Alternative Medicine Hashimoto Disease

Disclaimer:  I am a Certified Integrative and Nutrition Health Coach. I am not a medical doctor. This is my personal experience with putting Hashimoto’s into remission naturally after three years of research, consulting with numerous doctors (both conventional and integrative) and testing different treatment options. I learned to question everything and be my own advocate.  This article is not intended to be used as medical advice.

Listen to your gut, pun intended, and be informed about your health.  Links between immunity, gut health and diet are finally at the forefront but more research needs to be done.  

Maybe these pics will help demonstrate the effects Hashimoto’s can have on you.  I suffered from symptoms on and off for years.  But it wasn’t until late 2014 that I could really start to see what was happening.  I was diagnosed in 2015 and by 2016, felt the effects of Hashimoto’s fully.  I tried doing all sorts of things from the Whole30 program which helped a bit but wasn’t enough in the beginning, to attending the renowned FX Mayr Clinic in Austria.  It was not until late summer of 2017 and early 2018 that I started working on how to cure Hashimoto’s naturally via the AutoImmune Protocol (AIP).

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Can you believe I am the same weight in the first 2 pics?  Or that I weigh more in the last pic than I do in the first two pics?  The reason: inflammation

Are you one of millions of people who know something’s wrong with their body but your doctor tells you everything is fine?  Do you continue to gain weight even with a healthy diet and moderate exercise?  Have you been told the answer to your fatigue and weight gain is to go to the gym and be more active? Or worse, been told to take an antidepressant?? Has your productivity or overall drive faded?  You might have figured out that something is up with your thyroid but tests reveal your TSH level, the end all be all of thyroid function tests, is within normal range.

I’m here to tell you that your thyroid is way more complex than just a TSH test.  Your doctor should be testing you for several other levels, see below.  I went to 4, yup 4 endocrinologists, who kept telling me everything was fine and that my ailments were all in my head.   Complaints about fatigue and weight gain are the complaints of fat and lazy people, no one wants to hear it… not even your doc.

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It was my gynecologist who finally tested me for thyroid antibodies after I complained of symptoms for over a year.  Blood tests revealed my body had developed thyroid antibodies well out of normal ranges. A few days later, a thyroid ultrasound showed two nodules and moderate tissue damage from the antibodies attacking my thyroid tissue.

Even after the tests came back positive, three more endocrinologists said having antibodies is normal and that I should take a “wait and see” approach.  Two docs offered me metformin, the drug for diabetic patients, even though I had normal blood sugar just to shut me up.

High thyroid antibodies are not normal., especially when its the cause of healthy tissue being attacked!   Why is that not common sense I wonder.   A “ wait and see” approach is literally a guarantee to a path of thyroid destruction and life long cycle of medicines. In fact, its proof of an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis where your body attacks itself. Eventually these antibodies will destroy your entire thyroid, leaving you with severe hypothyroidism and in need of a Thyroidectomy (removal of the thyroid gland).

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Hashimoto’s is the number one cause of hypothyroidism.   Many don’t even know they have Hashimoto’s because it is their TSH alone that gets tested. Only those whose thyroids have been destroyed far along enough by the antibodies will start to see out of normal TSH ranges, finally indicating technical/clinical hypothyroidism to the medical world.

Some docs will tell you that you don’t have Hashimoto’s unless your TSH is out of range.  I would leave their office immediately.  Even what constitutes an appropriate TSH range is outdated in the endocrinology world.  A TSH below 2.5 is normal.  Some endocrinologists say below 4 is okay, others say 10! Why the disparity?  It is because these doctors haven’t read the latest guidelines and literature.  It’s negligent if you ask me.

The only thing docs are taught in medical school about thyroid treatment is to prescribe synthetic hormone if your TSH is abnormal.  That’s it.  The standard treatment for high TSH is Levothyroxine or Synthroid, which may or may not alleviate the issue.  More on that later.

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So why do so-called doctors not acknowledge thyroid antibodies? Because, as alluded to above, they have no idea how to treat your antibodies.  It falls under the gray world of autoimmune disease, a mysterious and untreatable defect of the body (that would be sarcasm).

To top it off, once your body develops one auto immune disease, you are at risk for developing several more auto immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, celiac disease, lupus, Crohn’s disease aka inflammatory bowel disease, alopecia arreata, psoriasis, eczema and more.   These diseases are all the result of the same mechanism, inflammation as well as antibodies attacking healthy tissue but just in different parts of your body.

It’s not all doom and gloom. Autoimmune diseases are very treatable and can go into remission.  Mine did. One of the major keys is to eliminate inflammation as much as possible.  The other is to find out why it’s happening in the first place.

My Thyroid Journey

Many are symptomatic way before their TSH starts to show out of range.  My TSH never actually went above 3.2.  This was my experience.

My body was shutting down.  I was tired all the time and put on 15 lbs in a 3 month span.   My face and hands were habitually puffy.  I didn’t recognize myself in pictures or in the mirror anymore.  My skin was dry no matter what I did.  I could feel my thyroid swollen and pulsing at different times. My fingernails started forming ridged lines… a telltale sign that your thyroid is really starting to diminish, although destruction can start years prior.  I became sensitive to light, would feel cold at the drop of a hat, developed weird food allergies in my mid 30s, became disinterested in people and couldn’t sleep through the night.  I even got shingles, another surefire sign that your immunity is low.  After testing positive for inflammatory markers, every endocrinologist I saw still did nothing.

It didn’t help that I was on a plane every month, disrupting what should have been me practicing normal sleeping and eating patterns.

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P.S.  It took me 18 months to get pregnant.  It was only until I fixed my issues with Hashimoto’s did I finally get a positive result.  If you’re having fertility issues, definitely check out this post:

TSH, thyroid-stimulating hormone, is a pituitary hormone that fluctuates depending on how much circulating thyroid hormone there is in your body.  It tells your pituitary gland how much Thyroxine, aka T4, to produce.  Your body then converts T4 to T3, the usable form of thyroid hormone.   T3 is used for so many things in your body from body temperature regulation to metabolism to heart rate and much more.  Elevated TSH usually indicates hypothyroidism.  It is possible to reverse the road to hypothyroidism if you catch Hashimoto’s in its’ early enough stages.

Lab tests show elevated TSH in people who have advanced Hashimoto’s or primary hypothyroidism.  However, TSH can fluctuate so it’s not always an adequate measure.  The other issue is that TSH will be normal for many until they reach an advanced stage of tissue destruction, as was the case with me, and so many others who go untreated until the damage is extensive.   So that is why you must test for other indicators.

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Back to Levothyroxine and Synthroid.  These are widely prescribed synthetic T4 drugs.  The issue with both is that if you have a conversion problem to T3, these drugs won’t work!  Many people have T4 > T3 conversion issues.  In fact, the drugs increase something called Reverse T3, aka RT3 , for those with conversion issues… making symptoms even worse!  The other issue is that these pharmaceuticals contain fillers like soy or cornstarch, which tend to aggravate inflammation or even worse for people with allergies to these ingredients.

Let’s get into what your doctor should test for.  Many endocrinologists, especially in the U.S., will not order these tests for you. Why?  They think its irrelevant plus insurance may not cover it.  They’ll have to explain to their hospital administration why they are ordering tests outside of normal protocol.

You have three options.  1) Demand it from your doctor.  If they still don’t budge, ask them to document in your file that they refuse to order these tests.  That should help.    2) Find an integrative or functional doctor who generally are much more aware of thyroid function, hormone production and how nutrition relates to all of it or 3) order them yourself from a private lab.  Send me a message

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