What is Reverse T3 and Why is it Important to Test?

Hi, I'm Dr. Tabitha, the gutsy gynecologist. I'm a triple board certified, OB, GYN and Functional Medicine physician. I've embraced the world of functional medicine and wellness through my own personal health journey. And I'm super excited to share my wisdom and unique perspective as it pertains to women's health. After caring for thousands of women, I've come to realize that your gut health determines your gyne health and your overall health. And it's a super gutsy thing for me to go against conventional gynecology practice to bring you the truth.

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Welcome back ladies. I'm so glad that you are here. This week I'm going to be talking about what the heck is reverse T3? So I've been getting this question a lot and it's really important for you to understand what reverse T3 is. And I will tell you, a lot of conventional doctors don't get trained on reverse T3. So I know that I, you know, didn't really learn about it in any depth and I definitely didn't learn how to test for it or to treat it. So it's really important. It can be a game changer in your thyroid function because here's the deal. Thyroids were not made to just poop out and stop working. That is not how God created our bodies. Our bodies are meant to be amazing and keep, maintain homeostasis and stay in balance. And our thyroid is our master gland. It will take on the burden of your other systems at the detriment of itself to keep your overall balance of your body. So this is a really key, important concept to understand is if you are struggling with hypothyroid issues or you've been told you have hypothyroidism and there is a reason. Thyroids don't just stop making thyroid hormone because they're tired of making thyroid hormone. They don't make thyroid hormone in sufficient quantities because they don't have the ingredients, meaning they don't have the amino acids or the iodine or the vitamins necessary for that production. Or they don't have the ability to convert the thyroid hormone that they've made to utilize it. Or the cell can't hear the signal because the cell is inflamed or you're making too much reverse T3. So that's what I wanted to answer today. So if you've been diagnosed with hypothyroidism or you think you have hypothyroidism, find out why, and you will ask your doctor. And you will probably get, I don't know, you just have a sluggish thyroid. You might get. Well, it could be an autoimmune process, but there's really no point in checking that because there's nothing to do about it. Those are the most common responses. Those are responses I myself gave as a conventional doctor back in the day, and I apologize for that because that's not true. We do know that it's very important to know if you have an autoimmune attack on your thyroid, meaning your own immune system is attacking your thyroid. That needs to be stopped. And once that stops, your thyroid can probably function again and you don't need thyroid support with thyroid hormone. Other reasons for your thyroid to not be functioning well is your adrenal glands are working over time or they are no longer producing the cortisol and the DHEA that you need them to anymore. It could be that your sex hormones are imbalanced, like your estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. It could be that you have a high toxic burden if too much lead in your system or mercury or mycotoxins from mold. It could be you're getting exposed to too much of halogens in your water. So fluoride in your toothpaste and in your water competes with iodine. So let me back up a minute. Because thyroid hormone T4 is 4 iodines, T3 is 3 iodines, T2 is 2 iodines. And so an iodine is a halogen. And if you remember back to high school chemistry, halogens are all in the same column on the periodic table. And those include fluoride, chlorine, bromine, iodine. So those other halogens can compete for the spots where your iodine is trying to go to make your thyroid hormone. And bromine in particular is in high quantities in our processed foods, especially like breakfast cereals and all those processed grains in the boxes and in the bags, they actually add bromine as a preservative. It's high levels in Mountain Dew and just so much processed food. So your processed food could be causing your hypothyroidism. I know that was definitely contributing to mine. But another big piece was chlorine. So I swam a lot. I was in a lot of chlorine a lot of the time. And that can compete with your iodine and then fluoride, like I mentioned, and your toothpaste. When I was growing up, we had fluoride swishes every Friday at school. We had, you know, fluoride treatments at the dentist, all of these things. And so I had all of those halogens competing with my iodine for my thyroid production. But let me show you. If you're watching this on YouTube, then you can see it. If you're listening to the podcast, you can go over on YouTube at the Gutsy Gynecologist and actually see the picture. But this is your thyroid gland, and it produces T4. I wish they would have a brain picture up here. This is from the Institute for Functional Medicine. I appreciate this. The brain secretes tsh. That's the main blood draw that your doctor will check to tell you whether your thyroid is functioning. And TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone. It's actually a brain hormone. It's not even a thyroid hormone. TSH comes down from the brain. Brain tells the thyroid, make more or less T4. Your thyroid hopefully will make T4 if you have enough iron, iodine, tyrosine, zinc, selenium, vitamin E, B2, B3, B6, C and D. You need all of that. Things that inhibit thyroid hormone production are chronic stress or cortisol production, infections, trauma, radiation, medicines, fluoride, like I mentioned, all those halogens, toxins, like pesticides in your food, mercury, cadmium, lead, autoimmune processes. So not just an attack directly on your thyroid, but an autoimmune attack at all in anywhere in your body can prevent your thyroid from making thyroid hormones. So say you have celiac disease or lupus or rheumatoid, something like that. So T4 has to go down and be activated in T3. T3 will bind to all the millions of cell receptors and send the signal to increase your metabolism or decrease it, increase your thermostat, decrease it, do all of those processes that your thyroid does, managing the body. You have to have adequate amounts of selenium and zinc for this conversion to happen. And then at the cellular level, you have to have adequate amounts of vitamin A and zinc to hear the cell signal. And you have to have healthy mitochondria. Mitochondria are the little powerhouses inside your cells that create energy, and those are healthiest and functioning and reproducing from exercise. So exercise is key to thyroid function and hearing signals from your thyroid hormone. But let's get to this. RT3, this reverse T3, because your T4 can go down the reverse T3 pathway of the active T3 pathway. If you are in a stressful condition, sometimes conventional doctors will measure it. In situations like the patient is in the ICU, your reverse T3 is going to be really high if you're in the ICU because it comes, it gets produced under times of physical stress, physical, mental or emotional, all that chronic cortisol and adrenaline production, any kind of physical trauma to the body, a consistent low calorie diet can cause elevated reverse T3. So just calorie restricting is not good. That is how your metabolism ends up getting turned down. And the weight that you have lost by being on your low calorie diet all of a sudden comes back and you regain that weight. And probably more than that, because reverse T3 is having the opposite effect on your cells. It's sending the opposite signal of active T3. So reverse T3 says, slow down your metabolism, stop growing your hair, stop nourishing your skin, slow down the bowels, so you end up with hair loss, constipation, weight gain, feeling cold all of the time. Like all of these hypothyroid symptoms when you could have a normal TSH, a normal T4 and normal T3 level in your blood almost, they're not going to be optimal, but they're going to be normal by conventional standards when your reverse T3 is elevated. So like I said, this is elevated from multiple things, even infections, kidney dysfunction, liver dysfunction, medications, alcohol use, all of that. So as a functional doctor, I love checking reverse T3 because to me, that is a marker of systemic inflammation, toxic burden, thyroid dysfunction. If it's over 15, we have some work to do. We really got to start working on some stuff that is for sure. So it's really important to realize that your thyroid is so much more complex than conventional medicine will have you believe. It is not just TSH and free T4. I mean, we just like, that was a grain of what's going on, right? I mean, all of our other systems impact the thyroid. The thyroid takes on the burden of the other systems because, say that you are in starvation mode, say that you don't have food available and you can't eat. Your body doesn't want to maintain that same high metabolism that you have because then it will start to break down your own muscle for protein and you will become malnourished and you will get very sick. That's what happens to very malnourished people. So the thyroid will turn down your metabolism in an effort to slow your energy production and your energy requirements to sustain that stressful situation. The same thing happens when you have surgery or you are sick or you have too much mercury exposure from the food that you're intaking, or having mercury fillings removed inappropriately, or so many things. So what I want you to realize is your thyroid is always just trying to keep you balanced overall, and it's not met. You know, it's not that it's not doing its job, it's doing what it feels is the best for your body at that time. And so we fight against that. If we are, like, living high, crazy, stressed out lives and we're pumping out cortisol all day because we hate our job, and we're just going from dusk till dawn and we're doing all the things our thyroid has to keep a balance overall. So it will adjust those signals and make less thyroid hormone because it's being shunted down the reverse T3 pathway, and reverse T3 will become dominant. So I hope that you got something out of this today. It's really a complicated situation, but what I want you to take away is that your thyroid just doesn't stop working for no reason. There's always a reason. And if you can figure out that reason and remove it, reverse it, support it, do whatever needs to be done, your thyroid can almost always go back into balance. I have had many people come off of thyroid hormone. I myself came off of thyroid hormone. And so I really want you to have hope that you can support your body to function in the way that God created it to function. And it can be amazing. So I hope this was helpful. If it was, please share it with every woman you know. You know, shout me out on Facebook or Instagram or Tik Tok. You know, share this with everybody and just have an amazing week, ladies. All right, Bye. Bye.