The delicate dance of managing Reverse T3

Let's Talk about reverse T3 in your thyroid panel. What is it? How. What does it mean? What can you do about it? All the things. So reverse T3 is your thyroid's inhibitory hormone. Okay, I'm going to give you an analogy with my hands. Free T3 is your active hormone. This is what binds to receptors and stimulates your energy, your metabolism, your cognition, your mood, your libido, your hair, your skin, your. All the things. Reverse T3 is shaped just like T3, but in reverse. It's a mirror image. And what that allows it to do is actually bind in the same landing spot as your free T3. But instead of activating that landing spot like T3 does, it just binds, sits in that landing spot and does not allow T3 to bind and activate that receptor for your energy, your mood, your metabolism, whatever. So I want you to think about this as the higher your reverse T3 is, the lower T3 absorption you get. Okay? Why is that important? Well, the source for your reverse T3 is called your T4, your free T4, your inactive hormone. 99.9% of all thyroid patients that are on medication or are on T4 hormone, and this can actually create a worsening or an inhibition of your medication to help you feel better. Basically, your inactive hormone, your T4 can dump to your inhibitory hormone, and often it does. And a lot of people are over medicated on T4 thinking that it will get them better and better, when in fact they actually don't get better, they get worse. Symptoms of elevated reverse T3 mimic hypothyroidism. There's one differentiation that can happen, but it's fatigue and brain fog and weight gain and dry skin and low libido and hair loss and hair shedding, shedding of the outer portion of your eyebrows, all of that. Okay, what can happen with reverse T3 that you can attribute specifically to that and not simply hypothyroid symptoms is your body pushes up reverse T3 when it wants you to recover. So when you're sick, you're tired, you're inflamed, you didn't sleep, you're pregnant, you're breastfeeding, it drives up your reverse T3. Why? Because that makes you lay down, rest, and recover, okay? So that you can get better again. So if you've got too much T4 and you have that tendency to dump to reverse T3, your body pushes you into over recovery, meaning, oh, you have one poor night's sleep, you should probably be able to handle that. Instead, you're Exhausted. Oh, you exercise a little bit, your body should be able to recover. Instead you're exhausted, that kind of thing. Okay, what can you do about it? Or let's talk about levels. So I want someone's reverse T3. On average between about 8 and 12. Ideally it can easily be up to 8 to 15 if they have a robust T3. If your T3 is really low, any amount of extra reverse T3 is going to make you lose even more T3. So it matters if your T3 is really robust, your body can deal with a 15, 16 level of reverse T3 easily because it has enough T3 to offset that loss. What you can do about it at home is improve your lifestyle. Things that drive an increase reverse T3, reverse engineer them. Get enough sleep, eat a low inflammatory diet, eat a diet high in micronutrients, practice meditation or stress relief. Yeah, if you're pregnant, there's not a whole lot you can do about that. But you know, take care of yourself, your immune system, try not to get sick, those kinds of things. Now, what we do at modern thyroid clinic often is we take over and control your body's ability to dump into reverse T3. And we do that by supplying you with T3 with your active thyroid hormone, that therein that then triggers a response for your body to send a message back to your brain and lower your TSH, which then lowers your inactive hormone, your T4, which is the source of your reverse T3, which then lowers your reverse T3. So we are able to manually override your body's predisposition for over dumping into reverse T3 and creating balance that way. I hope that makes sense. I know that's a lot. Glad you beared with me.