Holistic Healing For Your Thyroid

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I talk nutrition, exercise and mindset with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus, I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health so that you can go out there and live that big life you're meant to live. Now, today's show is all about a topic I get asked about, gosh, every week, and that is thyroid. And I have got a great guest on today who wrote both the Autoimmune Solution and the Thyroid Connection and went through her own healing journey with Graves disease, which is super interesting. And I'm going to have her talk to you about that today. So I have Dr. Amy Myers with me today. She's a renowned leader in functional medicine and a New York Times best selling author again of the Autoimmune Solution and now the New Thyroid Connection. She received her medical degree from LSU and then spent five years working in emergency medicine before starting training with the Institute of Functional Medicine. She's now helped thousands around the world recover from chronic illness through her dietary based program, the Myers Way. And she's created multiple programs, tools and free resources to guide readers through her revolutionary approach to health. And she's really taken on autoimmune disease and has some amazing information. So I'm super excited to share Dr. Amy Meyers with you today. All right, so let's do it. Dr. Amy Myers, welcome to the show. I am so glad you're here with me today.

I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

It's such a hot topic and you've got such a great hero's journey. So let's talk about where your passion for thyroid dysfunction and autoimmune disease came from because I know you had this kind of personal experience and journey through this.

I did and I talk about it in both the Thyroid Connection book and the Autoimmune Solution. So I'll give you the very abbreviated version since I know we don't have a ton of time, but I was in medical school and started started having panic attacks and insomnia and weight loss without really doing anything and really sleepless nights and eventually started with a tremor and was told by my friends, you really got to go to the doctor. So I went. I didn't even have a doctor because I was very healthy and went to the doctor and she poo pooed all of my symptoms and told me it was simply stress. And I was just a second year medical student thinking I had everything that we had been learning about. And I stood my ground and said, absolutely no way I've been in the Peace Corps. My mother passed away last year very unexpectedly from pancreatic cancer. This was not stress and I demanded a full workup. About a week later, she called back and told me that I had Graves disease again. In conventional medicine, I talk about this in the book. The treatment for that is either to blow up your thyroid with iodine 131, to have it surgically removed, or to take medication. I tried the medicine first, ended up with toxic hepatitis from the medication, and then, yeah, it was really bad. And then ultimately, because I knew no other choice, ended up getting my thyroid ablated. And, you know, I had entered medical school after the Peace Corps and knew I would be doing exactly what I'm doing right now, which is to have a functional medicine clinic. I just didn't know what that, how to get there, or what that was called. And so I went into medical school with a very holistic view. And I did all my prerequisites in integrative medicine and I mean all my electives with integrative medicine, holistic medicine. I was president of the complementary and alternative interest group. So I had this very different view of things. And so this was very against what I thought, but I knew no other choice. And so I had my thyroid ablated. But after that, you know, conventional medicine, quote, unquote, solved my thyroid problem. But I knew that, you know, I was more likely to get another autoimmune disease three times more likely since I had one, and that it really didn't get to the root of why I got this in the first place. And so I went on a journey and found functional medicine and eventually opened up my own clinic. I've now used my program the Myers Way, with thousands of people in my clinic and tens of thousands around the world and really have found kind of five main root causes for thyroid dysfunction. But I say conventional medicine failed me, and it's my mission to not have it fail you too. So that is what gets me up every day, is this mission to not have people be in the shoes that I was in and have to go through such extreme conventional medicine procedures in order to, quote, unquote, solve a problem. And of course, since then, I've helped many people Reverse their graves disease and spared them of the faith that I had.

But you know, you just confirmed what I've heard over and over and over again. The most amazing practitioners are the ones that have gone through it themselves. So it's made you, you know, it's allowed. You have such a bigger mission. So sorry you went through it. But then you're helping so many people with this and this topic especially because this is one where it just seems like the approach that conventional doctors have for thyroid is. It doesn't make sense. So why is it so different? Why is conventional medicine and functional medicine differing so much in how they treat thyroid dysfun?

Yeah, well, conventional medicine, as with all disease, is just looking for the symptom and giving you a pill for it. And certainly when it's overactive thyroid like I had, it's very harsh treatments, you know, really life altering treatments. Or if it's hypothyroidism, you know, some people, if they get to it late, and most people who have Hashimoto's, which is the autoimmune form of hypothyroidism, it takes, you know, six to 10 doctors before they get diagnosed. And you know, some of those people, because it's been so long, they will need supplemental thyroid hormone. I mean, if I didn't take it, I would die. So I'm not against supplemental thyroid hormone. It's just that conventional medicine often isn't looking at the root cause. And there are people that get diagnosed early enough that can use the dietary based program that I have in my book, the stress reduction, the supplements, and you know, making sure they're getting the nutrients they need to make the conversion of their thyroid from T4 to the most active form, T3. And conventional medicine looking at any of that. I mean, and then I can get into how when they're screening for thyroid, they're only checking a TSH, they're not doing a free T3, they're not even.

Doing a good range for TSH.

Like it's not even good there.

TSH. And then if you're lucky, they do the others. But irregardless of whether they do a TSH or any of the other tests, the reference range for all of these is way too broad. They're looking at normal versus optimal. And then when it comes to tsh, what most people don't realize is when they came up with those reference ranges, they actually had all these people who had hypothyroidism getting their labs. And so the reference range was really screwed so those are the two biggest ways in which conventional medicine is failing. They're not doing the right test, and when they do, then they're not looking at the reference range in an optimal form. They're looking at.

It's amazing to me, Amy, that they have not fixed the reference range yet. I mean, it just blows my mind. And it also just. Out in the world, it just seems like there's so much thyroid disease going on. What is going on?

Yeah, I mean, it's estimated that 27 million Americans have it, and 60% of those people don't even know they do. And I think that's probably even really, really under diagnosed. You know, I doubt that there's anybody listening that doesn't know somebody with thyroid dysfunction. It is quite amazing at how it has really touched pretty much everybody's life, either, you know, personally or one degree away. You know, one person away. And I think that this partly due to the number of toxins that we have in our environment, especially the halides, or halogens on the periodic table that are displacing iodine in our body. We're no longer getting the amount of iodine from salt or from our diet that we used to. And then we have bromides, fluorides, chlorine, all in our environment that are displacing the iodine. In my book, I talk about sort of five factors. Iodine. I sort of have that in the toxin chapter. Not that iodine is toxic, although it can be in high dosages, but that the flora, the halides are. Talk about the diet. You know, everybody probably listening, you know, following you, is familiar with the, you know, gluten and dairy and a lot of the very inflammatory foods, leaky gut. And then we have these toxins that I've talked about, including mercury. And the halides are big, big no no's for the thyroid. We have toxic mold. I had a recent toxic mold exposure myself. Then we have stressed out lives. You know, I mean, I'm actually on vacation and I'm doing a podcast. No, really, I was just literally hiking in a national park and got this text that I had to urgently look at this email. I mean, we're expected to be available 247 now. And we're living stressed out lives. We're not sleeping appropriately. And then there are infections. I mean, there are a lot of infections that have been linked to autoimmunity in general, but particularly the thyroid. There's this concept called molecular mimicry, where either the molecular structure of a bug or a food looks very Similar to our own thyroid tissue. It's definitely one of the theories behind gluten that its molecular structure looks so similar to the thyroid that if we have a leaky gut, we're eating gluten and we're not supposed to. Our immune system goes to attack the gluten. And because our thyroid gland looks just like the gluten, it inadvertently attacks the thyroid gland. It's one of the theories behind, you know, Graves and Hashimoto's. So those are the, you know, kind of main five things, I think, about the factors, including the diet, leaky gut, stress, toxins, infections. And then we talked about the iodine and nutrient deficiencies.

Yeah, I was just going to go there. Like nutrient deficiencies. What are you seeing as the most common nutrient deficiencies that are contributing here?

Yeah, well, so, I mean, we need tyrosine and iodine just to even make our thyroid hormone. And I just talked about, you know, not only are people not getting enough iodine that they're not getting it in their diet, we have all these toxins that are displacing it. I mean, I even see people who are on a paleo diet and they're not getting the amount of amino acids they need for their immune system or their thyroid because they have leaky gut and other digestive issues like small bowel, bacterial overgrowth and candida, they're affecting their digestion. It's not you are what you eat, it's you are what you digest and absorb. Selenium deficiency, zinc B vitamin deficiency. Because we're so stressed out and we're plowing through our B vitamins and magnesium. So those are probably some of the biggest that I see is selenium, zinc, B vitamins, iodine, and then not having enough amino acids, and of course vitamin A and vitamin D. I mean, almost everybody I see is vitamin D deficient.

Okay, now what about foods? If someone has a thyroid dysfunction, which foods are you telling them they should avoid?

Well, if you can do the full shebang, which is what I call the Myers way, I mean, that's getting off of grains, even non glutenous grains. From the beginning or at the beginning, I have a 28 day plan and legumes and then also including nightshades and eggs and dairy. Of course, if they can't do the whole shebang, which, you know, the absolute no, no for anybody with thyroid dysfunction is gluten because of that molecular mimicry and typically dairy as well, because about 50 to 60% of the people with a dairy issue mostly casein because of this molecular mimicry with a gluten issue, have a casein issue. And of course you know that I mean, those are the inflammatory foods. I'm not mentioning sugar, caffeine, you know, all the processed foods. And I sometimes forget because it's so not a part of my life that I just kind of forget. Like wait, of course, all the time people eat those.

Yes.

Inflammatory foods and the toxic foods. And we hope that the toxic foods you're really, you know, eliminating lifelong or you know, I'm not going to tell you, I never eat sugar. My birthday was yesterday, so I had some chocolate sorbet. Actually I woke up to gluten free, dairy free donuts from my sister. But anyway, it's very rare, right. My birthday, my wedding, things like that, that I'm, that I'm eating this type of stuff. But it's always gluten free and dairy free. And then for the 28 days at least, we want you to give up the toxic foods and the other inflammatory foods that I mentioned. And then, you know, I talk about this in the Autoimmune Solution, my first book, which is about an autoimmune spectrum. And I bring this up because most people with thyroid dysfunction do have autoimmunity, either Graves or Hashimoto's. It's the number one cause for thyroid dysfunction. And so you can be on this autoimmune spectrum where you've been diagnosed and you can work your way back down by going through the plan in my book. And then you might have something like myself, I got exposed to toxic molds, unbeknownst to me, and then you move back up the spectrum and you got to hit it hard. But when you're down on that, down low on the spectrum, you might be able to experiment and engage in some of these foods that I have, you get out of your diet at least for the 28 days. You might find that on occasion you can tolerate, you know, some sorbet or something like that. I mean, you just, this is where it's personalized medicine and you have to figure out what you can tolerate and when you can tolerate it. And there may be times in your life where you can do certain things and other times when you can't.

Yes. And the good news is the cleaner you eat, these things don't actually taste that great anymore either. So there's that side of it too.

Right.

So what about this one? Comes up all the time. So I'd love to get your take on this. The labs that you recommend when Someone thinks they might have a thyroid dysfunction. Which labs do you recommend for them?

Yeah, and we've actually partnered with a lab for people because a lot of times their insurance company won't do it. Like, I recommend all this stuff in the book. And then they go to their doctor and they're like, sorry, it happened to my dad. He's like, well, your Medicare will only pay for a tsh. Sorry, your TSH is so good that we won't pay for anything else. So there are lab companies popping up around town and we partnered with one that will be on my website and in the book that you can go to to order online. But anyway.

Oh, that's awesome. That's fantastic. And you know, I love that because you can take your health into your own hands. This is ridiculous that they would d. What you can go and find out about yourself for sure.

I mean, I was very strong about trying to find somebody to help me with this because I knew tens of thousands of people are going to read this book and many of them are not going to be able to get their labs done by their doctor. So this is a place that you can go. You pay for it online, very inexpensive. You can go to any quest locally by you. And then your labs will go back to this company. And then if you need advice, you can set up a session with one of my wellness coaches or take it back to your own doctor.

Excellent.

You don't want to write a book and then not give people the ability to do what you're doing.

Right.

No sense. So I felt very strongly about that. But so the labs are a TSH, a free T3, which is the most important one, because that's really the hormone that goes into all of your receptors in your cells and gives us the energy, keeps us warm, keeps our hair from falling out, keeps our weight at a good level. A free T4, I get a reverse T3 on people, and then I also get antibodies, a thyroglobulin antibody, and a TPO or thyroid peroxidase antibody on everybody. You want know if your thyroid condition is autoimmune or not. So that's like the first tier. I mean, that's like the bare bone basics that you need. And then of course, I do some nutritional testing that much of which you can get through a regular lab. And this will be available through the lab that we've partnered with as well. You know, a vitamin D level, a vitamin A level, a zinc level, a red blood cell magnesium level. Some of the more sophisticated levels there's not really a great way to check for iodine. Those would need to be done through a functional medicine lab. And we're even partnering with them to try to get some of these functional medicine labs, your ability to do those through this company as well.

This is so great. You are going to like. It is. It is people like you who take a stand and go out there and get disruptive that change everything. And I know it takes a lot of bravery and courage to do that. So I hugely appreciate that. I want to jump in because we're right up against the clock on this and I just want to. As far as, as, you know, someone's got thyroid dysfunction, so I'm going to use the C word. Can it actually be cured?

So, you know, I never use the word cure in any of my books because I feel like it's just not. It's like cancer. Can it be cured? Well, I don't know. Can it be reversed? That's how I like to look at things. Can you get to a place where you don't have symptoms anymore? Can you get to a place where your labs have returned to normal? And can you get to a place where you've gotten off your medication? And for many people with many diseases, the answer is yes. When it comes to thyroid, there's a caveat, which is, again, me, I can't get my thyroid back. If you've had thyroid cancer, you've had your thyroid removed, we'll need to be on supplemental thyroid hormone and quickly. I call it supplemental thyroid hormone because that's what it is. It's not a medication. I don't want people to feel bad if they've caught this so late that they can't get off of that. It is not a medication. It's like a diabetic needing insulin, a type 1 diabetic needing insulin to save their life. So can they reduce their medication? Can people who've just been diagnosed not go on medication? Have I reversed Graves disease in people? Absolutely. Can some people lower it, get off their supplemental thyroid hormone? Yes, some people can, but most people do not feel like a failure if you can't. The point of the book is to make sure you're on the right dose, the right form. We didn't have a chance to get into that, but I talk about all the different kinds, the right dose, the right form, and also making sure you're not getting another autoimmune disease and that we're getting to the root cause of why you had this in the first place.

And that is so key. That is so key. And I'm so glad you brought that up. And these books really are great and go hand in hand both the autoimmune solution and the thyroid connection because for so many. And again, I remember early on working with clients who had an autoimmune disease and being told just like we were just gonna watch this and I'm like, I don't where are we watching this go? Because this is not going to go to a good place, you know. So I'm so glad that you tackled the two of them together and especially with your new book, the thyroid connection. If people want to go deeper, and I know they will, where should they.

Go if they want to go deeper? On my website I have tons of free blogs and lots of programs and information. So it's amymyersmd.com a m y m y e r s m d.com and I made all of my social media super Easy. It's Amy MyersMD Awesome.

You are fantastic. A wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm reminding everyone again. Amymyersmd.com and grab our latest book, the Thyroid connection. Now after break, after the break I'm going to be answering the listeners questions. So stay with me.

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Now this is the time where I answer a listener's question and today's question, oh my gosh. Is about something that I just, that just makes me crazy. So it's from Lynn and Lynn asks, can you talk a bit about artificial sweeteners? How do they affect blood sugar? Are there times in the day they would be better like during the day versus before bed. Okay, Lynn, thank you for asking the question. And Lynn, there is no time of day that you want to put something toxic like artificial sweeteners into your body. And I want to make sure that you understand that I am not talking about natural sweeteners like sugar, alcohol, xylitol and erythritol like sweet herbs. Like monk fruit or stevia. I am talking about the artificial sweeteners like sucralose and aspartame. I am absolutely against any of these types of things. Here's why we set out to create these sweeteners because we thought diabetics would be able to use these and they wouldn't impact them. What we found instead is that they absolutely have a deleterious effect on the body for a variety of reasons. Number one, when you eat sweet, what do you want? More sweet, right? It just wakes up your sweet tooth. Number two, it causes calorie dysregulation. Now you're eating something that doesn't have calories and your body loses the ability to correlate the degree of sweetness with the amount of food you're eating. And then you tend to overeat. Number three, they can be neuro excitatory, they stimulate your brain and not in a good way. Number four, they can change your gut microbiome, the bacteria in your gut. So it's actually more intolerant to blood sugar, to glucose. And when you're intolerant to glucose, you have a bigger impact from the blood sugar, a bigger insulin response, which is why we're now seeing a bigger increase risk of diabetes, obesity, belly fat from these sweeteners. So the basic thing is everything that we created these for, they do the exact opposite. There is no healthy application in my mind for artificial sweeteners anywhere in your diet. Doesn't matter what time of year, day, if you're standing on your head or anything else, they just aren't there. Plus we have great natural alternatives. Now again, I mentioned erythritol, xylitol, stevia and monk fruit. I also love cinnamon and vanilla and glycine, which is a naturally sweet amino acid. I actually put a product together and I find that when you blend these things, you tend to have a better response because they all have a little bit of a different feel to them, like mouth feel, cooling feel. So I put together erythritol and stevia and glycine to make virgin sprinkles, which I think are the closest thing to tasting something sweet. But again, I say that not wanting you to use a ton of that, I want you just use the least amount you need to get the little bit of sweet that you need. Because I really want you to retrain your taste buds to appreciate the natural sweetness of things like blueberries or cinnamon or vanilla, and love things like spicy foods and savory foods. Okay? So that's the real long term goal. Now if you'd like to submit a question, just go to jjvirgin.com and you can leave a voicemail for me. I can't wait to hear from you. And one more way I'd love to hear from you. I would hugely appreciate it if you could jump on Stitcher or iTunes and leave a review for me. It helps so much and be sure to subscribe and share the show with your friends. This is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you that you are worthy Dare to live a life that matters.

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