The Thyroid Debacle with Dr. Eric Balcavage | How Humans Heal

Hi, and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donny Wilson, and today I get to introduce you to my friend and colleague, Dr. Eric Balkavich. He is originally trained as a chiropractor, but really he describes himself now as a functional medicine practitioner. Actually, Eric, I would love for you to describe to everyone what is it that you do, and I can't wait for you to share your passion and your purpose here today and talk about your. Your new book, the Thyroid Debacle. But tell us, like, about you, like, what drives you, who are you and what you do.

Yeah, I would say at this point in time, I'm a functional medicine practitioner more than anything. And for people, and people listening to your podcast probably know what that means. But for somebody who's not quite sure, in functional medicine, our job, our goal is to assess physiology for how we could improve it or optimize it. And what we want to do is look at what's creating this excessive cell stress on somebody's physiology and how do we reduce it or remove it to bring a person to either optimize their health and maybe they're operating what we call homeostasis, a low stress state, but they need to be. They could be optimized a little bit, or if they have chronic health issues and chronic illness, which is typically what shows up at our doorsteps, we have to understand these are people who are operating in what we call allostasis, a stress response. And our job should be different than allopathic medicine. I think that's the important thing. Our job is not to manage their disease, manage their disorder as they continue to progress. Our job is to say, okay, allopathic medicine may have you safe, or they don't know what to do for you because you're not bad enough yet, but you still don't feel and don't function well. So our job is to come in there and say, okay, what's creating that excessive stress? How do I reduce it or eliminate it? And then how do I support the recovery back to an optimal state of health?

I love it. And I mean, I think this is why you and I, as soon as we met, we were like, we're talking the same language. And we, you know, we have a similar passion of, like you're describing actually helping people heal and believing that the body can heal when we give it the right support. And so I'm so glad to. To have met you and to be having this conversation really, about getting to the root cause of many different symptoms and health issues. People deal with Especially related to the thyroid. Because now, and I know I read this in your book, but if you could share with the audience, why is it that you became so passionate about the thyroid?

Yeah, I had no intent on being passionate about thyroid physiology. Not at all. So, you know, ironically.

I went to undergrad.

Not to. I did not want to do anything with medicine, right. I was going to be, you know, a business major and just get in school and get out. Right.

But through some issues and trials and tribulations, I wound up taking some time off school and then transferring to a new school, and I couldn't get any business classes. You know, you're taking it in in January and there's nothing available, right? You got to start these things the beginning of the year. And somebody said to me, or the advisor said to me, listen, we don't have any business classes. And I'm like, okay, what major do you have that nobody takes?

And so literally, by default.

Yeah, it was by default. And she said, it's medical technology. I'm like, perfect. Make that my new major. She said, do you know what it is? I'm like, I really don't care. You know, I'm working part time in a hospital right now in the er. So, you know, it's perfect, right? Just put it in there. And I hated chemistry in school. Hated it, you know.

But wound up doing this and then finding chiropractic care. And then I thought, oh, I'm going to be the chiropractor. And I get out of school and all the blood chemistry stuff is behind, thank goodness, because I really didn't enjoy it at that point in time. And then I get out and I have a. My brother's wife. He calls me one day and says, hey, you know, his wife has got diagnosed with hypothyroidism, iron deficiency, and fibroids. And, hey, where they're going to do a total hysterectomy, put her on iron, put her on thyroid meds. And I'm like, why are you calling me like, I'm a chiropractor. I don't do this stuff, right? And he's like, I know, but you'll figure it out. And like, dang. So that led down this escapade of trying to figure out, okay, what's going on here? Is she anemic? Like, is this the thyroid? What does this mean? And that just kind of, you know, I had to go back to my roots and blood chemistry, the stuff I learned in, you know, in undergrad, we didn't get into thyroid Physiology really in depth in that we just knew what the blood tests were and we didn't really run all those blood tests. We went through the stuff that is typically run in a medical and hospital setting. And then, you know, as I'm working through this with my sister in law and realizing, hey, this is an immune issue, autoimmune issue, start digging in. Then I find Deities, Karazian's work and Apex and they were great for kind of helping that educational process. And you know, I think everybody kind of in, in our space now as long as we've been in it. The Tease has kind of been like the mentor that kind of guided us all into this. I mean, obviously there were people before, but I know for me, the Tease was a big, big role model initially because it's like, oh man, I didn't know all this stuff he's talking about from a totally different perspective. But then I start talking to all my chiropractic patients, you know, just keep, you know, short, you know, talking during appointment and you'd start to, you talk about what's happening. And these are the things I'm happening. I'm reading all this stuff, I'm learning this stuff, and I start asking questions like about thyroid physiology. And you realize, oh my gosh, more than half of my practice is on thyroid medication. And then more than half of them.

Still are symptomatic, still have signs and symptoms, still don't feel well. Even though they're told that they're, you know, they've restored biochemical well being. They don't know that that's what it is, but that's what that's what it is. And like, we got a problem here. Right. And so that really led me in pretty deep. And then I'm doing this stuff that we learned in all these courses and Apex and something else. And I was happ having conversations with a friend of mine, Ben lynch, who, you know, and.

I'm like, something's. We're missing something here. We're missing something. And he handed me, he sent me a paper. We were doing a shy kind conference and we were prepping for that. And he said, hey, listen, you need to read this paper. And it was this, the paper by Robert Navio, the Cell Danger Response. And when I read that paper, I was like, ding, ding, ding. This is it.

This is what's going on with these patients. Yeah.

Because we're trying to. Before that I was thinking which we should be, oh, the gut is the problem. Right. The bacteria is the problem. The thyroid is the problem. Right. So if I just fix the blood values, fix the thyroid, fix all this stuff, they should get better. And while you did those treatments, they did improve a bit, but then they go right back. And so you're like, what's going on? And when I read that paper, I was like, I'm trying to fix the adaptation. I'm trying to fix the body's compensation. I'm going about this all wrong. And that totally opened my eyes at.

The root of the root cause. Right. It's like, how do we get really in there at what's going on?

Yeah, because we'd see. We'd see that elevated reverse T3 and go, oh, that's the problem. Right. Because the body's deactivating it and think that that's the problem. So how do I stop the deactivation? But when you read Navio's paper and you read that, oh, this is an adaptive response, then I shouldn't be messing with that. That's the body's protective mechanism. Why am I trying to take that away? I need to get to what's causing that. And we got so caught up, I think, in functional medicine, for one. I think it's still happening that everybody's trying to fix the thyroid gland. Right. I'm going to fix the T3, I'm going to fix the adrenals. Well, I don't know that they're always broken. I think they're more adaptable. And it's funny when I reached out to Navio, because if you read that paper, I'm sure you've read it.

Yeah.

At least once. Right.

And I said I was in also, you know, at the shycon. I met at shycon and it was like that paper was. Yeah. A big part of the conversation about. Because it was also when we're talking about mthfr, for example. Right. So this is true not just for thyroid issues. This is because when we're talking about cell danger response and the body's adaptation to stress, which of course, you know, I love to talk about how stress affects us. It's going to affect different people in different ways. Some people it might show up mostly as thyroid symptoms and issues, and other people it might show up as something else. But if we just keep chasing all these symptoms and something else, we're not really getting at the core, then, you know, we're not really. Are we really helping people heal or are we all just kind of treading water?

Yeah. And I think that's fair. And when I. The interesting thing, Bo, in His paper, there was nothing about thyroid physiology really laid out there. And I'm like looking at the, you know, for the person who hasn't read that paper yet, go get that paper and look at the pictures. Right? Just look at the pictures. And when you look at the pictures, he has it laid out pretty well that these micronutrients that we often give vitamin D and magnesium, and we talk about tryptophan, all these different things, he's got them listed that, hey, in a allostatic stress state, this is what happens to that, and in a non stress state, this is what happens to it.

And then you go, oh, biochemistry. Our bodies completely function differently in a stress state versus a non stress, which makes sense. Our bodies are trying to protect us from stress.

Right. And so I said, where's the thyroid stuff?

He's like, it was missing.

I don't know much about thyroid physiology. And I was like, oh, my gosh. This is like the foundational piece is not that it's the thyroid physiology is broken, but the regulator, one of the major regulators to shift us from homeostasis to allostasis is the amount of T3 inside a cell. And so this hypothyroid state that people are experiencing, and especially in high numbers today, it's higher than we actually say it is, in my opinion.

I agree.

Is not broken. We're always trying to fix it. In functional medicine, we're like, oh, you cannot converting T4 to T3. Let's give you T. And that sets the stage for trying to override.

What the wisdom, the intelligence of the cell is trying to do, which is saying, hey, we're slowing down manufacturing, we're slowing down bringing glucose in here. We're trying to kill whatever this threat is. And by adding more thyroid hormone to try and fix the thyroid physiology, I think oftentimes we're creating a cascade of problems that we may not see show up for.

A few months to a few years after starting the therapy.

Okay, so thank you for. Because you've really, you've given us a really good summary of like your thought process and about your book. What's in this book, which is, which is a deep book here.

Yeah.

And I want to just back up and dissect this a little bit more. And yes, I'm. I mean, I was originally trained at Basty University under Dr. Alan Gaby, Jonathan Wright, and Dennis Wilson, which are, you know, some of the, you know, some of these original conversations about what's really going on with the thyroid. And so what I want to Say to listeners, first of all, is that, I mean, I think a lot of people are struggling with symptoms like fatigue, maybe weight gain or weight that's hard to lose, digestive issues or constipation, dry skin, hair loss. These are some of the common symptoms we associate with lower thyroid function. But a lot of people, you might go into your doctor and they do standard blood work like it's TSH and it's in, what is the, quote, normal range, and the doctor says your thyroid's fine, you don't need to do anything. So I want to help listeners know that if you have these symptoms, some of those quick ones that I just mentioned or Eric, you can share some others, then what we're saying is, hey, it might not all be fine. You know, even if your quick standard annual blood work says your thyroid's okay, things might not be okay. But then the piece after that is, even if you then go to a functional medicine practitioner and they might say, actually, your thyroid's not fine, you need some T3. And they just quickly give you a thyroid glandular supplement, which I see a lot of times, too. Or they quickly give you a T3 prescription and say, okay, now you should be on your way and feeling better. But what you're saying is actually that's not enough either, because we need to be understanding why the thyroid is under functioning and help the body out to solve that issue, not just quickly replace T3 or T4, T3 and forget about it. Because that's not really getting at the core issues. Is that kind of breaking it down some more?

Yeah. So I think the thing that's important for people to understand is you can have signs and symptoms of altered thyroid physiology and your glands still work. So your thyroid gland produces thyroid hormone. Right. Primarily T4. It gets into the bloodstream, and then we have lots of this T4 in circulation. And then the peripheral tissues, if they want to increase their metabolism, they're bringing the T4 in, converting it to T3, and that's what increases your metabolism. And so the body is set up, especially if you're gaining extra body weight. The way metabolism works in the body is as you start to store more calories, the body send signals. So those extra calories are getting stored as body fat. The adipose tissue releases hormones to go to the brain. And Brent says the brain, whoa. We're storing extra calories. We're done eating for a while. Increase the metabolism. Let's get back to it. Get those calories burned off so your body's in when it's in healthy mode. It's always, as soon as I get more calories, I'm going to increase metabolism, shut down satiety. So if you're gaining extra body weight, you know, not lean muscle mass, but you're gaining extra body fat, you have a metabolism problem. Okay.

The signals are messed up. They're not absolutely. Your body's not going from, to. From. From eating and burning. It's not, you know, because you really. Our body's like, I'm moving my body like this because it feels like in our metabolism, it should be perceiving what's going on and then adapting and shifting. But if that sort of adaptation stops happening, that's the signal that something's getting blocked in there.

Right. So the extra body weight is the sign that the physiology is not in low stress mode. But I'm in danger mode. I'm storing extra calories. And that's the sign that we've got a problem. So we're looking at 50% of the US population is overweight or obese. That means that probably. Yeah, that means about 50% of the US population has altered or adapted thyroid physiology. Their gland may be fine, but it's one thing to make hormone, it's another thing. How it works, I give people two analogies. One is you could have a full tank of gas, but that doesn't mean the car is going to run well. Right?

That's a good point. Yeah.

So. And somebody could say, well, the reason your car doesn't run well because it's 3/4 full. Really? Is that the reason? Okay, so let's fill it all the way up and it still doesn't run well. Well, it has to because it's full. That's like looking at your TSH and said every. Your thyroid physiology has to be good because your tsh, which is like the gas gauge of the thyroid physiology based on the allopathic model. If that's within range, everything's good. Okay, well, wait a minute. Is it possible, like for the car that I could have a full tank of gas, but the spark plugs are bad and therefore it's not running? The air filter doesn't work right. Or something in the engine is preventing a tank, a car with a full tank of gas to operate? Yes. Okay. Is it possible that I could have a normal TSH and still not have optimal thyroid physiology? If you ask in the allopathic model, they would probably say, no, that's not possible. But it is possible. And technically I do believe that most physicians would say it's possible, but there's nothing we can do until TSH is high and T4 is low and the gland has been destroyed. That's when they can intervene, right?

To me, that's because their toolbox, so to speak, only contains replacement hormone. So you can go, okay, if your thyroid is not making T4, we can give you T4. But how many people, the studies show how many people are taking T4 in the form of Synthroid or Levothyroxine and they still have all the symptoms. So it's not, you know, they're just taking T4, but it's not solving the fact that their cellular function is overwhelmed.

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Let'S dig into this for listeners. What are the things then? Because it's probably not going to really show on regular blood work, but what are the things that you and I are thinking of that end up clogging up the system that end up causing this cell danger response? What are the things that end up causing the metabolism to get stuck and therefore the fatigue and the weight gain and the other issues to develop? What are those things that you're looking at really other than the thyroid?

Everything. So when we think about, we're talking about.

Right, we talk, we look at foundationally and this is part three of the book is looking at what we, what we just, we determine with the fitness factors, right? So you, we've got to look at your dietary fit, like what are you eating, right? Is it good quality food or do you have a, do you have habit of eating pretty lousy food and have a behavior of eating occasional good foods or is the bulk of your Diet processed standard American diet fair. And if that's the case, that poor dietary choice day in, day out becomes some of this potential stressor that's creating this shift from.

Homeostatic regulation, low stress physiology to this danger physiology.

We talk about talking like sugar, refined foods, processed oils, all that stuff.

So you know, we got to look at that. So that's part of our job is okay, what are you eating? Right? And yes, right now there's controversy amongst our profession as to which diet is better. And for the listener, you know, it's all bull. So the key is, is that if you are struggling with chronic health care health issues, before you go to the argument of which whole food diet is better, how about just eat more whole food and less processed food. That should be number one.

Start simple.

I think we're doing a huge disservice by arguing amongst ourselves like we've circled the wagons, we're shooting in and saying no, veganism is better than carnivore, carnivore is better than keto, keto is better than pa. When in reality the battle should not be between which whole food healthy diet is optimal because that varies based on my activity, my lifestyle, my belief systems, all those things. And I can be healthy in any one of those whole food diets. But the other things I think we have to consider is what's going on with sleep and sleep fitness, right? So are you sleeping appropriately through the night? You may or may not be. If you're not sleeping well through the night, that's a huge issue. So we need to figure that out. Maybe it's because you already have an inflammatory issue that's making it difficult to breathe and now you're opening your mouth at night and creating hypoxia. Or maybe you have a partner who snores, right? Or maybe you have poor sleep habits, right? You sleep with the lights on, TV on, you got your cell phone next to your bed and next to your head. So we need to look at that, we look at respiratory fitness. How you breathe has a massive impact on your health, your well being and your inflammatory processes in your thyroid physiology. We talk about emotional fitness and this is one that a lot of people don't like to talk about, right? Especially like, hey, I'm emotionally stable. Are you right or are you like, what's going on in this, in the, in between the six inches of your ears that might be some of the greatest stress that you're putting on your system. We talk about physical fitness, like what do you do for exercise and activity that becomes important. Is it too much? Is it too little? Is it that you do not so much, but you don't ever get a chance to recover. We talk about habitual fitness, like what do you do on a daily basis, right? That is creating stress in your life. If you're the person who gets up with this and looks at all the Instagram, what's everybody doing today that I haven't done? Who's got more money than I do with it? Like all that stuff and then you go to bed with all that thing and oh, Jean, you said this about my post. And is that creating a problem? And is that taking away from your time to eat well and to breathe well and to exercise? Right? So look at your habitual fitness. We talk about your environmental fitness, what's going on in your air, your water, right? Your environments, are they toxic? Are they low tox? How can we do those things? And then we talk about your metabolic fitness and genetic fitness. So we look at every aspect of your physiology. And the one I didn't talk about, but one that you and I both work with on a lot of patients, is our microbial fitness. Like what we've got more organisms than we have cells inside us and what state are they in? Because they play a big role. But of the things that I talk that I just mentioned, most of those, if you're objective and if you're able to take a step back and take a look at it, most of the things are things that you could start to make changes to without help. All you have to do is be honest with yourself and take a look at those things. But your diet, your lifestyle, your environment, your respiration, all these things have created what you are now. And so many times the right strategy is to reverse engineer those things. Okay, what can we reduce, what can we eliminate or what can remove? I think that becomes a really important thing that we have to consider.

Oh my gosh, thank you so much for, you know, you just covered so much. But it's also sometimes these things are so simple, so much so that we end up thinking, is it really going to make that much a difference? I think that's a lot of times what people like, oh, well, is this, you know, and it's sometimes the biggest challenge is being able to implement eating well, sleeping well, exercising and, you know, and eliminating toxins as best we can and helping our bodies to. Helping our brains and our bodies recover from stress every day in the moment. I mean, again, this is why I love to talk about this and wrote about this in my book Master your Stress Reset yout Health. And I love that you're reminding us like this is where really it comes back to, you know, if you. So if you, what you're saying is if a person is wondering, hey, might my thyroid be involved and cause making it difficult for me to lose weight or might my thyroid be involved with my fatigue or brain fog? You're saying, well you know, do the testing but also make sure that you start with these core, I think of it as self care. Like start with just your lifestyle and how your supporting your health on a daily basis. Start there and then see what happens. Would you say?

Yeah, because I think we try and fix, we come in and we say, oh, you have bacterial over, let me give you an antimicrobial. Oh, I have an adrenal issue. I'm going to give you, you know, give you some, something that's going to fix your adrenal gland, right? Or oh, I'm going to give you T4 and T3 and that'll fix it. We assume that if we normalize a blood value or a lab value that we fix the problem. But that's allopathic philosophy. That's the allopathic paradigm. What we, we do need to do those things sometimes to help the system out for sure. But we have to say why is this happening? And if we don't ask the why is it happening and address the why, we're going to wind up with frustration because hey, I did that gut protocol, it was good for a couple months and now it's bad again. I got the thyroid hormone, I felt good for a little bit and now I've hit my plateau and now I feel like I'm back, honeymoon's over, right? And so I did T4 and I went up T4 and I went down T4 and then that didn't work. So then I went to T3 and I added T3 and now I'm taking high dose T3 and now I'm taking High Dose T4 and High Dose T3 and I still feel hypothyroid. Why? Well, because you have a cell danger response and your cells are smarter than you are and they're saying, hey, I don't care how much of this stuff you pump into my system, I am not going to normalize metabolism because I have a bacteria, a virus, a threat. I use the analogy. If you let me kind of give this analogy, I think it's helpful.

Because I have a lot of women I take care of and so I think it Hits home for them. What's going on? And I usually say, look, if, let's say it's Friday afternoon, you've got a big party coming up, you got all four burners on the stove, cooking pot, you got pots of stuff going on. You got wash going, you got the vacuum cleaner going. Right. You're doing like five things at one time. You're feeding your daughter right at the kitchen island. Now somebody breaks in and attacks your daughter. Are you going to continue to cook and clean?

Nope. We're going to deal with the most urgent issue.

Right. So are you going to turn off the oven, pack everything up in nice glass Tupperware before you go help her?

No. Okay.

Are you going to turn the vacuum off or maybe just try and finish the family room real quick before you go help her?

I might be tempted, but no, you're going to immediately. Yeah. And you're not even going to have time to think. I mean, the way our stress response happens is we don't even have time to think about what we're going to do. Right. Our bodies have a built in stress response system that's gonna choose for us right away. Right?

Yep. You got your limbic reptilian brain that says, this is I gotta do this. Right. Boom, I gotta do it. But in the moment, right. If I walked into your home and I saw the food burning on the stove, I saw the house is a disaster, clothes all over the place, vacuum cleaners running, right. I could make the assumption that you are a terrible cook, a terrible housekeeper. And so my solution would be, I'm going to fix this for Donnie. I'm going to get her a cook, I'm going to get her a housekeeper, house is clean, food's prepared, problem solved. Right.

Swallow more pills to take care of it. Yeah. Take this pill for this and that pill for that.

But did I fix the fact that you're downstairs in the basement fighting for your life and the life of your daughter?

No.

So is anybody going to eat the food that the cook made?

No.

No. Right. So none of this stuff, even though it looks nice and pretty now.

It still didn't address the issue. But I've window dressed the whole thing so it actually looks good. So I feel good. I feel good because I made it look better.

You think you did your job. Yeah. Yeah. And I think so many practitioners, you're pointing out like, and I see this too, I completely understand your frustration. Frustration and your motivation because we do see this every day, patients who come in and we can see that their practitioner had good intentions, right? And the practitioner is like, it seems like, here's the prescription that's necessary. But maybe they, you know, whatever reason, either they don't have time or they aren't looking at this big picture view to be able to say, hey, I need to go look in the basement and see what's really going on here. Now, maybe we need this prescription, or temporarily we need this prescription, or we might want to fill in while we deal with what's going on in the basement. We might need to do it all at once. But you're right. Like this, this. I think that if listeners can hear that, it's. We hear your frustration too. Like, you might be going to many practitioners who might have prescribed various different things, and you still don't feel better. And you're like, how much money do I have to spend and how many practitioners do I have to see before we can solve this? And I think it's what Eric's pointing out is that a lot of practitioners just were not trained to think this way. I think that's part of it. I don't know. What do you think, Eric? Why do you think it's so common that this isn't the way it's addressed?

Because we all grew up in an allopathic model. We all did, right? Not that the allopathic model is wrong, but it's for a different type of care. And so when Kelly and I wrote this book initially, definitely my. A lot of my. A lot of the writing was angry, right? Because I came from a medical model, frustrated by that model with my own health care issues. Kelly was a medical physician.

Had her health issues, kind of just pushed off is the typical thing. And so there's a lot of anger there. And then as we kind of had other people read, they're like, man, this is angry. And I was like, you know what? Through the process, I got a little bit older and a little bit wiser and said, really, what we need to really do is do a better job of building a bridge and realize that these aren't bad. Medical physicians aren't bad people. They're just doing a different job, right? We don't go to the plumber and say, hey, can you run the electricity in my house? Right? The allopathic physician, their job is to diagnose a disease and either cut it out, medicate it out, or manage it, right? But that's not my job, right? My job is to help optimize health. And I had a patient who, great guy, cardiovascular surgeon, struggling, doing all the things that medical. He would tell his patients. And yet he's diabetic and 60 pounds overweight and struggling with issues. And we had this discussion. He was a fantastic guy, super smart guy. It's not that he doesn't. He's not like, oh, he's not very smart. No, he's probably one of the best cardiovascular surgeons in his area. But this is a totally different world. I think the comment he said on one of my podcasts was, I didn't even know there was a parallel universe out there that did this. Right.

And so, like a parallel universe for them, right? Like, yeah, yeah.

And so it opened his eyes. And so what we need to do is make sure that we. We have allopathic medicine to do the acute crisis care. Right. And for the people who don't want to put a lot of time and work and eff being healthy, great. Let's make sure there's plenty of prescription drugs around to manage them. But for the person who goes in there and wants another option to say, hey, I don't want to take meds, I need to. I want to improve my health and wellbeing, then we have to have another option. And I think functional medicine is and should be that other option. But we in the functional medicine community need to kind of, as I say, guard the gate and make sure that what we're doing is going to what the foundation, you know, the kind of the foundational principles of functional medicine are. It's not just this greenwashing of allopathic medicine with. With supplements in place of medications. It is actually trying to address the root cause issues. And everybody says, I'm doing the root cause issues. I'm giving you T3. That's the root cause issue. That's never the root cause issue. And if you're one of those people who's taking 20 supplements a day and saying, hey, this is the. I'm. I'm getting functional medicine. You're not. You are getting allopathic. You're getting allopathic medicine with supplements. Right. If you need 20 supplements a day to feel lousy, you are. You. That is now functional medicine. Okay? So that's what I. That's the model for this book. Even though it's written from the guise of it's about thyroid. You know, it sounds like it's about thyroid only. It's really about explaining this cell stress, cell danger response, how it. We should expect, if you're in this position where you have excessive cell stress, that you should expect to have compromised thyroid physiology. Absolutely. You should expect to have adrenal physiology problems. You should expect to have gut issues because if you're being chased by the proverbial tiger, you're not stopping to eat, therefore you don't need digestive enzyme output, you're not stopping to sleep, you'll get eaten, right? So you're not going to sleep well at night, you're going to have insomnia, you're going to have trouble going to sleep because your brain is in protection mode, it's in fight or flight mode. You're not gonna, your sex organ, your sex hormones aren't going to regulate well because you're not going to stop and have sex while you're being chased by the tiger, right? So we should expect all aspects of physiology to start to become down regulated. And it's our job in functional medicine say, hey, this is anticipated when we have this. So this isn't a surprise, this is what we should expect. And that's different from allopathic medicine. Who's saying, hey, we're going to treat the outcome of that. When the thyroid gland becomes disease, we'll give you something, but it's a different job and a different role.

Oh, thank you for explaining that so well.

And to really identify, here's the issue. And then each listener, each person can kind of say to themselves, how do I want to choose, right, for my health care, for my life? Because ultimately, as you said earlier, sometimes you might take something and then it's right back to where it started from three months later or six months later. And where I'm coming from, I know with my work, and you are, is that we're not just trying to solve something for three months. We're actually here to say, hey, we want to be able for you to solve this and be able to maintain it through your lifestyle for your lifetime. And that also is a way different goal than what people are used to seeing in the healthcare system. And so for listeners to be able to say, hey, what do you really want for the way you, taking care of you in your life? And sometimes it does bring us to needing to make some big decisions, right Eric, like what is your, is it that your job or the way you're, you know, sort of like some of the boundaries and structure in your day to day life, you're in your relationship, in your home, in your, in the choices you've made in the past. Because I think sometimes we're, we get so caught up in the decisions we've been making that it seems impossible to shift those Decisions going forward. And sometimes we hit this moment where we go, wait a minute. Do I need to completely change my life, my job, my relationship? You know, like, in order to set. To be able to address at a root cause. I don't know. Do you end up having that conversation with your patients sometimes, too?

Almost all of them. Because, look, it's not one thing. I mean, that's the important thing. Because, like, when people come see me. Is it Epstein Barr? Is it. I think it's sibo. Right. Listen, those are all the outcome of an environment that's conducive for EBV to. Can be chronically reactivated. Why is it chronically reactivated? Because the environment's appropriate. Why do I have. Why do I keep getting sibo? Because it's the appropriate environment. So we can bomb you with antimicrobials. We can do that stuff. But that's not fixing it. What's creating this stress environment on your system? Is it disrupted sleep? Is it the relationship you have? Right. Maybe it's a bad relationship, and you really either need to fix it or get out of it, Whether it's a work relationship, a personal relationship. Right, but these are really tough discussions, and they're painful, and people often look to avoid them, and they think that they have it addressed, but really all they've done is kind of push it to the back, and it's still perseverating around in their brain. Right. Still creating a stress response, but they block those things out. So emotional fitness and that. And when I. Even when we talk about environmental fitness. Environmental fitness is your environment that you live in. It's not just the toxins and all those things. It's the emotional toxins as well. But these are things that are sometimes way more important because they're the things that are day in, day out that we don't consider. Right. We're jumping over dollar bills often to pick up pennies. Like, what about that bacteria? How about we look for this? Can we run a test that looks for the most rare bacteria ever? No, we cannot. How about we deal with their breathing? Your emotional relationship. What's going on between the six inches of your ears? Do you work out every day? No, no, no, I don't have time for that. Okay, but we're going to run a 600 do that could find an organism. But you don't have time to do, like, take care of your. Just do the basics and foundational things to take care of yourself. No, I don't have time. Well, how did you look up this organism no. Well, I was on the Internet. Okay, get off the Internet and start doing more self care. But I think it's really important. I don't have the great skill set from the, you know, from the emotional standpoint. But I typically, if somebody's got a lot of those emotional issues, there's DNRs, there's MAP method, which a lot of my patients have done really well with the MAP method. And these are techniques that can help you have better control of your brain and the mindset and the stuff that's going on. And I think people discount it. I know I did initially, but it plays such a huge role. I did get yelled at by a client the other day because we were talking about this because she has a lot of emotional stress and she keeps looking for why is what like everything else besides the elephant in the room. And we had that discussion, we started talking about all the things that she's like, well, this and that. And I, you know, it is because she's, she tells, it's how we start every conversation. Like all the stress that's going on in her life every time we have a con of a call, right?

And I said, listen, this is what you need to deal with. And she said, oh, are you telling me I'm not going to have, I need to get rid of all the stress in my life? And I said, said, no, that's impossibility. Matter of fact, you actually need stress in your life. I said, I started explaining that hormetic effect. No stress in your life at all is not good.

I mean, it would be impossible anyway.

It's impossible. But how am I going to get a bigger muscle? I have to stress it, right? Break it down and then it builds up bigger and stronger. As long as I do the right things after I break it down, I'm like, you need to have stress in your life. What I need you to do is have a better set of skills, right? To be able to have your pity party and then turn that stressor into something that you can turn into a positive experience. Like, how can I learn from this? How can I get some benefit from this? How can I find a solution? Are you problem? Because if you're problem oriented, you can't solve anything. You're always focused on the problem, right? If you're solution oriented, you'll be able to do it. So do I have stress? Emotional stress? Do I have, you know, is there relationship stress? Is there work stress? Absolutely. The issue is sometimes things suck and you got to be okay with that. Hey, that Sucks. Okay, pity party over. What am I going to do to fix it? Right? How am I going to do it? Do I have. And do we have this tools and the skill set to turn it to do those things? And it's so important. So it's what you talk about. It's what I talk about. I think people hear it. They kind of know it, but they're like, like, come on, can you just give me a. Give me a bottle of capsules and I'll take those. That's easier than dealing with my. What? My. My relationship with my wife or my kids or my parents or whatever, or my off. Or my work or. I don't want to change my job. Oh, my gosh. What happens if I quit my job? And you'll probably get another one, right? If you're that miserable, why would you stay in that environment? But we get trapped. We have this fear kind of fear mentality. Like, we're worried about what could happen. We're worried about what happened in the past. And really, most of us need to spend more time living in the present.

So. Oh, my gosh. I completely agree. And I'm. I mean, I'm so glad that you. Because this is the thing in your book, this is what you're talking about, this is what you're teaching us, is how do we actually take better care of ourselves under stress? And this is what I, you know, I love to emphasize too, is like, how do we, you know, people will say to me, oh, Dr. Donnie, aren't you stress free? And I'm like, no, I wouldn't even want to be stress free. I want to be able to choose what I'm passionate about and feel good doing it. And so that's what drives me to read this research and figure out, like you do, Eric, what can we do on a day in and day out? And how sometimes do we have to make these tough decisions to make sure that we can take better care of ourselves? And it's not always easy, but I believe that that's really what it is to be a human, is how do we be more in the moment and be more about how do we support ourselves through what we go through so that we can be well enough to do what we love? And oh, my gosh, thank you again so much for coming to share with, with my audience here at How Humans Heal. This book. They can get it at Amazon.

Amazon, Barnes and Nobles. Yep, Absolutely.

Definitely. If you've been struggling with what you know of as thyroid issues or you're wondering if you have thyroid issues. This book describes the thyroid and helps you understand beyond what you might hear from most practitioners. But as Eric is saying, it also really helps you understand your whole body, your whole health, not just the thyroid, but how to optimize your health overall. And you also practice in Pennsylvania, it sounds like also online.

Yeah. Yeah. So probably pre Covid, I went from big, big office to, hey, I'm going to simplify my life. Right? So same thing we're just talking about. Oh, my gosh, I wrestled with it for a while. Can I. Do I need to keep having all this big stress? Big. You know.

Once the ego phase goes away of having all of the stuff that everybody sees right, then it's like, wow, this stuff is pretty stressful. Right? Have all this stuff and everybody's got to make those decisions. So, yeah, now I would say I'm probably 90% virtual, which is awesome. I love it. Now I kick myself in the butt for not doing it sooner. But these are the things. We all have these stressors. We all have to do them. And I think one of the things that's really important for the listeners to understand, especially about this book, is this is not. Even though it's written from the lens of thyroid physiology, this is a book for almost anybody, how to improve my health and my life. Why is my body not working the way it's supposed to? It's probably because you've got this danger physiology going on. You need to get to the root of that. How do you do that? Part three is all about simple steps you can take before you ever pick up the phone and call a functional practitioner. There's a lot of things you can go ahead and do. And what's. I. I think what we did in this book, and we had a discussion on it, we did not put any supplement recommendations in the book on purpose because what happens most people do is they get to that. Let me get to part three so I know what supplements to buy. And they start buying the supplements and they forget to read the rest of the book. And then they show up in your office or my office with two bags of supplements. They still don't feel well. And so that should be somebody who knows what's going on's job is to tell you what to do for a short period of time, how to. How to manage those things. Your job should really be focused on what can I do day in, day out to improve my habits and behaviors so I can have a higher quality of health and higher quality of life.

Absolutely. Like get the foundation there, then you can see if there is still a lack of something, a nutrient or hormone, then we can address it. But let's get the foundation working for you first.

Right? Absolutely.

Love it. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much. It's been so great talking this through with you. I'm so excited to share about your book and. And everyone to benefit from it. So thanks again. And I'll be putting your. Your link here, but it's under your. Your website is under your clinic name, right?

So it's under rejuvencenter.com is the web is the website. And then I have a podcast, Thyroid Answers podcast you've been on. We need to get you back on and even talk about your book a little bit more.

And then just social media content. I don't do a lot of marketing, but I do get some posts out there occasionally, so people do hear about me.

Awesome. Awesome. Okay, so I'll put all that. Everyone listening. If you look in the show notes, you'll get those links to reach Eric. And I can't wait for everyone to benefit from your book. Thank you so much again for writing it and doing what you do. It's awesome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

You're welcome.

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