The Dr. Hyman Show - The Functional Medicine Approach To Hypothyroidism And Hashimoto’s Disease with Dr. George Papanicolaou

Starting point is 00:00:00 Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy. There's a strong connection between Hashimoto's and gluten. A large number of patients that have Hashis also have genes that make them more predisposed to gluten sensitivity and celiac disease. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. My main goal with diet is to use food as medicine, but even when we eat super well, most of us are missing out on certain essential nutrients. Our soils have become depleted and our digestive tracts just aren't working so great. They're compromised by stress and toxins and they just can't absorb nutrients as efficiently as they

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Starting point is 00:04:06 Pharmacy. Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's pharmacy with an F, F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter. And if you've struggled with low thyroid, which by the way, affects one in five women and one in 10 men, this conversation is going to matter to you. And we're lucky to have my colleague, my friend, Dr. George Pepinicklau from the Ultra Wellness Center here in Lenox, Massachusetts, to talk about this very common and often very poorly treated condition. Welcome.

Starting point is 00:04:43 Oh, Mark, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure. Okay, so let's get into it. We're going to talk today about a very specific kind of thyroid dysfunction, which is probably the most common type of thyroid dysfunction called Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Now, that is an autoimmune disease that gets treated in a way that really isn't that great for most of the people because they don't feel that great even if they're treated by the traditional endocrinologist so no first what is Hashimoto's sounds like some kind of Japanese dish uh and and what is the consequences of that for people who have it? And how do we approach it? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:30 So as you said, it affects a vast number of people in our country. 27 million Americans have thyroid dysfunction and 12% more are likely to get it every year. Hashimoto's is the most common cause of that dysfunction, particularly hypothyroidism. And Hashimoto's is an autoimmune process. What is autoimmunity? It's when your body's immune system starts making antibodies against your own tissue. And in this particular case, it's the thyroid. And this is the most common autoimmune disease in America, right? It is. It is. And we don't really treat it as an autoimmune disease. No, we treat it as hypothyroidism. Right. And there are probably many women, and we speak mostly about women because

Starting point is 00:06:15 they make up a large number of the patients we see with Hashimoto's. And a large number of these women do not feel better when they're treated. And they get diagnosed with hypothyroidism without ever being tested for Hashimoto's. And the reason being is, I think, the big disconnect in conventional medicine. And that is that it's seen as a thyroid condition. And it's really an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid. Yeah. And in that setting, with that mindset and that paradigm, the thought is, well, it doesn't really matter where the hypothyroidism comes from

Starting point is 00:06:57 because the belief is that there's nothing to impact that immune response against the thyroid. In conventional medicine, you just sort of let that immune response continue flaming until the thyroid is burnt out. And then the person is on whatever dose of thyroid medication will get their thyroid number, their TSH into the normal range. And that's considered good medicine. One problem, one that? There's a lot of women running around with a normal TSH that still feel like crap. That's right. That's right. So a lot of people who are diagnosed, by the way, half of people with low thyroid are not

Starting point is 00:07:36 diagnosed. Oh, yeah. Okay. So that's a problem in and of itself. And if you're talking about 20% of women, it's a lot of people. And 10% of men, it's a lot of people. And 10% of men, it's a lot of people. That's one problem. The second problem is, like you said, we treat it by just giving people thyroid replacement

Starting point is 00:07:54 without actually dealing with the root cause of why their thyroid isn't working in the first place. And it's like the same way we treat all other autoimmune disease, which is we say, oh, there's inflammation. Let's give you an anti-inflammatory drug, right, whether it's Advil or steroids or chemotherapy drugs or immune suppressants that are super powerful and cause cancer and overwhelming infection and death in many people. We don't go, what's the cause of the inflammation?

Starting point is 00:08:25 So, George, with Hashimoto's, which is, again, so common, what causes the autoimmune disease in hypothyroidism, in this particular kind of autoimmune disease? There are thoughts, you know, there's no clear understanding of the exact mechanisms that cause the immune system to go awry. There are some theories and there are some associated conditions. One of the strong thoughts is that, again, I should go back. I want to get this in a more clear model. Autoimmune diseases tend to cluster. If you have one, you're much more likely to have another. The reason why Hashis is most prevalent is that there's a strong connection between Hashimoto's and gluten. That a large number of patients that have Hashis also have genes that make them more predisposed

Starting point is 00:09:27 to gluten sensitivity and celiac disease. Gluten, therefore, is seen as a pretty strong trigger to Hashimoto's. Yeah. Now, I would say if you're thinking about what's the one thing that you can do if you think you have hashis go gluten-free or check your antibodies or check your antibodies i've checked antibodies for years on these patients because i i think this is a pretty well established yeah phenomena in the literature this is not like no you can go on pub med which is the national library of medicine look

Starting point is 00:09:58 it up hashimoto's gluten you'll come up with plenty articles and yet your traditional endocrinologist don't even look at it. And I checked antibodies on every patient with hypothyroidism, with Hashimoto's, and about 30% of the people have some level of antibodies. They might not have celiac, but they have some level. And so tell us, why is gluten so connected to autoimmune disease? Gluten is very similar when, so what gluten can do is it can trigger something called leaky gut. But in most cases, I would say that a person who develops thyroid disorder, particularly Hashimoto's, probably already has a disordered gut, probably already

Starting point is 00:10:41 is experiencing some amount of dysbiosis or imbalance in their gut microbiome, and therefore experiencing some level of inflammation in their gut. And if you have that inflammation, then you're already going to be disturbing the permeable membrane that's responsible. It's the gatekeeping system for nutrients to go in and for toxins and for the bad guys to be kept out. That's probably already disrupted. Gluten, which is very prevalent in our processed foods, does one more thing. It triggers something called zonulin, which is the gatekeeper. Zonulin is the compound that's responsible for opening and closing the gates that allow good nutrients and compounds to enter in, and then closes to make sure we keep out bacteria, viruses, and toxins.

Starting point is 00:11:35 That's right, and I think when you start to create leaky gut with the gluten, it creates inflammation throughout the body, and it can attack different organs. And some people can get rheumatoid arthritis, some people get psoriasis, some people get Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Because when gluten enters in the leaky gut, now the immune system sees it as a foreigner and it begins making antibodies against it. Unfortunately, those antibodies are also made against the thyroid because the gluten structure

Starting point is 00:12:06 is very similar to the thyroid. So you get this sort of molecular mimicry that causes the immune system to become confused. And now it's making antibodies against your thyroid. And studies have shown that people with Hashimoto's, when they cut out gluten, their thyroid antibodies come down. Their autoimmunity gets less. Absolutely. And I would also,

Starting point is 00:12:26 in regards to the testing and looking, particularly at something called thyroid peroxidase antibody, because that's the antibody that's made. It's made against this enzyme that the thyroid makes that's responsible for making thyroid hormone. It also makes, it can also make an antibody against thyroglobulin, which is another compound that the thyroid makes that is also responsible for making thyroid hormone. When you

Starting point is 00:12:52 test them, if it's positive, that's great. But it's also possible that you'll get false negatives. And if I really think a person has Hashis, they're displaying all the signs and symptoms, then I will retest them. And I might even do it after a gluten challenge. If a patient has been gluten-free, I will do that just to make sure we confirm the diagnosis. Yeah. So it's really important to think about all the factors that cause autoimmunity because it could be gluten. That's the most common. But in functional medicine, we don't just look at one thing. We look at all the triggers and there's a lot. There's a lot of things that cause inflammation in autoimmunity. So can you take us down the road of what are some of the other big ones?

Starting point is 00:13:37 Well, I would say this. This is a more complicated one to bring up, but pregnancy. So a lot of the patients that come to me with thyroid dysfunction come after pregnancy, or they come years after pregnancy, and they say, it was after I delivered my first child. It was eight months later that I developed Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Now, there are different thyroiditis that you can develop, but Hashimoto's can occur after pregnancy. And it is. The mechanisms that are there are largely immune dysfunction. They're related to immune dysfunction. There's large spikes and drops in estrogen that's been linked to the triggering of the immune dysfunction that leads to Hashis. And there's also this idea that when a woman has a child in utero, you have to suppress your immune system.

Starting point is 00:14:26 And after the baby is born, you get an immune rebound. And this results in a dysfunctional imbalance in an appropriate immune response, and you develop antibodies against the thyroid. No, I'm going to say, you know, there's also other things, you know, that we're learning about. And the thyroid is sort of like the canary in the coal mine. Right. It's one of the most sensitive organs. It's a gland that regulates our metabolism and our mood and our sexual function and our weight and our muscle mass and skin health and hair health. I mean, we'll go over some of the symptoms that people can have.

Starting point is 00:14:59 But triggered by mercury, toxins, heavy metals. Yeah. So we can, heavy metals. Yeah. So we can't ignore those. So what's happening is that there's this incredible flood of environmental chemicals that we've been exposed to that our toxic load is so high and mercury and heavy metals and many others interfere with thyroid function. And they're known as autogens, like antigens, but they're autogens. They cause autoimmune disease.

Starting point is 00:15:24 And these environmental toxins have really been well-documented to do this. And yet, most doctors who are endocrinologists will not check for your level of toxic load or a level of mercury, and they don't treat that. And that's what we do in functional medicines. We look for some of these underlying causes. So it can be gluten. It can be leaky gut.

Starting point is 00:15:40 It can be the environmental toxins. It can be heavy metals. It can be other viruses. It can be reactivated viruses. It can be the environmental toxins. It can be heavy metals. It can be other viruses. It can be reactivated viruses. It can be stress-related. You know, the stress has a huge impact on all of the endothelial linings, particularly the gut and the brain, and can cause leaking of the gut and brain, which will then trigger an autoimmune condition. Exactly. And so the question is, you know, from a functional medicine perspective,

Starting point is 00:16:06 we don't just say, oh, you have low thyroid, take thyroid. We go, you know, what is happening in terms of the causes? And then how do we address those directly, whether it's gluten or heavy metals or whatever? And then how do we help the thyroid work better? And, you know, in traditional medicines, like once you have thyroid issues, you don't bother trying to think about reversing it or stopping it.

Starting point is 00:16:28 It's particularly if you get it early, you can actually reverse and get the antibodies down. Yeah. And I think it's really, I think it's really important. And what I said earlier is that the thyroid, hypothyroidism, particularly Hashimoto's thyroiditis, is a thyroid, it's a body problem. It's a systemic problem that affects the thyroid. And that's how I approach it when somebody comes to me. Because even if I get their antibodies down, you know, that will have an impact. That will actually allow their thyroid to function better because now it's not under this assault under this attack but there are other organ systems that are that impact the thyroid and so when you have a woman that comes in and she's got three kids and she has lots of stress when she's having hormonal imbalances you're now talking about the adrenal gland being involved and cortisol

Starting point is 00:17:25 being involved. You're talking about estrogen and progesterone balance. You're talking about high levels of testosterone if that woman tends to have PCOS. Or that's polycystic ovarian syndrome. Right. And if we don't address those along with the thyroid, then they're never going to feel better. It's sort of a comprehensive approach. Absolutely. It's a comprehensive approach. And we don't look at all the factors.

Starting point is 00:17:51 We don't look at other hormones like sex hormones, adrenal hormones. I mean, if your adrenals are shot from chronic stress, your thyroid is not going to work properly. And if you take too much thyroid or the right amount of thyroid, your body might feel like you had too much because your adrenals can't keep up and aren't working. So you have to deal with all of it. You have to deal with the gut. You have to deal with leaky gut. You have to deal with nutrition. I mean, there are some key nutritional deficiencies that are linked to low thyroid function. Can you go through what those are? Well, one of the, you know, so what's, it's interesting, the first

Starting point is 00:18:24 thing people will think of is iodine. But iodine isn't necessarily the problem. I just wanted to bring that one up right away because iodine can be somewhat controversial. There have actually been studies in China that showed that people with lower iodine or deficient iodine levels actually have less thyroid disease and Hashimoto's than those that have higher iodine levels.

Starting point is 00:18:45 But other ones that would be involved would be vitamin D. Vitamin D plays an important role in thyroid function. Selenium plays a very important role in thyroid function, as does zinc and magnesium. Absolutely. And selenium is, for example, necessary to convert T4 to T3, which is the active hormone. And we need, for example, vitamin D to help bind the thyroid hormone at the nucleus to have the effect on gene transcription. So these are all critical steps.

Starting point is 00:19:18 So iodine, zinc, selenium, omega-3 fats, vitamin D. And when I test patients patients i will routinely test them for selenium levels and vitamin d levels and i can tell you that eight out of ten women are deficient in vitamin d and low in selenium and and that definitely becomes part of the equation i i would say that you know for for our listeners that if you're a woman or a man who is being treated for hypothyroidism and has never felt well on their thyroid medication, despite getting their TSH level into the normal range. Now, for some doctors that they may still be going by the archaic value of, you know,

Starting point is 00:20:02 0.45 to 4.5 and not the functional value of, you know, 1.5 to 2.5. So, you know, you might not even be looked at in the right range. If you're one of those people, and this is the conversation because there's so much more to be looked at. There's targeted nutrients that you've just mentioned. I mean, selenium can drop your thyroid antibody levels. Yes, absolutely. Just like getting off of gluten. Yeah. And reduce the autoimmunity. Yeah. So these are all important things. And there are foods that contain these things. So there's like thyroid boosting foods, right? We have selenium, which is in fish and Brazil nuts. You have zinc, which is in pumpkin

Starting point is 00:20:38 seeds and oysters. You have omega-3 fats, which are in fatty fish. You have vitamin D, where you can have that in herring and porcini mushrooms, although you probably need to get sun or vitamin D to get enough. You know, iodine can be from eating fish and seaweed. So there's a lot of ways to get these nutrients to help regulate our thyroid. And most of us are insufficient or deficient in these at some level. Yeah. Yeah. So paying attention to your diet is very important. And again, it tends that when I have patients that are struggling with thyroid, they're also struggling with their nutrition. And they'll tend to have diets that are higher in carbohydrate, higher in processed foods, higher in sugars.

Starting point is 00:21:20 They'll have carb cravings, again, because it's related to the host of systemic issues around the adrenal around gut function and around carbohydrate metabolism and insulin resistance that can occur okay that that all makes tremendous sense and then the question for for people listening is probably well how do I know if I have low thyroid function? Like, what are the symptoms? And then what are the tests that I should get to diagnose it? And is my doctor going to do the right ones or do I need to go to a functional medicine doctor to figure it out? Yeah. So the common symptoms are going to be, you're going to feel fatigued. You're going to have potentially weight gain. You're going to have harder bowel movements, maybe constipation. You're going to have potentially, you're going to be depressed. You may have apathy. You're going to experience

Starting point is 00:22:11 potential hair loss. Your eyebrows will get thinner at the ends of the eyebrow. You may notice that your nails get a bit harder. Your skin gets drier. Those are some of the common symptoms. Yeah, skin dry skin dry cracked nails fluid retention muscle cramps oh sex drive depression memory loss fatigue in the morning is a big one yeah if you can't get going in the morning that's a big one yeah so all these weird big symptoms that you think oh this is just like normal aging or i'm just working too hard or you know these are just little things that don't seem like life-threatening problems, but they are because we know that people with untreated, even subclinical hypothyroidism, just mild hypothyroidism, have a far higher risk of heart attacks and other serious consequences.

Starting point is 00:22:55 And in the case of Hashis, it should also be noted that when you first develop Hashimoto's, your thyroid is under attack. And one of the first things it does, it starts releasing an abundance of thyroid hormone. So your initial symptoms of Hashimoto's could be hyper, maybe like hyperthyroidism. And then as your disease progresses, even if you're being treated, and probably because you're being treated inappropriately, you're going to experience cycles of hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism, hypo and hyper, because if you're not paying attention to your diet and you continue eating gluten and other inflammatory foods, that's going to variably trigger your immune system so that you'll have, you know, you'll trigger your immune

Starting point is 00:23:39 system because you've had a, you know, beer and pizza. and then now you go on a good diet, now you're having a bad weekend, I'm going to eat well, and then you find over the next couple of weeks while you're avoiding gluten, you're avoiding other inflammatory foods, that you feel better. So there's cyclical behaviors that happen, and I only bring that up because hyperthyroidism and those symptoms can be part of what you experience in Hashis

Starting point is 00:24:03 at the onset and also throughout the treatment if we don't address these other issues. And so you can go to the doctor with these symptoms and what are the tests they're going to do? What's the first test they're going to do? If you can get them to test your thyroid, right, they're going to check your TSH, which is your thyroid stimulating hormone that's released by the pituitary gland to tell the thyroid to make more thyroid hormone. And if you have low thyroid, then you're going to have very high level of TSH. That's right. So they just check TSH or thyroid stimulating hormone, which is a hormone that comes from your pituitary gland, communicates with your

Starting point is 00:24:35 thyroid gland to make hormone. And if your thyroid gland is not working, it's going to create more TSH to try to pump more thyroid out. But we're learning that even what we thought were, quote, normal levels are not optimal. That even, you know, we thought if you look at the reference range, it's five. And if it's over five, they might say, oh, you maybe have a little thyroid issues. Well, we know from the American College of Endocrinology that the reference range should be maybe three or three and a half. And I would probably say it should be one, you know, one or two at the most. Even over two, I don't like to see. And then they don't check all the other tests that actually are important. And there are so many other ways

Starting point is 00:25:11 that you have to look at the thyroid to understand its true function and what you're dealing with. So what are the other tests we would do at the Center for Functional... So we would check for a free T3, which is your free thyroid T3. Your free T4 is active. So when thyroid T3. That's the active hormone. So when your thyroid makes thyroid hormone, it makes T4 and it makes T3. T4 is not the active form, it's T3. T4 goes to your body and it's converted in the liver,

Starting point is 00:25:44 in the muscles, in the intestine, in the heart to T3. T3 is the active form, and that is then going to enter the cells and have its result, its important impact in a cellular metabolism. So we check for free T4, free T3, and it's something called reverse T3. Reverse T3 is an active T3, and it acts as a, as a, um, like a break. It's a break. It's a breaking system. Uh, and basically when you, for any reason you have too much T3, T4 will get converted to reverse T3 and reverse T3 is sort of this inert T3 that won't have any impact. And that's sort of, is it breaking system and it all, and reverse T3 is also a marker for inflammation. It can be elevated when people have significant inflammation. Inflammation or chronic illness, right.

Starting point is 00:26:29 And it can block your thyroid. And so you can look like you have normal levels, but actually you're really functionally hypothyroid, even though your other levels may be normal. Exactly. And that's something very rarely checked. And then there are antibody levels that we check. So we check the thyroid peroxidase antibody,

Starting point is 00:26:44 and that's the main levels that we check. Right. So we check the thyroid peroxidase antibody, and that's the main antibody that we check. It's probably the most sensitive for diagnosing Hashimoto's. Yeah. So we check, yeah, the thyroid antibodies, like thyroid peroxidase, antithyroglobulin antibodies. And what I've learned over the years is people can have completely normal TSH, normal T3, normal T4, and they can have sky-high antibodies. Absolutely. And most traditional doctors won't never even bother getting there because unless the TSH

Starting point is 00:27:07 is elevated, they don't look. And second is if you have elevated antibodies, it means there's an autoimmune process going on. You better get on it before it gets too far. And often these patients feel much better when they get on thyroid replacement once they start having antibodies. But there's a lot of efforts that people are doing and that we, I mean, there are a lot of efforts that people are doing to try to reverse Hashimoto's and often very successfully in bringing the antibodies down

Starting point is 00:27:37 using a more functional medicine approach with diet, lifestyle, the right supplementation, and detoxification, hormonal balance, and all the things we're talking about. I mean, it's not always that easy, but it's possible. And I think if you get on it early, it's much easier before your thyroid's burned out. So you also want to look at other things, right? You want to look at other tests that reflect your nutritional status because of your thought, right? So what are the kinds of things we'd like to measure to see if people are getting the right thyroid nutrients? Yeah. So we measure a lot of, we always look at nutritional deficiencies, but specifically the

Starting point is 00:28:12 thyroid, we want to look at iodine levels. Sometimes we'll do a spot iodine, a 24 hour urine iodine is usually the best. Then we'll also look at selenium levels and we'll look at zinc and magnesium levels. Those are the major, and vitamin D. Those are the major nutrients that I will look for when I'm trying to assess whether somebody has the nutrients they need for the thyroid to function. Yeah, it's super important because, you know, you want to optimize nutrition and you want to make sure you're not doing certain foods that might be a problem. You know, one of the things I've found is that everybody's into these green juices. And it's not like they're great, but, you know, if you're juicing a lot of raw kale,

Starting point is 00:28:52 kale has these goitrogens in them that basically can block thyroid function. So kale is great, but cooking cruciferous vegetables is good. You don't want to have too much of the raw stuff. There was a woman, apparently you heard that, you know, these cruciferous vegetables good. You don't want to have too much of the raw stuff. There was a woman, apparently you heard that, you know, these cruciferous vegetables were good for her. And she decided to eat two pounds of raw bok choy every day, which is a cruciferous vegetable, a Chinese vegetable. And she put herself in a hypothyroid coma after eating two pounds of raw bok choy a day. So be careful of those green juices. Soy can also be a goitrogen. So you want to be careful if you're eating a ton of soy,

Starting point is 00:29:33 but it's really not in the normal amounts you'd eat in your normal diet. So it's okay. Don't be freaked out about it, but it's really just, you know, don't be juicing kale all day long. So this is really a common issue. It caused a lot of suffering. It's not diagnosed in half the people. If it is diagnosed, it's poorly treated in probably half the people. And even their levels may not be normal because the doctor might not check T3. They might not do all the full profile of testing to see what's going on. And when you see someone with Hashimoto's, rather than just like slapping them on like Synthroid, which is a typical prescription, you know, what is our typical prescription. You know,

Starting point is 00:30:10 what is our approach overall to dealing with this autoimmune condition? And what are the kinds of things we do from a dietary lifestyle point of view? And how do we then do the right supplementation? And then if we need thyroid medication, what do we do? So to get all that information, I will do some of the tests that we talked about earlier and looking for some of those nutrients. But I'll also do additional testing, as we talked about earlier. We look for leaky gut. We look for dysbiosis in the gut. We look for potential sources of that inflammation that we were talking about or potential sources for autoimmunity in the gut that we talked about earlier.

Starting point is 00:30:41 I'll also do hormone testing because the balance of hormones is very critical for most of the patients that I'm dealing with. So we'll do some advanced hormone testing. We'll also look, and that hormone testing will include adrenal function and it will include a, you know, a four point salivary cortisol test. So we can know what your cortisol is doing all day long. I will, I commonly find in my patients that are coming to me with uh difficulties treating their thyroid with known hashimoto's or not known hashimoto's that there is just never the thyroid it's always going to involve the gut it's always involving the adrenal so we'll do that advanced adrenal testing and we'll also look to make sure

Starting point is 00:31:22 that the hormones are balanced so we'll do advanced hormonal So we do the testing, but once you do want to start in the treatment with the diet and the lifestyle, what do you do? So immediately, you know, I definitely will talk to patients about going gluten-free if they're not already gluten-free. I want them to be dairy-free because casein can also trigger an immune response in some patients as well. Those are going to be critical pieces. Then we really want to work on reducing inflammation. So there's some basic things like omega-3 fatty acids are very important in reducing inflammation. So we want to make sure that we're doing that to reduce inflammation. I want to really support their detoxification because that detoxification is really important for getting rid of any excess thyroid hormone

Starting point is 00:32:06 that's being built up because your detoxification system is impacted by your hypothyroidism. Your thyroid does play a role in helping your liver detoxify, get rid of all the toxins that are building up that you're making and that you're're also taking in every day so i want to support detoxification and i will do that with um n-acetylcysteine which is a precursor to glutathione i'll do it with high doses of vitamin d i'll also do it with glutathione itself and when i use glutathione i will typically use it liposomally um or as a cream because it's best absorbed that way so those are those are some of the things I will do. I think of like replacing those minerals, like giving them zinc and selenium,

Starting point is 00:32:50 doing it as a multivitamin, giving them fish oil, giving them vitamin D, just the basic stuff makes such a difference for people. Huge. Yeah, and then you can get fancy with some of the other stuff, but I think that getting people on this elimination diet,

Starting point is 00:33:00 an anti-inflammatory diet, and some of these- One of the things that is, and when youinflammatory diet, and some of these... One of the things that is, and when you say elimination diet, is definitely removing gluten, dairy, corn, soy, egg, yeast, and sometimes even legumes. When we put the patient on that diet, typically within six to eight weeks, they're already feeling better,

Starting point is 00:33:23 particularly if we've added some of those other nutrients we know support the thyroid. That's right. So really we need a more comprehensive approach. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I've, I've, um, years ago, I, you know, I saw so much thyroid issues in my practice and I saw how poorly it was handled and I saw how many people were suffering and how many people weren't diagnosed and they didn't get the right test. They didn't know what to eat. They didn't have the right supplements. And so I actually created this thing called the Ultra Thyroid Solution, which is an online ebook that you can order and you just Google Ultra Thyroid Solution. And it provides really a roadmap for how do you know what right test to do? How do you know what the symptoms are? How do you know which foods to eat, which nutrients to take? If you need thyroid hormone replacement, what should you take?

Starting point is 00:34:05 Do you need just like Synthroid or should you be taking a combination? Do you need, you know, pig thyroid or free T3 or free T4? What are you doing with the thyroid replacement? So there's a bit of a nuance to there. Yeah, there's a lot. There's so much that we can really, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of important offshoots to this conversation. Balancing, I think one of the things that I also focus on is balancing that immune system. So,

Starting point is 00:34:31 you know, I mentioned the high dose vitamin D, you know, that is really important for balancing the immune system along with the glutathione and getting your gut healthy and under control. So I really think going back to getting that immune balance is really important. And one of the tests that I do is something called a DIO3, which looks at a gene that is responsible for making the enzyme that converts T3 to T4. And some people have a gene that doesn't work. And if you can't convert T3 to t4 then traditional t4 therapy which is the first line of therapy for hypothyroidism isn't going to work for you that's right and so so that's another test that we do um and it's readily available so it's very nuanced it's very personalized very specific and everybody's different it's not just like one every use gets enthralled that's it goodbye we'll

Starting point is 00:35:21 see you later and if you don't feel better i don't know why and that's what and that's exactly the the message i get from my patients that come to me with thyroid disorder and hashimoto's is that they've been told you're fine your numbers are normal everything's okay and everything's not okay that's right i mean if you if you are diagnosed with low thyroid function if you are taking thyroid replacement and you still don't feel great you're not crazy you know it's just that your doctor may be missing something and it's really why we do what we do here at the ultra wellness center that's why we practice functional medicine because it goes deep it's personalized it looks at your whole system not just one thing and we and we treat the whole the whole shebang of everything that can go wrong to get you optimized,

Starting point is 00:36:07 including your adrenals, including your sex hormones, including your leaky gut, including environmental toxins, including your nutritional deficiencies, all of which impact your thyroid. And so it's really a really beautiful, elegant approach that you've outlined. And I think, George, we are so lucky to be able to practice here at Delta Wellness Center. We're now seeing people virtually. We can see people from all over the world. You can go to ultrawellnesscenter.com, learn more about what we're doing.

Starting point is 00:36:29 But you don't have to suffer. And I think that's really why we do this work, because so many people suffer needlessly when there are solutions. I mean, look, we can't end hunger, end war, and end all viruses, which we like to do. But this stuff, we know how to fix. And people don't have to suffer. And it just breaks my heart when I see so many people struggling unnecessarily. And that's really my mission in life is to end needless suffering. And I'll tell you, I picked, you know, Hashis and thyroid conditions for women are huge. And it's

Starting point is 00:36:59 one of the most satisfying conditions I treat because it's the entree into so many other parts of their health. And we're able to work on things that have frustrated them for so many years. And the functional medicine model does work. And this is a particular disease process that I love to treat women and see them end their years of frustration and really reach their optimal health, energy levels, libidos, enjoy their life again. There you go. It's all about enjoying life.

Starting point is 00:37:28 Well, thank you, George, for being on The Doctor's Pharmacy. It's always a pleasure. If you've struggled with some of these symptoms, with thyroid issues, be sure to take a deep listen to this podcast again. Share with your friends and family on social media. Leave a comment. Tell us how you maybe cured your Hashimoto's. We'd like to learn.

Starting point is 00:37:43 And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 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, 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.

Starting point is 00:38:28 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-K-S, 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. 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

Starting point is 00:39:01 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.

The Dr. Hyman Show - The Functional Medicine Approach To Hypothyroidism And Hashimoto’s Disease with Dr. George Papanicolaou

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