' disease. Now, the most, as you said-
Starting point is 00:05:58 What are the symptoms? The symptoms are some of the ones I just mentioned, which are gonna be weight uh weight loss sweating thinning thinning nails hair loss um palpitations skin palpitations when it gets really bad atrophib yep and when it gets really bad you can have heart failure you can have a hormone imbalance and you can have anemia yeah those are some those are insomnia people can't i had a friend i had a friend call me who was like i can't sleep sleep. I don't know what's wrong. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:26 And we get to our history. He's like, and I lost 20 pounds and I wasn't trying. I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, you know, and it can be, yeah. So most people, as you said, have hypothyroidism. It's less common. I think 1% of thyroid disease or 2% is hyperthyroidism and Graves is the most common. But when you have it, it can be really debilitating
Starting point is 00:06:45 and it can be really hard to treat. And as you said earlier, in conventional medicine, the treatments haven't changed in 50 years and they're quite harsh. And functional medicine really gives us a great opportunity to get to the root causes of what triggers graves and allows us to then treat our patients in ways that make sense for the biology and their life environment. Yeah. So it's really, you know, the symptoms can be quite dramatic for people, right? Absolutely. And like, as you mentioned, some of the complications are serious. It's not just about having a racing heart or insomnia or diarrhea. You can get eye damage, so your eyes can bug out of your head. Right. You can get heart failure, right?
Starting point is 00:07:29 Yeah. That can happen. And, you know, the reason why that happens, and I think we're going to have to just jump right into this part of it, is the autoimmune process. Graves is an autoimmune disorder, just like Hashimoto's, which causes hypothyroidism. And so you can't get away from talking about thyroid disease without talking about our immune system, autoimmunity, why we have it, why it's getting worse, and what some of the major triggers are. So the eye disease is actually antibodies that are being made against your thyroid. They're called thyroid stimulating hormone receptor antibodies or T-RABS. And they're made specifically against the receptors on the thyroid.
Starting point is 00:08:14 So when those antibodies hit those receptors, it doesn't destroy those receptors, it actually triggers them to make more thyroid hormone. But it's a very nonspecific interaction, and those antibodies can also trigger like antigens in other parts of the body. They happen to be in the eye, where there are thyroid stimulating receptors, and also in the lower extremities. So you can get the deposition of all these antibodies in the eye that cause that um the graves up though uh up the uh graves eye disease um and also pre-tibial myxedema and that's because that's
Starting point is 00:08:54 like food retention food retention in your legs where you get a destruction of the tissue underneath the um the the skin of the the tibia or your shin. And you can see it gets thickened and fluid filled and it's not nice looking and it's not nice feeling. So those are the things that are the hallmarks of Graves. And they're all related to that autoimmune antibody response. What's interesting also is that autoimmune diseases often come in clusters. And with Graves, you see people often with other autoimmune diseases, right?
Starting point is 00:09:26 You do. Like what? So some of the other autoimmune diseases can be, you can actually get Hashimoto's. Hashimoto's is one of the other autoimmune diseases. You can have low and high at the same time? You can. You can definitely have that.
Starting point is 00:09:41 You can have diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease. Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes. Vitiligo, right? Vitiligo is a common one. It's where you lose all the pigment in your skin. Yep. Anemia and autoimmune things like arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, right?
Starting point is 00:09:56 Yep. And then what's interesting is also celiac disease. Well, there's a link between celiac disease because gluten is a is a huge trigger for autoimmunity particularly creating antibodies against the thyroid okay so so so that's a kind of a good overview of the prevalence of it what the symptoms are what the complications are and you sort of it's not it's often not that hard to diagnose when people are that sick you can kind of tell but it's subtle sometimes. What tests do doctors do to find out traditionally whether you have it?
Starting point is 00:10:30 Yeah, so... And we're going to get to what are the tests you do in functional medicine that are quite different. So, yeah. So, the traditional test, how you find it is looking first at your thyroid function. So, you're going to be looking at somebody. The key thing is the clinical symptoms, right? It's not always tests. It's people come in and they have symptoms. Then you have to start to use your medical cognition and everything you know about medicine to figure out,
Starting point is 00:10:54 okay, what do I think is going on? Well, once you realize what the symptoms are, then you start to understand, you know, this is the thyroid. So you're going to look at the thyroid and you're looking at what we call the TSH, which is a thyroid stimulating hormone. And if that's really, really low, that means that the thyroid is producing way too much thyroid hormone and your pituitary gland is being suppressed. So it doesn't make enough of this thyroid stimulating hormone. Let me just back up for a second. Your pituitary gland drives your thyroid. Yeah. And it sends a signal to the thyroid. It's called the thyroid stimulating hormone. So your thyroid- TSH. Yeah, TSH. And so your thyroid is sort of lazy. And so it has to be reminded to work. So the pituitary's responsibility is to send out this signal all the time.
Starting point is 00:11:48 So you're going to have this certain normal level of TSH reminding the thyroid to work. And as long as it's doing its job and nothing's impairing it from doing its job, then it's going to function great and it's going to make thyroid hormone. T4 and T3. T4 and T3 go to the cells. Now, T3 is the active form of thyroid hormone. And inside the cell, T4 gets converted to T3. Then it goes into the nucleus where it causes the DNA to start to transcribe and make enzymes and proteins that upregulate metabolism. And that's exactly what it's supposed to do.
Starting point is 00:12:25 Now, if you don't make enough thyroid hormone, then you're going to experience hypothyroidism and a slowdown of your metabolism. And if you make too much, you're going to have a uptick in your metabolism and everything that goes along with that, and that's called hyperthyroidism. So what happens is...
Starting point is 00:12:44 And what are the tests? So the tests. So when we go for the test, the TSH is going to be suppressed if the thyroid is making too much. The pituitary is going to stop sending the signal. So the feedback system tells your TSH shut off and then the other hormones go up. Yep. But there's also antibodies we check, right? So once you realize they have hyperthyroidism, then you want to check for antibodies.
Starting point is 00:13:06 And the main one you check for is thyroid stimulating hormone receptor antibodies. And if those are positive, it's 99% sensitivity and specificity for Graves' disease. That's the main test. There's also a radioactive iodine test, right? Yeah. So after you do that, you can do a radioactive uptake to see if the person has maybe some other reason for having that hyperthyroidism, which can be an adenoma or multi-nodular toxicoider. And so what do doctors, once people are diagnosed with this, what are the treatments? Because it seems like they haven't really changed
Starting point is 00:13:42 much since 40 years since I graduated medical school. Yeah, they haven't changed much and they're pretty harsh. And you know, one, you know, so there's, there's methimazole, which is basically a thyroid peroxidase enzyme inhibitor. Thyroid peroxidase is the enzyme that the thyroid uses to bind iodine together to make thyroid hormone. And so it blocks that. And so you just reduce the production. Methimazole can have some significant, and polythiourosal, PTU,
Starting point is 00:14:15 particularly can have some very impactful side effects. Side effects. Like hepatic toxicity. So, and you're gonna be on them for 18 months, up to 18 months to get into remission and so they're not they're not really they can be harsh and they can have lots of adverse reactions a lot of the most of the people that I see in your ultra wellness center they come to me with graves I don't have to
Starting point is 00:14:38 make a diagnosis they come and the reason why they come is they don't want to be on with them as all and they don't want to have you know iodine the the next therapy is yeah what else is radioactive iodine destruction of the thyroid so basically nukes your thyroid yeah basically nukes so you're going to get you're going to get you know i i 131 which is iodine tagged with you know um a radioactive molecule um and when that it's iodine so now this radioactive material gets absorbed into the thyroid that's wants to use that iodine but then that radioactive material breaks down to xenon and xenon destroys the uh thyroid or parts of it and reduces the production of thyroid hormone again pretty harsh you're you're radioactive and you know you're you're you're not you, when you can't breastfeed you can't you can't be around kids
Starting point is 00:15:27 You can't for a while. Yeah, you know not your whole life It can be up to two weeks, you know of the treatment and then finally there's just take the thyroid out So basically like nuke it take it out or poison it Okay, well, I mean sometimes that's necessary just to deal with symptoms or people can use beta blockers if their heart's racing and so on. Which is perfectly fine. Which is okay. But the question is, how do we deal with this in functional medicine that's different? And at the Ultrawolness Center, how do we think about this condition? Well, it's always getting to the root cause. We always look for the root cause in functional medicine. And here at the Ultrawolness Center, everything everything's designed all the tests that we do all the all the work that we do and the way we think about things is to get to the root cause
Starting point is 00:16:10 and we know that the the autumn it's an autoimmune process that drives thyroid disease particularly graves in this in this case that we're talking about. And 75 to 80% of your immune system is in your gut. It's called GALT, gut-associated lymph tissue. And so why? Because you have everything that you eat has organisms on it, has compounds in it that can potentially threaten your health. So your immune system has to be on high alert all the time, making sure that there's no disruption, nothing gets into your system that could cause you to be ill. So we look at the gut microbiome and the function of the gut almost first and foremost when it comes to autoimmune diseases, because that's where you're going to find the majority of the triggers. So the gut is always a key thing to think about
Starting point is 00:17:08 because 70% of your immune system is in your gut. And if you have an autoimmune disease, you have to treat your gut. Yeah. I don't think that there's one person with an autoimmune disease I've treated that hasn't had some gut issue that had to be dealt with that was part of reducing their autoimmune process and getting them into remission. Okay then, wow. And what's really fascinating is that, it just recalls this patient of mine who was about a 40-year-old woman who had Graves disease and was struggling and did not want to be on medication long-term, was willing to do whatever it took, and she turned out she had real gluten issues, had terrible gut issues and we did a really and she had parasites i mean we did a really aggressive gut repair program
Starting point is 00:17:49 and we optimized her health and her vitamin d and we improved her diet and what was amazing was that uh her antibodies for graves went to zero her thyroid normalized and she's completely fine now and off medication which is just really striking to me because that's something I never learned was possible in medical school. Yeah. And, you know, I've had a case where, again, you get to the root cause and yeah, was gut a major issue? Sure. But in my particular case, it was a woman who's 55 years old. She came with a diagnosis of Graves, like I said, many do, And she just didn't want to, you know, do the traditional therapies. So when she came in, she was also menopausal within the last two years. And she, that was the main, the other main issue with her. So, and although she had gut issues, she had bloating and distention and constipation, some of the stools. So with her, one of the things that works,
Starting point is 00:18:46 and when you want to treat somebody, it's perfectly appropriate to try to understand the mechanism and the pathway of the way the organ works. In this case, thyroid, TPO, thyroid peroxidase is an enzyme that's blocked with a pharmaceutical agent that is very harmful. Botanical agents can oftentimes, because we get many of our medicines from botanicals, so botanical agents can oftentimes be very effective. In this particular case, L-carnitine can act as a thyroid peroxidase inhibitor. And so using L-carnitine was one of the first things I did with this particular woman. And she, you know, before our next follow-up, she was already beginning to have some relief from her symptoms just using L-carnitine. And then because she was menopausal,
Starting point is 00:19:38 estrogen can have an impact on your autoimmune state. So balancing hormones is really important. You know, when you think about hormone replacement, you know, there's always been a concern, particularly with women, about the possible impact on the breast and breast cancer. What I will say is that there are now studies that are showing that early in menopause, using hormone replacement for a short period of time can have a very beneficial impact on brain aging. There's reduction in Alzheimer, development of Alzheimer's for women who have estrogen early in their menopausal state. Interesting. And also reduces the autoimmune state
Starting point is 00:20:26 because estrogen does play a role in balancing the inflammatory and anti-inflammatory sides of the immune response. So I actually put on a hormone replacement. I wonder if that's why you see most of the case of autoimmune disease in women. Yeah, in 40 to 50, you know, 40 to 60 range. So I balanced her hormones.
Starting point is 00:20:44 And then of course, you know, we worked on her gut microbiome, which is always a critical piece. Yeah. And, and, you know, the other thing you did was you got her off gluten and you put her on an anti-inflammatory diet, right? And you gave her the raw materials for helping her. Yeah. And I, you know, I, yeah. And I think it's really important when we say we work on the gut, we have to remember that when we work on the gut, we have a very programmatic approach that can be adopted and adapted to the various conditions people have. But it's that 5R approach.
Starting point is 00:21:16 You know, it's basically, let's find out what may be a trigger. So there are triggers to, you know, there are some, you know, bacterial and parasitic triggers to thyroid autoimmunity. One of them happens to be blastocystis hominis, which is a parasite that, you know, has been implicated in triggering antibodies that will go after the thyroid. That's interesting because that patient that I mentioned, that's what she had. She had this parasite. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:21:43 Which we're going to talk about on another podcast. Yeah, we are. So when we look at the gut, we're going to look, and so we're going to need to, we know we need to look at the gut carefully. And we do kind of, we do, this gets into the testing we do in functional medicine. So one of the first tests I do is a stool analysis. And that stool analysis is not only going to tell me about the balance of good bacteria, which are your commensals, and your bad bacteria. I always say that those are the bacteria that realize that poop's a great party, great place to live, and they come and hang out, but they may not do anything for you unless you have a really bad diet, you're under too much stress, you're not taking care of your gut microbiome, you're eating processed foods and diet, you're under too much stress, you're not taking care of your
Starting point is 00:22:25 gut microbiome, you're eating processed foods and sugars, you're eating lots of GMO foods that have lots of glyphosate on them, and your microbiome is disordered, now all of a sudden, those hanger honors are now going to just, they're just going to multiply, and they're going to push your good bacteria out. And when that happens, then the good bacteria can't modulate your immune system, can't help you, doesn't make the compounds that you need. As we know, 70% to 90% of your serotonin is actually made by bacteria in your gut. So you need to rebalance that. So we're really careful about doing that. We want to know not
Starting point is 00:23:06 only that balance, but how's your digestive system working? One of the things that allows the gut microbiome to go into this disorder is you're not making enough gastric acids. You're under too much stress. When you're under stress, then your fight-flight response takes over and suddenly you don't want to have an appetite when you're running away from the bear so your appetite goes down you start making less gastric acid and when you're under chronic stress this chronic loss of gastric acid allows bacteria and parasites and viruses to get into your intestinal tract where they can wreak havoc oh yeah that's another reason to worry about stress is more parasites right more parasites and viruses to get into your intestinal tract where they can wreak havoc. So we fix that.
Starting point is 00:23:45 Oh yeah, but that's another reason to worry about stress is more parasites, right? More parasites, another, another. So really it is. Yeah, well stress brings it all on. So we really work on the gut. Work on the gut, you get rid of the food sensitivities. But the traditional approach to autoimmune disease
Starting point is 00:23:59 is you use suppressive medications. Or in this case, you take out the thyroid or you nuke it. But in functional medicine, we really look at the root causes and there are many, there are environmental toxins, and they play a huge role in thyroid disease, whether it's heavy metals or pesticides or chemicals. We look at the gut, as you mentioned. We look at food sensitivities like gluten.
Starting point is 00:24:18 Yeah, and like I said earlier, hormones. Hormones, stress. We look at the HPA axis, which is the- Which is the stress hormones. The stress hormones, and so we know that we look at the hpa axis which is the stress hormones the stress hormones and so we know that cortisol is going to have an impact on your immune system and autoimmunity over and if you're under chronic stress like most people are and certainly over the last year and a half you know with covid people were under an enormous amount of stress that's why we started to see you know a lot more death more death from other causes as well, particularly heart disease
Starting point is 00:24:47 during this phase because stress has a big impact on heart disease. Chronic infections, as you said, environmental toxins, nutrient imbalances. What kind of nutrients are playing a role in thyroid disease? So we can talk about that because that moves sort of into treatment. We want to support a really healthy thyroid. So, you're thinking about things like iodine. You're thinking about selenium. You're thinking about zinc.
Starting point is 00:25:12 You're thinking about vitamin C, vitamin E. These are- Vitamin B and A. B and A all support good healthy thyroid. And if you're low in any of those, you will impact the health of your thyroid and your immune system. So you're going to be way more susceptible to any type of autoimmune process in the thyroid. There's really a 360 approach that looks at all the root causes. Very similar to what we do in general with people, but we specify it for the thyroid.
Starting point is 00:25:40 And I think that we do testing like stool testing, organic acid testing, hormone testing, adrenal testing, toxin testing, heavy metal testing, checking for iodine, vitamin D levels. These are things that you don't typically get at a traditional doctor's office. And Veltro Wellness Center here in Lenox, we've been doing this for decades and we really see amazing results. And, you know, I often will see a disease that I've never really treated or that is not that common. And I'm like, well, gee, I don't really know. All the time. You know, I don't know if this is going to work. Right.
Starting point is 00:26:09 But then I go back to first principles in functional medicine and look at what are the root causes of disease, what are the causes of whatever it is, inflammation or metabolic disease. And then I can usually zero in on what their story is and listen from their story. I'm like, yeah, yeah, you know, I've been eating tuna every day for 30 years. Or, you know, like I basically have this terrible stomach issue that blah, blah, blah, blah. And I go, oh, yeah. So you start to kind of find the clues in the page of the story.
Starting point is 00:26:35 And you follow the threads. And you start to do the diagnostic tests that help you. And then you start to peel the onion and treat all these problems. And so, you know, your treatment isn't just take this PTU drug or get your thyroid nuked or take it out. It's like, oh, we have to change our diet. Oh, we have to deal with stress. Oh, we have to take the right nutrients to optimize the levels.
Starting point is 00:26:52 Oh, we have heavy metals. We have to take care of that. Oh, we have pesticides. We have to figure out how to get rid of that. So we basically go through a process, a therapeutic process that's based very strategically on that patient's story and their specific labs. And there's no,
Starting point is 00:27:10 there's no two people that are the same who have any particular disease or graves or anything else. Yeah. I'm just going to echo everything you just said, Mark, because we have this conversation. This is the work that we do. We get to the root cause and then we use treatments that make sense for each person's specific biology and their life environment. And there's not a patient that comes to me, or it's a rare patient that comes to me, that we don't find multiple reasons why their health is either currently compromised or is set up for being compromised in the future because of all of those particular areas you just talked about. It's not a matter of people have toxins, it's how much. And then the genetics determine how well they're going to detox those toxins.
Starting point is 00:27:57 And so we also know that you have genetics that drive your immune system, but we have places to look. We do a lot of antibody testing to help us identify, do you have an autoimmune process? And where is the trigger? And so, and we can go through every, you know, every biologic system that we look at with all the testing that we do and explain in detail how we're using those tests in those biologic areas. Toxins, the HPA access, energy production in mitochondria. We do specific tests that will look at mitochondrial function. All of those things have to be addressed.
Starting point is 00:28:41 It's never one thing. It's multiple layers. That's the whole problem with traditional medicine. It like reductionist it's grave disease you get this drug a seal later that's it nothing else and we're like no no ten people with graves might have ten different issues and we need to treat them in ten different ways and we need to find out what their cause is and how to optimize their system and it's different you know what 20 years ago or maybe it's longer now maybe 21 22 years ago you were a Canyon Ranch and you had the opportunity to, you know, hear Jeff Bland speak. And you got the fever early on, right? I did, I did.
Starting point is 00:29:10 20 years ago, I just started my own conventional family practice. And I was a conventional doc for, you know, it took me about 15 years. But even in my conventional practice, I always had that holistic approach. I was writing nutrition programs. I was putting together exercise programs for my patients and my diabetics. I had a weight loss program specifically for my diabetics. However, the pressures of the insurance industry, the pressures of my discipline in family medicine were such that it was, see as many patients as you can, make the diagnosis, use a pharmaceutical agent.
Starting point is 00:29:50 And about six, you know, probably 13, 14 years in, I started to say, you know what? This is not right. There's something wrong because my patients aren't getting better. No. I'm maintaining disease. And then I found functional medicine. And that changed everything. Changed everything, right?
Starting point is 00:30:07 It changed everything. So where you would have come to me with grave disease 10 years ago, and I would have sent you to the endocrinologist who would have put you on methamazone and beta blocker, and then talked about having you go to an ENT doc who's going to take out your thyroid. I would have been right on board. You know what? I saw the light and I can tell you, in my time as a functional medicine doc, now board certified in functional medicine, the IFM, I think I have helped more people leave their disease behind, actually be better than I did in 20 years of private practice in conventional medicine.
Starting point is 00:30:45 Wow. So that's a big statement. You literally have helped more people in the last few years of functional medicine than you're tired. It is. It's kind of a miracle. And to me, it's both inspiring and it's also incredibly frustrating because so many people out there are not getting answers to their problems with solutions that exist.
Starting point is 00:31:04 And it just it just breaks my heart and people suffer terribly you know autoimmune diseases are so bad i i was recently out west and i was sitting in montana in the cabin i was staying in and i went out in the morning to just hang out and have my coffee and maybe journal a little bit and there's this old guy sitting there looked old anyway he was turned out to be a lot younger than I was, but he was, you know, kind of pretty overweight, big belly, started chit-chatting.
Starting point is 00:31:31 Where are you from? Oh, Texas. Oh, yeah. Oh, great. What do you do? I was like, well, I was an oil construction guy. And I'm like, oh, well, it's kind of cool. He's like, well, I had to quit.
Starting point is 00:31:40 And I'm like, what happened? He's like, well, I collapsed on the job. I had MS and I've been on these drugs and I'm just terrible i can't do anything i can barely get up i can probably tie my shoes like i used to wear boots i can only wear sneakers now because i can't do anything and i just feel terrible and i thought you know wow this guy's just not getting access to information that's going to really help him and i I told him about Terry Wall's work on MS and I recommend her book. And she's been on the podcast, going to be back on the podcast. And he's like, why are you helping me? I'm like, well, I'm a doctor and I just can't,
Starting point is 00:32:14 I can't help myself because I'm like, here you have a problem. You're going to get dramatically better. No, you do. You come across it all the time. You have doctor's eyes and you have a doctor's heart. I have doctor's eyes. I have a doctor's heart. I have doctor's eyes. I have a doctor's heart. I see things that other people don't see. And I cry over things other people wouldn't cry over because I know the implication of what I've just seen. And I know the suffering that people experience when they have a chronic disease that they can't get an answer to. And we see those patients here at the Ultra Wellness Center all the time.
Starting point is 00:32:44 And the good news is, is here at the Ultra Wellness Center, we have a team that's highly compassionate, empathetic, and really works with patients to, you know, get them through the process and give them hope. Yeah, it's so powerful. And that's great. So if you've been listening and you've had a thyroid issue or Graves' disease, I encourage you to think about
Starting point is 00:33:05 trying a different approach. We can certainly help you at Delta Wellness Center. You can find other people who do functional medicine. Don't just stop at the traditional approaches. And sometimes you do need medications or you need an ablation or you need surgery, but most of the time we can get you through without it. And if you love this podcast, share with your friends and family on social media, we'd love to hear from you. If you have a comment about what's going on, leave a comment. And how you maybe solved your Graves' disease. Maybe you have and we'd have something to learn. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:33:35 And we'll see you next week on The Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing,
Starting point is 00:33:55 which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter. And in it, I share my favorite stuff from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health it's all the cool stuff that i use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health and i'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter i'll only send it to you once a week on fridays nothing else i promise and all you do is go to drhyman.com forward slash pics to sign up that's drhyman.com forward slash pics p-i-c- That's drhyman.com forward slash PICS, P-I-C-K-S,
Starting point is 00:34:27 and sign up for the newsletter, and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to enhance my health and get healthier and better and live younger longer. Hi, everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only.
Starting point is 00:34:43 This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner.
Starting point is 00:34:58 If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed healthcare practitioner, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.

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