The Key To Deciphering The Mysteries Of Your Thyroid And Fixing Your Thyroid Hormones Forever.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. No podcast would be complete without us talking about West African peanut chicken. Why is it that my voice drops and I accentuate my S's when I'm talking about food? I have no clue because I don't really watch the Food Network. I don't know how they talk on those shows. It's just like my built in evolutionary mechanism to want to sound sexy when I talk about food. Anyways, I digress. West African peanut chicken with sauteed kale and rice. Yeah, we're talking about a hearty peanut stew with paprika and coriander and two, count them, not one, but two different kinds of peppercorn, a vinegar infused rice in a rich peanut butter and coconut milk sauce. This is a meal that is getting delivered to my house this week. While the meal isn't getting delivered, all the ingredients are getting delivered. And the recipe card that shows me how to make it, it's all from today's sponsor, Blue Apron. Now, Blue Apron doesn't just send you crap to your house. We're not talking about chicken that's been raised in a farm in a tiny little cage or like peanuts that are covered in mold. No, they actually get all their beef and their chicken and their pork from responsibly raised animals. Their seafood is sourced sustainably. Their produce is from farms that practice regenerative farming. And they send these meals to your house we with recipe cards. Then you just cook them. It's less than 10 bucks per person, per meal. Super easy. And to get your first three meals totally free from Blue Apron, along with a freshness guarantee, that means there's not gonna be any nasty mold growing on your food. You go to blueapron.com Ben that's blueapron.com Ben. First three meals free. I'm telling you, you gotta try the West African peanut chicken with sauteed kale and rice. Check it out. This PODC also brought to you by the Human Charger. So the mechanism of action of this tiny little biohacking device is that it emits light that interacts with the photosensitive areas of your brain when you stick the little earbuds that come along with it into, of all things, your ears. So when you do that, you release serotonin, you release dopamine, and you release noradrenaline. And all of those help with mental alertness and mood and energy levels, and even to reduce the effects of things like jet lag and poor sleep. So the proteins that are on the surface of your brain are Very similar to the ones found in the retina of your eye. And with better living through science or a little gadget like this, you can actually shine light on those photoreceptors and do some pretty cool things to your body. So it's called the human charger and you can check it out@HumanCharger.com Ben go to HumanCharger.com Ben and when you go there, you can use code that bee Fitness for 20% off. I've been using this thing since 2015. That means almost two years I've been blasting my ears with light. I swear by it. Especially in the winter and especially when I'm traveling. And again, you get 20% off. Go to humancharger.com ben and use code bfitness for 20% off. Today's show is all about thyroid. Thyroid tissue, thyroid issues, thyroid confusion. It's a topic near and dear to my heart. You're going to learn why in today's show, so enjoy. In this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Show, 1800s genius English physician was like, what's all these people with goiters on their neck and hypothyroidism? He extracts sheep thyroid gland. He injects it into a human and it works. Thus comes natural desiccated thyroid, which was the treatment for people up until the 1950s when drug companies could not patent desiccated thyroid. So what did they do? They created T4 Synthroid and they touted it as the one stop only answer. He can't afford to have children right now. We're going to cut his sex drive and decrease his testosterone. Same goes for female. She's not in a position to have a baby right now. She's starving or running from danger. We need to shut this down.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power.

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Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And I will admit it. I have thyroid issues. And I've had thyroid issues pretty much ever since I went through about a 12 month stint where I combined what I would say is called extreme ketosis. We're Talking like a 90% plus fat based diet without like cycling carbohydrates in or anything like that. Just full on fat based diet for about a year. And I combined that with really hard and heavy training for Ironman Triathlon. Now, granted, a big part of this was for a study that I participated in called the Faster study over at Dr. Jeff Volek's laboratory, which at the time was at University of Connecticut, where we were trying to see like what would happen to the human body in terms of fat oxidation rates and becoming a fat burning machine when you essentially restricted carbohydrates pretty intensively. And combine that with a lot of endurance exercise and sure enough, I became a really intensive fat burning machine. But at the same time, since then I've actually had to battle rock bottom, relatively rock bottom T3 levels and really high TSH thyroid stimulating hormones over the past several years. And so hypothyroidism and the thyroid in general is a topic near and dear to my heart. And I know there's other people out there. I mean, there's over 200 million people in the world and 20 plus million Americans some kind of thyroid issue. And 60% or more of those are undiagnosed or completely unaware of their condition. And it causes things like poor sleep and constipation and, you know, in women, gynecological issues like miscarriages and fibroids, it causes hormone imbalances, it can lead to anemia, it can lead to different forms of adrenal fatigue. It can even lead to Things like type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. And so whenever I see a good book on thyroid come out, I like to look through it. And frankly, in the past several years, there has been a dearth of books about the thyroid. However, I recently got my hands on a book that I would say is one of the most comprehensive resources that I've found in terms of not insulting your intelligence by spitting out what every other book out there, I think, tends to say about the thyroid, but instead taking a really, really deep dive into the world of thyroid horm and then teaching you how to fix your thyroid for good. And the author is right here on the show with me. So the book is called the Paleo Thyroid. Stop Feeling Fat, Foggy and Fatigued. A little bit of alliteration there at the hands of uninformed doctors. Reclaim youm Health. The author is Elle Russ. And Elle is of course an author. She's a health coach. She's the host of a different podcast. It's called the Primal Blueprint Podcast. She does that under or With Mark Sisson, that's kind of like part of his brand, the whole primal brand. And she actually sits on the advisory board of the Primal Health Coach program that Mark Sisson has created. So she wrote the Paleothyroid Solution recently. I recently read it, and I had to get her on the show to talk about not only her intriguing journey fighting thyroid, but also some of the fascinating topics that she delves into in this book. So, Elle, thanks for coming on the show.

What a great intro. Thank you so much for having me. And I was unaware of your personal thyroid issues. And we can either. I have some ideas as to why that happened to you once you described what you went through for a year. And also we can cover anything off the podcast afterwards if you, you know, wanted to talk blood work and look at stuff, but.

Sweet. I love being a podcaster. I get free medical consulting from experts. Amazing.

Exactly. From non MD holding experts. Yeah, that's right.

So I can sue you or no, actually, I think that means I can't sue you if you're not an md but you give me medical advice. I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

I love someone trying to sue me for malpractice. I don't have the medical. Now that would be like a mismatch. I'm not surprised, based on what you said that you had thyroid problems that year. So we can get into that later. But as you were describing that, I was like, oh, well, of course he had thyroid problems. So we can talk a little bit about that in detail later about your personal experience. But yeah, where should we start? Well, this is a huge topic and I'm very. Thank you for the review of my book. And, you know, one of the reasons is that's the book I couldn't find, you know, when I was looking for it. And I am tired as well of the same thyroid information given to you in every book. But they don't tell you what to do, how to look at labs, what should stuff look like, all the different nuances. They don't really tell you what to do. And I really wanted to empower people to understand this because there is a world of uninformed doctors out there, and you need to kind of come armed with your own knowledge.

And I know when you. When you, like, have a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. The saying goes something like that. And you obviously wrote a book on thyroid and you had thyroid issues and you use this term in the book. And so I'm curious, like, how you can justify Using this term, but you actually call thyroid, and specifically I think it's T3 the. The hormone of life in the book. Yeah. How can you justify actually calling it the. The hormone of life when there's so many other hormones, you know, like testosterone and cortisol and, you know, all these other hormones that we depend upon. Why is T3 the hormone of life?

All those other hormones you depend. You just talked about will be useless without proper thyroid function, because thyroid function is the master gland of the entire body. You will die without a gland. Can't not have one if you don't have one. You have to take the hormones that you.

Otherwise I think some people like get. Get it. Get. Can you get it ablated?

Well, here's the thing. So the people who have their thyroids removed, couple scenarios, thyroid cancer, cut it right out. If you have Graves disease and you have hyperthyroidism, oftentimes that cannot be controlled for a very long time. What they do is they'll either remove the thyroid or radioactively zap it, thus making the person hypothyroid, and they have to go on thyroid hormone replacement anyway. But the bottom line is this. You literally will not live without the gland at all. Period. End of story. Now, sometimes people have like a partial or a little bit of their thyroid gland removed, but as far as the entire gland goes, you can't live without it. Most people are not born without it. It's very rare to anyone to be born without it. But so you will die without this gland. It's the master gland of the human body, in charge of every single metabolic function because everything stems from it. So you wouldn't even have cortisol production or testosterone or anything else if the thyroid NT3 wasn't working properly. So if you would die without a thyroid gland, what do you think's gonna happen to you when you have suboptimal or sluggish or even really severely low levels of thyroid hormones? You're dying slowly. And that's literally what it feels like when you're severely hypothyroid and everything in the body will start to break down, the hormones will get thrown off, then you'll get right a fibroid, you'll get low testosterone, you won't get hard ons in the morning. As a dude, all of these things will go wrong because it's like a domino effect.

So like, let's use what you just talked about, like guys not getting a hard on in the cause. That happened to me when I was going through that time. But I wasn't sure if it was the like low testosterone and something like adrenal fatigue causing low thyroid production oror if it was the opposite. What you're saying is it was the T3 that kind of like starts the cascade to everything else.

Well, not necessarily. So here's the thing. Your adrenals could have affected the thyroid, right? And the thyroid then you know, and adrenals can also affect testosterone. But at the end of the day, when a guy who's of age where you should be waking up with erections, if you're not having that, then you really should be looking at not only just the testosterone, but dhea. DHEA is also another factor here. And often people are very, very low. So you probably exhausted your adrenals and in that came a thyroid and a adrenal response that messed with your testosterone. Now you could naturally corrected that the testosterone would come back naturally. Unless you had a true thyroid problem. But it sounds like you ignited yourself into a thyroid problem. And I don't know if you've naturally gotten on it or not. We can talk about the details on that later. But why I say the T3 is the hormone of life. Okay, so there's really two primary thyroid hormones that are really of consequence here. And one you can live without and the other you cannot. You can live without T4. In fact, I have spent the past four years with no T4 in my body. You cannot live without T3. Now T4 converts to T3. So if you're not converting properly or there's an issue and you don't, bottom line is you need enough T3 to function. And free T3, which is a test, is absolutely related to how people feel. So someone who is a total mess and seriously hypothyroid would have a free T3 at the bottom of the range or even under.

It'S individual. So, you know, most of the human population have normal working thyroids, have a free T3 around mid range. But essentially this is the metabolically active thyroid hormone. T4 is not okay. So you can give a person all the T4 you want, or they can have all the greatest T4 levels on planet Earth and then they're like, I'm still feel crappy. Well, have you tested the free T3? Because all that matters is that the T4 converted into the thing that matters, which is T3. Why is T3 the hormone of life? Well, it's the difference between too hot, too cold, no metabolism, Metabolism, inflammation and no inflammation. It is a Goldilocks scenario. It is the regulator of our temperature. Everything else that follows that.

So how are you able to have T3 without having T4 if T4 is what gets converted into T3?

Because I take T3 only, which is very rare. It is something that is.

You take it as a supplement.

Oh, no, it's not a supplement. It's the actual hormones. You can't buy it over the counter. I take actual T3 hormone now. That's rare. A lot of people aren't on T3 only. You actually want this conversion process to happen. You want the T4 to dish out and decide when you need T3 throughout the day. And hopefully that process is working correctly. And it's all testable, by the way. You can see whether or not these things are converting properly and you can check levels. These things are absolutely discoverable. So T3 only is a very rare place to be. And it is one of the options that is used when you cannot resolve a reverse T3 problem naturally or by other means. Because I don't know if you want to give. If I can give a snapshot of how the thyroid works right now, if that'll help everybody.

Essentially what happens is this.

Yeah. And by the way, before you delve in, I mean, like, you have like a deep, deep dive, One of the most comprehensive dives I've seen in the book. But, yeah, give us the overview. Again, I know a lot of people listening right now. You're pretty smart cookies. You've probably, especially if you clicked play on this, you kind of know a little bit about the thyroid. Possibly. But go ahead and give us that overview.

Sure. So what happens is, the first order of business is that the base of your brain, the pituitary senses when your body is low in thyroid hormones. And when it senses that, it sends a signal to the thyroid that will say, hey, wake it up. Produce more hormones. And that signal is called tsh, Thyroid Stimulating Hormone. Now, it's not a thyroid hormone. It is absolutely 100% not supposed to be used as a sole assessment measure for hypothyroidism. That is one of the mistakes all of the uninformed doctors use over the years. I went undiagnosed for two years because they kept testing my tsh. And I'll explain that in a minute. So the brain senses the body's lone hormones. It sends a signal to the thyroid to wake up and produce more. When the TSH signal is sent to the thyroid, the thyroid can take that signal. And if you have a normal working thyroid, it pumps out the right amounts and then those right amounts get converted properly and everything's metabolized properly in the body. You've got good levels of selenium and D&B12 and there's all these other factors, adrenals, et cetera. Sometimes the thyroid doesn't take the bait. And so the problem lies in a few areas. Doctors in the past were only testing the TSH, which absolutely makes no sense. It's a 1973 protocol. It's useless when used with other labs. And I'll just rattle off a good comprehensive list which is TSH free T3, free T4, and then you're looking at the two Hashimoto's antibodies, TPOAB and TGAB, and then reverse T3. Those tests are going to be.

Those are all the ones that you should get tested.

That's a comprehensive. Now there are other, you know, factors and you could do a million food sensitivity tests and hormonal tests, but that's the basics right there. Everybody should be getting the basics. Now you go to an endocrinologist, they're only gonna test the TSH and the free T4. They're not even testing the thing that matters.

Which is why is it more expensive to do the other tests?

No, it's because they are indoctrinated into an old belief system. It would be like someone telling you today, Ben, you should not eat fat off a steak because you're gonna have heart dis. You would laugh in their face because you and I know that that is old, outdated, bunked medical wisdom.

Unless it's a crappy grain fed cow.

That's right. But it's the same with thyroid hormones. The doctors that are in the know are up on the latest and the doctors that are not including endocrinologists who are the most indoctrinated. And I suggest nobody go see an endocrinologist for your thyroid health. They want to see everybody's free T3 in the middle of the range, if they even test it. Most of the time they don't test it. And they happen to be quite ignorant on a lot of the subjects surrounding thyroid health. Whereas functional medicine, doctors, dos integrative doctors and anti aging doctors, those are the people that are usually up on the latest and understand how to take and evaluate and assess these tests.

Is there like a directory somewhere that people could use if they wanted to actually find a doctor who they didn't have to tell to run those tests, but the doctor would actually know to run those tests? Is there like a practitioner directory or something like that? Where if somebody's listening, they could actually find the right kind of doc.

Good question. And yes, and I would go to the Nth Yahoo. Group. That's natural thyroid hormones Yahoo. Group. And within there, if you join their free Yahoo. Group, they have files and they have a good doctor list compiled by thyroid patients all over the country. And I think they have an international one. That's a great place to go and look to see about an informed doctor. I can't guarantee that everyone on there is going to be great, but that's a good start. And that's kind of where I tell everyone to go.

And by the way, for those of you listening in, I'll put a link in the show notes. The show notes for this particular episode. You can find. It's just Elle's name. You go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com l, that's e l, l, e. And if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness dot com l, I'll put a link to the Yahoo. Group and Elle's book and all that jazz. Okay, so most docs are not testing for the full spectrum of thyroid hormones. T3 is the hormone of life. But you still have to test what you said. TSH, T4, free T3, free T4, all of your thyroid antibodies, et cetera, and reverse T3.

Yeah. So, for example, if you were to take my blood right now, my TSH would be 0, my free T4 would be 0, my reverse T3 would be 0, and the only thing that would really show up would be my free T3. That's very rare, by the way. I'm not suggesting T3 to anyone. That is the last resort. And it's very hard to find a doctor who even knows what they're doing with T3. So if anyone thinks they're gonna go out there and buy some T3 and, like, lose weight and fix their problems, you're asking for a lot of trouble. Now, if you were to go online. Crap.

Because I order T3 from this online pharmacy every week. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, so here's the thing.

If you were to go online. If you were to go online and you were to research Cytomel, which is the Brand name for T3, or lyothyrenine sodium, which is T3. A hundred thousand bodybuilding websites pop up and you're like, oh, that's interesting. Well, here's why. T3 is the only Metabolically, it is metabolism. So why do bodybuilders take it? They jam themselves for six to eight weeks with T3 so that they can burn as much fat. Fat as possible before a competition. Is that smart? No, it's not. They could really f up their thyroids however they do it, because it is the most.

Is it just like a negative feedback loop thing?

Right. Well, here's the thing. When you take T3 directly, specifically, it really shuts down the TSH and everything else. So now they're overriding the system. And then if they wean themselves back off, does their system come back? Or they may suffer a little while while the body goes, oh, okay, so we're doing this again now versus having it shut down. There's where you can can get into a problem. And also it's dangerous. It kind of is dangerous. The way that they do it. They're not doing it, in my opinion, in a smart, effective way. If they were gonna do it, like, I would probably have some advice for those people, a way to do it better if they were gonna do that. But the bottom line is this. It's a fat burner. So why do you think low T3 levels, hypothyroid patients get fat? Hello. No T3. Why do hyperthyroid patients pretty much have trouble putting on weight? There you go. Oh, over T3, they're pooping and burning fat constantly. They've got higher body temperatures. That's not healthy either, because that's hyper metabolic and can be inflammatory, et cetera. But you go the other way and you go hypothyroidism. And again, it's all about T3 and T3 metabolism, essentially. So that's why, I mean, I say it's the hormone of life, because without it, you're done. You know what I mean? And if the T4 is not converting properly into the thing that matters, then it doesn't matter how much T4 you ever give somebody.

Well, as much as I am a fan of like, lurking on bodybuilding forums and taking the advice of bro heads, that kind of makes me think, if so many of these people are using T3 as a way to get a nice body or to burn more fat, what about eating thyroid gland? Can you order and eat thyroid gland? Like you can order kidneys and liver and stuff like that?

Well, desiccated thyroid gland is thyroid hormone replacement in the form of natural desiccated thyroid or ndt. That's what natural thyroid hormone is.

You mean like the capsules?

Not something you can get over the counter. If you're talking about a glandular, there's glandulars where they might chop up a little Bit of adrenal or chop up a little bit of thyroid. But for the essential natural, desiccated thyroid is sort of the best option for a majority of patients.

It's natural and you have to have a prescription to get that. You can't go to Amazon or other websites and get a desiccated thyroid.

You can actually, you can order it online without a prescription, but you have to seek out and kind of look around a little bit further. Because there's a lot of BS, by the way. There's a lot of BS supplements out, they're like, oh, T3 power. And you're like, oh, I'm taking T3. No, you're not. The most important element in any of those supplements is selenium. And why is that? Because selenium is ultimately responsible for the conversion from T4 to T3.

I've actually noticed that when I, when I've gone to like super supplements or gnc and you go and you grab the bottle that said that, that says that it's like the thyroid booster, the thyroid support, usually it's like, it's like Coleus forskoli is one that I see in there a lot of. And then like selenium, like you mentioned, usually like iodine is in there, a whole bunch of B12. But when you look at the label, there's no actual thyroid in most thyroid supplements. It's mostly like a bunch of stuff that supposedly, theoretically, not according to like peer reviewed clinical research, but it's supposed to support the thyroid. It's like a shotgun of stuff that the thyroid supposedly uses, right?

Well, certainly in vitamin D And selenium and B12, of course, there's all of these things that synergistically there's, you know, it's not just thyroid hormones. You could literally give a person all the correct thyroid hormones, but if they have low ferritin, low iron storage or adrenal insufficiency, then they're not gonna do well. They're not gonna be able to. Actually, here's why. You can give someone all the hormones. No matter what hormones, they are all you want unless they are being properly metabolized and distributed and getting into the cells. So back to the TSH and the way things work throughout the day. What normally happens is your body, your thyroid, if you're normal, dispenses about 80% T4, about 20% T3, and about 40, 50% of that T4 will be converted into T3 throughout the day as you need it. Whatever is not used of the T4 gets flushed out through a system called reverse T3. And that's a natural. That's why I have no reverse T3 results, because T3 does not convert into reverse T3. Well, what is reverse T3? Why is it important? It's really, really important. And this is probably what happened to you.

Yeah, that one's kind of confusing for a lot of people.

Reverse T3, it is confusing. So now we know. Okay, it's this way where excess T4 is flushed out through the body. Why do we have that there? Here's why. Reverse T3 is literally the marker of wellness and unwellness in most people. For example, if you have horrific morning sickness as a pregnant woman, likely you have elevated reverse T3. If you have just gone to a huge car accident and went through a lot of trauma, your reverse T3 is going to probably be high. Why is that? Because your body wants to save you at all times. And reverse T3 is there as an emergency alarm and an emergency break to make sure you do not become hyper metabolic in times of stress or inflammation. So let's take the example of you. I am willing to bet it was not the high fat ketosis that screwed up your thyroid. It was probably the overtraining combined with maybe 2 lack of calories because your appetite was probably very suppressed on the fat. There also could have been a selenium deficiency, ferritin. I don't know the other. I don't know your other blood values before you started that train. Right. So those elements, however, here's the thing. Here's the primal perspective, the paleo primal perspective of our bodies. Oh my God. This. So you're running like whatever, 15 miles a day. They're like, oh my God, this guy's either running from danger, he doesn't have enough fat on his body, we've got to reserve all the fat and he might not get food soon. We're not going to act, we're going to. This T4 is going right to the reverse T3 because we don't want to increase his metabolism.

Oh, okay, so. So it's down. It's down. Regulating metabolism.

Not only that, he can't afford to have children right now. We're going to cut his sex drive and decrease his testosterone. Same goes for female. She's not in a position to have a baby right now. She's starving or running from danger. We need to shut this down.

So it's like an ancestral mechanism.

It's a wonderful savings mechanism for us. That is why. And then I'm just going to cut you really quick. We don't have to get into a whole conversation on T3 only. But that is why being on T3 only is a pain in the ass to manage and difficult and not optimal because you're making the how. I mean, literally, how can I decide what my body needs at what times? There are certain things. I can measure temps and, you know, symptoms and go by pulse and things like that. And that's how we can. I can manage T3. However, when we think about this sort of like slow release mechanism that is T4, which is a storage hormone and a prohormone. Ah, that's a better system, right? That's more elegant. It's choosing for me. And if it's choosing correctly, then I'm getting all of the right amounts of T3 when I need it and I'm not getting any more or any less. Now. I gave myself hypothyroidism by chronic exercise. I'm pretty convinced because it doesn't run in my family. And now that I look back and see what kind of life I was living. I was a sugar burning, eating every two, three hours zone, south beach type of philosophy and I was doing a crapload of chronic cardio. Probably became iron deficient at one point and I knew I was selenium deficient at one point. All of those things could have just caused me to get a thyroid problem. But it was probably the body saying, you're starving. And so in that sense we call it like Euthyroid 6 Syndrome. Starvation can absolutely increase reverse T3 and cause a thyroid problem. So a lot of people who extreme diet. Do you know what I mean?

Right?

Yeah.

How long ago did this happen to you?

So I'm 43 and it happened to me when I was 30, and then I had a second bout, a reverse T3 problem like six years later. And both I had to absolutely correct myself without the help of a doctor at all. Which is why I wrote the book, because that's unacceptable to me. Totally unacceptable.

In your book you actually published a whole bunch of your lab results and you have, for example, like, you know when your body sounded that emergency alarm and you were producing a whole bunch of reverse T3. But like I just flipped open to the book where you talk about that, how you're making a whole bunch of reverse T3, but I'm looking at your values and your free T3 and your free T4, they're both high. This is July 2011. Did something happen after that? Because you keep saying that like your body doesn't make any T4 like what happened there.

Oh, well, no, no. Those results are from when I was on natural desiccated thyroid. I was on T4 and T3 at the time of that table that you're looking at.

So what was it that caused your body, what led to you having to take this supplement to get your free T3 and free T4 up? Was it just this overtraining and under eating that you were talking about?

No, the reverse T3 problem was separate. I was already on natural desiccated thyroid doing quite well. After many years I had already solved it. However, I was still a sugar burner, was not aware of getting fat adapted and following this train. So I was still in an over exercising. I had an extremely stressful year preceding my reverse T3 issues that severe stress can. I mean, normal people who aren't even on thyroid hormone get reverse T3 thyroid issues, going through major stress and adrenals. And the answer is not always thyroid hormones. Sometimes the answer is fix the adrenals, decrease the stress and the whole symphony gets back in again. Again, the body's sensing a stress of some kind. And again, the stress could be chronic underlying infection like Lyme's disease. Any kind of acute infection or stress that's going on in life can screw up a thyroid. So it doesn't have to necessarily be like a thyroid assault specifically. It can just be life or overexercising. So when I got the reverse T3 problem, I believe it was just a cascade of things. I later found out I was selenium deficient. Everybody who's taking thyroid hormone and people in general really should shoot for 200 to 400 micrograms of selenium every day. That was something I didn't do. My iron dropped. There was a lot of things that maybe I didn't keep up with as a menstruating female over those years and then ran into this reverse T3 prompt. Now, I tried to correct it naturally, but when I could not find success there, then the only answer at that point is really to go on T3. And that's because T3 doesn't convert into reverse T3. So the idea is you wean yourself off of the T3, T4, it clears out of your body, you replace it with T3, those receptors. Well, this is how we can look at reverse T3. Reverse T3 is like a guard that stands in front of the T3 cells and protects anything from going in it because it's like we don't want his cells to be affected right now for whatever reason. Right. So what we're going to do is we're going to block the cell receptors and we're just. And it's just going to pool in your blood. Which is why if you have a reverse T3 problem, you'll show that you might even have a decent or high amount of reverse T3 in the blood. And that, I mean, of T3 in the blood. And so the only way to really detect a reverse T3 problem is to get reverse T3 and free T3 done at the same time. And we do a ratio between the 2 and 20 or higher is considered healthy. So when I had a reverse T3 problem, my ratio was like 12 severely hypothyroid, even though I was taking thyroid hormones every day. Okay, got it now, stagnant liver. You could do a liver cleanse and try to get rid of reverse T3. There's lots of natural protocols that can absolutely do it, but I just happened to try all of them and didn't work, so. So reverse T3 is really there to protect us.

And to prevent us from becoming hyper metabolic in situations where that would be dangerous for us, if that makes any sense. And so for you, I'm not surprised. And this is what happens to a lot of people training for marathons and marathon runners, often very thin over exercising. That's the wrong messages you're sending to your whole thyroid process.

My body fat was at about 2 to 3% and I was doing a lot of training and no carbohydrates and Yeah, I mean it took a while for me to get myself back to health and back to like where I wouldn't. Like I used to, I used to spend like the first four to five hours every morning, like during work, like shivering, wearing like three layers of clothing because I was just like so freaking cold from, from very low thyroid hormone production. So. Yeah, and like constipation and then like poor sleep was a biggie, like having a really hard time staying asleep, which you'd think that's kinda like counterintuitive, right? You'd think if your body was like all sluggish that you'd just like collapse in bed at the end of the day and you'd be tired, but the body doesn't fall asleep. It's really, it's really weird, really frustrating.

Well, and here's why. Because when you're hypothyroid, often you have adrenal issues. Because when you have low t3, then the adrenals are trying to take over to give you energy. That's why when you have low T3, you're craving carbs and sugar. Very hard to even. First of all, you're metabolically inefficient for losing weight when you're hypothyroid. But then the, the crapper is also that because you have low thyroid now your body's screaming for energy. So you are like craving and it's very difficult. So now I've got this added extra horrible sugar addiction food obsession issue going on as well. Because your body's like, I need energy from somewhere. You're not giving it. So what it does is it over pumps the cortisol. Now you've got adrenal fatigue. That happens with most people, do you know what I mean, who have hypothyroidism. That goes unchecked for a while, while.

And so even though I had like, I had like through the roof cortisol levels, I still, I still do like, my cortisol is really high. So like my adrenals never really like quit producing what they were supposed to produce. It's just like my thyroid hormone just, just pooped.

Well, and here's the thing. So getting back to why you were having trouble sleeping so often people have these cortisol issues. You'd think, you know, you're sluggish and you're sleepy all the time, then why can't you go to bed if you have hypothyroidism? I never had issues sleeping. But people who did have usually have a combination of low and high cortisol. And what happens is they might start to feel a little bit of pep and better after 6pm and then they have nighttime high nighttime cortisol and can't go to sleep. So that's where the sleep comes in. It's adrenal related usually.

Okay, got it.

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Now, speaking of being cold, like, one of the things that you talk about in the book is this whole idea of taking your body temperature to figure out whether or not you're hypothyroid. Is there actual research behind that? I mean. Well, first of all, like explain how you would test it. But then I'm also curious, is there anything to that? Has it ever been correlated with thyroid blood levels?

Okay, well, let's just take a second. So why, if you go anywhere in the world to a doctor, do they take your temperature? The reason is because humans have a general thermostat of being about 98.5, 98.6 in the afternoon and there's an average 2.

It's also because they like to make you stick your. They like to make you stick your tongue out and look silly thing.

They're just trying to antagonize you as well. So, yeah, so we're all like 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, usually in the afternoon. And then in the morning there's also a range of basal body temperature and anyone can look up Broda Barnes, who kind of invented this. So here's the thing. There's so many human body temperature. I mean, it's an extension of basic body metabolism, right? Heat's a form of energy. Every reaction in the body has a. So, you know, low T3. Now you're cold, now you're freezing, now you're sluggish, now you're producing, producing less hydrochloric acid. Now you're digesting less, now you're absorbing less nutrients, now you're constipated. See the cascade of things that happen now your hormones are off. Now, you know, I've had low testosterone twice even as a woman. That's very important too. So I know how that feels. So body temperature is really important.

Now. For example, you know, people can have the flu and you can be like, have 102 degree fever, but you have the chills okay, now, or you could be waking up in the morning like you're freezing. Well, how do you know you don't have a fever or not? How do you know you don't have chills because you're sleeping sick. Well, you can go, well, I don't feel bad, so maybe I don't have a fever. The only way to test your body temperature is to take the temperature. You can feel cold. What's your temperature? Sometimes you can feel hot, but maybe just spend a day in the sun and your actual body temperature isn't abnormal. Now what we do know is this when you take temperatures for like five days in a row and you do an average, what we're looking for when you're testing this at home, and I detail this in my book, is really stability within temperatures versus crazy fluctuation. Because for females, for example, a second half of our month after ovulation, our body temperature naturally rises. And of course, you know, why do people do ovulation predictors with temperatures? I mean, these things are all mapped out already now. Correlation with thyroid. Obviously there are a million things in this world that can lower or increase temperature. But assuming the person is a Generally healthy person with no acute crazy infections and diseases. And they're just having, having hypothyroidism. One of the ways to either a, see if you have adrenal issues or hypothyroidism is to test at home. And you can really like do this with body temperature and go, okay, I think this is suspect. And then go from there and actually get tests. The other thing that we use it for is it's imperative when it comes to increasing and getting and reaching your optimal dose. When you start thyroid hormone replacement, you don't just take your optimal dose. You graduate up to, to what that is. And along the way, when you take hemps, you can kind of decide, am I closer, Am I too far? For example, I've been hyperthyroid before. When I was hyperthyroid, my basal body temperatures indicated that they were 98.3 in the morning. That's at the top end of that range. That's pretty suspect of hyperthyroidism. The other thing too is in the afternoon I'd be like 99 degrees. So not to mention my pulse. So there's a lot of different, different ways to assess am I on too much, am I on too low versus just looking at lab results. Because everyone functions at different T3 levels. Like my friend Kara functions really well when hers is towards the top of the range. I know someone who functions well when it's just mid range. Everybody's individual. But you can assess labs with symptoms and also temps to get a fuller picture. So that's how temperature is involved. And then also just in general, when you're too cold, cold, you've got mitochondrial impairment. There's not enough energy being created when you're too hot. Too much energy being created. Right. It's a Goldilocks scenario.

What kind of thermometer do you use? Like, is there a certain thermometer that works best for doing like a body? Like, you know, you have all your instructions in the book about how to run yourself through the whole body temperature protocol. But what kind of thermometer do you use?

I mentioned in the book, do not use digital thermometer. Patients have found out that those are just unreliable and not as accurate. And since we don't have the old school mercury thermometers anymore, there's something very similar called a Geratherm thermometer. G E R A T H E R m. It's like 3 or 10 bucks anywhere Amazon or the local Walgreens. And it looks kind of like a mercury where you have to kind of Shake it down, and it's got that ball at the end. And what you really need to do is hold it under your tongue for like, seven minutes. But, you know, you get more accurate temps this way. And of course, I detail the protocol in the book. So temperature is really important, not only as you're increasing your optimal dose, but really, let's say you're on thyroid hormone and you're feeling something's off. Well, you can take a couple weeks of temps and kind of gauge what's up. There are people that need a little bit more thyroid hormone in the winter and a little bit less in summer, and there's lots of nuances. So temps is always a great way to go. Now, there are some nuances to this. There are some things that make temperature really high.

There's adrenal issues and iron issues that can make temps high when it's not indication of hyperthyroid. And there's a lot of variables there.

That'S basically like giving you kind of a clue.

It's given a great clue, not only for thyroid status, but adrenal status as well.

I track. I track my temperature every day. I actually use a ring now. Have you tried one of these? The. The aura ring?

No, I haven't.

It measures your temperature, like, 24 7. So I can like, wake up in the morning, the morning, and I'll be like, hey, your body temperature peaked at whatever, like 4am last night, and it usually peaks at 2am this can be a sign of over training or under recovery. And so on this day, it'll set, like, your recommended number of steps lower or tell you that it needs to be like an easier recovery day. It's kind of cool. It's skin temp, you know, it's not this. This jara therm thermometer that you're talking about, but that's what I use now. And it's. It's really interesting. It's just like. It's just constantly measuring body temperature.

And. And it's another thing that's a great resource is aside from the thermometer, I'm a huge fan of continuous heart rate monitors, particularly when it comes to thyroid dosing.

Like walking around with a strap around your chest all the time?

No, it's. I just do the wrist one. Just. They have the wrist ones now that are pretty damn accurate.

Well, this. This ring. This ring does that too.

Oh, nice.

I'm not trying to turn this into like an advertisement for a ring, but. But it. But it does. It does my. My heart rate too. But you talk about a whole bunch of other. Other vitals that you track or that you recommend tracking that go above and beyond just temperature, like, other things that. Whether you're fixing your thyroid or whether you're trying to figure out if you have thyroid issues that you personally recommend tracking, like which vitals you track in addition to just temperature.

Yeah, you know, I wish I actually. And maybe in the second edition, I'll put even more. You know, the book could have been 800 pages because there's so many variables and nuances and tangents to every aspect of everything I say in there. And I would love to have gone into more detail on this. But, for example, eye track, so pulse, blood pressure and temps.

So you're looking at heart rate pressure. Does blood pressure respond to thyroid?

Yes, it does. So, for example, a lot of people who are misdiagnosed, who are treated with uninformed doctors are, like, on blood pressure medications, statins, antidepressants, by the way, all related to thyroid. Thyroid affects the brain. If you think you are having depression or bipolar issues, check your thyroid first before going on a Prozac or something like that, because it won't last longer than three months. You're gonna be back to the same problem. Same goes with blood pressure and any kind of cholesterol issues. Those are always resolved once your thyroid gets fixed. So this is another problem, too, about people going into a doctor, right? Like, oh, you're depressed. We'll put you on an ssri. Oh, you've got horrible cholesterol. We need to put you on statins right away. They're not even looking at the thyroid. And that is the master gland. It controls everything thing, right? Because it's controlling our metabolic process, how every organ functions. So, of course, you're not going to be processing fat correctly when your body is at 96 degrees, which mine was constantly all day. When I was severely hypothyroid, I was freezing all the time.

Yeah, I've definitely run into that.

And the constipation is horrific. So, anyway, so let's talk about heart rates. And so, for example, like, basically above 60 and below 90, you know, that's kind of what you're looking at for people. Everybody's different. Athletes are going to have a lower resting heart rate, but, for example, the normal heart rate for an average person might be between 70 and 80. So, for example, for me, when I was on too much T3, I might just be hanging out talking to you right now. And my pulse could be like 96. That's insane. That's stupid.

How much T3 were you taking? Like, what's the actual amount? How's that measured?

That actually has nothing to do with it. It's because too much for me is what it really was because there are people that can take 175 micrograms and that would kill somebody. Or you could take 30 and be fine a day. So it just depends on individually, but for me at the time, and that's how I noticed I started to become really warm. I was like, oh, I'm too warm. And then I noticed my pulse and I also noticed a level of anxiety because when your pulse goes up and then the cortisol and the adrenals, right. So I was kind of like on edge. When you're hyperthy, thyroid, not only are there overstimulation symptoms with pulse and things like that, but there are overstimulation symptoms as well, like with feeling aggro or agitated or. Do you know what I mean? There's other things that you can tell whether you're overstimulated. So that's why pulse and heart rate and things like that are normal. And I just feel also, it's great to get a good baseline for people of where they're at before they start, where they're at midway, and when they finish, then you kind of know what's right for each. Do you know what I mean? And so, for example, when I lowered my T3 and then my pulse went back down and temps went back down, totally different ballgame. Also, you can be hyperthyroid and feel chilly because you essentially are mimicking a fever into your body. You know what I mean? And then that causes inflammation. So getting back to just anyone out there who's thinking they're going to take T3 to lose weight, good luck, you'll run into problems, you'll screw yourself up and you can actually get fat. So it'll.

You'll have something to say in the bodybuilding form forums because everybody's got to pipe in there with their own N equals one story. Otherwise you're just useless on the forums and your little avatar of the biceps just is not going to have any credence to it. So that's the one exception. I'm just saying you got to mess around with some form of self experimentation if you want to be taken legit on those bodybuilding forums. Anyways, though we digress.

Throw one thing out there. I just want to throw one thing out. So, for example, a low heart rate or low number armor, but a raised blood Pressure and lower temps, that might be an indication of hypothyroidism. Okay. A high heart rate with a raised blood pressure may be an indication of adrenaline production due to weakened adrenals and low cortisol. So there's a lot of variables here that can go on with temp, blood pressure and pulse. And so it's just, I think important to not monitor and see where you're at and what's going on. And you know, even for example, like recently I put my heart rate monitor on my brother who's got perfect normal thyroid function, just to see like what his pulse was when we were hanging out together. We're roughly the same age. And I was like, what's he got? You know what I mean? And mine was kind of roughly about his. And I'm not saying I'm trying to match his pulse, but I'm saying, you know, if mine were higher than his, I would feel it. And it doesn't feel good either. So there's other symptoms involved, you know.

So what in terms of, of thyroid medications and thyroid supplements? Let me first ask you this in terms of over the counter thyroid for people who want to, let's say, not that there's anybody out there that wants to do this, let's say somebody wants to self test and self medicate. They're gonna go to direct labs, they're gonna get all the thyroid tests you just talked about and they maybe don't wanna go through a doctor, but they wanna try one of the these over the counter medications. Because I know I've talked before about desiccated thyroid. And for example, one company I've talked about in the past was Natural Thyroid Solutions. Or they have a supplement called Thyro Gold and I think it's T1, T2, T3 and T4. It's a desiccated thyroid like we just talked about. That's one example. There are a whole bunch of others out there. But are there any over the counter natural thyroid supplements that you recommend or that you endorse?

No. And yes, the no answer is anything that actually has the thyroid hormones in it. You know, it should be natural desiccated thyroid, just so you know, because each we go by grains. But let's say 60 milligrams of natural desiccated thyroid, usually a starting dose for most people, equals 38 micrograms of T4 and 9 micrograms of T3. Now, as I told you earlier, that 38 micrograms of T4 is going to be converted 40 to 50% into T3 throughout the day. And what's not used will get flushed out through reverse T3. So each pill of desiccated thyroid is standardized to equal these amounts. Okay. So anything that's not that I wouldn't trust as far as natural thyroid, you know, I don't know about thyroid gold. It's not something I hear about often. The major brands are really Armour, Nature, Throid, wp, Acela, you know, and of course, there's countries, everybody.

Aren't those all prescription?

They are. And you can get them without a prescription. So talking about over the counter, the best over the counters for thyroid, a couple things. Vitamin D, B12 or methyl CPG if your homocysteine is high. Selenium in the form of Se methyl L, selenocysteine, which is supposedly the most absorbable form. And then also things like coconut oil. People have noticed that taking coconut oil sometimes can stimulate things. Really?

Why is that?

People have said that. I'm not so sure exactly the mechanisms behind why that is the case, but.

It'S not the fact that it's just like a copious number of calories that are helping, do you think? Or is there something.

It could be that or it could be the actual saturated fat that people are kind of eating less fat anyway. And then they introduce a little. Some healthy fat and then saturated fat, as we know, cholesterol, production of hormones. Right. Everything is involved with that. So maybe that's part of it too, is that they're getting some good straight fat, eliminating things like raw cruciferous vegetables. Those have always been a point of contention and argued over, but at the end of the day, they say that raw cruciferous vegetables might have an antithyroid effect. So you could either cook them or avoid them altogether while you're trying to heal a thyroid issue. I would.

So, yeah, selenium's really the biggest one. And then also lifestyle again. You can take all of these things, but then are you running 30 miles a day? You know what I mean? Like, how are your adrenals? Are you sleeping? You know what I mean? Because that all like we talked about earlier, is really, really this primal perspective of your body and the signals that are being sent. And you have to make sure. And this goes into the whole. People are like, oh, low carb causes thyroid problems. No, I'm not willing to agree with that and I have a million thoughts on that subject. But one of the reasons is, I think part of the problem with that is when people go low carb, their appetite gets suppressed and then Sometimes they just really don't eat enough calories in general because their appetite is so suppressed. And that could be the problem. Right. Do you know what I mean? Also, we don't know if these people came to the board.

That's an easy fix. You just smoke weed.

Just smoke some weed and eat some coconut oil together or just do cannabis. Coconut oil.

That's what your next book should be, the Coconut Oil Marijuana diet.

Oh, listen, I'm a huge fan of thc. Would love to write that book. I don't like alcohol, but yeah, no, I don't know that THC can help the thyroid. That might be, might be something to look into.

But yeah, if there's been been any research on that, I would be curious. Like I'll usually go to. Typically it's CBD that you tend to find more of the, the therapeutic components in. And there, there's a. ProjectCBD.org is a website that has just like a ton of research on whether or not CBD is useful for, for a variety of different medical conditions. But I actually haven't explored that for, you know, any link between the endocannabinoid system and thyroid. That'd be interesting.

I just did a whole interview with Stuart Thomas from CB Sciences on CBD and fat burning. They're discovering some new elements there. And that's recent on our podcast if anyone's interested. But yes, CBD for anti inflammatory. That could always maybe be an assistant. Most people who are hypothyroid are inflamed in some way.

Yeah.

And again, this goes back to. So everything slows down, sluggish, nothing's being processed right. Constipation and so now what do you have? Insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. So this is just a train of nightmares unless you sit.

Now, what about medication? Let's say you were going to get prescribed something. You talked about Levothyroxine and Synthroid and getting like just T3 all by itself as perhaps not being the best solution.

It's not the best first order of solution ever for anybody. And it should never be considered a first order of business. Now here's the thing. You go to an endocrinologist, you go to an uninformed doctor, the first thing they're going to suggest is Synthroid or T4 only or Levothyroid. Now let's just look at this for a second. As I've told you, our own bodies do not rely on conversion alone. Our bodies actually pump out some T3. Okay, so right off the bat, that's Just not endocrine mimicry. Anyway, can it work for a lot of people? Yes, it often fails a lot of people. And I'm going to say this to everyone out there on Levothyroxine or T4 only. Levothyroxine's generic name, Synthroid's brand name. The doctor in my book said one thing about that, which is is he will never ever prescribe levothyroxine generically. He only prescribes Synthroid because he has seen that with that particular medication, the brand name is far superior. That says a lot. A doctor who's the only thing he won't prescribe generic is that he has seen people's liver results be totally off and screwed up from generic level thyroxine, Thyroid levels all over the place. So if you are on T4 only level thyroxine, it would behoove you to go call and get the brand name right away. I would.

Okay.

Based on what doctor on my book had to say. So that's one thing. So T4 only is the.

And that's the doctor who you interview at the end of your book.

Yeah, Dr. Gary Forsman. He's a primal doctor and also a functional medicine doctor. Really highly.

That's a really. That's a really good interview, by the way. I think the book's worth it just for that interview.

I know. I totally agree. And he's. And I've had several podcasts with him. So anyone, if they just can't tolerate the reading and their brain can't comprehend it, which when your hypothyroid happens, just go listen. Listen to some of the interviews with Dr. Gary Forsman. But so that's one thing. Now here's the other thing. So brief history, 1800s, genius English physician was like, what's all these people with goiters on their neck and hypothyroidism? He extracts sheep thyroid gland, he injects it into a human and it works. Thus comes natural desiccated thyroid, which was the treatment for people up until the 1950s when drug companies could not patent desiccated thyroid. So what they do, they created T4 Synthroid and they touted it as the only one stop, only answer. So the propaganda behind that is what has ruined patients for years. So then people got moved to T4 Synthroid. Only then years would go by, people's not doing well, people still having problems. Doctors are like, what's happening? We thought this was the only answer. Turns out there's all these other elements they figured out, right? And then they're going, oh. And now really the move has been back in the past 10 to 15 years to get people really. Natural desiccated thyroid, in my opinion, is the best first choice of business, unless there's other things that would dictate otherwise. And it's also the most endocrine mimicry. It's giving you a little direct T3. It's also giving you enough T4 in the ratios that our bodies would normally do it anyway. Pigs are very similar to humans that way.

So is that like armor thyroid?

That's right. That's armor thyroid. That's nature throid ndt, Natural desiccated thyroid. It comes in lots of different brand names. Every. Every country has a generic form of it. Thailand has one called thyroid. It's very generic, it's very cheap. It's been around for 100 years. That's really optimal now. So here are the options. You take T4 only. You can take natural desiccated thyroid. You can take compounded T4, T3 combination. That would be because you cannot separate the hormones in natural desiccated thyroid because they kind of come locked in that ratio. But you can can to the microgram adjust synthetic T4 and T3. So there are some patients who have compounded T4 T3 to Couture to them specifically. And these are people that really either need are allergic to fillers or have issues with fillers. And certain pills like natural desiccated thyroid might have some or because their doctor really needs to adjust it to the microgram or two. The only way to do it that is through a synthetic T4 T3 compounded scenario or there's T3 only. So there's really four main choices now. You can take T4 only Synthroid and add a little T3 to it. You can take NDT, add a little T4. You know, you can make adjustments to all of it. But those are the four main categories for treatment.

And what do you take?

I just take T3 only, Cytomel.

Okay. And that's. That's like that. And you take T3 only. Why? As opposed to desiccated? That's.

I did take desiccated thyroid, but then I got the reverse T3 problem. So then I corrected that. And I've been on T3 only for four years. I absolutely am going back on NDT. I am going to attempt that 100%. I would prefer to be on NDT. It's very difficult to manage T3 only, and it gets really old after a while. However, it's a lifesaver so not going to knock it. But the reason I haven't tried to go back on NDT is because I was writing a book book and I was like, if it fails me, if that T4 doesn't convert, I don't need to become hypothyroid right now while I'm writing a book trying to, you know what I mean? So that was really my main reason for delaying it. And the other reason was I got a bunch of tests with the doctor on my book and we found some factors that had been screwed up while I had had that last reverse T3 problem and I needed to get rid of some inflammation and high homocysteine and was able to do all of that. But I want to correct all of potential underlying problems so that when I go back on a T4, T3 combo in the form of natural desiccated thyroid, that I am primed for that to be converted and work properly, just as it once did for me. Now if it doesn't, I can always go back on T3 only. Right. That's like the savior. If it doesn't work and you know, I'll know right away in the first, you know, six weeks whether this is converting correctly and whatever. And so. But there might be a week or two where I might feel hypo. And so I didn't want to really, really risk that while I was being interviewed and writing a book. Of course, because you want your mental, mental sharpness there.

Yeah, sure. Now what, what if somebody has tried all these things you're talking about like, like they've quit over training and they've amped up their food intake and maybe they've even started into either a desiccated or a compound or they're working with, with a doctor to get them the correct thyroid and they're eating their coconut oil and smoking their weed and doing all these things that you talk, talk about. What, what if somebody tries everything and they're still having issues? Like, what are some of the things that could still be causing problems?

There's a, there's a couple things. First of all, high HbA1c, too many carbs, insulin resistance, you know, do you.

Really have HbA1c being like the three month snapshot of your blood sugar levels?

That's right. You want it to be 5.2 or lower. And if it's not, you're looking at having to adjust carbs. Mine was 5.7, which was pretty pre diabetic, so that had been lingering even though I went paleo prime Primal. I still for me didn't lower the carbs enough to resolve that. So that was something that now a.

Lot of people think that's counter too. Like you're saying eat fewer carbs to fix your thyroid.

I'm saying eat fewer carbs to fix the insulin resistance.

Okay, got it right.

Like I'm saying, like that's what happened to me. So if everything hasn't worked right, well, first of all medication should work. But if everything has not worked, what I said in the book, there's so many underlying factors. For women, the number one is iron storage, which is ferret. It should be between 50 and 100. If it's not, you're likely a candidate for iron supplementation that can screw up a thyroid. If you don't have enough iron storage, no matter what thyroid hormone you take or no matter what thyroid hormones your thyroid is dispensing naturally, it will not get to go and where it needs to go without proper ferritin. So ferritin, B12, vitamin D, these are all things that are very important underlying in this process. So you got to look at those things. If nothing's working, worked. The other thing I say is look at the insulin resistance because people might be like, well I'm eating low carb and I'm eating Paleo primal paradigm. But maybe it's not low carb enough to nip that in the bud over there. And that's what happened to me. So insulin resistance. Another thing would be Candida Epstein Barr. Now those are easily resolvable, but they usually take canceling out all sugar, switching up probiotics every month and you know, maybe even dosing yourself with a little oregano oil. Those things can absolutely affect and mimic thyroid symptoms. So can low ferritin, brain fog, depression, energy and issues with eating. So if you're still having all those issues and you're on thyroid hormone, then likely you don't have the diet and nutrition dialed up or you need some gut repair. Most people with hypothyroidism get screwed up guts during the process and that needs to be corrected, you know. And so there's where the paleo primal sort of lifestyle cleaning well as out comes in and repairing while you heal. It's not to say you'll never be able to enjoy a piece of pizza or. But while you're healing, it's an anti inflammatory program and protocol. So there's that, there's the Candida Epstein Barr. I for example had something called excess fibrinogen. So while I was hypothyroid apparently my blood got extra sticky and all this extra fibrin in there, and it's really kind of a stroke heart attack causer. And. And no amount of diet or exercise can turn that around, but systemic enzyme therapy turned that around for me.

Would that be like wobenzymes and proteolytic enzymes, things like that?

Yeah, systemic enzymes, like vitals. I took Vitalzyme XE, the professional version, and my fibrinogen went from like 500 down to 300.

So now that stuff can be really useful for soreness too.

Oh, it's. Well, I mean, they give it to all the Olympic athletes in Germany and Japan. I mean, if you look into systemic enzymes, they're very expensive. Expensive, but I swear by them based on my experience. So I had horribly fibrocystic breasts and terrible pms. And they're also used for inflammation. But I noticed that I didn't take it for this. But I noticed that after a month of taking the systemic enzymes, my breasts were like, amazing and perfect and no PMS at all. I couldn't even believe it. And I was like, what happened there? Well, the excess fibrinogen in my body essentially was fibrocystic breast. Fibroid. Right. Fibrin fibra. Right, there we go. So it's like I needed the brush cleaners of this. Clean all that out. And what fibrocystic breasts are, is estrogen dominance. That often happens to women. You know, we get estrogen dominance and you get low testosterone issues and also estrogen dominance. There's some men who go through hypothyroidism. They start getting boobs and they're like, what is going on here?

Definitely don't want that. And if that happens, call me. Definitely don't want that. Avenue. But. So there's all these other factors that can be affecting. There could be food sensitivities. I took a food sensitivity test, and chocolate or cocoa was number one severe intolerance. And it was the only one I had on the severe intolerance list. I didn't know that. I never felt the difference between cocoa. But when I look back as a kid, I hated chocolate. I hated chocolate, hated hot cocoa. Didn't understand why anyone liked it. So that kind of is the tip off. And then also. Yeah, and then also it's just like, well, you can do as many tests as you want, but there might be some element here that can help. For example, I never had a problem with eggs. I don't have celiac. I'm not even technically dairy. Or gluten sensitive in terms of what blood tests will tell you. But I am affected by them. So, you know, we have to go by both. You can do some diagnostics. I did an organic acids test and my serotonin was zero. Well, it looked as though, though the serotonin of a person who's up all night stressed out. And I wasn't. I was sleeping every night. Great. But I was like, all right, well, this is a problem. I have no serotonin that has to do with weight issues and energy. And so there's all sorts of other things out there that can mimic thyroid issues. And that's why you have to take a comprehensive approach. And that's why anyone who just takes a pill from their doctor and goes, oh, just take the Synthroid and I'll be fine. You're asking for trouble because, a, those things need to convert. Convert and get metabolized properly. But then you also have these other factors that can be inhibiting or taking you two steps forward, five steps backwards. You know, low B12, low ferritin. So I detail all of this in my book. But again, those are some other factors that can come up where it's like, well, I'm still not better. I still can't lose weight. Well, it's like, look at the Candida. Look at the HBA 1C. Maybe go get some more testing, like food sensitivity. Or, for example, I'm not sensitive, apparently on paper to anything. But I did have a genetic test done, and someone pointed out that I had a genetic marker that said that I might have an issue processing high sulfur foods. And then I was like, oh, that's interesting. I do actually kind of have an issue with broccoli and garlic. Those are high sulfur. And someone said, well, do you have a problem with eggs? I said, no, I've been eating eggs all my life. And I stopped myself. And I thought, you know, now that I think about it, there's been a few times where I've had eggs by themselves and I just felt kind of gross for hours afterwards. Not sick, not any major symptoms, just kind of like a, ugh. I just want this to digest and be over with. I feel gross. And then I thought, okay, well, maybe I should try cutting out eggs and seeing how that goes. I cut out eggs for a few months, and then I was like, oh, let me see what happens. Reintroduce them. Nightmare. Nightmare. Distended stomach, like an Ethiopian starving child. Bloated gas. Horrible. It was almost an instant horrific reaction. Couldn't even leave the House. House. Again, nothing else was wrong. It was just as awful. And so sometimes it takes like, you know, a lot of biohacking and experimentation, along with some tests to see what's right for you. You know what I mean? If you're eating chocolate every day. So of course you've got to look at these things. And that's why say a functional doctor, medicine doctor, or a do or a anti aging doctor is really what you want, because they're going to be looking at all of these things. And so anyway, inflammation is one of those underlying things that sometimes can't totally be dissipated through diet and lifestyle, like my excess fibrinogen. But then you can get tested for it and then use other supplements to help that out.

One thing that I thought was really interesting in the book is you say that you've seen situations where people's thyroid issues were totally fixed with chiropractic visits or acupuncture visits. What is the mechanism of acupuncture that would cause something like that?

Well, you know, I'm not an acupuncturist, but I will say this. When I was severely hypothyroid, I developed a fibroid and a polyp in my uterus. Now when I went to the acupuncturist, she was the head of gynecology in Shanghai. And so this is like her specialty and she's really famous in la and she said, I can get rid of this fibroid, but I'm probably not going to be able to get rid of this polyp and you're probably going to have to have it operated on. And I was like, all right, that's interesting. Interesting. She did get rid of that fibroid. And when I went to the doctor and they took a second ultrasound, they're like, oh, the fibroid's gone. I go, yeah. And so you think acupuncture is a bunch of bs, do you know what I'm saying? So I don't know the mechanisms of 3,000 year old medication. I mean, a medical system and herbs and whatnot that can bring things into balance. But at the end of the day, that acupuncturist did tell me to take thyroid hormone.

Yeah, well, I mean, you have different meridians. And I won't even deny the, the existence of things like chakras just because I've done a ton of kundalini yoga and have found that it, it seems to just like open up different parts of your body. And we've done previous podcasts on kundalini and talked about chakras and how that works. But I know when you needle certain points in the body, like during acupuncture, you actually can, can invigorate what they call like the yin or the yang or the like the energy to specific areas. And so maybe it is, you know, four, for example, enhancing the energy delivered to something like the thyroid gland area or something along those lines.

But it was something also liver cleansing, also liver. They're also very about liver and kidneys and liver and gut health and all that stuff is responsible for partly involved with conversion. A stagnant liver might also be an issue there too. So there's where acupuncture might help chiropractic work. Sometimes if someone has a pinch or something's off, it can be affecting an area that could affect the throat or the neck or the thyroid that's there. Do you know what I mean?

Nothing else is working. Basically quit eating chocolate, stop drinking, cruise and go get needles stuck in your thyroid gland.

Go get a bunch of needles stuck, go get a human pin cushion. But yeah, I mean I believe in trying everything. Listen, and a lot of people don't want thyroid hormone replacement. There's nothing wrong with it. I don't want people to be scared of it. But of course if you can get your body to work the way it should work, hey, you know, I'm all for that. I absolutely want to tell everyone how to do that. And there is a way to do that. Particularly with Hashimoto's. By the way, when teenage kids and people first get diagnosed with Hashimoto's, when you go completely grain free and adopt a real strict paleo primal protocol, you can almost turn that around and not have to go on thyroid medication and keep it at bay, then you can have a lot of success with.

Yeah, awesome. Well, there is obviously a ton of information in this book, especially because I'm like a total nerd. Like the stuff where you talk about the side science of the thyroid gland. I was just drooling over that section. And you have everything from lab tests to case studies to this really interesting interview at the back. We even talk about this Dr. Gary Forsman where you and he basically take a deep, deep dive into the state of modern medicine and treatments for thyroid and what works and what doesn't. So if you are listening in and you, you suspect you have thyroid issues or someone you know has thyroid issues or you want to fix your thyroid or you're a doctor who just wants to like educate yourself on thyroid, I mean I would say I would love for doctors to read this book as well. It's called the Paleothyroid Solution. It's written by L. Russ. And I'll put links to some of the stuff that Elle and I talked about. If you just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com l that's BenGreenfieldFitness.come l l e. And there you can get the book. There you can delve into the resources. And also I'll put a link to Elle's podcast where she interviews a lot of people about this kind of stuff. So, Elle, thank you for coming on the show and for telling everybody why they're so freaking cold every morning. Thanks so much for having me feeling fat, foggy, and fatigued. I guess I should say. That's your trademarked alliteration, right?

That's right. And also on the note of, like you said, even the book, if you look at the Q and A, that's something you could actually bring into a doctor. So a doctor can read and hear what another doctor is saying about why they don't know what they're talking about. It's pretty powerful because no one's gonna listen to me. Right. That's why I brought the doctor in on that one. And also if anyone wants to know more about me, E L L E r u s s.com so awesome.

Cool. I love it. All right, folks, well, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield, a little along with L. Russ signing up from BenGreenfieldFitness.com again, you can access the show notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.come l l e. Thanks for listening in and have a healthy week.

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