McCall McPhersonFounder, Modern Thyroid Clinic.

Stress & Thyroid: How Emotions Impact Health & Recovery

11 Jul 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:26

Short spoken piece by McCall McPherson explaining that emotional stress affects thyroid function (altering T4→T3 conversion and increasing reverse T3), can trigger or worsen autoimmune thyroid disease such as Hashimoto's, and that childhood trauma greatly increases likelihood of later autoimmune/chronic illness (speaker cites ~85%). The speaker shares a personal traumatic episode—his daughter’s cardiac arrest and performing CPR—and recommends practical stress-mitigation (e.g., walks) and following his content for additional 'hacks'.

Chapters

How does emotional stress impact thyroid and what do you recommend for clients? It impacts in two different ways. One, the activation of your hormones, the conversion of T4 to T3, or inversely reverse T3. Right when you're stressed, that happens. Also, stress can cause Hashimoto's, it can worsen Hashimoto's, it can create flares, etc. Just to give you guys a little perspective, if someone experiences a traumatic event as a child, their likelihood of ending up with an autoimmune disease or chronic health condition later in life, not even way later, like early later is like over 85%. So how our emotions are not abstract, they impact our physiology. So I, most of you know, went through an incredibly stressful and honestly like traumatic last year with the decline of my daughter's health and ultimately it resulting in me having to her going into cardiac arrest and me having to perform CPR on her to resuscitate her. And I don't really don't wish that on any parent. But anyway, over the last year I've been very much working on my stress because it dominated my whole life. Like I don't think I ate or slept for four months straight, maybe even closer to six. So finding ways that you can mitigate that, going for walks. You guys can always tune into my content too, because I am forever trying to figure out these hacks. Okay, Like.