89: Autoimmune Disease Is Rising Faster Than Ever – The Root Causes Conventional Medicine Still Misses with Dr. Amy Myers

Today's episode is going to be a good one. I am chatting with my longtime mentor and friend, Dr. Amy Myers, who is a medical doctor, a two-time New York Times bestselling author, and an internationally acclaimed functional medicine physician who specializes in empowering people with autoimmune diseases, thyroid issues, SIBO, Candida, to help them reverse their conditions and get back their health. She is also the author of The Autoimmune Solution and The Thyroid Connection, but this year she is re-releasing The Autoimmune Solution with updated research and information, and I can't wait to get my hands on it. Stay tuned for that, but let's dig in.

Okay, so we have the one and only Dr. Amy Myers here today, who is a mentor to me and someone that I've admired and looked up to for over a decade now, and one of the original founders and helped really catapult functional medicine into the sphere where people are aware of it. They know about it. They know that they can influence their autoimmunity. So So excited to share our episode today with Dr. Amy Myers.

Thanks for having me.

Really appreciate it. So excited for you to be here. I kind of wanted to open up with your own story, how this became a passion point for you, because I know you're trained in traditional allopathic medicine. So kind of take us through those initial years and what that journey looked like and how you ended up here. Sure.

So I'll start back from the very beginning, but I'll make the story quick that my parents— my mother knew about the microbiome. Almost 57. So that was in the early '70s. She made homemade yogurt and whole wheat bread, and we ate real food. I mean, first of all, there was not a lot of processed food, but my family was not into that. My father was a professor of international studies, and China was a specialty. So we rarely got sick, but if we did, we took Chinese herbs. So that is the foundation of which I was coming from. Uh, very long story short, joined the Peace Corps, was down in Paraguay, South America, read Dr. Andrew Weil's book Spontaneous Healing, got interested in herbal medicine, natural medicine, came back to the States and actually moved out to Seattle because I thought I was going to go to Bastyr and go to naturopathic medical school. Very long story short, my mother got sick with pancreatic cancer very unexpectedly. Actually, my great-grandmother died of 103 the same year that my mother died at 59. And I was very interested in alternative medicine during this, this period. And my mother got sick, I moved home to New Orleans, and I ended up going to allopathic medical school in New Orleans. I did all my electives in integrative medicine, uh, holistic medicine. I created a— actually a complementary and alternative medicine interest group and helped get it into the curriculum of my medical school. But all along the way, I really couldn't find what I wanted to do. Nothing was really fitting. I had a full circle moment. My fourth year of medical school, I did a rotation with Dr. Andrew Weil, and during that rotation, I felt like he was just triaging people out, saying, you know, if you have irritable bowel, meditate, do take some chamomile tea, and it wasn't getting to the root. So I actually opted to go into emergency medicine because my history in the Peace Corps and, and the idea that maybe I would do international health if I never really got to figure out what I wanted to do. Ended up meeting Mark Hyman, who was a mentor to me, and hearing about functional medicine. And I just, you know, dove in. So I became an emergency physician and then ultimately went to a conference, heard about functional medicine, dove into that, and created a practice. In the meantime, the most important part of my story that I'm forgetting here is that my second year of medical school, I started having panic attacks, weight loss, Terrible insomnia. I was a vegetarian at the time, so I was eating Ezekiel whole wheat bread and butter before I went to sleep every night so I wouldn't wake up a pound or two thinner. And eventually got a tremor that took me to my doctor, and she dismissed me and said, "Oh, you're just learning everything in medical school," or, you know, "This is all in your head," essentially. And I said, "No, no, no, no, no. My mother died of pancreatic cancer. I've adjusted from the Peace Corps. I've had some stress in my life, and I've never responded this way. I want a full workup." So she called me back a few weeks later and told me I had Graves' disease. I'm quite sure she never apologized to me for gaslighting me and telling me nothing was wrong with me. And so I reached out to Andrew Weil. He didn't have any suggestions. There was no me back then. I was not aware of functional medicine. So I tried PTU, the medication, first, and it gave me something called toxic hepatitis. I started having horrible hor— symptoms. Actually, I did Chinese medicine first, then I did PTU, and then I had to get off all the medication because my liver was starting to fail. I thought I was going to have to drop out of medical school, but I didn't, and ultimately had my thyroid ablated. So at the end of all this medical school and learning, I really realized through functional medicine, even though func— conventional medicine, you know, really said they solved my problem by just getting rid of my thyroid, they never got to the root of why I had autoimmunity to begin with. And so that really is my journey of helping myself reverse my own autoimmune disease and then helping many, many others do the same through my books and programs and clinic and things like that.

Wow, isn't that— I mean, it so echoes thyroid patients in general, but especially Graves'. I feel like the vast majority of them get sent to psychiatry for anxiety, for, you know, anything except the true physical problem that is causing the upheaval in their entire physiology?

I mean, if you look at my labs from that time, they were not overly elevated. I've just always known my body. And I think that's one of the things that I really, you know, teach people and have taught people over the years is how to listen to their body, how to listen to how things affect them. So this idea of, you know, sleepless nights and I mean, it really was the hand tremor. You know, I remember sitting in medical school class and I went to get something from a friend and my hand tremored and everybody just said, you've got to go to the doctor. But I don't even have a primary care doctor, right? I've had no health issues. I'm in my 30s. And then I go and I get completely gaslit that I'm just learning things in medical school and thinking I have them. And I'm a pretty feisty person, right? I mean, I don't hesitate to speak up, but I think about all the patients that, that don't have that and don't speak up. And I, of course, saw it all the time in my clinic. I'm sure you see it frequently as well. Just all the people who've been dismissed. I mean, certainly since you guys are working so closely with the thyroid, right? And, and most physicians are not checking the proper labs or interpreting them as optimal versus normal. The whole shebang that I'm sure everybody knows, uh, all your listeners. But all of those people getting dismissed, right? And particularly women and women with thyroid disorders.

It's—

I mean, I, I heard it every day in my clinic and I experienced it myself, so I know it's true.

Same. It's an epidemic. I'm going to sidetrack us for a minute because I always forget that you did your Peace Corps in Paraguay. My husband's family is first-generation immigrants from Paraguay. They still spend a lot of time there.

Oh my God.

We go very frequently as well. What part were you in? Were you like in the Chaco? Were you in Asunción?

I was outside of Villarrica, which is— Oh yeah, exactly.

That's where my mother is.

2 hours on a bus, 1 hour on a paved road, 1 hour on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere. I never knew that about you.

All the time. Yeah.

Well, I have a dear friend who, who lives part-time in Austin who's Paraguayan, and she actually has been out to my site and brought them stuff. So they still have a place there. We might go this year.

Well, keep me posted because my mother-in-law goes a couple times a year. My husband goes in August and they'll always go to Villarrica. So keep me posted if you ever need us to transport anything. My mother-in-law would love to. That's so fun.

Awesome. Thank you.

Yeah.

So talk with me a little bit. So it seems like— and I talk with patients and other clinicians alike about this— it seems like autoimmunity, the incidence, the frequency that we see it is kind of exploding. And I'm wondering your take on— do you think we're actually increasing in cases of autoimmunity or are we just getting better at detecting them? How do you think that looks from your perspective?

Well, I do think that the number of cases is exploding. Uh, I actually just recently updated my book, The Autoimmune Solution. It will be out, the revised edition, in, in September. And so we were looking for statistics, and the statistics in terms of numbers of people have not been updated. So it's still saying, you know, 50 million people. But the number of autoimmune diseases, things that we are classifying as autoimmune diseases, has exploded as well. Um, when I wrote the book initially, I think it was 100 autoimmune conditions, and now they're classifying them as 150 different autoimmune conditions. So there are more things that are being captured and explained as autoimmunity that had not been before. But I am, you know, anecdotally, so to speak, seeing and hearing of a lot more. And I think it's the same as cancer, right? I mean, we are seeing these things hitting more people, and we are seeing them hitting people at a younger age. And so as far as I know, the testing hasn't gotten any better, right? I mean, Cyrex, who I used to always use, I have an autoimmune panel that I had made through CPL. It's the same test that was there before. I, I'm not aware of any new tests like, oh, this now captures, um, 6 other markers for 6 other autoimmune conditions. So I'm not aware of any testing that's improved. I think that it really is partly that we're classifying more things as autoimmunity, but more importantly, that our environment has continued to change. And that is really the biggest thing that I— one of the biggest things that I wrote about in the book. I felt when I was asked to do a 10-year anniversary, they just wanted to put a new cover on it because frankly, the book still sells really well. And I said, no, I will not just put a new cover on this. We have introduced COVID and the COVID vaccines into the world, or they have been introduced into the world, and this has completely changed the landscape. And completely changed our immune systems. And pollution has gotten worse and plastics have gotten worse. And it's now very clear. I used to think it was conspiracy about the airplanes. I mean, I can tell you what days they're spraying here, right? I mean, it's become pretty— you can look in your legislative what's on the docket and you will see that changing the weather is a real thing that's happening around the world. So unfortunately, our ability to escape a lot of these toxins, infections that maybe you could have escaped in the past is no longer an option. It's everywhere. And I'm not trying to be alarmist to people because I think one of the things I do really well is to talk about ways to prevent this, but also get these things out of your body. And that's what I spend a lot of time in the book talking about is a lot of interventions that have become much more mainstream than they were 10 years ago, and, and how you can utilize these to help, to help support your immune system. So I've said a lot. I'll let, I'll let you dive in there, but our environment has significantly changed for the worse, and many of the modalities that you and I have been using for a decade or more have become much more mainstream. And so you know, they are more effective and more available to people to help heal themselves.

Yeah, I want to dig into that for sure. I want to back up a hair too and, and say, why is it, do you think, that women are disproportionately affected by autoimmunity?

So that's the multimillion-dollar question. I mean, the theory is hormones play a role. So we as females, you know, typically— and I don't think we can say typically anymore when it comes to autoimmunity or cancer, right? I mean, typically there were these screens for cancer in your 40s, 50s, 60s, and now we're seeing 20 and 30-year-olds getting cancer. So there is no typical anymore. Typically, autoimmunity would come on during times of big shifts of hormones. So I'm sure you know, plenty of women got pregnant, delivered, got diagnosed with autoimmunity, got pregnant, their autoimmune condition got better, then delivered and it got worse. Going through perimenopause, these shifts in your hormones, going through menopause. These were typical times and ages in which women were getting diagnosed with autoimmunity. Now we're hearing of, you know, children much younger getting diagnosed with autoimmunity. But we believe it has something to do with these hormonal shifts, particularly shifts in estrogen and progesterone. And during these times where we have enormous shifts such as pregnancy, delivery, perimenopause and menopause tend to be the age at which this would happen.

Yeah, agreed. I echo that in my own practice. This is kind of synergistic with the conversation we were having about gaslighting, which is a shame, but can autoimmune disease be present for a very long period of time before someone finally gets the clarity of the diagnosis? Like, do you have any, even your own clinical insights on how long these people deal with these syndromes under the surface before someone formally is able to diagnose them on average?

Absolutely. So I think the average is 5 to 10 years. These antibodies are showing up, you know, you don't just get autoimmunity overnight. These antibodies are usually brewing for 5 to 10 years and the average person is going to 4 to 6 doctors. Now, why is that? First, conventional medicine does not believe that once you have an autoimmune condition that there is anything that can be done to reverse these. So they don't even bother to check antibodies. That was pretty standard in my clinic when I was practicing, is I checked a whole slew— this, this panel that I created through CPL, I would check antibodies on everybody because they were coming out, you know, before people were even having symptoms. And then, wow, you really have an opportunity to absolutely prevent this from ever coming out if, if they're not even having symptoms yet. And then with autoimmunity, the other thing is it is typically happening in women. We typically are dismissed. Many of the symptoms can mimic other things. You've just delivered, you're tired, you've gained weight, your hair is falling out— you just delivered a baby, of course that's happening to you, right? They're not checking your thyroid, they're not checking maybe you have lupus or something else. And so, you know, they say it's like normal part of aging, or you're just you just had a baby, whatever the situation is, that's perimenopause and those are just the symptoms of it. So they're not checking. And many of the symptoms could be explained by other things. And then during this 5 to 10 year journey, many of the symptoms are coming and going. So it was not infrequent that I would tell somebody that, you know, say had MS that, oh yeah, I mean, I do remember 5 years ago, I was hiking and suddenly my leg spasmed and seized up and like, I couldn't walk for a few minutes, but then it went away. So I really didn't think anything of it. And then I had that other episode right after my dad died. My other leg did the exact same thing and it lasted 3 days this time. But again, it went away, so I didn't think anything of it. So usually when I would diagnose somebody, I would hear these stories. Oh yeah, I do remember that I had this thing, but then it went away. And so With autoimmunity, during that period where it's brewing and you haven't been diagnosed, there are often symptoms coming and going during that period. And so a lot of people do, you know, dismiss them. It's not until they get, you know, this— my leg seized up, I can't walk— now I've gone to the doctor, now they're doing the MRI, now I've been diagnosed with MS.

Yeah, 5 to 10 years later. You mentioned some of the symptoms that you've heard in clinic. What are some common symptoms that people should tune into early, right, to say, hey, you know what, I think I probably need to get a further look at this, not wait, wait, wait, wait, wait until it's already fully manifested. Can you list some of those?

Well, that can be a bit difficult because, as we've just said, there are over 150 autoimmune conditions, and there really isn't an overlapping, um, symptom across all autoimmune conditions. What I can say is, in my book The Autoimmune Solution, on my website, and of course in my latest edition of The Autoimmune Solution, I I have a quiz and it places you— where are you on the autoimmune spectrum? So that's something that I coined, you know, whatever it's been, 12 years ago now. And it's, you know, it's a level. And at 80 or above is your score. You know, you've likely been diagnosed with an autoimmune condition and then you really have everything in between. And one of the things I've done in the latest version is to actually label it with levels. So you kind of know and also know in terms of diet when you can start adding foods back in and things like that. But in general, fatigue could be one, weight gain could be one, brain fog, hair falling out, joint pain. I mean, it's just so very, you know, of course we have digestive issue, gas, bloating. It's just, it's very difficult to say, which is why I have this, you know, very extensive quiz that you can take to really see where you fall on this autoimmune inflammatory spectrum. Certainly, you could look at labs. Are there any inflammatory markers elevated? And then of course, getting antibodies. I mean, that's the best way is to see, do you have any antibodies? And like anything, there's a period. I mean, it depends on which lab you're looking at. But, you know, if say one is negative but the level detects down to 0.01, you know, if you are at 0.9, it doesn't mean like, yoo-hoo, I don't have an autoimmune condition. I mean, it means you're pretty close to going over one, which then diagnoses you as positive. So if you're anything between 0.02 and 1, I would say you're already like moving on a spectrum of potentially becoming positive to something. I mean, I'm just talking about one, one marker and not all of them are— their reference ranges are not like that. But that's my point is to say that it's not one day you're negative and one day you're positive. I mean, I had this patient, I'll just say, that had a family history of celiac, went in, got a biopsy, was— it was a child having symptoms. And with celiac, the true definition is that you have blunting of your villi in your intestines. And they had everything, the genes, you know, elevated antibodies, but they just didn't have the blunting yet. And the doctor literally said to them, well, I can't diagnose you with celiac because you don't have the blunting yet, so come back when your villi are blunted, and then we can diagnose you with celiac. And literally told them that they could continue to eat gluten until this had happened.

Right. Meanwhile, that test, I'm pretty sure, has about a 30% accuracy rating also. So we're just going to let this person carry on with their gluten, feel horrible every day, high propensity to have it, and just— we'll see.

I mean, if anybody hasn't one first-degree relative, a parent— if you are a parent listening to this and you have been diagnosed with one autoimmune condition, much less two or three, and you have biological children, I would not allow them to eat gluten. I have an adopted child and I don't let her have gluten. So the association between gluten and autoimmunity is so strong. And yes, there is only a 25%, you know, chance of it being genetic in terms of, you know, I believe there's a 75% the environment affects you and 25% genetics. But of things compared to, say, cancer, autoimmunity does have a genetic component. So if you have the same genes, right, you know, you want to intervene with the environmental factors early on.

Yeah, it's so interesting. So I'm celiac. Everyone in my family is celiac. My extended family, my close family, my brother, everyone. So my daughters are presumed celiac. And, you know, at one of their doctor's appointments, their peds appointments, the nurse practitioner said, hey, well, let's test her for it. So just have her pick up a donut before she comes into the lab that day, which celiac has to be chronic exposure over a long time. The testing is still honestly quite poor in terms of accuracy. And I'm like, that is not what we're doing. That's an absolute no. And you really should go back and read the literature on this because because that is not how any of this works.

You know, the number of times that I had patients come into my clinic saying, I feel terrible on it, and the doctor's telling me to go eat it for 2 weeks and then come get tested. Now, I mean, I would say I have a niece— well, she's really a cousin— that is celiac. And, you know, I do think if you are eating it and, and you're about to go get tested, you might as well just continue on for a week or whatever till you get your test because there is value in knowing, are you celiac or not, right? The stakes are much higher for her in terms of cross-contamination than they are for me, who's pretty sensitive to gluten and doesn't want to eat it because of my history of autoimmunity, but I'm not celiac. And so there is value in that. But if you're already off gluten and you already know that, like, you were sick and now you're better, particularly if you've been off for months months or years. I would absolutely never recommend to somebody that you go eat a bunch of it just to prove a test that you have it.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for clarifying that because I feel like it's wildly misunderstood and underappreciated.

Happens all the time.

All the time. You kind of touched on where I wanted to take the conversation next, which is environment versus genetics. And, you know, there's the, the longstanding saying of genetics load the gun, environment pulls the trigger. So I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the interrelation of genetics, environment, and what role that might play. Sure.

So back in the day, you know, we thought these were your genes, they're static, and if you have this gene, you're going to get X disease. We now know about epigenetics and that that is not the case and that the belief is, or the research is showing, about 75% is your environment as to whether these genes are going to turn on and turn off. And when we say environment, people might just be thinking about literally an external environment, but we can go through— when I say environment, what all that encompasses, because that's even your thoughts and your beliefs to things you are actually being exposed to. And then of course the things you eat. But in the last 10 years, I mean, 10 years ago, I remember interviewing Dr. Alessio Fasano, who is the leading researcher on leaky gut, and his team, you know, discovered zonulin, and he's also, I think, one of the top researchers in celiac. And he found that they were starting to find people being diagnosed with celiac that actually didn't even have the celiac genes. So again, more like, even more so in the last 10 years, because the environment has gotten so bad, we are seeing people who actually don't even have have certain genes get diagnosed with certain autoimmune conditions. So now we can even say you don't even need to have the genetics for it, right? I mean, the environment is playing such an enormous role that you don't even have to have a family history. But if you do have a family history and you do have the genetics, that's just another, you know, the gun is already loaded for you, as to use your analogy. So I don't know if you want me to get into some of these, you know, environmental factors or— yeah, so absolutely. So, you know, I break them down into 4 pillars in my book, or I've also sort of shown them as a pie chart as to 5 factors. And that really is the 4 pillars are, are, are your gut, healing your gut. Most everybody has leaky gut. You know, Alessio Fasano was on the COVID of Scientific American, gosh, right before I even got into functional medicine. So that must have been almost 15 years ago, talking about, you know, having a genetics, having a leaky gut, and then having, you know, uh, and some event occur to you, a trigger, um, occur, then you get autoimmunity. So we know leaky gut is a huge part of this. Again, it's a whole nother conversation that I could get into about— I've tested thousands of people for leaky gut. That have autoimmunity, and a lot of times the test doesn't come up that they have leaky gut. So was that a function of the test 10 years ago? Did they already heal it? You know, what, what's going on? But I pretty much assume if you have autoimmunity, you have a leaky gut. We have our diet. So, you know, typically we are eating processed foods, we're eating lots of gluten, our wheat has been hybridized, we are eating things that have GMOs in them. And we know that Roundup is a big contributor to leaky gut. We're eating a lot of inflammatory foods. I mean, I can get into the whole gluten, dairy. I get people off lectins. I even get people off grains for a period of time. This is coming from a person who was a vegetarian for 27 years and only ate grains. So, you know, for me to have gotten on to meat and then off of grains, that was huge. But, you know, definitely was a huge piece. Taming the toxins. So that's a really big one. That's the, the third pillar is to tame your toxins. And as I've talked about, our exposure to toxins now has— well, some of it's always been there, such as athletic gear, right? Like, to me, that's a big one in the news these days. Athletic gear or plastics in the receipts or in gum. It's been there the whole time. We just weren't talking about it, right? And so we're now uncovering these things. I mean, I never in my wildest dreams thought that— I mean, it makes sense, your skin is your biggest organ— but that I would be absorbing plastics and things through my athletic wear. I mean, I have since changed out all my athletic wear to, to organic cotton and made sure that my child is, you know, wearing cotton, which is very difficult to find these days, or very difficult to find affordably, maybe I should say, to find, you know, particularly organic, but certainly just 100% cotton clothing. So we have toxins coming at us from everywhere. I mean, I too used to think the airplanes— what are people talking about? All of it has a white stream behind it. What are you talking about? And now that that's really common, you've seen the documentaries, and you can get into your, you know, legislative docket and see this is real and that they are spraying us from above. It's very difficult. And I can go through my plan of prevention and detox, you know, at the end if you'd like as well. And then the last The first one is healing infections, so latent infections, relieving stress. And then in the updated version of The Autoimmune Solution, I, after working with people for over a decade, added letting go of trauma because I saw the number of people coming to see me and almost every single one of them had some degree of trauma in, in their childhood, in their life. And then I myself I, uh, you know, have, have been working on that personally. So healing infections, we have to add in latent infections, which is things like Lyme, Epstein-Barr, and now we have COVID. I mean, we've been exposed— virtually everybody's been exposed to COVID, whether you've had symptoms of it or not, whether you've been exposed by somebody or you've got shedding from somebody's vaccine. I mean, everybody, I would imagine, at this day and age is testing positive to having been exposed to COVID. And so what is that doing to our system? What is that spike protein? In some people, it's continuing to replicate. It's why we are still seeing turbo cancers. My half sister died last year at 31 of a turbo breast cancer. She had 6 COVID vaccines. She was a conventional nurse. So we are seeing young people with strokes. We are seeing young people die suddenly while doing sporting events. We are still seeing this years later. To the point that people are beginning to feel like this is just normal, which it's not. I mean, I'm almost 57. This is not normal. This did not used to happen. And then we have relieving stress and letting go of your trauma. And so I can, you know, dive into any one of those that you would like.

Oh my gosh, there's so many options. So let's start from the first pillar, which is food, right?

Well, it's Heal Your Gut.

Yeah. Heal Your Gut.

Yeah.

Yes.

Let's start there because I know you have all— like, I know there's so much supportive information in The Autoimmune Solution, even in the first version, which I saw there will be even more, I know, in the revised version. But you also have a lot of supplements and protocols to really take that information and implement it in people's everyday lives. So I'd love for you to give us a little bit of the 10,000-foot view on healing your gut and what that looks like and means.

Sure. So I use the, the typical 4R program through the Institute for Functional Medicine. And you are correct, I mean, I've personally formulated over 75 formulas based on my clinical experience and saying, oh, I wish this— when I was using this product, I wish it had this in it, or I wish it didn't have that in it, or maybe I could get all of these in one supplement and I could get it to taste better. So So everything, you know, on my website has been formulated by me and, you know, third-party tests and all that stuff. But so the first step in healing your gut is changing your diet. So to get rid of toxic and inflammatory foods, so to remove, and you also want to remove any infection. So this is really critical and I think a piece that a lot of people miss or are not really thinking of, but to heal your gut, you've got to get rid of, if you have Candida overgrowth, if you've got SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, if you have parasites. And most people with autoimmunity have one— I, I have had all of these, uh, had one or all of these at some point, particularly if you're dealing with an intestinal autoimmune condition such as celiac, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis. I have never met a single person whose autoimmune condition was in their gut and they did not have one of these infections. So you want to get rid of toxic and inflammatory foods, you want to remove toxic and inflammatory foods, and you want to remove any infections. Uh, then you want to replace anything that's missing. So generally I put everybody on a very comprehensive digestive enzyme, and then if they need HCl stomach acid, you can put them on stomach acid. If you need to replace bile salts, maybe they have a sluggish gallbladder, they don't have a gallbladder, You want to replace any of these, anything that's missing, and then you want to reinoculate with probiotics. Now the caveat to that is if you're dealing with Candida, you want to reinoculate with a really high-quality multi-strain probiotic. I have one, it's 100 billion units, to sort of kick out the Candida. If you're dealing with SIBO, you do not want to be taking a probiotic that has lactobacillus in it. Most every probiotic has lactobacillus in it, but with SIBO, that's typically an overgrowth. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, so that's typically an overgrowth of lactobacillus, and so you're just adding fuel into a fire. So in that scenario, I recommend that you take a soil-based probiotic. Of course, we have one of those as well. And then the last thing that you want to do is to repair your gut, and my top-selling product is my Leaky Gut Revive. That was one of the first products that I created because I used to do what's called white labeling somebody else's product, and it was terrible. It was this peach flavor. It was brown. It was disgusting. I could not get my patients to take it no matter what I tried. And so I said, there has got to be a better way. And so we created a white one that's plain and has no flavor, or we have strawberry lemonade, which is delicious and incredible. But the first step is to heal your gut. I am famous for saying the gut is the gateway to health, and that's why I put that first. So between— I remember Mark Hyman telling me this years ago because I was an ER doctor. So the idea is you come to the ER and I never see you again. And suddenly I was opening a cash-based practice where not only did you come see me, you were paying me cash, and then you were going to follow up with me. I was freaking out. And he was like, relax, relax, you're going to be fine. 80% of everything gets better by healing their diet and fixing their gut, which in the beginning that was true. And then you write a couple of books and you get the people flying in from all over the world with like 9 autoimmune immune conditions, and they've already done your program before they've walked in the door. So that no longer worked. But in the beginning, you know, if you're dealing with mild symptoms, just changing your diet and healing your gut goes a very, very long way.

It really does. Talk with me too about toxins. So I know there's two parts to this, right? Reducing exposure, improving excretion, or getting rid of them. I would love your take on that, like what the most common culprits are that we deal with on an everyday basis and how to handle it.

So exactly that. I have a two-step program. One is preventing them from coming in and then working to get them out. So how do you prevent them from coming in? Well, how do we absorb toxins? We breathe them in through our nose. You ingest them in through your mouth, or we get them in through our skin. So looking at those three areas, so in terms of your nose, your indoor— they, we believe the indoor air quality of your home, not mine because I have a special house, but in most homes is way, way more toxic than the outdoor air quality. Now, my guess is that those statistics are also very old, but the point is our houses are closed up and people buy, you know, cheap furniture. Even expensive furniture has a bunch of formaldehydes and flame retardants and all kinds of stuff in it. Right. And then people are using cleaning products and the indoor air quality can be much worse. So you want to have a HEPA filter, HEPA filters in all of your rooms. I have something called an HRV in my house that brings in fresh air. It dehumidifies it, it does dehumidify it, but it also goes through a HEPA filter before it actually even enters into my house. And then I have HEPA filters throughout every room in my house. So you want to look at the air that you're breathing. What are you eating and drinking? So you absolutely, if you can, want to be drinking filtered water and you want to be eating organic. I tell people, if you can do this in your home, because it's very difficult once you go out, although I now take a water bottle with me every single place I go, even just a restaurant, I'd be sure to grab— I'm like, I have well water and a whole house filter. Why am I not bringing my own ice and water to every single restaurant that I go to? So that's now a requirement in our house. But anyway, you want to get— be eating organic in your home and drinking filtered water because once you leave the house, all bets are off. It's very, very difficult. It's gotten better in the last 10 years, but it's very difficult to eat exclusively organic once you leave the house. So I say if you can control what you can in your house, then when you leave your house, you just got to deal, you know, you just don't worry about it, right? Because you've already controlled hopefully 80% of it. And then when you go out, you're dealing with whatever you're dealing with. So eating and drinking filtered water, organic, and then your skin— absorbing stuff through your skin. So using clean body products, using clean cleaning products. Now I need to add in wearing clean clothes. I do have on a silk shirt, which I guess is a natural fiber, but I have truly this past year changed out my entire closet to all cotton clothing or natural fiber clothing because of this. And then you want to work to get things out. So how do you get things out? You sweat them out, you pee them out, and you poop them out. So you want to make sure that you're drinking, again, lots of filtered water so you're peeing. You want to make sure that you're pooping. And most people think one bowel movement a day— it's really however often you eat, that's how many bowel movements you should have. If you eat two meals a day, it should be two movements. If you eat 3 meals, it should be 3 bowel movements. People think I'm crazy when I say 1 to 3 bowel movements a day, but— and then sweating. So I'm here in the desert, so I have an infrared sauna that helps me sweat daily. Otherwise, I wouldn't sweat here. And then you can do things to boost your detox pathways, such as taking acetylated glutathione. And then you always want to take something such as a charcoal binder to be binding up anything that you're getting rid of. So I typically take acetylated glutathione and my liver support when I get in my sauna, along with a coconut charcoal that I have to bind any toxins that are coming out.

Do you really sauna every day?

Not every day. No, no, no. I mean, there are periods where I feel like I've been— I had to get an MRI with contrast recently, and absolutely, for 2 weeks I was in the sauna every day. And absolutely.

Wow.

But yeah, I got a hyperbaric sitting here and a sauna over there, finding the time for it all. I go through periods. I am just like— I own a supplement company and I get tired of taking supplements, people. I am human. Just are you.

Right.

So there are periods where I'm like, on it with the sauna, and there are periods where I haven't done it for 2 months.

I know. I have like 2. I have one that leaves your head out, and then I have one, the traditional. Both of them. Like, both of them, sometimes I struggle. I'm just like, I don't want to do this right now. So I get it. Absolutely. It is— you have to find ways to incorporate it in a realistic way.

But the sauna, where it's something that you're enjoying— I mean, I am a fan of stacking, and I talk about this too, you know, in the book, of stacking all of my things. It's rare that I'm doing any one thing alone. So if I'm in my hyperbarics, even though I'm not supposed to bring my computer, I bring my computer and I work. I've edited every book in the sauna. I mean, like, usually the editor's getting it. It's like drips of sweat all over my manuscripts. I have something called a BioCharger, and I meditate while I'm doing the BioCharger. So I never do anything by itself.

Yeah. Curious, do you ever use a vibration plate for lymphatic movement for detox or not?

So, um, oh, that's a great idea. I have a rebounder that I use. I don't have a vibration. It's been on the list, you know, to get one, but I, I have a rebounder. And that's what I use.

Yeah, I love it. Okay, talk with me a little bit about thyroid, because this is part of your story. It's part of my story. Obviously, it's part of so many of my listeners' story. And, you know, it's one of the most common autoimmune diseases or truly it is the most common autoimmune disease. And I feel like, you know, millions of people are walking around with hypothyroidism that have never been checked for antibodies. Right. They don't know if they have Hashimoto's um, one, do you think that it's valuable to check them initially? And then how often would you recheck them in your own patient population?

Um, great question. So we actually have just launched my Inner Circle, and I've hired a health coach. And we have— now you have, if you're part of the Inner Circle, you have the ability to do health coaching but also order labs. So I was literally just going over all of this with my health coach about creating different panels, right? And so the initial thyroid panel, absolutely you want to check antibodies. I think if you are a person that is going down a functional medicine path and that you end up not having any antibodies, I would probably check them once a year. Now, if you're a person who's just starting off and you know you have antibodies, or we uncover that you have antibodies, and we are actively doing something such as you've just walked in and you've been eating gluten, and I know just getting off gluten alone is going to help bring these antibodies down, I would say every couple of months, maybe every 2 to 3 months, we're going to be checking antibodies to track them coming down. So I'll take myself as an example. I have not shown any thyroid antibodies for years now, and so I get mine checked maybe once a year just to make sure I'm not having or if I've had an exposure such as— I know toxic mold brings out autoimmunity in me. So if I have a toxic mold exposure, I might go check my antibodies. But otherwise, I've been pretty consistent for a decade of not having any thyroid antibodies. I check that full— that full panel on myself through CPL probably every 6 months to a year, just, you know, making sure that I don't have any antibodies. I think it all depends, right? Like, I've I have— I can write my own prescriptions, I can do these things, so I check things on myself more often. But back to your question, I would say every couple of months if we are actively, you know, trying to watch something come down, and that is our goal. If you know maybe you've hit a plateau and you're on the very low end of your antibodies, then probably twice a year, something like that. So we have a panel that of course includes the antibodies, but then there are the people that you don't want them paying for antibodies every single time they want to check their thyroid. So we have a panel that doesn't include antibodies. So you're just not paying for something that either you don't need or you don't want.

So a couple of things. One that I love that you brought up is like, look, you had a thyroid ablation and you still check antibodies. There are, especially around exposures, etc. I think there's a misconception that, you know, post-thyroidectomy you can't have antibodies, post-ablation you can't have antibodies. When I actually, you know, I see it fairly frequently in an ongoing manner. Do you find the same thing in your practice?

Yes. I mean, until I found functional medicine, I still had antibodies. I mean, I do preventative MRIs every year and they say diminutive thyroid. They don't say, oh my God, she has no thyroid. I mean, the idea that when you go through an ablation or a surgery that they've removed every bit. Also, over the years, I've been able to decrease the amount of thyroid hormone. I call it supplemental thyroid hormone. I don't call it medication because I think that really puts people in a place where they feel like they're on a prescription medication and not an essential life-saving hormone. And it just reframes things for people in a way that I think is, you know, more valuable. But over the years, I mean, I used to be on 3 grains of Armour and I'm on 1.5 grains of Armour and 50 micrograms of Synthroid. And so over the years, I've been able to decrease the amount of thyroid hormone that I need. And so that tells me I have some functioning thyroid in there. And absolutely. I mean, I know before I got into functional medicine, I was checking antibodies. And when I first got into functional medicine and I still had antibodies. So absolutely. I mean, all the more reason if you know you had Graves' disease, I would definitely be checking antibodies.

Right. And tell me, too, one, is remission possible?

Right.

Is remission possible with Graves? Is it possible with Hashimoto's? And what benefit does that translate to people if it is possible, if they reach it?

So the short answer is 100%, 100%. Now, there are some caveats. So with Graves in particular, I mean, it's always bittersweet for me, but I've helped thousands and thousands of people who were on immunosuppressive drugs for their Graves' disease, and they've been able to get off and not need to be on any supplemental thyroid hormone and have a fully functioning thyroid, which is incredible. When it comes to something such as— I'll put the caveat on diabetes type 1, Addison's, and Hashimoto's— these are all things that if you catch them right away, that you which is rare, but if you do catch them right away, that you can typically keep people off of this supplemental hormone through diet and all of the things that we've talked about. But we mentioned in the beginning of this interview, most people are bouncing around multiple doctors, multiple years. So it's very rare that you're finding somebody right off the bat with their symptoms. You know, the symptoms are so much more subtle than they were, say, with my Graves' disease. So in those cases, you may be able to get rid of their antibodies. However, enough damage may have been done. We'll talk about Hashimoto's in specific. We'll go to the thyroid because that's the most common and that's your area of expertise. So much damage may have already been done to their thyroid that it may never function optimally. So it doesn't mean that you don't, you know, for example, in my world, go through my 4 pillars and reverse it. You absolutely want to do that. You want to find the root cause because once you have one autoimmune disease, you're 3 times more likely to get another. And not to disparage anyone with thyroid disease, certainly Hashimoto's, but that's one of the more manageable ones. If they're coming to see me or one of you or one of your practitioners, right, you can get people to feel really pretty good by just taking a little thyroid hormone. I don't mean to make it sound super simple, but, you know, as compared to ALS, Multiple sclerosis, scleroderma, vitiligo. I mean, you could have something that's really life-altering for yourself, so you don't want to get that. And so if you have Hashimoto's, you're 3 times more likely to get something else. And so you want to get to the root cause. And the reason I call it supplemental thyroid hormone is because there are all these influencers all over the internet saying, I got off my thyroid medicine, I got off my thyroid medicine, And that makes people feel like a failure. That makes people feel like if they can't get off their Synthroid, that they've failed at healing themselves. And I want to tell you, that's not true. If I got off my Synthroid or my Armour right now, I would ultimately die. So you're not a failure. How you can track that you're a success is you don't get another autoimmune disease, you feel better, your antibodies got lowered or went away. So with Hashimoto's, Addison's, and insulin— I mean, and diabetes type 1, You may need to take some amount of life-saving hormone in one of those three conditions, and it doesn't mean you're a failure, but you still want to get to your root cause so that you don't get another one, and you want to get to your root cause so you can get rid of those antibodies and possibly lower the amount of supplemental hormone that you're on.

Yeah, or that you'll need in the future, right?

Right.

It doesn't mean you don't need medication and And you know what, I love that you frame it this way because look, like taking supplemental thyroid hormone prevents you from having to take diabetes medication and high cholesterol medication and all these sequelae that happen from even mild thyroid dysfunction. So, you know, I'd love to fast forward 10 years and see how these influencers' health and wellness is doing in a decade when they likely unnecessarily, you know, stopped thyroid medication just to wear a badge of honor that's dangerous to pervasively share that messaging with everyone else. I've loved this conversation. I have a couple more questions. One, tell us where people can find the new revised version of Autoimmune Solution and when can we preorder it? Give us, give us the whole rundown because I even personally want to order it as soon as I can.

Well, thank you. They— because it is a revised edition as opposed to an absolutely new book, it kind of gets slotted in. So I don't have a specific day, and we have not gotten up the pre-order information yet. We have just gotten the Inner Circle off the ground, so that will be next. So in August, you can come to my website. I've just created one for, for me, dramymyers.com. My supplements and protocols can all be found at my supplement company, which is amymyersmd.com. But if you're interested in joining the inner circle, or in August, I don't know when this will go out, we will certainly have a pre-order page up. And all of, all of the stuff, you know, for launching of the book will be found at dramymyers.com.

I love it.

And it will of course be wherever books are sold, right?

I mean, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, one last question too. If you had one message to share with people struggling with autoimmunity who think maybe they're struggling with autoimmunity, what would it be?

There is always hope and you can reverse it. So I have lots of free information on my website and you can still pick up a copy of The Autoimmune Solution. I mean, the one thing that I will say is people said, you know, are there any dramatic changes? You know, is there something that you thought 10 years ago that doesn't apply or hold true now? And there wasn't. So what we've done is really let you know that instead of feeling like this is a somewhat restrictive diet for the rest of your life, that there's a spectrum and that you can, as your antibodies go away and as you begin to feel better, you can start to ease up on some of, you know, adding in different foods into your diet. And so the basic principles of that book remain the same, and you can absolutely still heal from your autoimmune condition reading the original classic. I love it.

And tell me, so I know we can find you on your website, tell us social, podcast, where else can people find you and track you down for the valuable information you always share?

Yes, so my— I think my website now, Dr. Amy Myers, it hosts the, the podcast. A lot of my content written articles are still on the doc— or Amy Myers, MD. My socials are— everything's at @DrAmyMyers. The company is more at Amy Myers MD. My podcast is Take Back Your Health. You're going to be on it soon, and that is wherever you listen to podcasts.

Well, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your message. Oh, thank you.

We have a little gift for your, for your people. I forgot to say.

Oh, tell me, tell me.

Yes. So I think if you go to Amy Myers MD backslash McCall, we have a free little, you know, ebook giveaway for your listeners if they'd like to come over and check it out.

I love it.

And a little percentage off.

Amazing. I will be sure and drop that in the show notes as well as your website link to your podcast. Thank you for doing that. That is so—

Yeah, no, absolutely. Totally forgot. I was like, oh, my team's going to kill me. I had them do this thing and then I don't even say it. I'm the worst marketer sometimes.

Me too. I would have had you back on a call just so we could do that. So don't, don't worry.

I'm the same.

Thank you so much for all that you've poured into our community and your work. And it makes just a lasting impact on so many people's lives. So excited to share your message.

Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for all that you do as well.