The Dr. Hyman Show - Exclusive Dr. Hyman+ Ask Mark Anything: Fertility, Thyroid Testing, Dysautonomia, And More

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

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Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark Hyman here. Now my team and I have been working hard on something that I'm so excited to share a little bit about today. It's a revolutionary new platform called Dr. Hyman Plus, which is a premium membership exclusive for my community. With Dr. Hyman Plus, you get a ton of private content and special access that no one else gets. This yearly membership gives you exclusive access to ad-free Doctors Pharmacy podcast episodes, access to all of my docuseries, including the Longevity Roadmap and Broken Brain 1 and 2, plus all the bonus content. You get monthly functional medicine deep dives where one of our doctors goes deep into a health topic to tell you everything you need to know to heal.

You'll also get access to a monthly Ask Mark Anything Q&A where I answer the Dr. Hyman Plus community's biggest health and wellness questions. This Q&A is only accessible with a membership. Now, because I'm so excited to share this premium membership content with you, I'm releasing a teaser of the brand new Functional Medicine Deep Dive episode diving into one of the most important topics in health. I hope you enjoy it and head over to drhyman.com forward slash plush. That's drhyman.com slash PLUS for more information. Okay, here we go. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the latest episode of Ask Mark Anything. I'm Herschel Perth. I'm the Dr. Hyman Plus Community Manager, and I'm here with Dr. Hyman. Hi, Dr. Hyman.

Howdy, everybody. How's it going? All right. And thank you to everyone that submitted the questions today. We're going to pick Dr. Hyman's brain about those questions, and let's see what he has to say. So let's go ahead and get started with our first question. So this question, Dr. Hyman, is what is dysautonomia and how do you heal from it? Well, dysautonomia is a horrible condition. Why am I laughing? Because it's just one of those vexing problems in medicine that stumps doctors. And essentially what it means is that your autonomic

or we call automatic nervous system that controls breathing and heart rate and blood pressure and temperature, all the things you don't have to think about. You don't think, oh, I've got to beat my heart. Like you go, I'm going to move my arm. That's good. I can move my arm, but you don't go,

oh, I'm going to make sure my heart's beating or I'm going to make sure my heart's beating, or I'm going to make sure, you know, my, my, my temperature in my skin is perfect, or all these basic functions that our body does digestion, you don't go, oh, I'm going to digest my food now and tell my digestion what to do. Or I'm going to maintain my blood pressure. So I don't get dizzy when I stand up quickly, or, you know, there's all these things that our body does with this nervous system called the autonomic or automatic nervous system. And just like any neurologic condition, those nerves can be damaged. The sympathetic parasympathetic nerves can be really damaged. And they can be

damaged by many, many things. For example, diabetes is a terrible one that causes neuropathy. So any kind of neuropathy. Toxins, environmental toxins, pesticide, chemicals, metals. Also, we see that there may be various autoimmune diseases that can affect the function of your nerves as well. And one of the big ones we see is infections, such as Lyme disease, for example, causes a lot of dysautonomia. And you see people with what we call POTS syndrome, which is essentially where they stand up and they get dizzy and fall over. Those are all symptoms of adrenal sort of autonomic dysfunction. And the question is, you know, from a functional medicine perspective is how do we think about it?

How do we deal with it? What do we do to address it? And, you know, there are drugs to take for dysautonomia. There are drugs, for example, for POTS or blood pressure issues, midodrine and various kinds of blood pressure supporting things. That unfortunately is just sort of treating the symptoms. But I'm much more interested in what is the cost? So if someone has Lyme disease, for example, we'll treat that. Or someone has heavy metals, we'll treat that. Or someone has exposure to chemicals or pesticides, we'll deal with that. If someone has a real sugar problem and diabetes or insulin resistance, we address that. So it's really about using a functional medicine approach to look at the root causes of disease to get the body in balance to take out the bad stuff, put in the good stuff. And the body knows what to do

pretty well. And I've helped a lot of people with dysautonomia. It's a very vexing condition for many people, but from a functional medicine perspective, you can navigate and be a medical detective and figure out the cause. So I wouldn't lose hope. You need to dig deep. I mean, it can be from nutritional deficiencies like B12. It can be from toxins, as I said, infections, from gut microbiome. It's off balance.

It can be from hormonal and insulin resistance issues. It's really important to look at what are the underlying drivers of dysautonomia and address those. And then often the problem will get better. Okay, great. So just like functional medicine, kind of going to the root of what the issue is. So our next question is about fertility. And we get this question quite a bit. And so we had a community member that was asking, what's the optimal diet for fertility? And are there some tests that you should get prior to trying to conceive? Yes, yes, and yes, yes, yes. Okay. So gosh, you know, one in seven couples

is infertile in America. Many reasons for that, including environmental chemicals, toxins, which are hormone disruptors, which is a big cause of sperm dysfunction and infertility and all kinds of hormonal shenanigans. The good news is that a lot of the infertility we see in this country is caused by my favorite thing to talk about, which is insulin resistance. And if you know any of my work, obviously you'll know about this, but essentially it's from eating too much starch and sugar that turns you into a pre-diabetic metabolic mess. And what's really frightening, Harshal, is that today in America, it's unprecedented in human history, 88% of Americans are metabolically unhealthy. That means only 12% of Americans, including kids, right, are metabolically

healthy. And what does that mean? Well, when we refer to metabolically unhealthy, we're referring to people with high blood pressure, high blood sugar, or bad cholesterol. All of those problems, all of those problems are caused by insulin resistance or prediabetes or some level of that. The one problem we see often in women relates to this is called PCOS or polycystic ovarian syndrome. It's not an ovarian problem. It's a dietary problem and it's caused massive havoc in women's lives. It creates infertility, weird irregular cycles, heavy bleeding, acne, hair growth on your face. No, no.

I mean, fine if you're a guy, but if you're a girl, you don't want to have something look like this. Hair loss on your head, you know, belly fat. It's just a miserable thing. And the majority of the cause of that is dietary. It's too much starch and sugar. And we've talked about many times,

we need about 133 pounds of flour and 152 pounds of sugar for every man, woman, and child in America. Now I'm not having that much. So some of you are having a lot more and that's really driving all this change in the body. So when you have too much sugar that causes insulin to go up, that causes resistance, your body becomes resistant to the effects of insulin. You get high testosterone. If you're a woman, if you're a man, you grow man boobs, you get high estrogen, that suppresses your testosterone. So it just creates a whole, you know, whole problem in people around fertility. So in terms of dietary approaches, there's actually a book called The Fertility Diet, written by Walter Willett from Harvard,

who's done a lot of the research on this and found, yes, you know, women who are eating a diet high in starch and sugar tend to be more infertile. And men also get into trouble. And I think the key here is to eat a diet that's essentially what I call the vegan diet. You might've heard about that. This guy named Dr. Hyman wrote the book about it and it's pretty smart. I like it a lot, but, it takes you off of all the crap. It gets you eating real foods, lots of plant-rich whole foods, lots of good fats, good quality protein, good quality fats. It's often starch and sugar and processed food.

And it really makes a huge difference. And I can't tell you how many people in my practice have helped get pregnant by simply helping their overall health and diet. And there are nutritional factors as well. I mean, people have nutritional deficiencies that are impactful. And even taking a multivitamin prenatally is important. Not, or what's the word, antenatal. Before you even get pregnant, it's important to get your system in shape.

And I think one of the challenges that we don't do in this country is that we don't realize that the epigenetic changes that happen in the course of a baby's growth in utero is really significant. So the condition, think about it, if you're planting a seed in really poor soil, I mean, it's a problem. And that's why you get the soil ready beforehand. You put in compost, you put in fertilizer, you make sure the nutrient levels are good. You optimize the health of the soil before you even put the seed in the ground. We're just throw the seeds in, hope everything's going to be fine. And it turns out the epigenetics, which is essentially the modification of genes from the environment, the drink is profound.

And so if the baby's conceived in a nutritionally depleted environment, and the mother's low in vitamin D and folate and B12 and B6, and who knows what else, zinc and everything else, iodine, it definitely can impact the baby in the first developmental period of 12 weeks when it's so important and the baby's just forming. So you want to make sure before you even think about getting pregnant that you get a tune-up. And that means eating a whole foods diet. It means prepping your body. It means getting rid of the starch and sugar. It means getting all the fats.

Omega-3 fats, for example, are so critical for the brain development of a baby and for you to make breast milk that will help to feed the baby the right nutrients that contain omega-3 fats. So if you don't have omega-3 fats, your baby can't get them. And DHA in formula, for example, has been found to, well, actually in breastfeeding between breastfeeding and formula babies, the IQ point difference is seven points, which is massive in a population level. If you give the babies the DHA in the formula, it comes right back up. So it's the missing fish show. So

that's just one example, but there's many. And so you want to make sure the environment in the utero, in the womb, is great for the baby to land in there. And then during pregnancy to make sure, you know, oh, just gain weight, eat ice cream and whatever. No, do not do that. data really clearly that people who are overweight, who have poor diets, who eat processed food, junk food during pregnancy will affect the long-term well-being and health of their baby. Not just maybe they'll get pre-diabetic or diabetic and gestational diabetes and have a big baby. That's bad enough. But I'm talking about babies who are living in this in utero environment full of bad food from the mother end up having diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and much, much higher rates than the average person. So I think we need to be really alert to the fact that one, you know,

is a very precious thing to create a new life. And you want to prepare yourself before and during and after. So it's really important to think about all those aspects when you're trying to think of having a baby or conceive. Yeah, that's, that's so important. Yeah. One of the questions also, I think was, it was what tests should you get, right? So I think for, for pregnancy, you know, the doctors are a typical panel of tests, which are really good. And the traditional panel is fine, but there's some extra things I would do. I would look at thyroid antibodies. I would look at full thyroid panel, T3, T4, TSH. I would also look at things like methamonic acid and homocysteine, look at B

vitamin status. I look at insulin resistance a little more carefully early on instead of waiting until they're 28 weeks and then doing a glucose tolerance test. That's kind of late already. Like by the time you're, you know, like seven months pregnant, it's like, all right, already, like, that's fine. But let's, let's get you earlier on to figure out if you're insulin resistant. I think we'll check their iodine levels, vitamin D levels. They should check omega-3 levels. So often not really checked because you want to tank those up. You want to, you want a full tank on all that stuff before you even get pregnant. Yeah, that's definitely important. Um, thank you for all the things that they should look at. So our next question actually kind of relates to what

you were just talking about, which is thyroid health. And so we had a community member ask, how does one support their thyroid health post-pregnancy? And what do you do if you have postpartum thyroiditis? Is there something that you should look into? Are there foods that you should consider a diet supplements? What does someone do about that? Yeah. So I think the thyroid in pregnancy is a very important topic and it's very important to properly check your thyroid and tune up your thyroid because if you have low thyroid function, it will affect your own wellbeing, obviously, but it'll affect the wellbeing of the baby. And there's a term called cretinism, which is a horrible term. I hear a cretin, it used to be an insult. We used to say to kids in junior high school. Remember that? And essentially, it's what happens when you have a mother who is low thyroid

and has a baby that's grew in an environment of low thyroid. They get basically mentally handicapped and stunted and all kinds of horrible features that happen as a result of low thyroid. You want to optimize your thyroid during pregnancy. After pregnancy, often women often have issues. They might get an autoimmune disease. They might have low thyroid function. So it's important to track it and then to make sure that you're testing properly for it, not using the typical test that your doctor will do, which is a TSH.

That's fine. But you need the TSH. You need a free T3, a free T4, thyroid antibodies, TPO and ATG, make sure you get checked because you could have a low-grade autoimmune thyroid condition or inflammatory thyroid process and not really know it. And then you're going to not only be, you know, struggling with fatigue, but you might have postpartum depression. You might be able to make enough milk. You might be tired all the time. You know, things just don't work. So I think it's important to make sure you're really on it if you're pregnant and also after pregnancy to look at what's going on with your thyroid levels.

All right. Thank you. Sometimes you need to take thyroid hormone if you're stuck, you know. Okay. So that's definitely something to consider. Well, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of exclusive content that you get every single month with Dr. Hyman Plus. If you want to listen to the full episode and get access to ad-free podcast episodes, plus all the content from my docuseries, and of course, any future ones we're going to release, plus monthly Ask Mark Anything episodes, plus monthly functional medicine deep dive episodes, I guess, right? That's why we call it Dr. Hyman Plus. Head over to drhyman.com forward slash plus,

that's drhyman.com slash P-L-U-S to learn more. I'll see you there. Hi, everyone. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. 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. 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, and can help you make changes, especially when it comes to your health.