McCall McPhersonFounder, Modern Thyroid Clinic.

How Gut Dysfunction Drives Inflammation #shorts

20 Apr 2026 · 1 min

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1:14

In this short, the speaker explains how patients with Hashimoto's thyroiditis often experience a gut‑related inflammatory cycle. Overgrowth of certain harmful bacteria in the gut produces lipopolysaccharide (LPS), which fuels systemic inflammation. This inflammation drives higher insulin and cortisol levels, which in turn keep thyroid peroxidase (TPO) antibodies elevated. Because of this ongoing inflammation, simply increasing thyroid hormone (T3) doses—such as high‑dose T3 or compounded thyroid medication—may improve lab values but often fails to make patients feel fully better. The speaker emphasizes that clinicians need to address gut inflammation and actively monitor TPO antibody trends to achieve true symptom relief.

Chapters

because when you have Hashimoto's, almost all of the time you're gonna have higher insulin levels and you're gonna have high cortisol levels because you have this war going on in your gut, right? Which starts some of this, I believe. So you have this war in your gut where the bad bacteria are making the LPS and, you know, your bad bacteria. A lot of times people with Hashimoto's too, I talk about this in the book, they have certain bacteria in their gut that are overgrown. So they have more of certain bad bacteria and a lot of these bad bacteria produce more LPS. Cause more inflammation. And so it's just, again, it's this same cycle of their TPO antibodies are higher, their insulin's higher, their cortisol's higher. Until you address that, you're going to be throwing T3 at them in large amounts and they're still going to tell you like, I don't feel better, right? Or they don't— they may feel better, but they don't feel amazing. And that's frustrating as the provider because you're like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm giving you 90 milligrams of ren thyroid or, you know, 120 milligrams, a lot of T3, and you don't feel better and your labs are getting better, but you don't actually feel it. And the reason is because of all the inflammation, which is why, you know, you and I believe you really have to monitor those antibody levels too, because we want to make sure we're making progress lowering those levels.