06: The Hidden Connection Between Thyroid Health and Mental Well-Being with Ainslee

I am here with one of our absolutely lovely and inspiring patients, Ainsley. Ainsley, thank you so much for being here today. I'm excited to chat.

Thank you for having me. I am so excited to be here.

So I know we're going to dig into like you're, you're not only a patient of Modern Thyroid Clinic, you also are a participant of our weight loss program and are such an example of how those two things synergistically work so well together. I kind of wanted to open up this conversation. You have been at Modern Thyroid Clinic for almost a year to the day. Like literally. I think your one year anniversary was this last week.

I love it.

And you've been in our weight loss program for about the last six months. I kind of wanted you to tell me a little bit about what life looks like for you a year ago before making the transition to coming to see us.

Well, my life was very different a year ago before I came to Modern Thyroid Clinic. I was just looking recently I had photos arise in my memories and I was thinking, well, we were about to go on a family vacation that we take every year. We were gearing up for that. A lot of physical walking involved in family vacations. We go to Colorado and enjoy our time there and we're out and about a lot. And a lot of things were more difficult for me just physically, just getting around, not having energy and comparative to now, it's like a different life. I feel like I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, but I do feel like a different person. Coming to Modern Thyroid and getting on the thyroid treatment was absolutely life changing.

What do you feel like before coming to see us were the main barriers that kept you from being able to live the life that you envisioned that you deserve? What do you feel like? Those were, if you can think of any.

The main things that I felt just day to day before were that I used to say to my husband often, I can do one thing a day. That was how I lived my life. And I, I've accomplished a lot in my life and especially in the last five years span of time. However, just day to day energy, I felt like I could do one thing. I could either do something with my family or do go to work or you know, do something else. I would study or, or whatever I was doing in my off time. But I could only pick one main activity a day because that's how long my energy and through that, you know, just feeling really beat down every day, really drained every day. And now I can do all the Things now I can do as many things as I want to do in a day.

And I think too, what so many people don't realize, like in that haze of survival is not only do they only get to pick one thing to do every day, they don't get to enjoy any of the things. Like it's almost like this hierarchy of needs. You're just surviving, surviving, surviving, surviving. You miss out, especially for women on like years of family time. That's really a huge part of our quality of life and in our life at some of our most important years. And so many women are just surviving, getting through every day, not being able to be find the joy in it.

All right, I would completely agree and I think that is common for a lot of women that we're not enjoying our day to day, we're not enjoying our family. I have an amazing husband who I love to spend time with and I have amazing kids in not being able to at the end of the day, have the energy to watch Netflix shows with my husband, you know, sit around, talk to the kids extendedly into the evening, you know, following up on everything with them. Our kids are older. I can't imagine feeling like this with young kids, but I know that's a reality for so, so many women. And this has just completely changed that. Now I am up and about and I am full of energy. I can work a hard day and I, I, I'm still tired at the end of a hard day, but it's a normal tired. I think that's what people don't understand. As you say fatigue and people think, oh, you feel a little tired. No, you feel bone tired, completely wiped out. You have no mental bandwidth left, you have no emotional energy. And it's just very defeating to live that way day to day. And I feel like it has a really negative effect on our mental health just as a whole. Even more specifically for myself, I felt like I was getting depressed. Turns out, no, you had a thyroid problem. I had a thyroid problem.

It's so true. And then I find like the anxiety component that goes along with it too. I find so much correlates around people, women not knowing if they're going to have the energy that they need to have to get through their day. So like they're constantly chronically anxious about, oh my God, well, if I go out to dinner with my husband today, am I going to be completely wiped for work tomorrow or oh, my kids have this thing this weekend, I need to rest enough to prepare for it and am I going to be Able to rest enough after it. Like there's so much of our bandwidth get wrapped up in that. That idea.

I completely agree. And you really nailed it with that. On the anxiety part. I defined myself as having anxiety. I'm a type A, I'm an overachiever, I'm all those things. But I was also just completely in fight or flight mode is what it felt like day to day. And I always attributed that to other circumstances or my own character failure that I wasn't living up or I wasn't doing enough. And my husband would say, I would check in with him and he would be like, have you lost your mind? Look at how much you do like you do so much. And I never gave myself the credit for what I had accomplished. I couldn't. The anxiety kept saying, you've got to do more. And I would just be tense all the time. And that also feeds into that enjoyment. And that was one of the things that Lori had told me upon. I think one of my first meetings or Sally or someone had told me right at the beginning of my time at MTC that my anxiety would go away. And I thought, that's sweet. I thought that's a lofty goal. But you know, if it helps a little bit, and I remember relating that even to my husband that, you know, maybe it'll help some anxiety. When I tell you I'm no longer an anxious person, do I get anxious from time to time? Yes. Again, just as day to day, normal life, as normal humans, that is what happens. But it is not a way of life. I don't wake up anxious and feel anxious and keyed up all day long and your mind just goes on a constant feedback loop and it's just, it's a miserable way to live. But when you, when you're in it, very hard to see the difference. But that was one of the first things that happened within a few months of my treatment. And I felt like I had been set free, delivered what is in this medicine bottle, this tiny little pill that I take twice a day. That's all I have to do, right? And I have freedom. Another part that's been life changing.

You know, it's so interesting too because I think people get this idea that they need to do everything perfect and do all these things and live their whole life, revol their whole life around their health in order to get their lives back. But I'm like, listen, we just start with the basics at Modern thyroid Clinic. We don't really ask you to do a lot of hard things in the beginning, we just want to do the simple things that are going to yield the biggest result for your energy and your capacity and your motivation and all the things so you can take that improvement and create more with it, create more energy, do more for your health. But in the beginning, it is profound what fixing someone's biochemistry will do with little to no effort on their part.

That is so true. And benefits of my health have been impacted tenfold. Not, you know, we just spoke about the anxiety part, but the medication really, it almost proved to be a litmus test. Right. So as my symptoms, my fatigue, the bone tired feeling went away, the constantly feeling drained. As I got more energy, I was more calm, my mind was more clear. The brain fog. Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible.

It goes away so fast.

Yes. Yeah. And those are just, they're just fixed. That's when I really started more reflecting upon. Okay, whoa. How much of this is physiological and how much of it is my self assigned shortcomings? Because we do take that all on. I feel like as women, we're mothers, we're caretakers, we're friends, we're sisters, we're best friends, we love to self assign things and take responsibility. And some of us are really good at taking responsibility a little too well.

For things that are not our responsibility.

Right, right. And we're like if we just sucking up a little more, if we just put our, put our wants and needs on the back end. And that was really the catalyst for me in my journey initially on thyroid treatment, was it inevitably made me start putting myself first, probably for the first time in my life. And I'll just say I'm in my late 40s, so it has been a long time coming. And I started to realize through the thyroid treatment that putting myself first, focusing on these things as symptoms of a endocrine problem and a metabolic issue and a health problem, and stop assigning personality to set me free in a very different way emotionally. It took the weight and the burden off of that. And I feel like that's one of the things I see on your social media a lot in the comment section. Women are carrying this burden of things they have no control. You can't will your thyroid to work.

And you know what I think, and you'll have to give me your perspective on this. I almost think that it is because medicine has failed them over and over and they're not able to get fixed. So if they do not take on the responsibility of finding their own solution, no one else will. And so it's almost like they have to carry that burden. And then when they come, when they do finally come to Modern Thyroid Clinic. So often I have the conversation of, you don't have to carry this anymore. Like you can turn this over to me, let me take this from you and you just sit back, do the bare minimum at first, let me manage it, let me help you and, and then we'll circle back and see what you can contribute in later to the building of your long term health. But it is an intentional shift of responsibility because they have carried it for often decades.

I feel like carrying that burden of responsibility. And that was definitely my experience. When I came to Modern Thyroid Clinic, I was met with talented, knowledgeable, true medical professionals. This is not. They're junk pseudoscience on every corner. You want to go look for it, you can find it. But that was the most impressive thing to me is that I was getting true health care and from real trained medical professionals, no junk science. And on my own. I have a science undergrad, so I'm an analytical girl. I love a good study. But I had researched on my own and found the information you had provided about the lab values and how those are a therapeutic range and they're treatable and you're symptomatic. I had found that I can't remember the entity, so I won't quote it, but I had found that from an authority in the medical journals from 20 years ago.

Right.

For 20 years. This is not new. You did not discover a new planet. You simply took knowledge that was available and put it into practice. And women are met and dismissed every day. Every day.

Every day.

I still think in my mind when I go to the doctor for a new whatever symptom in the back of my mind I'm always thinking, how am I going to counteract when I'm dismissed? What if they don't believe me? What if they don't listen? That was the main key difference. When I came to Modern Thyroid, I was not only heard, immediately validated, but I just, I felt like I found a village because it wasn't just Lori providing my prescriptions and doing my, doing my overall treatment plan. It was more than that. The emotional support I received was. I almost cried.

Half the time I cry with them.

Because I was like, what? What do you mean? I. This isn't all in my head. But we're so. The bias in medicine is real. We're still fighting that battle every day. And I feel like that is a superpower that we have with Modern Thyroid Clinic that we get to skip all of that. We get to get down to actually treating the real health issues. And I think that is a big hindrance. And if women can figure out how to get great health care in this country and be attended to in this way and be treated, we are unstoppable force.

Absolutely.

People were already doing, feeling the worst we've ever. I got an entire NBA feeling terrible with Hashimoto's and not, not a medicine to be found, right? But when my doctor, when I requested, as most women do, I went to my primary care and I said, will you please check my thyroid? This is the only thing that makes sense. Like, I've exhausted every other avenue. And he checked it and guess what? It fell within the range. I tell my friends, if you have, you know, a cold, you go to the doctor because you're symptomatic, right? You don't need to have a full virus panel to identify exactly which virus or bacteria you may have. Certainly if you have a bacteria, you want antibiotics, but they don't run a full virus. They don't identify it, but. But they'll still treat you. You still get medications, you still get supportive care instructions, you still get directives on what to do. Go to the doctor as a woman in 2024 for your thyroid and you're told, well, you're in this ball field, so you're fine, not bad. Please go get on antidepressants or it must be your mental health or, or you're middle age. This is expected, this is normal.

I see that go on from 20s, the excuse of, oh, you're getting older into, oh, well, now you're in your 30s, oh, well, now you're pregnant, now you're breastfeeding, now you have toddlers and women come and they're like, well, all my kids are gone off to college now. I've waited this whole time to feel better. I still don't. And I don't have anything left to blame. Right. Their clinicians have wasted decades of people's lives. It's. It's crazy. But I'm curious. Of course I want to get into, like, the whole weight loss thing too, but tell me advice that you have for people who are sitting currently in the shoes that you were in a year ago from a thyroid or a hormone perspective. Any tidbits for them?

I'm your unofficial cheerleader out in the world. I just will not stop talking about it with my girlfriends. And I feel like it's so important. So the advice I have for anyone who, if you're suspicious about it. You feel like maybe it's my thyroid. I'm doing all these things I want to say. I want to empower women. I was going to Orange Theory, then crossfit in the same day. I was working out all the time, probably exhausting my adrenals. I. I don't do that anymore. We've given them time to heal, however. I was tracking macros. I was weighing my food. I was eating clean. I was doing everything, everything that I possibly could. No, it wasn't perfect, but it was significant. And nothing helped. And it should help, right? Those are positive, supportive actions in our life. I wasn't sleeping well. All of these things. I would encourage women that just make an appointment. Just talk to the clinicians on staff at Modern Thyroid. Reach out to you, reach out to anyone on your staff. They are so knowledgeable and they have the answers. They're right there. Everything is just right there. And I feel like it's incredible to look back just a year ago. I feel like a different person. But I would just encourage women to trust your instincts. You know when there's something wrong and you know when something's not right. And if you can think back to a day that you felt really, really good and you were full of energy and you had a good night's sleep and maybe a life without anxiety, but now it's not that way. If there are more than a couple of weeks in there and you don't have some of the crisis happening, make an appointment. Go, go. Just go. Find out. Do the labs get evaluated and find out, because being within range does not mean that you're not symptomatic. And I feel like that is the most important message that you send every day on all the social media and trying to reach out to people is, we've got to change women's thinking on this. That just because your labs are in the football field of a range and then some, that does not equate no symptoms. And it does not, does not ever mean you're not treatable. The treatment is transformative beyond.

And I always tell people so almost every patient, you can probably think back to this yourself. Everyone is always terrified they're going to return for their first appointment with their clinician, and the clinician's going to be like, everything's fine. It's not your thyroid. Because that's what they've been told over and over and over, obviously looking at labs in a very different way. But I always tell people, look, if it looks like a duck, it walks like A duck. It quacks like a duck. The likelihood that it is a duck is 99.999%. And, I mean, our practice is filled with almost exclusively people who have been repeatedly told their thyroid is not their problem. And they come, and our success rate is, you know, it's unparalleled in the industry for getting these people their lives back. So there's a gap right in that information somewhere. And of everyone that's ever come, I think we've sent away one person and said, you know what? This actually isn't your problem. And it was a. But one out of thousands. We literally, like, returned all of his money. I'm just like, listen, I only want to help you if we can help you. We're not in the business of trying to help people that we can't help. There's too many people that we need to be helping in the meantime. Right.

Yes.

Such great advice.

I would also add to that an interesting paradox that I've experienced. Clinicians who are so happy to tell you, your TSH is good. There's nothing wrong. When I go back now, armed with the magnitude of just diligent, consistent lab work and great healthcare in my file, I sit in front of those clinicians now, and they say, oh, this is wonderful. Oh, MTC is treating your thyroid exactly right. Oh, I don't even need to do anything because they ordered everything that I could ever possibly want for you, and this looks fantastic. So please keep seeing them and please keep doing what you're doing. It's having a very positive impact on your health. So if I went in there first, 100%, I know, without a doubt, because it's happened, they would have dismissed it and they would have said, oh, well, you're. You're fine, you're fine. But now on the other end of it, it is a very. It is gratifying in a sense, but it's also a little enraging because I'm like, absolutely. Why won't you change?

And listen, because you could be in the same position a year later that you were in a year ago had you not picked up your train and put it on a new set of tracks, you know, and.

And I'm all in support of. Of very pro mental health. Let's reduce the stigma. Let's get rid of that. I'm happy to admit, if I've taken medications to help, I have. But this commonly. How many women are unnecessarily on mental health medication and they're going to therapy and they're Doing all the things, because I certainly did. I was going to consistent therapy and thought. And then again, you assign the personal character failure to it, or at least I do. I'm sure a lot of people do. And then, you know, and that's just a.

Then you're stuck there forever because you have biochemical issue that's creating a symptom. And if we don't solve that biochemical issue, we're simply hoping to manage symptoms when a lot of the time, I mean, most people don't know this. I ended up creating Modern Thyroid Clinic from a functional and integrative psychiatric practice that I founded. And I had so many women coming to see me for treatment, resistant depression, that I actually figured out was a thyroid problem. That over years, 80% of my new patients in my psychiatric office were coming to see me for thyroid treatment because they had heard what I was doing on thyroid platforms, etc. They took my information, spread it across all kinds of Internet platforms, and when my first patient flew in to see me for thyroid from out of state, I was like, oh, my God, I'm doing the wrong thing. I'm supposed to be doing thyroid. I already had my own thyroid journey. And that's how Modern Thyroid clinic was born. The burden was so heavy for people being diagnosed with mental health issues that were actually due to a thyroid problem that it created Modern Thyroid Clinic.

And thank God for you. And I'm so grateful. I'm sad that you had to go through such a journey to get here, but I'm so grateful for it. And speaking to that, you know, I. I think about the. The parallels of women with hysteria back in the day. What was that? The early 1900s. Right. That was a medical diagnosis. Hysterical women or the story of Bicycle Face, where. I don't know if you've heard that before, go look that one up. But yeah, because women were flushed and they looked pensive when they were bicycling.

More men with thyroid problems, we'd probably be solving this issue a lot sooner.

A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And I also think too, and you're the medical professional, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but the number one silent killer of women in America is heart disease. What is one of the causes of untreated thyroid problem? Oh, heart disease.

High, high risk for heart disease. When I was going through my own thyroid crisis when I was 27, the doctor tried to put me on a statin for high cholesterol that was actually just literally due to my levothyroxine, not working at all for my body. I was 27. He was going to happily put me on Lipitor, but refused to run a full thyroid panel to determine if perhaps my medication wasn't working for my physiology. So absolutely, I mean, cannot be. And, and that's one piece of the two pieces. Mental health, heart disease, There are a million impacts to poor thyroid function for our long term health. And if we want to intervene on a lot of them at once, certainly a potent powerful way is to actually fix this problem for women that is destroying their health and destroying their quality of life. So could not agree more. I kind of want to transition to the weight loss program topic. I'm kind of excited about this. So this is, and I'm sure you've heard me say this so many times, our weight loss program to me is not about weight loss at all. It is about so many other significantly powerful things in the lives of women that vary from woman to woman. And I feel like the added bonus of this process is weight loss, but it is not the main benefit, you know. So I'm curious if you have had. I'd just love to hear about the extra benefits that maybe you didn't expect going into the program that you've experienced along the way that don't have anything to do with weight loss.

Yes, I can definitely talk about that. So the benefits that I've experienced that are weight loss side weight loss is great, but one of the main benefits that I experience pretty much right out of the gate is the reduction of inflammation in my body.

It's crazy.

That alone will probably keep me on a maintenance plan for a long time because I did not like the thyroid. You, you don't know what you don't know. And I did not know until that happened what a difference it made just in my day to day function, my overall energy level and just how I, I felt each day.

Inflammation is such a, people don't expect it. They don't know that it's driving so much symptomology in their lives. A lot of people don't know they're even inflamed. But, and, and so in the past I've used things like LDN to decrease inflammation, you know, lifestyle, those sorts of things. And that's all amazing, but it's all a very slow reduction over time. So again, it's hard for these people to pinpoint. The inflammatory reduction of GLP1s within 24 hours is instant. And so people have to see it at that point because it's undeniable, you.

Know, I always knew that my Botox and filler was great, but I didn't really know the magnitude of how great until I lost all of the inflammation in my face. Even just looking at pictures of myself, I felt like when I looked in the mirror I said, oh, there you are. Finally start to recognize myself again. And what that did for my self esteem, just my improved mental health, being able to look in the mirror. And I think we, we all go through those periods as women and sometimes extensively where we're looking in the mirror and we're going through some things and, and maybe our were not having great health at that time. But that inflammation, it just changes everything. It just makes you feel crummy day to day.

It's funny because even if necessarily people are at the weight or close to the weight they feel comfortable at, if they're inflamed, it feels almost like you're wearing a Michelin man costume, like you do not feel like yourself. And people that don't struggle with inflammation, my husband for example, he's never been inflamed a day in his whole life, but they don't get it. But people that struggle with inflammation, it is a daily thing that they are trying to reconcile. And not only like physically do we feel better, but that reduction in inflammation for our long term health outcomes is absolutely enormous. And there is nothing that I've ever seen in medicine that compares to a GLP1 for inflammation. And people relate it to weight loss over and over and over and again. And I'm not sure if you've heard me mention this or if Sally has in the program, but what happens in the studies a lot is they'll look at inflammatory markers, they'll check them before and then they'll check them six months later. And they see those HSCRP markers reduce over six or 12 months. Well, I sometimes check them weeks after people start the program before they have lost weight and those inflammatory markers plummet. They can go from high, extremely, like almost 100% chance of heart attack, stroke in the future, to low risk for heart attack and stroke in the future within weeks. Like it's crazy unreplicatable in any other way.

I would completely believe that. And I also have a secondary condition that I, I'm fine to share about. So I have alpha one antitrypsin deficiency. And what that does is I am lung affected. So it affects my ability to maintain oxygen, to be able to breathe correctly, to, you know, you could think of it as severe asthma or, or something to that regard. I Had been hospitalized twice in 2021 before we knew that I had this. They call it a rare genetic disorder. I don't necessarily believe it's rare. I believe it's under diagnosed. So as does most of the Alpha one community. So we're working to advocate for that. But within that, because of my Alpha 1, the amount of times that I've been told by doctors, well, you're just going to have inflammation because you have Alpha one, maybe we could try to get that inflammation down and then maybe I could breathe better. And I can say just from my own personal anecdotal experience, though, since January, I don't have shortness of breath. I don't experience. And a lot of that to. Can be the, the weight loss. But you know what happens with weight loss. You also have a reduction in inflammation. So you know, it's causation, correlation, all the, all the things all at once. But this has improved my breathing, just my ability to breathe day to day. And I monitor my oxygen saturation all the time. I have it on my Apple Watch. And, and yes, that is an. It's pretty accurate. But I, I just noticed an improved trend since starting the GLP1s where in. My husband made a comment just a few weeks ago. He said, I don't see you like deep sighing or taking deep breath or you don't seem to have those instances anymore. Or if he makes me laugh too hard, which is all the time, constantly. I would have almost like an asthma attack because I would get caught up and I'd have some coughing or some constriction there. And those of all. I can't remember the last time that happened.

Those stories fuel my freaking soul because they're so unique for everyone, but they're, they're not unique at the core. Like it is these medicines. I saw an article come out today that's like, GLP1's actually maybe the cure for everything. And I'm like, that is where medicine is headed. People are still sadly wrapped up in all this narrative about, oh my gosh, these side effects. Oh my gosh, they. People don't stop vomiting. Oh my gosh, cancer. It's like, guys, you are reading the wrong messages here because number one, this medication probably has the lowest side effect profile of any medication I've ever seen. The side effects that are being touted as terrible are actually like pancreatic cancer. Well, that's because of pancreatitis and that's what you're at risk for if you lose weight. Doesn't matter if you do that with caloric restriction or a GLP1 or exercise, you are at risk for pancreatitis as you lose stored fat. I do advocate for slow reduction in weight loss, which is why we, you know, tailor our program so tightly for our unique needs. But, you know, and the cancer risk, it's like, first of all, thyroid cancer in general. Thyroid cancer has been completely disproven in the literature to be a risk at all. It's less risky than insulin, and insulin is not a risk for thyroid cancer. Sure, theoretically, maybe, maybe medullary thyroid carcinomas in particular, which is extremely rare and has never shown up in a single human ever.

Period.

So, yeah. And then, I mean, it's just. It's crazy that the racket. When in reality, these meds are going to change forever. Alzheimer's, autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular stroke risk, which if we should, like you said, be afraid of something. We should be afraid of heart disease. Heart disease kills more of us than every darn cancer combined every year. So that is what we need to be afraid of. And if you had told medicine five years ago that we could reduce heart disease mortality by 20 to 30%, they would call you a liar.

I feel like there's this narrative, probably from the 80s diet culture that's carried over. There's this narrative that says, and every woman has had this experience. You go into the doctor, you just need to lose weight. If you just diet and exercise and you just lose weight, just stop eating. Just. Just stop. I lift weights. I need more than 1200 calories to fuel my body. It's like the narrative feels that it went, okay, we. We need to lose weight. That's. That's what's causing all of your medical problems. And then we say, okay, here's the GLP1s. This is fantastic. Plus, here's this hoist of other benefits that are positive, and it's impacting positive on cardiovascular disease. I've read so many studies about cardiovascular disease and how it saved people's lives and improved people's Life with the GLP1. And it's almost like they're like, oh, yeah. But not like that. That's too simple.

We have to take responsibility and beat the crap out of ourselves all day when we try to do it ourselves. And it doesn't work because, like you, our practice is filled, filled with women who do eat well and do exercise. And you know what? They're not losing weight because their metabolism is so damaged and disrupted. And it doesn't matter what they eat. Or how much they work out, they are not going to be able to make an impact on their weight nor improve their metabolism, which again, needs to be part of this conversation of not only are people losing weight, they are improving their metabolism so that if they do choose to come off of these medications in the future, which most people in our program do, they can maintain their weight with realistic effort, not like over restricting and over exercising.

Yeah, I, I am met with that statement a lot. Oh, well, you're gonna have to take it for the rest of your life. Or.

Okay, people that get the inflammation relief, they're like, sign me up.

I'm like, I, I'm. I'm pushing 50. I'm going to have to take things for the rest of my life anyway. If I could take something that. I think LDN helps you also maintain your youthfulness and also the reduction inflammation. Oh, okay, I'll take that. But yeah, there's, there's a lot of misinformation and a lot of misconceptions and the amount of things that people have said to me when they find out that I'm taking this med, because I, I'm pretty open about it. You know, I'm not walking up to people. Hi, my name is Ainsley. I, I take semaglutide. No, I'm not. I, I try to be open in case people have questions, but the amount of misinformation has been wild.

So polarizing. It's like we are living in this era of health extremism and polarization, and it's, it's really, it's a bizarre, It's a bizarre time. I mean, even. And, and we're not ever having real conversations. We're still talking about these pretend side effects, you know, like when we're also talking about a medicine that reduces all mortality. Doesn't matter if you're going to get hit by a beer truck or die of a heart attack. If you are on a GLP1, your risk of death is reduced by 20%. So, like, why aren't people talking about that? Realistically, Tell me your. This was one of the questions that people wanted to know from you. Tell me about your experience with side effects and then we'll get into the weight loss piece too, because I know people want to know about that, but again, it's always like the byproduct of, for me, of the conversation.

Yeah, the side effects for me have been overall minimal. Almost right away. I think the first weekend I started mid January this year is when I started like the 12th of January. So just for some context for folks if they want to figure out how, how long I've been taking this. And now we're at the end of June. So probably that first weekend I can remember I wanted a little treat. I, you know, I just wanted a little bit of ice cream. And so I had my ice cream. But because of my disordered eating, which is a real thing that we encounter a lot of times when we've gone into significant obesity, like you can't influence.

Your weight with effort. Natural byproduct of that is disordered eating. Because you're trying to do more and more and more to gain back control of your failing metabolism.

I completely agree. And I'd had a little ice cream and I instinctively went, I'm going to have a second, second bowl. Which is not a negative thing at all. But I did not get very many bites in and I was met with a little wave of nausea. And what I found is that was one of the side effects right out of the gate that I'm not going to be able to overdo it on sugar. Awesome. I don't need to overdo it on sugar. I think the recommended daily amount is 25 grams or something to be healthy. And I thought, well, this is going to be easy because I, I basically pavloed myself with the medication. I was like conditioned and trained. Done, done. I don't enjoy a little nausea, although it wasn't debilitating. And I remember the advice from Sally and within our group and I, I extra hydration. I upped my protein. It was very minimal and brief. I remembered that. So I watched myself moving forward to just keep that in mind. I stayed away from the wine for a while. I'm happy to say I can still drink wine. I've done it. I've traveled with my husband to Chicago. We went and saw friends. I was all about some wine when traveling. I. So those, those have been very minimal. I would say initially I, I try to plan to do my injections on like a Friday evening because that way I know Saturday during the day the most I'm gonna do is go to my sweet sister in law's house and lay by her pool and play with my baby niece. And that doesn't require much energy, but I may feel a little fatigued. But it's not comparative to what it was before. So I've had a little bit of fatigue, I've had a little constipation, things like that, but they're manageable. And usually the answer I have found Increase your water, add your electrolytes, high protein, which you want to be doing anyway, lifestyle or if that doesn't work.

We simply adjust your dosing.

Right.

I mean this whole idea that people need to be walking around violently ill all the time is, is a reflection of over medication, that these doses are too high, that standardized. You know, GLPs are promoting and only they are the only options at this point. So yeah, that is a definite byproduct of over medication when in fact it can be really manageable and tailored to you.

Right. And I, I feel like those, the manageability of the side effects is really key. That it has not dissuaded me. I do not feel worse to get better, kind of, it's not a trade off. And when I say I've had these, these side effects and these symptoms, they're minimal.

So it tends like the worst one is.

Right. This is maybe a two. At the very worst, maybe it's been a three on a, just a, a weird off day where I was probably dehydrated, I probably wasn't eating my protein. And so, and it's taught me a bit about the relationship with myself again, going back to putting myself first. It's made me focus on, you have to take care of yourself. You have to have self care, you have to prioritize yourself. That means I'm going to get my water and I'm going to get my electrolytes. I'm not going to push it to the side. I'm not going to focus on work and not get my, my liquids in or I'm not going to, you know, I can go to the pantry and get my protein shake for the day and you know, increase my protein take. So it, it's had a good effect in, in teaching, retraining my mind in a way to have more self care. And we all need that, all of us collectively, all the women in the world, our self care.

Amen. Yes, sir. I could not agree more.

Guilt free too.

That would be great. I'll write that on a prescription for you.

Yes, thank you.

Tell me. Okay, the million dollar question. Tell me about your weight loss, the actual weight loss. Right. Like I know we've talked so much about all the other wonderful things, but tell me about it.

Yeah, I would love to tell you about my weight loss. I want to preface this by saying like if people are watching this right now and you know me and in real life, but maybe you haven't seen me in, I'd say the last five years I have hid on Social media, how much weight I gained. I felt so ashamed by it. I was always, you know, active and more fit. I'd have some. Some fluctuations in my weight with my life, but not to this degree and this extent by far. And, you know, diligently working out, doing all the right things. Prior to modern thyroid clinic, I had lost maybe, maybe about £20 over the course of a couple of years, which sounds great, but is defeating when you are working nine times as hard and ten times as hard as you have to be just to gain a little, little inch forward. So when I got on this, I've lost a total, I believe today was a little over £52 since January. And what caused me to start the weight loss medicine was in January, I was having chest pain. My blood pressure started increasing. I am 110 over 70 all day for 25 years, and it scared me a little. And that's what prompted me to say, okay, no, no, no. I. I lost about another 10 pounds with the thyroid medication. We were so excited and, you know, and we got to that point and I worked with Lori on my treatment plan. We adjusted medications and all of that. And finally I just said, I think we're there. And she said, I agree. I think this is the key. And according to your labs, with your your A1C, your CRP, all these things collectively say to say to me, it is your metabolism and we need to treat that and we need to fix it. And I am not kidding. The weight, I. I feel charmed. I. I feel like I am one in a million and lucky. But I also felt really validated that I was doing all of the things I needed to do, and I already had all those supportive practices. So I don't. My heart goes out to. When I see other women in our group get discouraged, especially right out of the gate, because a lot of them are having to cultivate all those supportive practices in place and start this journey.

Starting thyroid and weight loss, too, is like, a lot, and it's slower in the beginning because we have to fix that piece. That largely was part of the cause. They gained so much weight in their.

Poor metabolism, and I'd had a solid six months on thyroid treatment, which I feel like for me, that was really key. So we had really had time to kind of let my thyroid get a break, not be constantly inflamed that whole time. Moving to the weight loss, though, it had just taken off. I don't know if you call it a super responder. I don't know. But it is nothing short of amazing. And I am just a mere mortal. I hit a plateau after the 16 weeks. So I did the full 16 week course and then I hit a little plateau. But because of the knowledge shared in our, our group and within the clinic and so many resources that you provide to your patients is incredible. It's like a wealth of encyclopedia of knowledge. Then the access. You cannot find another clinic where you could reach somebody or text them or just send a quick message and have such a responsive team. But yeah, I hit a little plateau. I didn't even hardly think about it because I had so much education, true education. And I just thought, oh no, this is normal, this is expected, this is not real. I'm just going to sail right on through and maybe in a couple of weeks we'll kind of see where it's at and if it's a problem, then we'll, we'll look at that, we'll look at the dosing because again, if I just needed to increase, I could do that. If I need to take a full break, I could do that. There's so much flexibility with this medicine locked in. And you know, it's not like the diet quote unquote meds of the past, of the early mid-90s where you're not like just jacked up on drugs all the time and running around like I am completely feel myself. I don't feel any, any alteration to my personality day to day. It doesn't affect me in that way. That is the greatest thing. I mean so many of those other, you know, things that we've all tried in the past, they make you really jittery or just make you crazy.

Compromising your health short term for a hopeful long term gain. Like you're unhealthier, trying to get healthier, you increase heart risk to try to reduce it. And this is the, the opposite. And kind of circling back to what you were mentioning, I think what people don't understand and part of, I think the negative dialogue around these medications are people are joining programs where they don't have support, where it's not tailored to them, where they don't have resources. In our program you can connect with our person. I mean you have a private email. But every darn week we have an opportunity to get together, to ask questions, to troubleshoot, to do whatever needs to be done. And when that isn't happening is where bad things happen, where people are really sick, where they are losing too much weight too fast or they aren't losing weight because no one is there to support them. To troubleshoot, to adjust, to tailor it precisely to them in a personalized manner. And I feel like. I feel proud of the program we've built because of that. And it's so valuable to me to hear you tell me back, hey, listen, these things impacted my journey because that ultimately is what we are striving for. And where I think our program is light years ahead of literally any other one I've ever seen. Like, I've never seen a program that has so much support, that is so tailored to each person. And I love that we are still, like, hitting that nail on the head.

Yes, I fully agree. I feel like it's. It is a personalized and tailored experience at Modern Thyroid Clinic just all the way around. It doesn't matter if you're a thyroid patient, doesn't matter if you're a weight loss patient or if you're both. I still feel such personability. And I feel like every person that I encounter with, from, from billing to appointment setting to prescription, anyone I encounter, they care. And I won't name and shame and go into too much detail, protect identity. But I have a very dear friend of mine that tried to replicate this at a place on the corner, and it. It put her in a really horrible position. The style of treatment, the lack of monitoring, the lack of knowledge. They are putting her on medications and administering these things. And, you know, her hair's falling out. She's. She was, you know, just completely depressed. It affected her mental health. She was having a horrible reaction to these things. And my question is, do you know what's in those meds? Do we even know? The. The integrity? That is another thing that I. Because I believe and I trust in you, and I just. I just do. I don't know how else to explain it, but I know that you are someone, as a clinician, as a healthcare provider that I trust. If McCall says, get the med. This label from this pharmacy, I have scoped it out. I have read every fine detail. I know you have done that research, and I can just trust it. And that is a piece. The trust that I have with you, with your staff, with everyone there, that is priceless. And that is something that's missing greatly in just general health care in America. Across the board, we have a trust issue because we're told something and we don't know how to quantify that. We don't know how to validate that. We don't. So, yeah, when you tell me, go to this pharmacy, buy this. This is the way we're doing this. I know there was probably late night hours of McCall going through studies, reading, reading all the pharmacology, doing all the organic chemistry on the side, making sure it all matched. I know that you've done that. I assign a lot of positivity to what you, the research you did. But I have no doubt and I feel like this is the thing that translates the most as a patient at your clinic is that it's personal to you. It's always personal to the patient, but we really truly feel like it's personal to you. And that is something. I work in healthcare tech and that is something they would pay a pretty penny to put lightning in a bottle and to be able to capture that. And that's something that is just foundational to modern thyroid cl. And I'm never leaving the transformation, the personal experience. I've never spent money on my health care in such a way that I received such a personal curated experience. It's more. I've had concierge medicine experience. I've had that before. I have a great friend that is in concierge medicine in Dallas, internal medicine. He's amazing diagnostician. However, this feels even more than that. It's just so personable and I think, you know, that's the unique difference is patients need to know that they come to modern thyroid clinic, they do the thyroid treatment, they're going to get that person ability. You do the weight loss group. McCall is in our Facebook group. Not just as a figurehead, not just liking a post. She's in there giving you advice, checking on you. You're in the mix. Yeah. We don't just have a moderator in Sally. She is a, she's a. Sally is a media and Internet of her own.

She is incredible.

Yes, yes. And the amount of support found in there, it just. When I need an uplift, I just go in there. I just go in there and just read the warm fuzzies like it's just, it's women supporting women. It's a positive thing. It's evidence based information, no science here.

From the top down. That's what I want to cultivate for people, you know, and it's even like the reason we hire people who have a thyroid problem. We want really everyone that people encounter to be understood and empathetically seen because that is the biggest thing that is lacking in medicines now is just empathy and connectivity and relating on a human to human level. I love that. Well, there was one other thing I'm going to read from my little notes here. When I asked you what you felt most passionately about to talk about. And it can be thyroid or the weight loss program. You replied in, and I quote, I feel really passionately about how we, mainly women, assign our physical symptoms as a character failure. And you've touched on this a couple times during this conversation. But I wanted to give you a little platform to just tie it up with a nice little bow and share with me how that's impacted your life, thoughts about it, or things that you want to convey to other women that are honestly doing the same thing.

I feel like it's so important, and I see it across the board. As far as assigning our. Assigning character failure to personal physical symptoms. We see it all the time across the board. I see it with all my girlfriends. They're like, I get questions all the time. Do you think this could be my thyroid or is this just me? No, I don't think that you. You know, they assign lazy. That's a word that's no longer permitted in our home. We say restful. And so I feel like there's so much within women today that we are beating ourselves up before we even get out of bed. And then we are carrying through the day, and the inner critic is just ramping on us. And society's partly to blame. We are very logical. There seems to be no other answer. It must be me.

Doctors telling me it's me.

It's gotta be right. It's all in your head, or you just need to lose weight or whatever. We're just being gaslit every. Everywhere we turn, and we just go, yeah, it's probably me. And I just think of, there's got to be women out there right now today that woke up today, and they're putting on a brave front. I mean, these are not women. Coward in a corner, passionate women that are raising their children, who are going into workplace every day, who are accomplishing magnanimous things in life. And inside their head, they're sitting alone and they're like, you're stupid, you're lazy. You just didn't do enough. You always do this. That inner critic. Critic will eat you alive. And I feel like this is not just transforming. Of course it is on a physiological level, but this is a transformation. The benefit to mental health, the women on the brink of. Of suicidal ideation who are battling that every day. I'm not saying that they don't need the mental health help. They sure do. This is such a contributing factor across the board with our thyroid problems, with our weight problems. It's like, how many mental Health problems would you actually have at the end of the day if your thyroid was treated and corrected and managed, if you didn't have extreme obesity and the enormous amount of problems that come with that? Your clothes don't fit, you feel bad, your self esteem, it's just, it's systemic throughout your identity. Right. It is an attack on your actual identity. And I just, my heart breaks thinking because I've been there, assigned all those things now, but my heart just breaks to think that it is 20, 24 and all we know about mental health and empowerment and girlhood and all these things and there it's still going to be at the end of the day, some woman who is magnificent creature in the world and she's not feeling her potential and she's not relishing in her successes and it could change the world. I mean, true empowerment of women. It's. Please stop gaslighting us in medicine.

I view my work as like generational, I really do. And I mean not to over dramatize it, but if you change the lives of women, you change their marriages, you save their marriages, you change the lives of their relationship with their kids. Their kids, then their relationship with their kids. Like I really think the healing of so much of our country and the world starts with women. So I could not agree more.

I absolutely agree with you. My kids definitely have a different moment than they did a year ago. My sweet teenage son said that he would describe me as fierce. And so when a teenager tells you that, yes, you know it's true. Right. I'm going to hold on to that forever. But you know, I don't, I don't know that he would have described me that way three years ago, four years ago. I certainly wasn't living my best life in that capacity. So, yeah, I completely agree with you.

Well, this has been amazing. I feel like I got to hang out with a friend and have coffee for the last hour. Thank you so much for being open to share it with people because it can really, truly change lives, generations of people, because of your willingness to be open and vulnerable. So thank you so much for being here today. I'm active, absolutely honored to be part of your journey.

Well, thank you for inviting me. It's been an honor. It is truly my pleasure. So excited to do this and to talk to you. You know, I'm all over social media all day, all the time in the comment section and things, trying to hype up mtc. But truly this, this is a gift to the world and that's something I say in my day to day life that good mental health is your maintaining your own good mental health is your gift to the world. Well, you are helping thousands of people every day improve their overall health, improve their mental health. And that is truly a gift to the world. And I'm just so proud to be affiliated with the clinic and be a patient there. And I'm just, I'm so excited to see what next year holds.

Well, thank you so much and I can't wait to see what the next year holds for you, my friend.