Is Your Environment Harming Your Thyroid?

How much your diet and nutrient levels play a role in your thyroid. What about some of the other big factors? We talked about food sensitivities in the diet part, but what about some of the other factors that you talked about, such as toxins or, you know, just infections? Like what? What about those things? We talked about stress, but what about those other two areas?

So let's talk about toxins. And I think part of the reason why we have such an epidemic of thyroid disease in our world is because our world is becoming more and more toxic. So we're looking at toxins in our homes, toxins in our environment. So I was personally exposed to Chernobyl.

Wow.

Yeah. And so I lived on the Ukrainian border in Poland when I was growing up. And so we know that.

So you're from Eastern Europe.

I am from Eastern Europe.

Amazing.

And we know that anybody. There was one part in the Ukraine that 80% of the children that were of a certain age had thyroid antibodies indicative of an autoimmune attack on their thyroid gland. So it's not just genes, it's our environment that's bringing this out. Now, even low doses of radiation can produce and exacerbate conditions like Hashimoto's and asthma. So that's one sort of toxin. Another toxin is fluoride in our lovely water supplies. So public health officials wanted us to have better teeth, but unfortunately, fluoride actually suppresses thyroid function. And we know that communities that utilize fluoride have higher levels of hypothyroidism. Back in the day, fluoride was used to suppress thyroid function in people with hyperthyroidism. So that's another source of toxicity. Then we have.

It's concerning because a lot of people are exposed to that, and it's not something they even know about or have a choice about. It's just put in the water. And what about kids who are getting all these thyroid pills from their doctor?

You know, Absolutely. So it's something that is in our water and we don't know about it. We're taking it in. Then we have endocrine disrupting chemicals in makeup. This is a point that gets me really upset because thyroid disease affects women primarily, and women are the ones that are putting on that have six to eight personal care products each day compared to maybe two or three that men put on. And a lot of our personal care products that are supposed to make us more beautiful and wonderful and all that are actually making us sicker. So we know that women who. Who wear lipstick are more likely to have Lupus and that's potentially due to lead contamination. And then there's mercury and then there's arsenic. A lot of different toxins have been found in beauty products. Lipsticks, I would say would be the most devastating.

So stay away from radiation. Don't have fluorinated water. Filter your water. Right.

I like filters.

And check out safe body care products. I would recommend people going to EWG.org where they have a database called Skin Deep where you can find skincare products and put yours in there and see what kind of toxins there are. They rate them whether they're good or bad. So really important to reduce your exposure. What other things like can you do for mercury and lead and all these? You find if people get rid of them, that they actually get thyroid improvement or does it really, once they've got it, it doesn't affect them if they get rid of it.

So let's say, let's use mercury as an example. People who have mercury amalgams, they have those silver fillings in their teeth, that's a source of mercury. What studies have found that some people are mercury sensitive when they're mercury sensitive. When you remove the fillings, they actually have better outcomes and their thyroid antibodies reduce, their symptoms improve. Then there's a subset of people with Hashimoto's who are not mercury sensitive and you can do a test called the MELISA to determine that. And so those people probably are not going to benefit as much from the removal. But you do want to make sure that you remove them safely with a biologic dentist. Because removing mercury in some cases like chelation or even removing amalgams can exacerbate things if your clearance pathways are not moving properly. So one of the things that I recommend, rather than having somebody do heavy duty chelation or something like that right off the bat, is looking at supporting liver function. So doing things like milk thistle and acetylcysteine, green veggies, broccoli, to try to move some of those toxins naturally or moving by helping your liver do its job or sitting in a sauna, that can be very, very helpful rather than taking out some of the toxins and letting them kind of recirculate.

Absolutely. I think it's important. And you know, we're so exposed to so much, and I've written a lot about this, how we actually can detoxify, what foods we can use, how we can use things like exercise and saunas, hot baths, how we can use nutrients and supplements to upregulate detox pathways, how we can use things in the gut to help bind the metals. There's all science of detoxification, which is pretty important. And I think the thyroid gland is often called the yellow canary because it basically, it's like the yellow canary in the coal mine. It. It's the gland in our body that reacts most strongly to all sorts of things. All the things we're talking about, toxins, allergens, poor diet, stress. It's a very sensitive gland, and that's why we see such an epidemic of problems with it. So what about infections? You mentioned that. What about that?

So chronic infections can trigger autoimmune thyroid disease through a few different mechanisms. One of them is through molecular mimicry, which we talked about. So the infection looks a little bit like the thyroid and has some protein sequence that's similar. And then the immune system attacks the infection, and then the thyroid, because it looks like the infection, that's one mechanism. Another mechanism is the bystander effect, when perhaps the thyroid gland may have an infection in it, like a virus. And as the immune system tries to attack, the infection attacks its home as well. So that's how the thyroid can get damaged that way. Another way is through inducing intestinal permeability. So we know that intestinal permeability is a factor in just about every case of autoimmune disease. And infections, specifically in the gut or in the mouth, even in the sinuses, can all produce intestinal permeability. So some of the most common ones I've seen in people are gonna be H. Pylori, Blastocystis hominis, which is a protozoan parasite. It's been connected to Hashimoto's, and there's one. I've been seeing it for quite a few years. And usually when we get rid of that pathogen, people will start seeing a reduction in thyroid antibodies and a reduction in food sensitivities. And there was one study, one paper, I should say, that highlighted a person going into remission by treating that pathogen. And so it's also been connected to chronic hives and irritable bowel syndrome. So that's one particular pathogen that may be present.

And most doctors, by the way, don't test for it, and they don't even look for it. And they don't even know what to do with it once they get it and think it's not pathogenic. So they might not treat it.

Yeah, they think it's commensal. So they say it's supposed to be there. But sure enough, when you have symptoms, you get rid of it, the symptoms go away, too. So there's different schools of thought on that. And I'm definitely with the school of thought that it's something that we want to get rid of. And then we have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So about half of the people with hypothyroidism are going to have that. And that can be a profound inducer of intestinal permeability.

Mean leaky gut.

Exactly. Leaky gut. Leaky gut. My Eastern European accent is coming out.

So that's all right. You speak Polish, I don't. So that's good. So I think it's true. I think we don't often think, how does our gut bacteria affect our health in that way? And it affects everything. So you're saying it even affects our thyroid function?

Absolutely. And I think there's controversy about parasites because people, you know, I'm a big proponent of the Paleo movement, but they'll say, well, parasites are Paleo and parasites are good. We should have parasites. They help with autoimmune disease. But just like there are good bacteria and pathogenic bacteria and opportunistic bacteria, same goes with parasites. So there's parasites that are beneficial to us and live in symbiosis with us, and then there are ones that cause us all kinds of trouble.

And it depends on you, right? It really depends on the individual. That's why, sort of, you can't just make blanket statements for everybody.