Dr. Tabatha Barber explains how the thyroid regulates metabolism by reading stress, infection, and other body signals. The pituitary makes TSH to trigger thyroid hormone production, but T4 converts to either active T3 or reverse T3, which blocks signaling. TSH-only tests miss this: reverse T3 can fool the brain while the body stays sluggish.
Thyroid. It could be the chicken or the egg. There's. Thyroid's a little more. Complex because it is the master gland of your body that regulates your metabolism, how quickly and to what extent your body burns fat or not. And it's dependent on everything that it's coming in and being told. So your thyroid's taking information in every second from all of your systems and evaluating whether you're in survival mode or thrival mode. Is it safe to use resources and burn extra fat? Or do we need to possibly fight an infection, run from this crazy boss, detox from too much alcohol, heal from surgery like, what is happening? And it will decide, are we okay to burn that fat for fuel, or do we need to hold on to that fat even harder? So this is from the Cleveland Clinic Institute of Functional Medicine. I have to give them credit, but I want you to see that they didn't put the picture of the brain on this sheet. And the brain is super important because the brain makes tsh. Tsh, Thyroid stimulating hormone is not a thyroid hormone, yet it's often the only thyroid hormone checked when you go to the doctor to get evaluated to see if you have a thyroid problem. The TSH is made in the pituitary gland in the brain, and it goes to the thyroid in your neck, and it says, make more or less hormone. So they're always in constant communication and contact, and your thyroid will make T4. The four means that there's four Iodines in this compound, in this chemical, and then it goes around in your body, mostly to your liver, and gets converted to T3. T3 is the active form of thyroid hormone that combined to the trillions of cells in your body, bind to the receptor and send a signal saying, increase my heart rate. Move my bowels, make my brain function better. Grow my hair. All of these good, amazing things. But T4 can also be made into reverse T3. And reverse T3 is like putting your foot on the brakes. Whereas T3 was the gas, reverse T3 binds to those same receptors and says, slow down. Stop the bowels from moving, stop the hair growth, stop the skin, turn over. Stop utilizing all of these resources because we're in survival mode. And so your hair starts to fall out, your skin is dry, you're constipated, you're gaining weight because you have way too much. Reverse T3. Putting the foot on the brake. The sad thing is, reverse T3 goes back and talks to the brain the same way T3 does. And so if you only check a TSH level, it could look falsely normal and reassure you that your thyroid is normal when in fact it is not. In fact, your body is struggling to utilize your thyroid hormones and there's many reasons why this is it could be as simple as the cell membranes are inflamed and this key does not fit in this lock so you could have T3 all day long. You could have perfect T3 levels but if it can't, key can't fit in the lock and send the sign it doesn't matter because your cells don't hear the job they need to do. We need to understand what is driving your thyroid to make T3 or reverse T3 and I want to point out this is super important. Your thyroid is not failing. Your thyroid is protecting you because of what's going on in your body. It thinks that you need to downregulate. It thinks you're going to be in a car crash so it puts its foot on the brake. So stop being mad at your body and stop acting like it failed you.
