The Liz Moody Podcast - The REAL Root Causes of Thyroid Issues—And How to Actually Fix Them

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Did you know thyroid diseases are on the rise in this country? By popular request, I recorded the most comprehensive episode with Dr. Izabella Wentz—the leading thyroid expert who has helped thousands of people feel better, even when nothing else worked. If you’ve been diagnosed with a thyroid condition (like Hashimoto's, Graves', or Hypothyroidism) and want to feel better, or if you simply want to do everything you can to prevent thyroid issues affecting so many people, this episode is for you. We dive into your trickiest thyroid questions and cover everything you need to know to stay and feel healthy. In this episode, we get into: The real root causes of thyroid issues What most doctors miss What tests to get done to know if you have a thyroid problem What your thyroid levels should actually be What to do if your thyroid treatment plan isn’t working The pregnancy and perimenopause connection to your thyroid The food sensitivity connection to your thyroid How to keep your thyroid (and yourself) in good health And so much more! For more from Dr.Izabella Wentz, find her on Instagram @izabellawentzpharmd or online at https://thyroidpharmacist.com. Check out her podcast Thyroid Pharmacist Healing Conversations, on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. Use our discount codes from our  highly vetted and tested brand partners by visiting https://www.lizmoody.com/codes.  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. This episode is brought to you completely free thanks to the following podcast sponsors: Seed: visit Seed.com/LizMoody and use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first month.  LMNT: go to DrinkLMNT.com/LizMoody to get a free LMNT sample pack with any order. MasterClass: check out MasterClass.com/LizMoody for 15% off an annual membership.  The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 357. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Thyroid conditions are on the rise in this country. What do you see is the reason for the increase? This is basically very just general self-care that everybody should be doing. But unfortunately, in our society, a lot of us don't really seek out the help until we're sick. Pregnancy is a huge cause of autoimmune disease in women. Is there anything that we can do either during pregnancy or postpartum to lessen the risks of that? If somebody wanted to absolutely avoid medication, what would you say to them? You can keep getting sick over and over again if you don't.

heal your trauma. Are there any other myths about thyroid health that you want to bust? Hello friends and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. At long last and by popular request, we are doing the most comprehensive thyroid episode that we can possibly do. If you have a diagnosed thyroid condition and you are looking to feel better or you're wondering if you are treating it in the best possible way, this episode will be immensely helpful. Or if you just want to do everything in your power to help prevent thyroid issues in the future, Since they are on the rise right now, this episode will help too. My guest today is probably the world's number one expert in thyroid health.

She is the New York Times bestselling author, Dr. Isabella Wentz. She has helped thousands of people feel better even when nothing else worked for their thyroid. And today, she's going to get to the bottom of all of the trickiest questions. Dr. Wenz, welcome to the podcast. Hi, Liz. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to have you here. Let's just start off with where did your interest in thyroid health come from?

So in full disclosure, I was never interested in the thyroid during pharmacy school. I thought it was just like this boring little gland and it just secreted some hormones. And as people got older, then it stopped working and you just needed to take some hormones, right? It wasn't until I was diagnosed myself in my 20s after 10 years of some really confusing and frustrating symptoms when I realized how much of an impact the thyroid gland head on the body and that there was this whole autoimmune process behind it. and the autoimmunity itself was also leading me to have a ton of symptoms. So I became passionate and interested in Hashimoto's and thyroid health because of my own diagnosis, because of my own journey. I wanted to figure out if I can do anything to feel better. At first, I was passionate about taking meds, right, being a pharmacist. I'm like, okay, I'll be on meds. This is going to solve

everything. And spoiler alert, the meds did not solve everything. I still continued to have a ton of symptoms while on meds. And then I just started to look at various research out there in patient forums to try to peel back the layers of what was going on within my body. Like why was my body attacking my thyroid gland? Could I do anything to stop it? Could I do anything to dampen it? Can I do anything to make myself feel human again, right? What were the symptoms that you were having? Gosh, I had like so many symptoms. I was so young and I felt like my body was falling apart. So from the top of my head, I had hair loss, I had panic attacks, I had anxiety, I had fatigue. Like, I would wake up after 10 to 12 hours of sleep exhausted.

Every single day, I would rely on like six to eight cups of caffeine. I was constantly cold, which should have been a red flag, where I was living in Southern California and everybody was in short sleeves, T-shirts, and I was wearing like a sweater and a jacket and a scarf. I had pain, including carpal tunnel in both of my arms. So that prevented me from doing yoga and all the fun things I wanted to do. And really, it just felt like my life was sort of falling apart and getting worse. Every few months, I would get a new symptoms.

So I had some symptoms that don't seem related to thyroid disease, but they absolutely are. And that was a lot of allergies to everything. I had acid reflux and I had irritable bowel syndrome, constant bloating. And, you know, the doctors at the time were like, well, that's not related. That's not related to your thyroid, right? Your hair loss isn't related. And so I was sent around to like a cardiologist for my palpitations and then a dermatologist for my hair loss and gastroenterologist for my acid reflux and the IBS.

And I was a full-time patient. I felt like one in my 20s. It does still even now feel frustrating. I have somebody very close in my life who has a Hashimoto's diagnosis. And it is like, do you go see this doctor for this thing? This doctor for this thing. It feels very hard still to construct a care plan or even know where to start with that. Absolutely.

And I think the crazy thing is that a lot of these things and a lot of these symptoms are connected and they have common root causes. So in my example, I had dairy and gluten sensitivity. and that was causing the acid reflux IBS carpal tunnel syndrome. And once I got off of those foods, a lot of my symptoms begin to improve, including the fatigue. And there's a body of research that shows the connection to thyroid antibodies and the gluten protein, especially in people with celiac disease. There's this whole body of research that conventional medicine just completely ignores

on what can be helpful. And so you're sent around to different specialists rather than somebody looking at you as a whole person, right? So we're going to get into like gluten and dairy and all these different things later. But I just want to start with zooming out and getting a lay of the land. So you were diagnosed with Hashimoto's, which is an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid, right? And then there's graves, which I believe is also autoimmune related. And then there's people who just have underactive and overactive thyroids, correct? Most cases of thyroid dysfunction are actually autoimmune in nature. And for majority of people who have hypothyroidism, which is,

an underactive thyroid, they actually have an autoimmune attack against their thyroid known as Hashimoto's. Eventually Hashimoto's turns into hypothyroidism. You can also have other reasons why you might be hypothyroid. For example, if you were born without a thyroid, you can have hypothyroidism. If your thyroid gland was surgically removed, perhaps you had nodules or thyroid cancer, you may also become hypothyroid that way. And then there's overactive thyroid. This is generally most commonly caused by Graves disease, a different type of autoimmune condition where the body starts to produce too much thyroid hormone. In some cases, people may also become hyperthyroid because they're overmedicated. So when somebody says like, oh, I have hyper-hypothyroid, but like I don't have Hashimoto's, I don't have Graves, what do they mean by that?

Oftentimes they mean that their doctor didn't do the right tests for them and they just may not be aware. Oh, that's so interesting. I know in so many cases, people are told that they have a sluggish thyroid, a slow thyroid or hypothyroid, but nobody thinks to check their thyroid antibodies, which can reveal if they have an autoimmune attack against their thyroid. But you think that most thyroid problems are because of an autoimmune attack against the thyroid, barring these like your thyroid was removed or something like that? Exactly.

The research shows that more than 90% of the time, this is going to be the case in Western countries. In countries that don't add iodine to their salt supply, there may be some cases of hypothyroidism that are due to iodine deficiency. But this is pretty rare in the Western world. Wow, that's so interesting. Okay, so what tests should we be asking our doctors for that we might not be getting? The thyroid antibody tests are really, really important if you've been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. You do want to figure out if it's autoimmune because you can do various things to support your body rather than just take thyroid hormones. And thyroid antibodies, TPO antibodies, thyroid peroxidase antibodies is the long name. You can just say TPO.

And then there's thiroglobulin antibodies. You can just say TG and your doctor will know what you're talking about. These are going to be the two most commonly elevated antibodies in Hashimoto's. Okay, so I'm just trying to like help out the person because I just, I feel like I have so many friends where they're like, I just have like an underactive or overactive thyroid, and they don't think it's autoimmune related. So they could go in and ask for these two extra tests, and then the doctor would maybe be able to piece together that this was autoimmune related versus what they might have been testing before.

Exactly. And then there's just to confuse things a little bit. There's also something called seronegative Hashimoto's where you don't test positive for any of those antibodies, but you still have Hashimoto's. And you could potentially see that on a thyroid ultrasound. or if you did a biopsy of the thyroid gland and you were able to see that there are white blood cells infiltrating the thyroid gland indicating an autoimmune response. So a small percentage of people might have Hashimoto's, but they might not have those

antibodies too. So just because, you know, I hear that from a lot of people, I don't have Hashimoto's. That sounds really exotic and rare. It's very, very common. And chances are you probably haven't had the right test for it. Oh, that's so interesting. So almost in absence of other information, we should be kind of treating these as autoimmune diseases while we're trying to get the information. Like it is more than likely an autoimmune attack of the thyroid.

More than 90% likely, yeah. Wow. That's crazy. That's so interesting. So to me, if something is autoimmune related versus thyroid related, I feel like we'd be treating that completely differently because we'd want to be addressing the root causes of an autoimmune attack. Is that wrong? That would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately, conventional medicine doesn't necessarily see it that way.

Sometimes when people get diagnosed with Hashimoto's, especially if they're in the early stages, they basically say, okay, now there's nothing we can really do. If you're anxious, we could send you to the psychiatrist, right? If you have this symptom, we could send you to this doctor. But there's nothing we can really do for the autoimmune component other than just like wait until your thyroid gland burns itself out. And then we can put you on thyroid hormone. But yeah, it would make sense to actually treat the autoimmune component

And that's sort of what I do. And that's how I became the thyroid pharmacist through becoming my own human guinea pig was figuring out how to get the autoimmune component into remission. So what do you do differently when you approach thyroid treatment than a conventional doctor might? I would look at why the body is causing you to attack itself, right? In functional medicine, which is sort of the branch of medicine that I would recommend most people with an autoimmune condition see this kind of practitioner. is we focus on their root cause.

So trying to figure out what's really driving that inflammation. And oftentimes it's going to be known things. Nutrient deficiencies, food sensitivities, impaired stress response, impaired ability to get rid of toxins and sometimes chronic infections. Okay. And is it usually a mix of those things or is it usually you're like detectivine for that one thing that's the problem? Every now and then I have somebody that just has like one thing.

And it's like a really easy like success story because we'll just take away one food. or we'll treat one infection and voila, they're like, wow, no more thyroid antibodies, no more symptoms, my thyroid function normalized. But these are sort of like the exceptions. I wish everybody was an easy case. In most cases, people will have multiple nutrient efficiencies, multiple food sensitivities, sometimes more than one infection. And I guess, you know, it's hard to say because a lot of times the people that come to

see me are more complicated that I work with, but then I'll get stories from people that read my books and they'll just say, I tried that one thing you said, and I feel so much better, or my fatigue is gone, or my thyroid antibody has went away with just one thing. So what is your goal with the people who come to work with you? Are you trying to have them avoid medication? Are you trying to have them feel better even if they take medication? Are you able to reverse this attack on their thyroid altogether? I kind of go by what their goal is, right? And so, I'm not anti-medication. I'm pro you feeling your best and living your best life. I'm not necessarily attached to you having zero antibodies. I just want to meet you where you're at and figure out what you

want to do. For most of my clients, they're on medications, but they're still not feeling good. And so I'm trying to figure out how to get them to feel human again. For some of my clients, it's going to be they have really high thyroid antibodies and they don't have a need to go on medications yet, but their doctors told them there was nothing they could do, and yet they have a ton of symptoms. And so I'm trying to work with them to reduce their thyroid antibodies and get rid of their symptoms as well. So you just mentioned there's this whole array of different things that are contributing to thyroid conditions. And thyroid conditions are on the rise in this country. Is that because different environmental exposures are increasing? Or what do you see is the reason

for the increase in thyroid diseases? It's a tricky question because we do know that there's, of course, better diagnostics and better recognition. But at the same time, if we were able to look at frozen blood samples from 10, 20, 30 years ago, we could look at the rates of thyroid antibodies and they would be much higher these days, right, compared to old and stored blood samples. So the schools of thought are that it could be related to environmental toxins. There's also a large body of knowledge connecting the iodization programs where iodine has been added to the salt supply in many Western countries. And that addition, you know, public health officials always trying to help us out, right? They're like, your teeth are getting cavities because you're eating a lot of sugar and

there's a lot of acid. Let's give you some fluoride. Let's just put that in the water for everybody. And similar idea. People were becoming hypothyroid because they didn't have enough iodine in the food supply. And so iodine is a required nutrient for creating thyroid hormone. and public health officials were like, oh, we're going to solve this issue. We're going to just put iodine in the salt supply. Now, the challenging thing is this did solve the underactive thyroid caused by low iodine, but it also increased the rates of autoimmune thyroid issues. And so this sometimes just that iodine addition has doubled, tripled, quadrupled rates of Hashimoto's in various countries.

Why would that be? iodine tends to be a narrow therapeutic index nutrients. So you want to have the levels just right. So if it's too low, you're going to become hypothyroid. But when it's too high, then it could lead to more oxidative stress within the thyroid gland, especially if other nutrients that are needed to balance out that process are missing. And so it's like one of those things where you like try to solve a problem and then you create a whole host of new problems. Are there other things that you would point to that have changed in the last like 20 or 30 years that you would attribute the increase in thyroid cases to? I would say stress is another big common trigger that I see in a lot of my clients where we're just in this like high and go society and we're never really resting. This can be a really, really big trigger for not just thyroid disease, but any kind of autoimmune condition in general. I know. Okay. I'm going to ask you this.

I ask so many doctors on the. the podcast this because I feel like it is true that stress contributes to all of these things. And telling somebody that their stress is contributing to these types of things just makes them more stress. So how do you approach that in your practice? How are you not just like, well, don't be stressed? And they're like sitting there. And the second they feel stressed, they're like, oh my God, I'm so stressed that I'm stressed. And this is contributing to my thyroid problems. Telling somebody to not be stressed is sort of like saying don't be a woman, right? Like it's not helpful, right? Being a woman causes this issue, right? Or it can

contributes to higher rates of X, Y, and Z. So I actually look at, like, what's the physiology of stress? What's going on in your body when you are stressed? Chances are you going to be nutrient depleted, especially in vitamins B and vitamin C and magnesium. And so we're focusing on replenishing those nutrients. Many times people who are anxious, they do so, so well with doing Epson salt baths or just taking magnesium supplements, where all of a sudden the world around them, becomes less stressful. I love utilizing adaptogenic herbs for different individuals and there's like a whole bunch of different ones depending on what your need is. But adaptogenic herbs, I always joke that they make everybody around you less annoying because they work so well on your stress response and

they help you adapt to stress. So these are going to be the things that you can start doing on your own to support your body. Blood sugar imbalance is also a another contributor to that stress physiology and that stress dysfunction. So for some people, simply eating more protein and more fat and lower carbs than they're currently eating, you know, compared to the standard Western diet, this can be incredibly helpful. Just that blood sugar swing is such a big stressor on the body. And then we're talking about lifestyle changes, like not watching TV before you go to bed so that you get really, really restful sleep. And sleeping in an all-dark room because one of the fastest ways to get your body in that stress

physiology is by sleep deprivation. And so getting enough sleep is the fastest way to get out of stress. I love that. I love the idea of like breaking down stress into its contributing factors and to its contributing effects. I think that's such an intelligent way to approach it and it's much less stressful than just like don't be stressed. Yeah. I think like don't be stressed is just like great. Thank you. Thank you so much. We really appreciate it. When you think about strength and resilience, like your ability to feel energized, to recover well, to stay strong as you get older, what do you think that actually comes from? Most people say working out or good nutrition, and yes, of course that matters.

But there is a biological foundation underneath all of that that most people are completely overlooking. I have been diving deep into this lately with the team at timeline and what I've learned has genuinely shifted how I think about my own health. Every single movement that your body makes, every step, every workout, every muscle contraction depends on energy produced at the cellular level. And at the center of that is your mitochondria. Here is the thing that nobody tells you, certainly nobody told me, starting around age 30,

our mitochondria naturally become less efficient. More get damaged, more become sluggish, and over time that impacts your energy, your strength, your recovery, and your resilience. Most of us respond by pushing more. we're like noticing these things and we're adding in more protein. We're trying to fix it with more supplements. We're trying to do harder workouts. And those things do help.

But timelines research suggests that we also need to be supporting the cellular machinery underneath. And that is exactly what their supplement, Mitopure, does. It contains Erolithin A, which helps your body clear out damage mitochondria and support healthier ones so that your cells can produce energy more efficiently. Because this is happening to your cells, it's going to impact. your entire body, your immune system, your muscles. One study found that taking mitochondrial increased muscle strength by 12% in four months with no change in exercise routine,

it's going to impact your energy, your sleep, your skin, your cell health impacts all of this, and urolithin A keeps your cells healthy. Timeline has done over 15 years of research and testing on this one product, urolithin A, which, by the way, most of us lack the gut bacteria to synthesize naturally. That's why many of us need to supplement it to get the benefits. This has become a staple supplement for me. It is my top way to support how I want to look and feel as I age. Support yourselves and how you age with mitopure gummies from Timeline. Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitopure gummies.

That is timeline.com slash Liz. If you have headaches, allergies, brain fog, skin irritation, or you've been dealing with hormone issues, you are especially going to want to listen to this ad. Every single thing that I just listed has been linked to chemicals and household cleaners. One study found that regular use of cleaning sprays was associated with a lung function decline comparable to smoking 10 to 20 cigarettes per day. Synthetic fragrances are a well-documented migraine trigger and a number of studies have

linked ingredients in common household cleaners to fertility issues, thyroid dysfunction, mood changes, and more because of their impact on our endocrine systems. Luckily, you can just make one simple swap and you can eliminate all of those risk factors that you get from common household cleaners. Branch basics makes cleaning products that are plant and mineral based, completely fragrance-free, and made safe certified, meaning they are screened against thousands of known and suspected harmful chemicals. And best of all, you literally use one product, but you mix it with different amounts of water to make your kitchen spray, your bathroom cleaner, your laundry detergent, your produce wash, your glass cleaner, literally everything.

It does not smell. It does not give me headaches. It does not give me rashes or itchiness from clothes because you are. Remember, we're using this for laundry. We're using this for literally everything. And it works so well. Everything gets so clean. And I know that I'm protecting myself from all of those long-term issues too. And I'm protecting my kittens who are much tinier than me. So anything they're exposed to has a much greater impact on their little tiny systems. And they're running around on their little paws and then they're licking them. So I'm protecting them too. Branch basics is now available at Target.com, Amazon and BranchBasics. So it's easier than ever to make the switch.

And if you want to grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branch basics.com and use code Liz Moody. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. Yet so many of us want to eat health.

but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier. That's where Marley Spoon comes in. What I love about this company and what's different than all of the other companies out there that are doing stuff in the same arena is that you can customize your choices based on the effort that you want to put in. So if you want them to send you ingredients, so you can make your own 20-minute meal and get into your chef energy, they'll send it to you to all be in perfect portions so you'll eliminate waste.

Great. That's sorted. But they also have meals that you can do. just heat up. They have ready-made breakfast, which is always such a tough time of day to get a healthy meal in. They have grab and go snacks. Everything is made from farm fresh produce with high quality proteins and you can select by dietary preferences, including Mediterranean diet, which is the top diet that doctors on this podcast recommend. Also things like gluten-free, dairy-free, low-sodium, anything that you need. The food is so good and it's so gourmet feeling like you feel like you're at a

nice restaurant. We're talking like chicken milanese with a crunchy cucumber arugula salad or everything bagel salmon with truffle chive potatoes. My favorite recent meal was the creamy lemon chicken tray bake. I had one of those moments where I looked at my plate and I was like, wait, I made this and so quickly, like so easily. It's just so little effort for so much reward. Marley Spoon just makes eating well feel easy instead of stressful. And honestly, that is everything. This new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. That is right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody. So remember to get the offer in there.

Marley Spoon.com slash offer slash Liz Moody for up to 25 free meals. I've heard that trauma is a big contributor to Hashimoto's. Is there research behind that? There's a lot of research behind trauma contributing to various autoimmune conditions and conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia. I don't know that there's as much research in Hashimoto's, but I will say when I was looking through client charts and asking people, what was going on in your life before you got sick or when was the last time you felt well? Trauma is oftentimes such an important thing that pops up, especially adverse childhood events. I've had a lot of people who would say they lost a loved one and all of a sudden their thyroid

antibodies skyrocketed or they were in a very challenging situation. So I feel like it's one of those elephants in the room that really needs to be addressed. Part of what I recommend, we talk about stress reduction, one of the biggest reasons why we might be stuck in a stress response could be because of past trauma. It's like your life could be low stress right now, but if you're still living with the trauma that you had, you really need to find a way to reprocess that. I'm a big proponent of EMDR therapy for trauma reprocessing. And sometimes I will say for some of my clients, that's like absolutely what they need to do to heal is figuring out how to reprocess their past trauma. I feel like there's so many people too who almost don't want to give themselves permanent.

to call what they experienced trauma. And so then they don't benefit from the treatment of it. They're like, well, my childhood was mostly fine. Or I even think the pandemic was trauma for all of us on like a mass societal level. And we're just kind of ignoring it and not talking about it and trying to move on really quickly from it. So I do think there's all these people who are probably experiencing negative effects physiologically and psychologically of trauma because they don't even want to like acknowledge

that that's what they experienced. Yeah, I think it's easy to do. because you can always find somebody who had it worse than you, right? But you have to really be able to be kind to yourself and give yourself that grace. I always tell the women that I work with to treat yourself as you would like a beloved pet or a really small child because I find a lot of women with autoimmunity, they tend to say some really harsh things to themselves. So there's a lot of beating themselves up and there's a lot of the self-negative talk. Like get out of bed. why are you doing this? Why are you so lazy all of the time? And some of that might be coming from

outside sources that becomes internalized. A big part of healing is really showing up for yourself and really giving yourself self-compassion and kindness and treating your body with love and attention and care. And part of that might be realizing that the things you went through were very traumatic and giving yourself that opportunity to grieve and holding space for yourself and seeking out the right therapy. Why do you think we're so mean to ourselves? I like the idea of talking to yourself like a, you would, a kid or a best friend or a pet or something like that, but do you have any other pragmatic tips for finding that sense of self-compassion?

Practice, I say sometimes you have to fake it till you make it. So I love using positive affirmations. I love the one every day in every way I'm feeling better and better. And I treat myself with kindness. I have people do mirror exercises. Some of them are like, I can't do this. Others have said it's changed their lives where they look at themselves in the mirror and they talk to themselves in a really positive way.

That's going to be a really great place to start. And then there's also the process of doing therapy and working on your self-limiting beliefs or some of the negative thought patterns that perhaps got imprinted on you in childhood. Maybe somebody was mean to you in the first grade because you picked your nose and now all of a sudden, you know, you've had that in your head that there's something wrong with you going through a process like EMDR can help you repattern that and build new brainwaves to make you feel like, actually, you know, I'm not a nasty nose picker. Like, I have other attributes. I'm a good person. And the reason that I'm like lingering on this a little bit too is because I think that we we have a tendency to dismiss the importance of this type of work when we are. healing. And in your experience, is it a key part of the process? For many people it is,

it might not be where people start. Some people start in that realm, but many people really focus on their physiology and really focus on eating well, nutrition, and, you know, kind of doing all the things. But if they don't address the underlying trauma, they can get stuck, right? So the trauma within you can make you really less resilient to things like infections. or toxins, right? And so you can keep getting sick over and over again if you don't heal your trauma. Like, you're going to be burning through a lot of your nutrients. So you're constantly going to be nutrient depleted. And not to mention, you're going to be putting yourself in the same situations over and over again. So I've seen people who get into remission from

Hashimoto's. They got there because of overwork. And then they got really fatigued. And so they're like, okay, I'm healed now. Now I can go back to overworking, right? And then they get sick again. Can you completely heal from Hashimoto's? Can you completely reverse it? In some cases you can. I would say in the early stages, it's much easier when you just have antibodies against your thyroid gland. When you're in the more advanced stages, let's say stage four or five of Hashimoto's, your thyroid gland might be so damaged that you're going to need to be on thyroid hormone replacement for the rest of your life, right? But there are many cases, especially in the early stages where you can lower the thyroid antibodies to the point

where you're not going to have thyroid gland damage and you can get rid of all of your symptoms, too. And how do you know what stage you're in? There's five different stages, and the first stage is essentially just the genetic predisposition. So you don't have any thyroid antibodies and your thyroid function is normal. You don't have any symptoms. The second stage is going to be when you start having this autoimmune attack against your thyroid gland. typically what you would see on a lab test is elevated thyroid antibodies. You might also have some symptoms at that point too.

So anxiety, panic attack, fertility challenges, feeling of unwell, fatigue, various heart conditions. A whole host of different symptoms have been described. Oftentimes they're ignored by mainstream medicine, but functional medicine can help you recognize them. The third stage is subclinical hypothyroidism. So you have this antibody attack. It's gone on long enough where your thyroid gland starts to lose its ability to compensate

because it's under damage. And at that point, your thyroid stimulating hormone might be elevated perhaps to like a level of 10, but your actual thyroid hormones are still going to be within normal limits. This is when people, again, are going to be much more symptomatic to. Stage four is considered overt hypothyroidism. generally speaking when the autoimmune attack has been happening for 5, 10, 15 years, there's enough of your thyroid gland that becomes so damaged that it just loses its ability to compensate and you're going to be diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

So your TSA might be elevated and you might have low levels of the thyroid hormones circling in your body. And then what not many people realize, but stage five is actually progression to other autoimmune conditions. Now, unfortunately, I've seen people who maybe have Graves disease or they have Hashimoto's and they're put on medications or they have their thyroid gland surgically removed and they think this is their root cause, but they end up with different autoimmune conditions down the line. So they might have rheumatoid arthritis or something else like lupus down the line. And it's because of that autoimmune progression because you didn't really address the other root causes, right? So interesting.

Okay, I have so many questions. Let's start with first. Stage one is just the genetic component, you say. What is the genetic component of thyroid disease? Maybe you have a family history of it. So maybe your grandmother had it or your mom had it. That doesn't mean that you're always going to have it. How strongly linked is it? It's interesting because if your dad has it, you have a very high percentage chance of having it. Interesting. But not your mom? You do have higher chances of having it if your mom does. If it was a purely genetic condition, we would see like, 100% concordance in identical twins. And I think it's about 50% or so. So if you have an identical

twin with Hashimoto's, there's about 50% chance. So there's definitely the genetic component, which is important, but there's also this environmental component. Something really interesting is looking at the rates of thyroid disorders, including autoimmune thyroid disease and people exposed to Chernobyl, the children that lived the closest and were downwind from that. that effect, that nuclear fallout, they had much higher rates of Hashimoto's and thyroid antibodies compared to genetically similar children, you know, the other direction, right? I don't recall the exact rates, but it was like way different statistics, like where clearly, you know, the environmental factor really increased the rates of thyroid disease. Okay, but if we're looking around in

our family, if our dad has it, if our mom has it, these are like red flags that perhaps it's something we should be on the lookout for. Definitely. I have a seven, year old son. And so when I got him to do blood work, which, which wasn't easy, by the way, I was like, let's make sure we test his thyroid function and his thyroid antibodies because this is something I want to be on the lookout for because it runs in my family, right? And so this is wise if you have a condition that runs in your family to advocate for yourself and do that with your wellness checkup maybe once a year, every few years or so, just to make sure that's not something that's relevant for you. Is there anything we can do if we have a thyroid condition?

and we don't want our kids to have a thyroid condition, or we see our mother or father, our aunt, our uncle has a thyroid condition and we don't want to get one ourselves. You can definitely be proactive with your children or with yourself, so you can make sure that you have proper nutrient levels. You can test your gut function to see what might be missing. You can be proactive with looking at your food sensitivity markers and see if there's anything contributing to inflammation in your body.

and just kind of live more of a, I don't want to say wellness-focused lifestyle, but just a bit of a more aware lifestyle. So, for example, making sure you're taking a high-quality multivitamin because selenium deficiency has been tied to autoimmune thyroid disease, making sure that your iron status is balanced because low iron can contribute to thyroid disease, making sure you have your vitamin D levels in a good reference range because low vitamin, low vitamin, and D can contribute to the development of autoimmune thyroid disease. I really would love for everybody to know how to take care of their bodies because this is basically very just general self-care that everybody should be doing. But unfortunately in our society, a lot of us don't really seek out the help until we're sick, right? Yeah. Well, and maybe that can be like a little bit of extra motivation or

something like that. Okay. And then you mentioned like your thyroid hormones. There's T-SH. There's free T-3. There's free T4, there's reverse T3, there's TPO Antibodies. It feels like there's all these different numbers and I find them very confusing. Can you kind of break down what the different numbers are and what a normal doctor will test for and maybe what we should be asking for outside of what a normal doctor would test for? Most doctors will test for the TSA, which is the thyroid stimulating hormone. And this is a pituitary hormone that is supposed to sense when we have low thyroid hormone levels. So in the case that we have not enough thyroid hormones, the TSA is supposed to rise to tell the body to make more thyroid hormones.

In a perfect world, this would be very accurate, but it isn't always the best test. One reason might be because as we went through the stages of Hashimoto's, that TSA number might be normal for the first five, 10, 15 years you have Hashimoto. It could be fluctuating depending on the day that you test, right? One day it might be high, one day it might be low, another day it might be normal. Another reason why I don't love it is it's not always connected. Like there's sometimes a communication breakdown.

So you might actually have low levels of thyroid hormone, but your TSA might just not budge. Another kind of big concern that I've had is that the reference ranges have been historically overly lax. When they try to determine like the normal range, they test a bunch of people's blood. and they say like, well, what is the normal reference range in this group of people? When they did that inadvertently, a lot of people had hypothyroidism. And so they were saying like a TSAH of up to eight or ten was normal when I could tell you when my TSA was at like a five, I was a sloth, right?

And most women and men like of childbearing age should have a TSAH somewhere around one. Most of the women and men I've worked with generally between point five and two is where we want to see their TSAH. Sometimes in senior citizens, you might see like a 2.5 or a 3, and they still feel well. But generally speaking, those reference ranges, sometimes I have clients that have said, I had a TSAH of 5 and my doctor told me it was normal and I was losing chunks of hair, right? So you view over two is something to kind of pay attention to? Absolutely. Okay. So that's your TSA, which your doctor will normally test for. Yes, but you also want to advocate for testing the thyroid antibodies, the TPO and

TG antibodies. Those will indicate if there's an attack against your thyroid. Generally speaking above nine is where you might suspect that you might have an autoimmune attack against your thyroid. And then there's the free T3 and free T4. And this basically is a way to measure what thyroid hormones you have in your body circulating that are available to interact with receptors. There's different reference ranges for that. So generally what I tell people is you want to make sure that you're in the middle to top half of the reference range. some people will be like right at the border of the bottom of the reference range and their doctors are like, you're normal, but it's like you're not optimal, right? T4 is one of the main active thyroid hormones

and T3 is actually the more active one. So this becomes really important for people too when they're on thyroid meds because in some cases they might get enough T4 from their thyroid meds but not enough T3. And T3 is the more metabolically active. It's the one that grows hair, gives us energy, makes our brain function well. And so sometimes we might not convert the medications like Levothyroxene, which is T4, into that T3 hormone. So this is a big reason why I recommend that, especially when people are already taking meds. And then last but not least, reverse T3. Reverse T3 can sometimes be an indication that you might have a thyroid condition, which may or may not be thyroid derived, if that makes sense. So your thyroid antibodies might be normal. Your T-S-H might be normal. And even your free T-3

and free T-4 might still appear normal. But when you have high reverse T-3, that means that it's an inactive thyroid hormone and that it's binding your thyroid receptors, basically blocking them from being used up by the good thyroid hormones, the active ones. And so a lot of times people might end up with quote unquote all the thyroid symptoms in the book, but their other labs come back normal. With reverse 2-3, it's usually caused by either excessive stress or low iron, typically measured as ferretin. So these are some of the driving causes. And so I like to have that for people who are looking for a diagnosis and maybe have symptoms. If I'm working with a person already, I'm not necessarily going to be testing for that because I'm like, we're already doing

all the things to make sure that your thyroid conversion is doing what it's supposed to be doing. Okay. So these numbers are not only important, like the whole range for diagnostics, but also to see if your medication's working in the way that you want it to and also maybe to give you reasons for symptoms that you might not otherwise have an explanation for. Is there anything else I'm missing in terms of how we should be, why we should be asking for so many more numbers and interpreting them perhaps differently than our doctor might be doing? Yeah, and definitely to monitor, not just how your medication is working, but also if your lifestyle changes are making a difference. So, for example, if you're doing things to try to reduce your antibodies, it would be nice to see

if those things are working, right? And so you do want to retest those to see if the changes you're making are making an impact. And then the last thing you talked about was the stage five, the concern is that perhaps if you have an autoimmune cause to thyroid problems, which you said 90% of us do, despite that not being widely talked about, that your immune system might not stop there. Your immune system might continue on and your thyroid then becomes sort of the canary in the coal mine and other things start happening afterwards. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Yeah, unfortunately, that might be the case. So let's say if your autoimmune condition was caused by some kind of infection, right?

The immune system will start to recognize the infection as a foreign invader. And what it does is it essentially takes like snapshots of parts of the protein sequence on the infectious organism. and shows it around and says, hey, see this sequence? This is what you need to attack. And sometimes that sequence may cross-react with the thyroid gland. And so the thyroid gland will get attacked, but the longer that infection's in there, maybe more of those snapshots are being taken and then you cross-react with different types of organs in the body. So that might be one potential pathway that if you've got this underlying infection and it's still there and lingering, that you can just keep getting more and more symptoms and more diagnoses.

And that would be the biggest reason to not just sort of like take medication and not go beyond that, essentially? That would be one of the biggest reasons for being proactive about your health and definitely for people who take medications and are not feeling their best, right? There are those that take medications and feel 100% amazing after they take them, but that's not most of us. And a lot of people that I will see are like, oh yeah, I'm on medications and I feel great, but they're like 50 pounds overweight. Or they'll be very fit, but extremely fatigue. Or,

you know, fit and have energy, but super anxious. And so there's a lot of these things that can be out of balance and working on your immune system can help you feel like a human. How would you start to get to the bottom of what the actual root causes are? There are some things people can do on their own. And I would say these would be like nutrient status. So making sure that you have magnesium on board, selenium and myonocetol, in some cases, those two nutrient deficiencies can really drive the autoimmune response and getting those nutrients on board can get the condition into remission. We talked about vitamin D status, making sure that's optimized. We mentioned ferretin levels, which are associated with iron storage. Oftentimes those are going to be low, and so we want

to make sure we optimize those levels to have proper thyroid hormone function. This will be be a great place for most people to work on figuring out if they have foods that are causing inflammation in the body. There's a big connection between gluten sensitivity, celiac disease, and Hashimoto's, and people, I would say, about 88% of people feel better gluten-free. Can I ask? Yeah. I know. Obviously, celiac, there's like your body's having this pretty extreme reaction to gluten, but I've heard for thyroid because the shape of the gluten molecule is very similar to the thyroid molecule that if you have an autoimmune condition that attacks your thyroid,

your body will mistake essentially gluten for thyroid and attack gluten. So it's even different than the celiac mechanism of action. Am I totally wrong? No, you're correct on that. So there is some cross-reactive proteins. So it's just as we talked about with the infections that can cross-react between gluten or gladean and the thyroid anatomy. So that can cause like, hey, immune system isn't liking gluten and what else looks like gluten, right? And so that can definitely be a pathway for this. There's also, in some people, many people, gluten causes intestinal permeability. And intestinal permeability is a driving factor in autoimmune disease.

There's research showing that most people with autoimmunity have some degree of intestinal permeability, and that's what sort of activates the genes, and that's what allows the triggers to, like, propagate. And so sometimes eating gluten can be causing that intestinal permeability. And if you remove gluten, then you can have your guts not be leaky anymore. And then those triggers and the genes don't really interact as much. Yeah, I just like to clarify the mechanism of action because I feel like a lot of, we often jump to getting rid of gluten. And I don't think as many people need to get rid of gluten as we talk about sometimes societally. It's almost become trendy to get rid of gluten. but I do think there's this unique mechanism of action in terms of thyroid health that is

helpful to spotlight. Yeah, yeah. In my experience, not every single person needs to get rid of gluten, but about 88% of people feel significantly better off of it. And obviously, if you have celiac disease, which about 5 to 10% of people with Hashimoto's might have, then you would need to get rid of it forever and be super strict about it. For most people with Hashimoto, I would say, even if you don't have celiac disease, it makes sense to go on a gluten-free diet for at least 90 days and see how you feel.

Look at your thyroid into body numbers and see if there's a change there. But we're going back to like, let's figure out what the root causes. What about stuff like Epstein Barr and mold and these other outside attackers on our immune system? A lot of chronic infections and toxins can absolutely be relevant for turning on this autoimmune response and they can be very relevant triggers. If I were to work with somebody, I would definitely have those considerations. So we might test for Epstein-Barr virus reactivation. I would do an organic acid test and a mycotoxins test.

I would do a gut test like the GI map or the gut zoomer to see what was going on in their gut, to see which of these triggers we might need to eliminate. How often do you see that as part of the equation in your practice? It's tricky because the people that come to me are usually much more complex. Right. So I would say everybody, but like I know that's not the case because there are people who, for whom it's not relevant. I would say Epstein-Barr virus, it gets a lot of media and attention,

but it's not as commonly reactivated that I see it. Mold, I would say a lot of times people who don't get better with like the gluten-free diet or just kind of seem stuck. People that have oxalate issues, these are going to be histosal. These are going to be people that are oftentimes have mold colonization or ongoing exposure. And then I oftentimes see blastocystis hominous and then H. Pylori that are very common triggers.

H. Pylori, especially when somebody's got acid reflux, and blastocystis hummus when they just tend to be sensitive to everything, when they have chronic hives, and when they have irritable bowel syndrome. So that's a very relevant trigger that I feel like doesn't get enough attention. H. Pylori is a bacterial infection, right? You can get like food poisoning and then that can linger. Am I right in that or no? Where does that come from? It tends to be something that's associated with ulcers. And that's where scientists typically and physicians will focus on like, oh, if you have an ulcer, you probably have H. Pylori and you need to take like heavy duty antibiotics. And that's been where it gets the most attention in. But it's also been implicated with things like atrophic gastritis, which is another type of autoimmune condition. It's been associated with Graves disease, Hashimoto's, to the point where when I see it, I get very excited because when we treat it, a lot of times people's thyroid antibodies and symptoms really improve. And it's generally going to speak speaking of like a stomach infection.

And then I'm not even going to try to say the other word that you said. What is that? Where does that come from? I've never heard of that. Blastocystisuminous is a protozole infection and it infects the gut. And what it does is essentially makes people very sensitive to a lot of different foods. It's similar to GR. but it hasn't gotten as much attention. I got giardia within, it was like the second week I was dating my now husband. And so I still didn't want him to know that I pooped, but I had giardia. And so I was like trying to hide giardia, which is really hard to do.

That's a tough one to hide for sure. And I know that it's been called beaver fever, not to be mistaken with like beber fever, but it is something that that's very known as a potential trigger for gut dysfunction, if you have it, you take medications for it. But blastocystis hummusis has been kind of controversial, where some people will say like, oh, it's part of your normal physiology. No, it's just like a normally occurring part of the microbiome

and it's not really associated with anything. But then there's all these research articles that will say, like, this person had blastocystis hominous and they ended up with chronic hives. They treated this. The hives went away. This person had irritable bowel syndrome and blastocystis huminous. they treated it and the IBS went away. And when I started working with clients, I found like

about 20 to 30 percent of people had this when I was using a specific stool test that's no longer made. And I started noticing that their thyroid antibodies would go down. Their food sensitivities would go away. Sometimes their thyroid function would improve. And recently there's been a couple of case studies published on this, maybe. I want to say they were done in Turkey, like two or three case studies, where they found that this particular protozoa, so you, it's not like a giant weird worm, like you can't see it with your naked eye, that it can be associated with Hashimoto's. And treating it can get Hashimoto's into remission.

When it comes to wellness, you're going to get the best results by focusing on the big needle movers. A lot of us spend a lot of time trying to optimize that last 1%, which creates a ton of stress and it actually doesn't help our help that much. At the top of the needle mover list, sleep. And one of the best ways to optimize your sleep is to optimize your mattress, which is why I love avocado green mattress so much. First of all, this mattress is so comfortable.

I have the one with the pillow top, which is medium firm, and it's just a dream. I miss it when I travel. It's better than even the fanciest hotel beds. Having a mattress that supports your joints and your body and feels good is going to help you get more sleep and better quality sleep. But then, on top of that, avocado mattresses are made with certified organic cotton, wool, and latex, and they are made safe and green guard gold certified. They're also Okotech certified, which is the gold standard.

I look for it in any mattresses, sheets, or towels that I buy, which means the materials have been rigorously tested for harmful substances. You can actually look for the Okotech standard 100 label right on the product, and I love this part. It includes a traceable certificate number and the name of the testing lab so you know exactly what you're getting. There are no toxic chemicals. There's no harmful off-gassing. It does not smell like it's going to kill you when you unbox it. This is what I mean.

I'm not going to swap out all of my clothing. which is that top 1% of optimization. But by making sure that my mattress and my bedding are as good for me as possible, I literally reduce my exposure during a third of my life, which is a huge needle mover for a one-time swap. I will also note, and this is a me thing, but I sleep super hot and avocado's materials are really breathable, and it makes me sweat the least of any mattress that I have slept on.

And avocado is a certified B-Corp and a 1% for the planet member because caring for yourself and caring for the planet do not have to be separate things. You can get up to 20% off organic mattresses and more by shopping Avocados President's Day Sale right now at avocadogreenmatress.com. That is avocadogreenmatress.com, no code needed. I very rarely get genuinely excited about skincare, but this is one of the most innovative products that I have come across in years and I am so obsessed with it and I've been telling all of my friends to get it, so now I need to tell you guys. Here's some science first.

Your skin isn't just getting older. It's being actively broken down by something called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped functioning but refuse to die. They sit there, releasing inflammatory signals, breaking down your collagen, degrading your skin barrier,

and accelerating every visible sign of aging. Scientists call them zombie cells and as they accumulate, they are one of the primary drivers of how old your skin looks and feels. The team at one skin, a group of female longevity researchers and PhDs spent five years testing over 900 peptides to figure out how to help reduce the accumulation of senescent cells. And they finally landed on it.

OSO1, the first peptide scientifically studied to reduce skin's biological age at the molecular level. OSO1 goes in and it clears out the senescent cells so it helps skin function like healthier, younger-looking skin. It is not masking the signs of aging. It's not true. targeting one thing. It is actually rolling the clock back at a cellular level. I've been using the face moisturizer for almost six months now and I love it so much. It feels amazing. It goes on really smoothly. It's not tacky at all. And I actually see a difference, which I just feel like is never the case with skincare. You want to always like see a real difference and you're kind of like, do, do I? Do I? And this, I genuinely do. Because it's clearing the senescent cells, it doesn't just target one thing. So my skin looks

firmer, it looks glowier, the texture feels dramatically smoother. And I feel like you can see that too. I also love the body moisturizer. It dries down really quickly, which is always a pet peeve of mine with moisturizers. I hate that like sticky feeling when you go to put your clothes on. This does not do that. But it does moisturize really, really well. And then again, I'm reducing my skin's biological age. I am not making it just look younger. I am making it actually younger. OneSkin has four peer-reviewed clinical studies in over 10,000 five-star reviews. The data backs everything up. For a limited time, get 15% off with code Liz at oneskin.c.com slash Liz.

Again, that's 15% off at oneskin.com with code Liz. I'm genuinely confused how masterclass gets literally the absolute top people in every single field to teach every single one of their classes. I use it when I want to learn things directly, like the cooking, class from Thomas Keller has all of the wisdom that you would normally have to go to culinary school for. But also, I'm being honest, this is like a use case I don't hear a lot of people talking about. I'll just watch it for entertainment when I want to do something that's far more interesting than scrolling. Christina Aguilera taught me to sing. Shan Boudrum's Art of Mastering's Art of Master's in Sex Appeal class.

It's 10 out of 10. There's menopause classes with leading doctors. There's script writing with Mindy Kaling. Literally, you name it. They're on master class and it is such a good way to get off your phone. have something that's like not quite as long or hard to get into as a TV show or a movie and that it just keeps you entertained and interested. And you are learning. There are over 200 classes from the world's best, all for just $10 a month when billed annually. And you get unlimited access to every class on the platform so you can learn at your own pace whenever you want on your phone, your computer, or even an audio mode like a podcast. If you're looking to stop scrolling and start consuming entertaining content that makes you feel excited and

helps you learn, Masterclass is it. And the best part, every membership comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can start learning risk-free. Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. Okay, so if somebody's listening and they have their little detective hat on, they're going to go get like, would you say start with the nutrient?

test, like where should they, like literally I'm listening. I turn off this podcast. I'm trying to figure out what is the root cause of my thyroid disorder. Where am I first step beginning? I would say definitely test your B12 vitamin D and your ferretin to see if you need to address those nutrients because you can feel like a brand new person once those levels are optimized and that can give you a lot more energy, your brain function back, and in some cases if you need to dig deeper than you can. And then some people advocate for an elimination diet. Sometimes getting off of gluten, dairy, and soy for 90 days might be a great place to start. I'm not like a really big proponent of very limited diets. There's diets that have helped a lot of people like the autoimmune paleo

diet, but I'm not like necessarily like everybody should be on that and everybody start on that. My school of thought is like, well, why are you sensitive to so many foods? It's not because foods are evil. It's because there's something going on with your gut. So if you've been on an eliminating diet for 90 days. You've been gluten-free and dairy-free and soy-free for 90 days and you're still having symptoms. Then maybe doing some deeper work, figuring out which food sensitivities you have. So you might do a food sensitivity test. I like the ALA test, the IGG test. Or you might do some stool testing like the gut zoomer or the GI-Map test to see if there's anything funky going on within your gut. Why dairy and soy? We talked about gluten, but why would dairy? Is that, is that?

just an inflammation conversation? It's definitely an inflammation conversation. Just looking at the stats and the data of all the people over the last decade plus, those are the top three foods that I see. So about 80% of people are going to be dairy and soy sensitive. And I know dairy can be an amazing food and so delicious as part of many people's healthy diet. But if you're sensitive to it, that can cause a lot of inflammation in your body. I had a doctor who specializes in the microbiome, And he's in neuroscience as well in the podcast. And he was like, almost everybody listening to this is lactose intolerant. Like, unless you have a very specific ancestral background, like you are probably lactose intolerant,

which I think was heartbreaking to a lot of people. But also there's a lot of cheeses that are naturally lactose-free. And I feel like that's important to talk about. There's definitely lactose-free cheeses if you're lactose intolerant. The unfortunate thing is it's not always lactose. It could be the dairy proteins. So, like, K-Kin and whey. And I know, like, way protein is amazing.

it supports glutathione levels, but for some people, it can lead to inflammation if you're sensitive to it. And I will say for some people, this needs to be a long-term exclusion. Other people can reintroduce dairy back into their diet once they do some gut healing. What about cruciferous vegetables? How do those impact our thyroid? Cruciferous vegetables are sort of one of those things that gets a lot of attention, but not for good reason. So there is this theory that cruciferous vegetables are not. known as goiterogens, which it's a broad term basically means interferes with thyroid function. The way that they are supposed to work is by blocking iodine absorption into the thyroid gland.

But one, you'd have to eat like a buttload of them in the raw state. So most people are not going to do that, right? And two, Hashimoto's, which is the cause for most people with hypothyroid issues, it's not necessarily like a low iodine status. Your iodine levels are probably fine. you might want to test them to see where you're at before you assume that you need to skip cruciferous vegetables. If you hate broccoli or whatever, like go for it, right? Avoid them, but just don't do it on behalf of your thyroid because they can be very helpful for detoxification.

And they can be very helpful just as part of an overall healthy diet. And does cooking them remove or significantly reduce the goiterogenic effect? Exactly. So I have not had too many people who have issues. with them interfering with thyroid function and definitely if you cook them or lightly steam them that would eliminate any effect they would have. The one thing I will mention is some cases, some people might have like sulfur intolerance or if they have SIBO, which is more common in hypothyroidism, they might find crucifers do upset their gut. But that doesn't mean they're evil.

That means and they're bad for the thyroid gland. That means you've got something going on with your gut or you want to support your liver pathways to properly get rid of sulfur pounds. Can you talk to me about the relationship between our thyroid and our gut? Like, are sometimes we having gut symptoms and actually that's a sign of thyroid imbalances or are thyroid things causing gut? Like, what is it? Is it bidirectional? What's going on there? It's definitely a two-way street. So the thyroid gland and the gut tissue have like the same fetal origin. And definitely if we have a sluggish thyroid, that's going to impact our gut function. So constipation is one of those symptoms that is going to be very, very common if you have an underactive thyroid. If you have

an overactive thyroid, you might have diarrhea. And oftentimes, you know, what's going on in your gut can really impact your thyroid function. So if your microbiome is out of balance, if you're not properly absorbing nutrients, if you have gut infections, this can lead you to have autoimmune thyroid symptoms and autoimmunity against your thyroid gland. Are there other lifestyle factors that we should be paying more or less in terms of the goiterogenic stuff, like attention to when it comes to our thyroid health? One of the hacks that's really helpful for thyroid health is actually heating up your body. So if you can spend time in a sauna or an Epsom salt bath or doing some hot yoga if you're able to, that's going to be very, very helpful. One, because you're going to sweat.

A lot of times people with hypothyroidism, they don't sweat. It's never a symptom they complain about. like nobody's like, oh, I wish I sweated more, right? But sweating is actually an important way for us to get rid of toxins, right? And so this is going to be a really big game changer for many people with hypothyroidism. Now, you might guess what I might say next. One of the wellness trends, like cold plunges, right? Probably not the best thing to do and not the place to start if you're like hypothyroid. Like I know it can work wonders for inflammation and for many people, but most thyroid patients, they're going to feel better when they're actually like spending time in a sauna, doing a hot bath and then, you know, really offering their body that warmth because their thyroid gland has to work extra hard to create warmth

in their bodies, right? And so we're giving it a break and we're allowing it to do its job better when we when we give ourselves that warmth. And then are there any other lifestyle factors that you would add in that you think we should just like be talking about more societally? Definitely supporting your liver pathways. And, you know, going back to your point with charcoal, it's a great way to bind up toxins. And I used to utilize that with my clients, but most of them got super, super constipated. And so I started doing just generalized liver support. And this might include things like an acetyl cystine, milk thistle. We might do something like amino acid support, liver and gallbladder support, just doing that sauna therapy, sweat therapy. And we do that

for like a two-week time period to help to detox them and get some of that toxic backlog, there's a whole host of different toxins that can contribute to thyroid dysfunction. If you were to do a PubMed search on like any toxin, there's probably an article talking about how it can interfere with thyroid function and lead to thyroid autoimmunity. And for a lot of people, I'm not even like necessarily going down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out which exact toxin they have in their body, just supporting. their detox pathways can be incredibly helpful. And why aren't they working? Like, why isn't our liver just doing its job that it's supposed to be doing? I think few reasons. One of them is because you're not

sweating. So your liver kind of has to take on a more burden essentially. Interesting. If you're constipated, you're not detoxing through your bowels, right? And so then that comes back to the liver. And then you end up basically having this backlog. So it's like one of those DMV workers where they just like have the stack of papers on their desk and they're moving super, super slow. Your body keeps sending it to like your skin. It keeps sending it to your intestines, your colon. And then they're like, no, no, we're sending it back. And then your liver's like, okay, so I have to process all this now myself. Yeah. And there's like cofactors and amino acids that it needs. And those can become depleted, right? And if you're a lot of times people with hypothyroidism are also have low stomach acid. And so they're

not getting enough amino acids from their protein containing foods. And so they're not getting like the raw materials. And so it becomes like this perfect storm. And big part of what I do is like, okay, let's make sure you're pooping every day, right? Let's make sure you're sweating every day. Let's make sure that you're hydrating. Let's make sure, you know, we'll give you some of these supportive nutrients to kind of clear out that backlog. And I have to say like it was a complete accident. I just had the client that we were doing a ton of different testing with and she just wasn't getting better. It was like a lot of money. And she was like, tried this diet, tried this supplement, and kept reacting to everything.

And I was like, let's just try this liver support stuff. Why don't you follow this protocol for two weeks? And then she was like, my gosh, I feel so much better. I was like, that's amazing. And I was like, I don't know why. But then, you know, I kind of went down the rabbit hole to the point where I started utilizing it with all of my clients. I had women with multiple chemical sensitivities who like weren't able to walk into like a Yankees candle store or something like that.

And because of the smells just overpowering. for them and they weren't able to breathe and utilizing just that two-week liver support protocol, they were able to actually start living life, right? That's amazing. And I also feel we need to like tell Yankee candle to like calm it down to. And like Uber drivers with the scent thing. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, this makes me want to throw up everywhere. Yeah.

And that's another reason because we're constantly bombarded by these amazing sense, right? Like they're like everywhere. I find them like so aggressive. Okay, let's get into the medication conversation. If somebody is trying to figure out whether medication is right for them, what would you ask them to consider? I would definitely check in with them to see how they're feeling and look at their numbers. So you should have the TSA, generally speaking,

most people are going to feel best with it between 0.5 and 2. So are you getting that? But also look at your thyroid hormone levels. Is your T4 and T3 converting proper? So if you have like top level of the reference range of T4, but your T3 is at the bottom of the reference range, there's a indication that you're probably not converting your medications properly. And so you might benefit from adding a T3 containing hormone to your routine.

This could be something like armor thyroid or another type of natural desiccated thyroid or tyrosant or compounded T3 to supplement the least. levothyroxine. Sometimes that's the case. Some people, especially if they have like acid reflux or if they like to chug their thyroid medications with coffee, I've been there. Do you not recommend doing that? You don't want to take your thyroid medications with anything other than a glass of water. And then you need to wait 30 minutes at least. Sometimes an hour. Some people need to wait more. And so many different substances can interfere from calcium supplements to iron supplements. And even, you know, that delicious morning coffee, this can really interfere with your absorption of thyroid meds. Thank goodness for Italians.

They figured out that they have these cappuccino lovers and they figured out a gel cap formulation of thyroid hormones known as tyrosin and that has levothyroxine. And you can like take that with coffee and that doesn't interfere with other types of supplements or medications. And even if you have absorption issues, you can still do well with that. So I oftentimes educate people about like when you go to see a doctor, check in with them to see if they work with every type of thyroid medication because some of them might be really well versed in like synthroid or levothyroxine, but they may not be aware of compounded options or natural desiccated thyroid or tyrosin. And sometimes they're like, you know, this is it, you know, like you have a hammer,

everything's a nail. And then patients try to say, like, what about this other medication? They don't want to prescribe it because they don't use it. They don't know how to use it. or maybe they've had some people react poorly to it. So you definitely want to work with a practitioner. It doesn't have to be a physician, but somebody that knows how to dose the various thyroid hormones. Are there any that you think are kind of universally less good or universally better? Or is it all about your specific numbers and treating those?

I think it's about your numbers and symptoms for sure. I will say the patient favorites tend to be like the natural desiccated thyroid because they lose a little bit more weight and their brain works a little bit better. Okay. I've heard from a lot of people who felt that the medication contributed to weight gain or inability to lose weight. Is that a common side effect that you see? I would say in some cases, if they're using like levothyroxine, that they're just not converting properly to the T3 and that essentially your body does it on its own. But when you give your body hormones, the hormones are supposed to do that so that can kind of create this weird situation. And in those cases, You either need to get like on a T3 containing medication or you can utilize some of the things to support that T4 to T3 conversion. One of them is actually like that liver support that we talked about. Most of that conversion happens in the liver.

You have a liver backlog, then the liver is not going to be properly converting your hormones. Some of the other conversion happens in the gut. So if you have gut issues, that conversion isn't going to be happening. Low ferretin status also can interfere with that proper conversion. So a lot of times it's like dialing in various dials, I saw a meme a few years back where a medication was really pissed off because the person was expecting it to do everything for them, right? And we can't rely on medications to do everything for us, right? We still need to do the lifestyle changes in many cases. And we still need to take

care of our bodies. And then the medications can work their best. So that should be kind of a key takeaway from this conversation. To the point of your stage five thing earlier, too, is like even if you are on a medication, you probably need to be making lifestyle changes to address some sort of root cause issue so that this doesn't have other impacts on your body. Absolutely. Medications are wonderful, but they can't do everything. So let's say you had a nutrient deficiency that caused your thyroid condition. You getting on that medication isn't necessarily going to solve that nutrient deficiency, right? You still want to address that nutrient deficiency because if you're anemic and hypothyroid, you're going to feel like crap.

You correct the hypothyroidism. You're going to feel a little bit better, but that anemia is still going to be there. And so you might need to address that anemia to get your brain function back, to feel human, to not have mood swings, to not feel cold, to not have hair loss, right? Are there any known long-term negative side effects

of the medications? This is a little bit controversial. They have been tied to different types of osteoporosis, especially if a person is overdosed or cardiac issues. But generally speaking, if you are managing them well, they are bioidentical, right? So they are what your body would naturally make. They're not necessarily medications that interfere with different receptors and stimulate your body to do something it's not supposed to be doing. It's not like using hormones postmenopause where,

you know, there's a big question about whether should we be, you know, 85 years old with the libido of a 20-year-old, you know, I'm not sure about that yet. Ask me in 30 years, right? But thyroid hormones, are going to be bioidentical. So if they're dosed correctly and conservatively and not overdose and not underdosed, most people tend to do pretty well with them. If somebody wanted to absolutely avoid medication, what would you say to them? I would say keep an open mind, right? And not so open that your brain falls out, but definitely keep an open mind. Medications might help you at some point. Definitely if you're trying to conceive or if you're having a lot of symptoms or if you've had thyroid disease for quite some time. This might be the kindest thing to do for yourself is to take a

medication. If you're in the early stages, there might be actually some things that we can work with. Mayo and acetol and selenium and subclinical hypothyroidism can sometimes completely normalize thyroid function and thyroid antibodies. So I love advocating for the use of that. You might adjust your vitamin D levels. There are things like aschwaganda and adaptogens that can be very, very helpful. Some people do the gluten-free diet within 90 days, their thyroid function comes back, right? And so I would say give yourself like a timeline where we can definitely try these lifestyle interventions 90 days and see where you're at. It's like, have you made progress? Are you feeling better? Great. Then, you know, keep up, keep going in this direction. But if you're like just like feeling worse and worse and

worse, then perhaps it's time to make a new plan. But cold laser therapy over the thyroid gland can be very helpful. What's that? It's kind of like red light therapy and you put it over your thyroid gland. There are some studies in Brazil that have shown people were able to get off of their thyroid meds, sometimes reduce their thyroid meds, reduce their autoimmune attack against their thyroid glands. So that can be one potential option to look into some people, especially if they've had excess iodine. I've had clients that were like, seaweed snacks and high-dose iodine drops and they developed Hashimoto's. Doing a low iodine diet for some time can help to bring that into balance.

And then addressing like iron status for some people that can help normalize that pathway. So I would say there's a lot of different pathways that can be out of balance. And especially in their early stages, we can kind of shift them and bring your body back into balance. But definitely keep an open mind. And I don't want anybody to like get stuck and think that medications are evil because is they can be a life, life-changing resource for many people too. Can you do that cold therapy at home, the cold laser?

Or no? Some people do. When I first found out about it, it was like 10 plus years ago and I ordered this like cold laser from Brazil. And I was like, I'm going to like burn my eye out with this. And it just, you know, I'm trying to read in Portuguese, which I can't. Since that time, there have been various clinics that will offer this. There's still few and far between in the States.

but also I've had anecdotally people tell me using like red light therapy over their thyroid gland, which is not a cold laser, but very kind of like a similar genre of therapies. And they find utilizing that and generally speaking, they would use it more frequently. The cold laser protocols were I believe like twice a week for six weeks where this would be maybe like an ongoing maintenance thing. People have seen reduction in thyroid antibodies, improvement in thyroid function with those. I've been really impressed by the anecdotal stories that I've heard about red light therapy. Yeah, none of the companies can really say anything because they're not FDA approved for it, but we do have, like, people that have used it that write in and they have really good results. Is there anything that you think men and women should consider differently when they're treating thyroid disorders?

One important consideration is like symptoms, because women will oftentimes say they have weight gain as a core symptom or fatigue, where for men, oftentimes they'll say they have things like trouble growing up. a beard or maybe they're not putting as much muscle on or they might have libido issues. And for men, really important consideration is sometimes that normalizing your thyroid function can normalize your testosterone. For men, like testosterone clinics are like a popular thing these days. And I would advocate, like if you are looking into that, like, please check your thyroid function because sometimes optimizing your thyroid function can actually optimize your other hormones. Generally speaking, the same things would apply. I have so many friends who have. been diagnosed with the thyroid condition after pregnancy.

Pregnancy is a huge cause of autoimmune disease and women. Is there anything that we can do either during pregnancy or postpartum to lessen the risks of that? Postpartum thyroiditis is really important condition and many women do develop it after pregnancy. Selenium supplements, vitamin D supplements, and fish oil supplements during pregnancy can actually prevent postpartum thyroiditis. So that's one avenue you can take.

having support in your home can be very, very helpful too. I know I shared before we started that I have a beautiful seven-year-old son who also didn't sleep for three years, first three years of his life very well. And so that can be very, very draining. Like that sleep deprivation can really wreck with our hormones. And so I'm a big advocate of making sure that you have somebody there for you, whether it's like your mom or a good friend, a co-op, a point. postpartum dula, somebody that can help you navigate those waters. Because I feel like some of it

is just like you don't have, you pour all of this energy into this wonderful little human being. In the Western world, we are so disconnected from our families and community. I grew up in Poland and my aunt lives with, whose has four wonderful children, lives with my grandma and her sister's next door. And there's like just such a beautiful community. that is there and surrounding women when they have their babies and providing that care. What about perimenopause and menopause? How does that impact our thyroid function? The three peak times when a woman might be diagnosed with a thyroid disorder would be pregnancy, puberty, and perimenopause. And there is an intricate feedback loop between our hormones.

And definitely perimenopause is going to be one of those times where many women are actually diagnosed because that's when things just sort of come to the surface. And so we had some of our hormones, whether that was progesterone or cortisol, kind of DHA powering us through. But once we hit that perimenopause age, then these systems sort of break down and we become more sensitive to the triggers that are within our bodies. I posted a meme recently. It was like when I had everything figured out with Hashimoto's and then perimenopause hit. So this is a really big lifestyle change for women. I will say a lot of the same things that I, talk about for Hashimoto's, they're going to apply to perimenopause. Do women oftentimes with Hashimoto's may hit paramedopause earlier.

So they might have premature ovarian insufficiency where they might go into metapause five, ten years earlier than women without Hashimoto's or autoimmunity. So that's something to be very aware of. Like, you might, your mom might have been 45, but you might be 35 when a lot of these symptoms are occurring. I'm a big proponent of, you know, making sure that you are hormonally balanced in perimenopause. Sometimes that looks like more progesterone. Sometimes that looks like more liver support. Sometimes to help detoxify the estrogen always looks like, you know, balancing your stress response too. And then the last sort of hormonal thing I want to talk about is if somebody has unexplained

infertility, do you think they should be looking at their thyroid? Absolutely. The thyroid dysfunction can be such an important root cause of multiple miscarriages, having trouble getting pregnant, could be related to women having poor outcomes with pregnancy and even like developmental delays and disabilities in the offspring. And so it like maddens me that every woman of child bearing age doesn't have her thyroid function tested because your TSA being just a tiny bit elevated might make it harder for you to conceive and keep a pregnancy. And thyroid antibodies, they can actually impact your synovial fluid and to prevent like proper fertilization. Just even having those thyroid antibodies on board can make it harder to conceive. And there's like very

straightforward things we can do. We can do selenium dose about 200 micrograms per day. There's going to be about a 40% reduction in thyroid antibodies and vitamin D and myoanacetol. All of these things are, I don't want to say basic, but they're just readily available. Their research is out there and that they can help women have babies. I've worked with women in their 70s who were never able to have children because their thyroid dysfunction was never corrected properly. And they wanted children, right? It's like if you don't want children, that's wonderful for you.

But if you want them and you can't have them, like we really need to support women and figuring out what's driving that. Are there any other myths about thyroid health or little kind of like nitpicky, gritty information that you want to share? People will say that you should eat two Brazil nuts a day for thyroid function. And I just will say, like, that's not really going to do much for you. Like, you definitely need a selenium supplement. So Brazil nuts are thought to be like a rich source of selenium. But it depends on where they're grown.

So if they're grown in one type of soil, they might be low in selenium. If they're grown in another type of soil, they might be high in selenium. and like you don't really know what you're getting. And it's just kind of like one of those things that gets perpetuated. And I have so many clients with really high antibodies. They're eating their Brazil nuts. They don't even like Brazil nuts. They're like sensitive to nuts.

You know, we'll put them on a selenium supplement and the thyroid antibodies and symptoms reduce. So this is like a pet peeve of mind because I know it's like very like social media friendly, right? But it's like it doesn't work. I love people. I'm like me. I say that.

That's definitely something that I have said. Because I don't know. I just like I've heard that. So I'll put two Brazil nuts in my nut milk that I make. And I'm like, look, I'm having my little thyroid supplement. And you're like, no, that's not. If you are just doing it for general thyroid health and you like them and you're not sensitive to nuts, that's wonderful for you.

But if you're trying to like actively reduce your thyroid antibodies from like 1,000 to 500, then you need a selenium supplement to do that because it's a narrow therapeutic index nutrient. And so if you do it too high, you're going to be toxic. If you don't do enough of it, it's not going to move the needle. So that's just one of those things. Like I'm not against, I am not hating on really. Brazil nuts. I think they're delicious. But, and great for thyroid function in general, but if you're

really trying to have like a therapeutic effect, same goes with probiotics, right? So probiotics are amazing, but if you're trying to like move the needle in your dysbiosis, there's like the doses that you need for intervention. And then there's like the doses of probiotics for general health maintenance. So I would say Brazil nuts are in that same category. Great for general health but not going to move the needle to lower those antibodies aggressively. And then we always love to end on a homework assignment. So I'm going to give you two. One, can you give us one homework assignment if we don't have a thyroid condition, but we just want to have something to add into our lives to keep our thyroid as healthy as possible? And then can we get

one homework assignment to support our thyroid if we do have a thyroid condition? Definitely. So if you're somebody that is wanting to maintain good thyroid health, I would say for prevention, if you can do sauna, maybe 15 to 30 minutes a week, that would be wonderful for you or just find a great way to sweat, whether that's an Epson Salt Bath, Hot Yoga, or whatever makes you sweat, that's going to be really great way to mobilize and get rid of toxins. I would say if you have a thyroid condition and if you're dealing with anxiety, constipation, trouble sleeping and pain or any kind of cramps, I would consider either doing an Epson Salt bath, you can soak in that for 15, 30 minutes, one cup of Epsons salts. That's going to replenish

your magnesium stores and you're going to sleep so much better. Your joint pains are going to go away. Your cramps are going to improve. This is going to be something that can be a really big game changer for you. Can you tell us a little bit about where people can find your work and maybe work with you, all of these things? My website is Thyroid Pharmacistusus.com and you can find lots of my articles all about Hashimoto's and thyroid health. I have a few popular books, Hashimoto's protocols, probably the most popular. It's about a 90-day plan to take charge of your health and utilize some of these protocols regarding of what your causes are to feel better in a very short amount of time, such as the liver reset that we talked about. And then Hashimoto's the root cause

dives into like all the different triggers and all the different tests that you can do to figure out what might be your unique root cause. I am on social media and I also have a podcast called Thyroid Pharmacist Healing Conversations where we do little deep dives on all elements of different thyroid symptoms or different thyroid nutrients or root causes and triggers. Is there an episode people should start with? One of the favorite episodes has been the top 10 things I wish my undergranologist would have told me when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto. So I think you'll get a lot of benefit from that episode. Yeah, I want to listen to that and I don't have Hashimoto's. That sounds very intriguing. Well, thank you so much. This was so helpful. Thank you for the work that you're doing,

that you're helping so many people. And I just appreciate everything that you're putting out there. Thank you so much for having me and for spreading awareness about Hashimoto's and hypothyroid disease and for making the world a little bit healthier with your work. I hope you loved this episode. You can find Dr. Wenz's new book, Adrenal Transformation Protocol, wherever books are sold. tons more information and programs at thyroid pharmacist.com. There are two things that you can do right now that make a huge difference in the success of this show in our ability to make this show for you, and they are both free. First, follow the podcast on Spotify or Apple or YouTube or wherever you're watching.

Even if you think you are following, go and check the button on the podcast homepage, the one that lists all of the episodes. Make sure that it says following. There was a glitch that a lot of people got. They were unfollowed from the podcast. So just go check real quick. Next, send a link to this episode to just one person that you think would benefit from it. I have like 25 friends that are dealing with a thyroid issue, unfortunately right now.

So lots to choose from. But just send a link to one person. You'll be helping them. You'll be helping the podcast. It's a win all around. We are able to bring you this show completely for free thanks to the amazing brands that we partner with. If you're looking for science-backed products to elevate every single part of your life, you can find all of our current discount codes, including any code that you heard in this episode

at lizmoody.com slash codes. And do not forget to sign up for our newsletter, the takeaway. You can find that at lizmoody.substack.com. We have full transcripts for every single episode. So if you want to go back over what all the things that Isabella said were of like test, protocols, supplements, all of that, you can do that. You can go through the whole transcript there. We also have bonus Friday content that you will not get anywhere else like this Friday.

We're sharing your most genius ways to save money on weddings. Last week I shared all of my top 12 most favorite books of all time. You can find all of that at lizmoody.substack.com. Okay. I love you. I deeply, deeply, deeply hope that this episode helped you. I know so many people dealing with thyroid problems. And it's just, it's really, really, really hard.

So if that is you, I'm sending you so much love. I hope that something in this episode helps you feel better. And I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.