[Bonus Episode] How to Better Manage Thyroid Disease with One Simple Tweak with Dr. Alan Christianson

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There was a big study done to see if people absorbed more of that when they were low in iodine versus when they weren't. And they took three different kinds of skin. This was so, so bizarre. So one group of skin was from those who were known to have thyroid disease. One group was from those who were just healthy. One group was from dead people. They had cadaver skin.

I have a feeling something funny is about to come out. Hey, it's JJ and welcome to Ask the Health Expert. But this isn't just any old Ask the Health Expert expert session. This is your bonus session. Yes, it's the weekend. And because it's the weekend, we are going to take some time with an amazing expert. So be on the lookout for these Saturday Ask the Health Expert bonus sessions.

Where we're going to go deep into.

An amazing subject with an incredible expert to give you actionable items that you can put into your life. Hey, J.J. here and welcome to this bonus episode of Ask the Health Expert. Deep dive. This is where I'm going to hook you up with some super information with my buddy, Dr. C. In fact, my personal doctor, Dr. Alan Christiansen, who's a board certified naturopathic endocrinologist and he focuses on thyroid care. You are going to be blown away by what he he is going to be unpacking today. He has spent gosh, last couple years researching this. As he started to share it with me, I was like, blown away. Can't wait for you to know more about it. He is the New York Times bestselling author and this book that we're going to be talking about today is the Thyroid Reset Diet. He also has the metabolism reset Diet. He's been all over the place, Dr. Oz, the doctors in the Today show, and he's the founding president behind the Endocrine association of Naturopathic Physicians and the.

American College of Thyroidology.

He literally, the information that you're gonna hear today is so groundbreaking, it is going to make you rethink the way that you handle your own thyroid issues if you have them, and help you.

Hopefully never get them if you don't have an issue.

So super excited to share all this with you today. It all is going to center on one specific nutrient. You're going to have to come back after the break to hear what that is. And I'll be right back with my buddy, Dr. C. Stay with us.

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All right.

Dr. Alan Christensen. I am super excited about this interview, my friend.

Hey, jj. Super happy to be here with you.

I mean, you've been my doc forever. It feels like working on my thyroid and getting it dialed in and optimized. And I'm just so thrilled that this information now is getting accessible out into the world. Because for years I was like, going, okay, I've got this amazing doctor, and you can't have him. You can't get his information. But now everybody will be able to get this incredible information that is so needed. So what I'd Love to start with is you've been a thyroid expert for years, and you have this new finding that's really, I think, going to change the entire game for thyroid disease. And how did you come across this?

You know. Yeah, just poring through research and stumbled across some studies, and it was exciting, exciting stuff. It's. I don't know, information changes and evolves, and I was happy to see that the body can heal itself more than I even thought before.

Yay. Well, you know, over the years, what. What's been kind of out there about thyroid disease? I mean, like, remember before, it wasn't even that diet mattered. Hello. So we've. We've come a long way, but I'm still thinking back to, I think it was maybe 20 years ago, although I still hear about this today, where people were talking about the most important thing that you needed for thyroid disease was to up your iodine levels. And they were having people put iodine, that, you know, whatever that pink stuff was on their skin to see how much they'd absorbed so they could see what. How to dose the iodine. So I'd like to kind of. I'd like to start there with, you know, as you dug into this research and started to really get this clear picture of iodine, its role, like, what did you find? And then let's just go through and unpack where we were 20 years ago. What could have led to a lot of the problems today and what we need to do.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's been a journey of understanding that this is not like other nutrients, most nutrients. Our food has some. We can be low in them, but there's not really tangible danger of getting too much for most people. But all the things that fit for the nutrients do not fit for iodine. You know, it's got one job, one chemical reaction, and one gland, and many people are vulnerable to getting even a little bit too much. And it's also been the source of just tons of misinformation and misunderstanding in all the medical worlds.

Yeah. Because honestly, for years, all you ever heard about was iodine deficiencies. And so they have iodinized salt and then again that pink stuff. And you were supposed to see how much iodine. Where did all of this. Where did the misconception come from that we had such a problem with deficiencies?

You know, it's funny, there's pretty much always some kernel of truth behind the misconceptions, and deficiencies were a huge issue. I mean, if we go Back to just 1990, we had 112 nations on planet Earth that were categorized as severely iodine deficient. And in the years preceding that, there was about a billion people that didn't get to have proper brain function just for this simple deficiency. So it was a huge thing. But, you know, it was a public health victory in that they stopped it. You know, within a couple decades. By 2014, that number of deficient nations dropped down to zero. So that was huge. But those categorized as risk from excess was at zero in 1990, and then it went to 52 by 2014.

And were those the same countries that were low before they then overdid, or was this something else?

Well, it was not, but it was basically that the correction extended through all the countries. So those that were severely deficient got back to normal or minuscule deficiency states, but those that had adequate got. Many of them got to states of excess.

So thyroid, I mean, one of the big things that you hear about is that the thyroid needs iodine, right? So if the thyroid needs iodine, wouldn't you want to make sure that you have adequate iodine? And how would you even know. How would you know if you were low or in excess? Like, how do you even know where you're at?

Well, this is another wrinkle. So there's a. There's a new tool called the iodine inventory where someone can just check their daily intake of iodine, but the tests aren't accurate for it. You know, there's. There's some tests that can show if you are maintaining enough or if you're getting low enough amount to detox, or if you're building it up, you can tell which of those three categories you're in. But there's no simple, accurate tests. So really, it's a matter of just knowing your region of the globe.

There's not a lab test, like, you can't do a lab test to see.

There are scores of lab tests. And, yeah, you can tell if you're steady, gaining or dropping by a specific thing called the urinary iodine to creatinine ratio. And there's countless other tests that are really commonly done. And almost any test can be good to gauge the iodine status of a lot of people, like a population of 500 or more. But because our iodine levels fluctuate so much moment to moment, almost none of those tests are meaningful for one person.

Okay, well, this is a conundrum. So, okay, go ahead. Cause I'm, like, looking at, going, so you don't want to be low, because if you were Low, it creates problems. So that sounds like that's not really the issue anymore.

You don't want to be low, but honestly, if you're hearing this, you won't be low. So. So the cases in the world that were severely deficient, they don't exist anymore. There were areas in which they had no iodine, fortified salt. They were basically on starvation diets. We talk about how great it is to have locally grown food, and it is great to support local economies, but your food is a function of your local soil. And if all your food comes from one area and your soil quality sucks and you have no fortification and no foods from elsewhere, that's how you can get deficient. But that doesn't happen on the planet Earth anymore.

Right? Okay, so there aren't deficiencies. What happens when you have too much?

You know, this is the bizarre thing. So any nutrient at some point can get to be too much, but most of them, you wouldn't stumble onto that. You'll hear stories about, like Arctic explorers that got liver failure from vitamin A overdose from consuming polar bear liver. And that's, it's not the kind of stuff that we have to worry about. But with iodine, the range between a healthy dose and excess is narrow. And what we've learned now is that there's not a lot of difference from person to person in terms of how much we need, but there's a lot of difference from person to person in terms of how much we can tolerate. And those prone to thyroid disease, they cannot tolerate too much. You know, a lot of common foods, some processed, some healthy foods, a lot of common things we put on our skin, a lot of common vitamins. We can have a single exposure and have 10 times more than what's a safe dose for a given day.

Wow. And if you have too much, what happens?

Well, that's the thing. You need some for your thyroid to work. But thyroid hormones are so powerful that too much of them would be fatal. So if your body just cranked out thyroid hormone, which willy nilly in response to extra iodine, we wouldn't have evolved to get out of the ponds back when we needed to have buffers in place. So, like your house, if your current is ever too much, you blow a fuse so your house won't burn down. We've got the exact same thing for our thyroid. So any extra iodine, it just shuts off the thyroid rather than make too much hormone.

Wow. Which is really a challenge because I'm sitting here just kind of even googling. I, you know, Because I. I'm finding this so fascinating how much misinformation on this specific subject there is. Like WebMD has nine foods high in iodine and why you need it, you know, so. But if the reality is that this isn't something we're low on, wouldn't really what we need to do then. And if you're taking it too much, it's going to lower thyroid function, which is the opposite of what people believe. Right. That if you aren't careful about where your sources are, like getting too much, you could be lowering thyroid function from that. Is that part of what's going on now with thyroid disease?

It is. So what happens? There's. There's three different things that occur with too much iodine, one of which is just that your thyroid just slows itself down. The other one is that the extra iodine makes your thyroid, your body, attack your thyroid, you know, it breaks down some of the cells, creates a lot of free radicals. It pulls in your immune system, and soon these immune cells start attacking the thyroid by itself. And then the third thing is, along with slowing your thyroid, it makes your body resist thyroid hormones. So even those who, you know, they don't have a thyroid, they're taking hormones for all of it, they can still feel like they're not getting the effects of it because of the iodine.

So what do you do to, like, if you've. If you've got excess iodine, which I guess you would do by this assessment based on your diet, what do you do?

Yeah, you know, the simplest thing is that if you get to a low enough level, your thyroid can get rid of the extra. Your thyroid can't get rid of much iodine, except for what it makes into thyroid hormone. And those with thyroid disease diagnosis, they're not making a lot of thyroid hormones. So the extra iodine just sits there. So the trick is you've got to get to a low enough window for a period of time so we can clear out that excess. And that's the part that just lights me up is the study showing how much that can change things for people.

So to get to a low enough window, where do you need to. What would you need to do? I'm assuming that a lot of this comes from ensuring that they're not in your supplements and looking out for specific foods, like, what do you do to get the iodine levels down?

Yeah. So there's a couple of areas you think about. There's your supplements, like you mentioned, not as common, but there are some medications that can be a factor for it. And then there's the stuff we put on our body cosmetics, skin creams. Consider those as well. They can be sources of that. And then there's the diet. So in the thyroid reset diet book, I broke down foods into green light, yellow light, and red light. And basically, to clear the extra iodine, you just do green light foods. It's that easy.

What are some of the big red light foods?

Biggest one would be sea vegetables. So kelp, wakame, dulse, those can be extremely high in that. But honestly, for most people, the biggest problems are going to be dairy food and processed grains. You know, several of these are the things that you're going to cut out a lot of these on the virgin diet.

This is winner chicken dinner. But. But I'm thinking about this and for years, you know, people have always said you should be eating sea vegetables for the minerals. I just don't like them. So, you know, and they're not a big part of our diet. But what about in Asia where there's so much. There's such a high sea vegetable consumption.

Consumption. Yeah. That's been fascinating for me. There was a time in which I was a fan of them as well before I looked at this further. So in areas that consume the most of it, the more they consume, the greater the risk you'll see for breast cancer.

Wow.

Yeah, they do have minerals. However, the drawback is things like that. They have all the minerals, the ones you'd want, but also the ones you wouldn't want, like lead or alumina or. Or arsenic or radioactive iodine. So, yeah, that's the drawback about getting things that have just a lot of minerals in general.

Wow. And this, like. Let's just blow this one up. That pink stuff you put on your skin to check your iodine levels. I still remember that. Like, that was what, 20 years ago? Oh, you know, what was going on.

JJ, that's still talked about as if it's brand new. That's still going around, sadly.

So I think someone put on my Facebook page the other day, they were like. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. Really? Still?

So here's some science behind this. So there's iodide and iodine, and what they talk about using is a Lugol's solution or potassium iodine, and those have a little bit of both. So iodine is pink, iodide is colorless. When you put it on your skin, it exposes itself to oxygen, and most of the pink iodine oxidizes into colorless iodide. So it's just the air does that. But there was a big study done to see if people absorbed more of that when they were low in iodine versus when they weren't. And they took three different kinds of skin. This was so, so bizarre. So one group of skin was from those who were known to have thyroid disease. One group was from those who were just healthy. One group was from dead people. They had cadaver skin.

I have a feeling something funny is about to come out.

Well, the funny part was that the difference between the three groups was completely random. It didn't make a difference if you were alive or dead or had enough iodine or didn't have enough iodine. And. And this was figured out. It was not recent. That paper was done in 1932. That they busted that myth.

Wow. But yet it was going through the medical conferences, the alternative medicine conferences is the thing. I remember this.

Oh, boy.

That's crazy. Well, I'm glad we could put that to rest. And so when you're seeing this. So someone's coming in, they go on the thyroid reset diet. They get off of the red foods and get the yellow foods out, and they focus on the green foods. I assume that some of this, too, might be like. Would. Would going in an infrared sauna help with some of this too? Like, you need to get out of your tissues, or is it just time?

In terms of just general health, there's all kinds of benefit to detoxing. You know, big fan of saunas. In terms of specifically for iodine, it just takes getting in a small enough amount where you can get rid of the excess. And based upon what your exposure was, how far along your thyroid disease was, that could be nine months. It's anywhere between about two to nine months for someone to see the full effect.

And so then I would imagine, as you're going through this, if this was an issue, and that's the next thing I want to ask you, that you'll start to see someone's need for thyroid medication decrease.

Yeah, we've had the most studies done on those who are not yet on medication, and they've shown that about 80% of them have normal thyroid function in just a couple months. Those on meds, they may take longer. And not all will see the same level of change of their need, but they generally still see good changes in symptoms. But, yeah, the pitfall is that as their output increases, they need to be expecting that and working with their doctor to lower the medication so it's not.

Too much and so does that mean then, like, what is the correlation? If, and I'm not sure if this is even, you know, can be known, but the hypothesis of how many people do you think have thyroid issues because of excess iodine? Like, how big of a driver is this for thyroid disease?

You know, honestly, there was a paper that was done in 2 and 20,000, 2007, and they said that we're 100 years after they figured out what Hashimoto's disease was. What do we know now? And they said there's three things that drive thyroid disease that are irrefutable. There's been scores of theories that have come and gone, and either those things are just no longer relevant or their relevance is minuscule. But the three drivers are age, gender, and iodine status, and age and gender we can't do a whole lot about. But the. This is the one thing that we know is a contributor to nearly all versions of thyroid disease and we can change.

Seems like, though. And when was that paper published?

2007.

Because it sure seems like that the takeaway that people misconstrued from that paper was that it was iodine status and we must be low.

Yeah, they.

Because, I mean, that's. I mean, I'm thinking this has been going on for years, that we need to have iodine if we've been. Got a thyroid problem. So was the paper, like, could you have read that paper and missed that, like, thought that it was low, not high?

No, you wouldn't have missed it from that paper.

But.

But you're right, there were a lot of popular ideas around that time making it sound like people needed more than they did.

Gosh, this is crazy. Like, this is. This is big, you know, legacy, groundbreaking stuff you've got going on here. And I cannot. It's. It's. I remember as you first started telling me this, I'm like, how is this information not out there?

I know.

How do these crazy urban legends still exist on this? So knowing this now and having people going through the program, and I know you've been pilot testing the program that is the Thyroid Reset Diet. Can someone who's been on thyroid medication for an extended period of time, can they lower their dose from this? Will they be able to turn it around? I mean, can you actually reverse some of this?

Yes. And for most, that does mean needing less. For nearly all that means better symptom response. And again, what we see, change is two big things. There's how much hormone the thyroid can make. And some people don't have a thyroid or they were on so much medicine for so long that it shriveled down to nothing. And I, you know, I've learned to never say never. We've had patients that have thought they had no thyroid, actually regrow thyroid function. So that can happen. That's, that's unusual.

Wow.

Yeah.

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You know, in that case, the person obviously had some that was left post surgically and had the circumstances to come back online again. So I like people to anchor their goals on their well being because that's the part that always does come around. You know, it's, I mean, how many pills you take in the morning, I don't think is the most important variable of our life, but how you feel and how you function, that, that's a big one. So that part, that part can come around consistently for people.

That is super exciting. And I'd love to hear one story, one patient case study that you can share just to give people who are listening, because so many, so many people have thyroid disease, it's crazy. So give us hope for sure.

So this is one that just came to me from a medical group that's been early implementers of this program. And there's a couple of versions of thyroid disease that are distinct. There's one called toxic nodular goiter where you just got to take that. It's basically a little lump that's making more hormone than you need. It's got to go surgically. Then you've got things like subacute thyroiditis, which come on after a flu. You've got some thyroid cancers and you know, you can't treat them in the moment even though iodine affects their risk, but pretty much everything else. So hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's Graves, subclinical hypothyroidism. They do relate to this and they can get better from this. This is from a gal, I'll call her Bridget. It wasn't her name, but she was seen by a group called Parsley Health. They've got doctors all over the country, and they've been implementing this protocol. And she was on treatment for Graves disease, and she was on three medications for it. She was not. She was failing to respond. And she still had very high levels of thyroid hormone. She was having her eye protrusion symptoms, Graves eye disease, palpitations, insomnia, bad, bad tremors, sweats, and she. She couldn't function. She had to drop out of graduate school, and, you know, life was on hold. She got going on the diet, and within the first two weeks, she suddenly started sleeping all day. And she followed up with her doctor, and she was badly hypothyroid. So all these medications that were unable to slow her thyroid before were suddenly much more than she needed. So over the following weeks, she became down to just one tiny amount of one medication, which she only needed for about one more month. And after that, her thyroid function stabilized.

That is just crazy. I would hope the big goal with all of this is that this becomes the new standard for treating thyroid disease.

Yeah. Nothing is perfect. And there certainly are those to whom it won't respond. Like, for example, one of the big studies showed that about 78% of people that had thyroid disease for roughly four years had normal function in three months. Well, and I think about that, that's phenomenal. And of the remainder, they were in three groups. There was those to where they. They didn't successfully lower their iodine. You know, either they weren't educated well enough, or they missed some sources. That was one group. So they. They didn't win because they didn't play, like, with a lottery.

I always hate to count those ones in the study. It just doesn't seem quite right. You know, I didn't follow the rules. Your thing didn't work.

That's right. There was another group that was off by a lot. So some of your listeners might know this, but the TSH scores, they are backward indicators of thyroid function. And the further you get above 2, the more sluggish the thyroid is. So some of These people had TSH scores of 200 or like 150.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, they were. They were bad shape.

Wow. I feel bad at three.

Well, I know. Could you even imagine 200? That's. That's awful.

No, how. They can't. How are they getting off the couch?

Well, so in the three months, some of the people who were in that category, they didn't become normal, but they got down by like, 75%. So the thought was, you know, more time, they probably would have been, but they, they were in those that didn't respond. And then the last group was those that they did follow the rules and they, they did have reasonable scores to start, but their scores just didn't budge at all. That was about 3% of participants. So I know there'll be some for whom it won't work. And we don't have as clear data in terms of the exact percentage odds to expect for those on medication. We know their symptoms can improve. We don't know exact percentages, and there are differences in the iodine threshold. There's some people that probably could tolerate a little bit more and maybe reduce more than necessary, but those are things we can refine over time. But at this point, we know this is a big answer for many people.

And here's what's beautiful about it. There's no risk to it. There's no reason not to like the side benefits. What would be have a little more energy, feel healthier.

Well, so that's it. And this came about because there's very coarse, low iodine diets that were made for someone who's going to do like an ablation or an iodine scan. They just have to be blank, blatantly deficient for a few weeks. And those diets were just cut out all foods but these two. And for those purposes, they were fine. But I wanted to make something to where it was a good diet and someone could be eating healthy foods, avoiding the allergens. They could be paleo or vegan and they could do well with it and it was nutritionally complete and they had a lot of options. So that's how this is different. It's one that you're not going to hurt your health from it. You're just going to get a healthy diet. Overall.

I'm very excited to get this out and I'm kind of doing a call to arms on everyone on the podcast to get this information out again. It's like I've been seeing or interviewing you. I also was googling all this and the massive amount of information about how we need iodine for our thyroid is mind blowing. So this is, this has to get out. What, what groundbreaking stuff. I am so proud of you. I'm just. This is so great. And it takes a lot of bravery and courage too, you know, to go out with something that people are going to go, what? So.

We'Ve learned to thicken our skin over the years, haven't we?

Yes, we do. We are good at that. So. So here's what's super cool too. Everyone who's listening, you're going to get a chance to to watch Dr. C. S iodine docu series and you'll be able to do that@jjvirgin.com iodine that's a free viewing. Tell us about this docuseries.

So this I'm really excited about this. This is really telling the story about the big hidden sources. So there's some things that are obvious, like the stuff you paint on your skin. But in this last several decades, the rates of thyroid disease have tripled and it's because of these hidden sources that have snuck into the diet so people can learn about them and figure out how to avoid them.

So everyone's going to be able to get into this and watch it for free. And all you got to do is go to jjvirgin.com iodine and you'll be able to jump in there. And the big thing I'm going to do the shout out for is share this information. Anyone that you know who has thyroid disorder or any is starting to struggle with any of the early signs of it. And I'm going to have you rattle through the early signs of it as well. Share this information. This is super critical. And early signs someone might be having some issues with their thyroid before their TSH gets in. And just one other really quick thing while we're doing that is, you know, because I still have people that I'll look at, their TSH is at 4 and you know, it's like it's fine. You know, just a little bit about what, what are some signs that your thyroid may not be working optimally and, and little bit on just the TSH.

Number too, for sure. So yeah, so normal ranges are normal for the population that's sick with thyroid disease, but they're not typical for those that have good thyroid function. So JJ's right, if your TSH is on the high side of normal and you're symptomatic, that can be totally relevant. And the symptoms, think about the symptoms but also think about how they come on. So I want you to think less about things that have always been there and more about things that changed over some time frame. So the new, the unexpected fatigue, you know, the same level of activity that you did fine with. Now you do not weight. You know, you used to figure out how you could maintain your weight or how you got results from a certain amount of diet or exercise that quit working. The hair thinning, the menstrual irregularities, the digestive symptoms, those are the top ones. And especially if they've shifted for you at some point in time, think about the thyroid being a culprit.

All right, so those are all critical, important things to think about as you do this and then making sure as you're starting to look at all of this to go on the diet. And it sounds like I'm going to review everything I'm doing now to see how much iodine's in things and to give it some time and to track those symptoms as well. So you'll be able to grab that thyroid reset diet and so make sure you get that. And then also watch the docu series@jjvirgin.com iodine and Dr. C, thank you so much. Not just for the interview, thank you for being the super fact finder that you are and to be willing to be critically open minded, go look for all the information. It's rare out in the world when you really think about it. People get an idea, that's the idea and then they go look for all the information to defend that position. Position rather than going what's the challenge? And let's look at all the information and then create the rationale. Right.

Thank you for that. Yeah, doing, doing my best.

You are doing a great job out there. So appreciate you so much. Be sure you grab that docu series and I'd love to hear from you, share it. Love to hear your experience as well as you go on the thyroid reset diet. All right. Mind blown. Right? And there's some clear action steps here. Of course, number one, make sure you get your front seat, your ticket to docu series and that's jjvirgin.com forward/iodine. Next up, you're going to want to grab the thyroid reset book and start to look at how to shift your diet to lower your iodine in there and heal your thyroid. Thyroid super important. And third, this is a bonus episode of my daily show, Ask the Health Expert. It's where you get your daily dose of what you need to know. I take questions from you and then we get you answers from either me or some of my expert pals. So if you've got a question, I've got answers, jump on my social media platforms and leave it for me. That's @jj Virginia on Instagram, JJ Virgin on TikTok, JJ Virgin Official on Facebook. Are you seeing the theme here? And of course you want to make sure you don't miss a dose of Ask the Health Expert or these super awesome bonus episodes. So go to subscribetoj.com so that you are hooked up.

Foreigners this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles that they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.