Depression and Thyroid

Hey, everybody, we're going to talk about depression, about the thyroid, and about mental health in relationship to Lyme and mold. And remember, if you have depression, if you have anxiety, if you have mental health imbalances, there's a root cause, right? It's not like we just wake up and the brain decides to not function for no reason. And the same thing with thyroid. You know, I see people and one of the questions I have gotten recently gotten is like, I've been on thyroid medicine for 30 years. Can I get off? Right? And so the. The answer is like, yes and right? So we always want to make sure, of course, when we're getting off of every. Any sort of medication, we're working with our prescribers. It's really important things, especially when we're coming to antidepressants, that they're titrated off slowly. And definitely work with your prescribers to do that. But to give you some overarching ideas of like, if we just simply pull. Pull medications without getting to the root, it's probably not going to work. Right? But I see people get off medications all the time. But we do this by addressing the root. So Lyme disease, mold illness, Bartonella, Babesia, other hidden toxins can be huge causes of things like depression and anxiety. And furthermore, a lot of things can cause thyroid disorders. You know, toxins can get into the thyroid, and the thyroid will not produce. Produce thyroid as well. Certain microorganisms will get into the hypothalamus of the brain. And this is the upper regulatory part of our system, meaning when the hypothalamus is working correctly, it sends the signal to the thyroid to work correctly. So that's really important. So part of it is like getting somebody off thyroid medication, for example, getting rid of the infections so that the hypothalamus, the brain, is sending the right signal to the thyroid. In addition, the thyroid hormone becomes activated in our liver and our gastrointestinal tract. So if our liver is not working up to par, if our gut's not working up to par, we're not activating thyroid hormone. And then it's also really important to work with somebody who understands what proper thyroid testing is. So, for example, there is a thyroid marker called Reverse T3. Reverse T3 will block regular thyroid hormone from working, so you can have totally normal thyroid hormone levels. And if you have high reverse T3, then your thyroid is not going to actually have an impact on your cel. So it'll look high in your blood, but it's not able to do its job because it's being blocked. So then we have to look at what elevates reverse T3. Well, stress does. Cortisol that gets secreted from the adrenals is a big cause of that. So the kind of take home points is like, yes, I do see people get off medications via the thyroid medications, antidepressants, many other medications, all the time, even with decades of use. And this is what happens when we're getting to the root cause. So we got to find the root while we're getting to the root. A lot of times people do best if we're putting band aids on. You know, your thyroid medication, your antidepressant, they're not getting to the root, but sometimes they're the band aids that help you survive while you're getting to the root. And having enough thyroid hormone does give your body the energy to heal, to repair, to detox. So being on, you know, something like that, a medication like that, while you're going through the human healing process, is oftentimes a good idea to give your body the strength to heal. And then once the roots are addressed, that's when it's time to work with the prescriber to say, okay, well, can we start reducing things, titrating you down, seeing how you feel symptomatically, you know, with depression and anxiety especially, and tracking your levels in your blood, we're talking about thyroid and just making sure you're really working with a doc that is going to run all different levels and tests, looking for root causes, but also running panels even for basic things like thyroid that are thorough. You know, too frequently I see with thyroid just TSH, the brain hormone that stimulates the thyroid, or free T4, which is inactive thyroid hormone. So those are oftentimes the only two markers that are run. And we're not looking at very commonly reverse T3, which will block the thyroid hormone, or free T3, which is the thyroid hormone that is actually active, that actually does the activity that thyroid hormone is needed to do. So these are kind of the overarching things to think about when we're thinking about depression. So thyroid microbes and getting off a medication. Hope that helps. Please do subscribe to the channel. Don't keep me a secret. Share me with your friends and family if that's helpful. Information about me is in the show notes. I'll see you next time.