The Thyroid Truth Behind Weight Gain, Fatigue, and Brain Fog with Dr. Amie Hornaman

One symptom that women are told is just aging— that is actually a thyroid red flag!

Weight gain, that widening of the midsection weight gain like you're doing all the things right. You could be doing keto carnivore or hitting the gym going organic cleaning up your house of plastic the whole deal and nothing is working to budge the weight?

My new dear friend Dr. Amy Horniman welcome to Rooted in Wellness. Oh my goodness I am so happy to be here thanks Mona Sharma Sharma it's always great having you on.

Thank you for inviting me.

It's always amazing when people show up and within 25 minutes we're life friends.

I know, I love it.

I love it. There's no way.

Soul sisters.

Soul sisters. Yeah. All right. We have a lot to dive into today. I was sharing a bit about the intention of this podcast. Ultimately, it's for all of our listeners to be able to come more rooted. That's rooted in themselves and their health and their happiness. And what I believe we all have is our inner knowingness to be able to heal ourselves, but we all have different ways of getting there. So I'm curious, what are 2 or 3 things that help you feel more rooted in who you are and your happiness?

You know, I would say, first of all, it's just finding your authenticity and confidence as a woman. I mean, you know, if we don't feel good about being in our own skin, whatever that means, I mean, yes, it can be aesthetics and what you see in the mirror, or it can be internal and just how you feel every single day. You know, that, that core emotion that drives you. Is it happiness? Is it dread? Are you uncomfortable in your life, whatever that is, I think we all have to come back and find that rooted power that we as women have that gives us that confidence to power through the day, to be our own health advocate. And then it extends out in so many different ways in our life.

Do you know that you're the first person to say that? Almost 100 episodes. And I have goosebumps right now because I feel like now in my mid-forties, I'm only getting to that truth. And I'm seeing how that truth is directly associated with my health. And so is that something that came to you intuitively? Is it a practice that you have that made you realize that? Is it— there's something that you do every day to remind you of your superpower?

No, it's called turning 50, Mona Sharma Sharma Sharma. So the reality is that once you turn 50, you no longer give a crap about much. And that's just truth. But no, I would say it does come with age, maturity, and I don't know, it's just as a woman, you're starting to— I am starting to notice what's going on in the world around us. And our younger women below us in their 20s and 30s, they're struggling. There's a lot of pressure out there. There's pressure to look a certain way. There's pressure to be now this heroin chic skinny that we're seeing all over IG and TikTok. So I think it's, it's that maturity that comes with perimenopause and menopause that you realize, you know what, I am strong, I am powerful, I have a voice in this world. I can move mountains. I no longer have to hide behind a facade, pretend to be somebody else. And, and that just happens with, with age. I think that's one of the benefits of getting older and going through hormonal changes is it strengthens you.

I love it. To put this out to the audience, you know, how many of us would our health be in a different stage right now had we have never tried to fix ourselves when we were younger, right? To just tune into, oh my gosh, I'm so incredibly unique and I'm supposed to be this way and I'm supposed to eat differently and look differently. I think the trajectory for all of us would have been way different.

Oh, girls, that's so true. I don't know even know if I would be here, right? Because I put a lot of pressure on myself. I mean, you and I grew up in basically the same era.

Yeah.

The Cosmo, the Fitness, the all the magazines.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.

And, and yeah, I was on how many diets? So exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So as a practitioner then, do you notice when you feel uprooted, you know, are you able to stay grounded most of the time or do you catch yourself? What are the things that happened in your life that caused you to feel uprooted?

You know, I would say the biggest thing that causes me to feel uprooted now is anything to do with relationships. Like I want those solid relationships, which, yes, I absolutely have with my husband. But as we age, I think our friend circle gets more narrow and tighter and you want those friendships to be really, really deep. So if there's any rockiness, that's really the only time that I feel uprooted and unstable. Outside of that, again, that, that grounding that comes with hormonal balance and age, that's key.

That is cute.

Yeah.

Well, you know, let's dive into some rapid-fire questions first and then we'll go deeper on all of this. And you're batting 10 out of 10 for unique answers so far, just approaching them from a different angle, which I think speaks to so many of us. So, all right, first one.

Okay.

One symptom that women are told is just aging that is actually a thyroid red flag.

Weight gain. That widening of the midsection, weight gain.

All right, next hot take: is thyropause as inevitable as menopause, or is it preventable?

It's inevitable. It absolutely is, in about 90%. 10% will skirt by and avoid it.

Okay, true or false: if your doctor says that your labs are normal, your thyroid is fine.

Oh my gosh, false.

False. So false. So false. The one supplement that most thyroid patients are missing L-tyrosine. L-tyrosine, right. I saw this in your supplement, actually, which I want to know about. One thing every woman over 40 should ask her doctor at the next appointment: can I have a full thyroid panel?

And we'll go over what that actually is.

Yeah, and does the doctor even know what that is, right? Can the thyroid actually be fully optimized, or is this a lifetime management game?

It can absolutely be fully optimized, yes.

So we need to own that as our power because there is a silent epidemic happening right now. Women are suffering, we're feeling exhausted, we're losing our hair, we're gaining weight, we're being told that it's normal and it's not. And we're doing these insane functional labs and a lot of them still appear at the surface to be normal. And yet the stat that I found on your site was up to 60% of people with thyroid dysfunction are actually undiagnosed. Yes, that's wild. Yes. And yet we're still missing one of the most powerful drivers out there. So I'd love to dive in by understanding from you why thyroid first. How have we missed that the thyroid is actually the missing root cause for all of these symptoms that we're suffering from so deeply?

I know, I, I, I don't know how we missed it, but in reality, the thyroid is the master gland. So I always say, from head to toe, it runs the show. Meaning if your thyroid is off, dysfunctioning, you have subclinical hypothyroidism or full-blown hypothyroidism, Hashimoto's, we can start at the top of your head. So we're talking hair loss, brain fog, mood, concentration, focus, memory, our eyesight, our eyebrows, our skin, our throat, our metabolism, our digestion, our heart rate, which ties back to your experience, right? AFib, tachycardia, heart palpitations, low heart rate, low body temperature, cracked heels, dry— I mean, dry elbows, dry knees, dry— it's from head to toe. It literally runs your entire body.

And should we be testing for a full thyroid panel before 40?

Well, we really should. Yes.

Yeah.

Because I was diagnosed, or, well, I was misdiagnosed 6 times. Yeah. And then finally diagnosed in my 20s. So hypothyroidism can hit at any age. Now, I would say it, it mainly hits women between 40 and 60, but of course you have the outliers that, that get diagnosed earlier.

So. Go back and listen to the list of symptoms that you just mentioned. Eyesight being connected to this. Yeah, the cracked heels is something that I address with my clients, uh, that I learned from an Eastern medicine doctor. But there's so many symptoms where the thyroid could be the driver, and yet we're not understanding this. Yes. So right now we all know that menopause is having its glory moment in terms of just relevance and understanding and compassion and sympathy for women, which is incredible. But let's talk about thyropause. Right? Yeah. No one's talking about Thyropause. Right. And here we are. Tell me, how is it different than hypothyroidism? What is Thyropause?

Okay, so Thyropause. And first of all, I love that you said that. I always love when, when I'm being interviewed or I'm interviewing someone and they say the exact same thing that I do, but they don't know that I've said that before.

Right?

That's literally exactly how I say it. I'm so happy that we as women are getting spotlight finally on our hormones and on aging and on menopause. But exactly what you said. Wait, what about the thyroid? What about the master gland that dictates whether or not you're going to have a fun perimenopause-menopause transition or a horrendous, you want to jump off a bridge perimenopause-menopause transition? So thyropause, the definition, my definition is when your thyroid gland craps the bed after the age of 40 due to fluctuating hormones. So what do I mean by that? When we look at all hypothyroidism, low and slow thyroid function, 95% of that is Hashimoto's autoimmune. So it's our body attacking our thyroid gland. Your mom, you said, had rheumatoid— has rheumatoid arthritis, right? Same thing. Her immune system is confused and is attacking her joints. Hashimoto's, your immune system is confused and is attacking your thyroid. So that's 95%. Now, what do we know about autoimmune? I love the three-legged stool analogy that Alessia Fasano gave many, many years ago because it's true. Number one, you have that genetic predisposition. So I bet you if we went back in your history, in your family history, we would see other times of, of autoimmunity, other markers of autoimmunity. It doesn't always have to be Hashimoto's. It can be rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes, psoriasis, anything.

Mm-hmm.

Then we have leaky gut, which I mean, who doesn't exactly have leaky gut these days? I'm not sure. I mean, with the bombardment of our bodies from this toxic soup environment that we're living in and swimming in. Yeah. I don't know who doesn't have leaky gut compounded by stress, right?

Like who doesn't experience high levels of stress today in our world, right?

Exactly. Yeah. So you have that leaky gut. And you have the stress that contributes to leaky gut, but then you have the stress that is also a trigger. So that third leg of the stool, that's that trigger. Now, it could be a massive stress. It could be a death, a divorce, a move, something like that. Or it could be a stressor, i.e., fluctuating hormones. So when we move into perimenopause, what's going on in our bodies? Our progesterone's declining first, followed by testosterone. And then our estrogen goes on this wild roller coaster ride where we're estrogen dominant and then we're not, then we're deficient until estrogen finally falls off a cliff. Well, that time of hormonal chaos is enough to flip that switch from the off position. So let's say you have been hanging out with this predisposition to autoimmunity for decades and then bam, something flips that switch. And that's where you'll hear women say it was, you know, at the age of 42 that my body went to hell in a handbasket. And, and that's, that's that switch turning on.

Yeah.

Thyropause.

And when we think about the timing of everything right now, like coming out of the pandemic, maybe all being a little bit more susceptible immune-wise because we spent so much time indoors. And gosh, we know on this podcast the number of people who suffer from digestive symptoms, right? It comes up over and over and over again. And yet doctors are still dismissing it. Like, just a couple of years ago, 2 years ago, I met with a GI doctor who said that not— who said not to trust that leaky gut was a real thing. Don't believe everything that you're seeing on the media. And I'm just like, Jesus, you're actually— you're a GI doctor, really? Right. And okay, so genetic, we know, but we know that just because we have the genetic predisposition doesn't mean it's going to turn on, that we're going to get it. Then we have to deal with our digestive issues. So everyone listening, ask yourself, do you have any digestive symptoms that need to be addressed before it progresses into something like leaky gut as a precursor, and then addressing whatever your other symptoms are. Let's say that some people listening are checking the boxes right now. They go to their doctors, and the doctors are becoming a little bit more well-versed in this, but they're diagnosing as Hashimoto's. Is Hashimoto's something that's actually reversible, or is it something— is a diagnosis that, you know, can be Prevented? Can it be reversed? What are you seeing in your practice?

I get this question all the time, all the time. And the answer is maybe, it depends.

Yeah.

So if we can catch someone in the very early stages of Hashimoto's, and this is going to be the woman that says, you know, I, I maybe have 5 pounds to lose, maybe 10, but it's not so bad. And my energy, well, um, yeah, I get tired a little bit, but it's not so bad. So the symptoms aren't horrendous. They're not affecting her quality of life. And we're just starting to see those numbers change. At that point of time, yes, we can intervene dietarily, nutritionally, supplementally. There's some magical supplements like black cumin seed oil that will lower antibodies. We've seen it push Hashimoto's into remission. But then there's the other subset of ladies that they've been dealing with this for years, maybe decades. They've been dismissed by 5, 6, 7 different doctors. They've dropped money on functional medicine that hasn't helped.

Yeah.

At that point of time, their thyroid is so beaten up and, and the production of thyroid hormones is so low, we have to intervene hormonally, medically, hormonally. And I like to say hormonally because when you say the word medication, yeah. Yeah. You know, people go, it's a stigma. Do I have to be on medication the rest of my life? So that usually follows. So the question first is, can I reverse this naturally? Second is, do I have to be on medication the rest of my life? And I say, well, we have to reframe how we think of this thyroid therapy. We have to put it in that hormone replacement category. We can't put it in the medication category. Those are the Band-Aid medications that you were talking about. Those are the ones that we want to avoid. We avoid those. By addressing the root cause, which could be your thyroid. So then when we replace the thyroid hormones properly, then your, your quality of life comes back. You won't want to let go of those hormones because they're actually giving you your life back.

Right. So what would you say in practice then, the top 3 to 5 symptoms that you are consistently seeing as the red flag that people need to start paying attention to their thyroid?

Yeah, the top 3. Weight gain or the inability to lose weight. Like you're doing all the things right. You could be doing keto, carnivore, hitting the gym, going organic, cleaning up your, your house of plastic, the whole deal.

Mm-hmm.

And nothing is working to budge the weight. Number 2 would be that incredible fatigue, that crushing fatigue that literally you have to drink 5 cups of coffee to get through the day. You wake up in the morning after 8 hours of sleep and you feel like you could go back to bed. And then third would be hair loss, hair loss, hair breaking, hair thinning, or just that dry, brittle feeling to your hair. Those are the top 3. And then in the book, I also get into the wild and wacky symptoms, kind of like what I mentioned in the beginning. I forgot to even add in migraines, joint pain. I mean, there's so many crazy symptoms associated with thyroid because it does run your entire body.

We really have to tune into our symptoms. Right. Something that I recommend to all my clients is when you start to feel symptoms, one, it's so important not to identify with them right away because we become just so vulnerable to identifying with the symptoms, like something's wrong, I'm sick, I'm not well, and that paranoia that follows. But just tuning in, like, I'm sure that a lot of the patients that you see, the onset might be slow, like the symptoms will come in and then they might regress a little bit, then they come back in. So your body is just trying to communicate with you. So we have to remind people not to ignore the symptoms. Yes. And now, do you take black cumin seed oil? Yeah. Daily?

Yeah, I do.

I do.

Oh my goodness. Because it does have an anti-cancer property to it too. So it absolutely, even though my antibodies are pushed to zero, obviously I continue taking it for that, for inflammation, and then for the cancer prevention.

Ancient ritual that I absolutely love. And do you take it by capsule or literally just by the, the oil itself?

Capsule.

The oil's pretty intense. Capsule, please.

It's a little bit rough.

Yeah. It's hard to get down. Okay. So, Let's start to break this down then. I remember when I was in school for nutrition, there was an amazing traditional Chinese medicine doctor who looked at us and said, the thyroid is never the problem. The thyroid is the one that reacts first to every other, you know, symptom within the body, wherever it comes from. More often than not, the digestive system and issues with the gut microbiome. So can you— if you were to kind of break down a love story for, for the thyroid, how would you describe it?

Oh, that's a good one.

Oh my goodness. Because people don't have a connection to it. I think a lot of us might, when we start thinking about our thyroid, we wanna notice if we can feel it or not. Obviously, you know, the, the medical signs of if we see enlargement and, and things like that is a separate story. But what's your love story about the thyroid?

Oh goodness, this is a great question, Mona. Okay. So first of all, it is a tiny gland. So you're right. It's not like, you know, we could put our, hand over our heart and, and feel the beats and connect deeply with that, even our heart chakra. Well, let's think about our throat chakra, right? We don't often put our hands over our throat because it's, it's almost like, I don't know, it's, some people don't even like to have their necks touched.

Yeah.

So we don't connect on a deep love story level with our thyroid like we should. But I also think, I'm gonna go a little bit deeper here. I also think as women, we have such a hard time expressing ourselves because we don't want to be seen as bitchy, demanding, controlling. There's all these stigmas attached to us as women when we speak up for ourselves as opposed to a man. I mean, whether you like it or not, that's just the truth out there. So how many women are covering their throats even without their hands, just unknowingly, they're not speaking up. That suppression of your voice absolutely can cause thyroid problems. So I'm with your, your Chinese doctor there. And then, yeah, I do believe that the thyroid is, it's like a canary in the coal mine. So when it starts to downregulate, not work properly, not produce the right thyroid hormones, we do have to look at the rest of the body. Now, the only thing I'll expand on with that is I'm not a fan of, oh, let's just treat your thyroid. Adrenals and your thyroid will magically heal. It's like, let's do everything at the same time. Let's heal your gut. Let's address any stress or adrenal dysfunction. Let's address everything. But at the same time, let's actually address these low thyroid hormones that we're seeing and replace those so that you can get better quickly and get back to being who you are. Find your voice, find your strength, find your confidence again. Instead of, oh, let's wait 6 months while you do this adrenal protocol and then we'll see how your thyroid's doing. Let's just do it all at once. So it's kind of a combination love story there.

It's interesting because as you were speak— well, first of all, I love that love story. And the reason why I wanted— I asked that question is because often when we look at our thyroid or if there's something wrong as a woman, we say, oh, it's my thyroid. Like we hate on our thyroid, we hate on these parts of ourselves. It's like, no, your thyroid is just communicating with you. It's this beautiful part of you. Right. So that's one. The second part of this is really understanding, like, that your health can, can shift, right? Things can actually change, but the body is systemic. Everything is connected. And the supplement industry is kind of an extension now of what the medical industry is, right? Prescriptions or supplements are now becoming the new Band-Aid solution, right? Well, we have to look at the body as a system. Misdiagnosing.

Yeah.

Understanding what a full thyroid panel is. Take out a pen and paper. Let's dive into this. Let's go into all the thyroid hormones and really understanding why just testing for TSH is not enough.

Exactly. It's not. TSH is, is a brain hormone. It's not even a thyroid hormone. So we look at it, we check it. We want to see how your brain is communicating with your thyroid. Does it sense that there's not enough thyroid hormone in the system? Does it have to yell at your thyroid? I.e., go up, okay, we'll look at it, but we can't stop there. We have to go deeper. So next up, and this is a test that if you go to your doctor and you say, hey, doc, I want a full thyroid panel, you'll get TSH and you'll probably get free T4, but you're not going to get the rest of these. So free T4 is the next one. T4 is the inactive thyroid hormone. So it's important to note here for the listener that you do not have a receptor site anywhere on any cell in your body for T4. You only have a receptor site for T3, the active thyroid hormone. So we wanna look at your free T4, that inactive, because it's sitting there almost in, in, in a, in a little box ready to be converted.

Hmm.

So it's sitting there in storage and then our bodies pull that T4, yank off a thyroid or an iodine molecule, and it becomes T3. So we want to look at free T4 and see where it's at. I don't want it too high, actually, because if it's too high, that tells me that, that this person is most likely on way too much T4 thyroid medication, or they're producing T4 and T3 from their own thyroid, but they're not converting it properly.

Got it.

Then we drop down to free T3. Yeah, I want to know how much active thyroid hormone is in your body ready to get to that cell, ready to give you metabolism, light up your brain, grow your hair, all the things. Then we look at reverse T3. Now, this is one of my favorite markers. Reverse T3 is the number one dismissed marker in conventional medicine. Your doctor will tell you that we only test that in a clinical setting. And what they mean by that is if you come into the hospital and you're in the ICU or the ER and you're fighting for your life from a major injury, That reverse T3 will go up and thank God it does. It's built into our body for a reason because at that point in time when you're injured like that, you don't need to burn body fat. You don't need to think, you don't even need to poop every day. You just need to lie there and survive.

Right? Yeah.

What if that's high when we're walking around trying to live life, right? When we're trying to just do life and enjoy it. So our bodies think that we're lying there dying. So what reverse T3 actually is, is the anti-thyroid hormone. So it will go up if we do not convert that inactive thyroid hormone to the active thyroid hormone properly. And that actually is a very tough job for the body to do. And this ties back beautifully to your comment earlier about the thyroid being connected to everything. So insulin resistance, estrogen dominance, nutrient deficiency, elevated cortisol from stress, genetics, all of these things can interfere with that T4 to T3 conversion. And push up reverse T3. So we have to test it every single time. Every single time.

So reverse T3, then it's kind of like the brake pedal.

Yep.

But for a lot of people, the brake pedal might not be working and doctors aren't understanding that, right? At all.

Well, the brake is on the whole time. It's like you're pushing the gas and the brake at the same time. That's not going to work.

You made me just think of something also with TSH. So connected to the brain. Our brain function, but also associated with our pituitary. Pituitary gland is also the signaling that would support your body in having a regular cycle also, right? Which I wasn't at the time of my, my heart surgeries. The pituitary gland has to be one of the first if we're going through consistent chronic daily stress in our modern life, right? Right. Which would also throw off kind of like a cascade of miscommunication between thyroid hormones. And then here we are not even testing those, right? And I've looked at some functional lab panels from, you know, some incredible doctors, and they're not even doing this full panel.

I know, I know. Actually, it's funny, I just posted this in my Facebook group the other day. I said the number one way to tell if your doctor knows anything about the thyroid— yeah— is if they test reverse T3. And I see that too, even in functional medicine. If, if a functional practitioner doesn't specialize in the thyroid, that's the first way to tell is you won't have a reverse T3 on your labs.

And for labs then, we tend to look at this lab range. Do you use a specific lab range that, like, is there a functional lab range between normal versus optimal? Are we always aiming for optimal?

Always aiming for optimal, yes. So I joke, I say normal is a setting on the dryer. It should never be used to actually describe you, your body, your labs, your health. We don't want to just be status quo. We don't wanna be normal. We want to be optimal. So to be optimal, we have to look at your labs through that optimal lens. And yes, absolutely. We have the functional optimal ranges. So with, when you look at your lab panel, you're gonna see that standard lab value range next to your result.

Mm-hmm.

That is why vast, it's huge. It's taken from groups of sick people.

Mm-hmm.

Functional medicine comes in and we narrow it down. It's like a little bullseye and we say, okay, We don't want you out here with the masses. We want you in here with the badasses. These are the people that feel their best. These are the 70-year-olds that are skiing down the side of a mountain and still hitting the gym every day. That's where we want you to be, in that optimal range.

I want to be a badass when I'm 90.

Right? Exactly. I know.

And 100. What's fascinating to me is, again, the conversations are so loud with menopause, but now you're shedding light on longevity. Right. And so when we're thinking about optimization, we're not even looking at these numbers in total.

Right, right.

Tell us a little bit about your aha moment coming to this truth for yourself. So you said that you were misdiagnosed how many times?

6.

6 times. What were you suffering from? What did life look like for you at that time?

So I was, I was an athlete, I was a fitness model, I was doing figure competitions. I had my body in the top, top shape. And this one show that I was getting ready for, you know, where you're eating clean, I mean, very, very clean, you're going to the gym twice a day, the whole deal. The scale was going up and not down. And my body, I'm 5'2", it put on upwards of 25 pounds. I stopped getting on the scale after it hit 25 pounds because I became so depressed.

Yeah, of course.

So depressed. And I was hiding my body and I wouldn't go to the gym and just, you know, didn't want to get undressed even in front of my partner. So it was, it was really bad. And I kept going to all of these doctors just crying to them. I would bring in what I was eating on a piece of paper and they would look at it and just basically throw it aside and dismiss me. And one of them pointed to a BMI chart and was like, oh, well, you're still not that bad. 25 pounds, not that bad.

You're so tiny. Right.

And I knew what I felt comfortable with. And, and it wasn't that. And I wasn't recognizing myself in the mirror anymore. And not to even mention the hair loss, the fatigue. I mean, all of that kind of took a, a backseat to the weight gain because that was really at the forefront. I mean, all my clothes were getting tighter. I was crying in my car. I was praying that a doctor would just give me any diagnosis at that point because it would, it, it would be a name. Mm-hmm. It would be a something. It would be a description to what was going on with my body. So 6 doctors misdiagnosed me. Finally, the 7th one, actually she was the first one to lay hands on my throat, first one to touch me. And she said, swallow. And she goes, you have these little, little nodules on your thyroid. She's like, according to your labs, which I still don't know what those labs were, but according to your labs, you have hypothyroidism. You have Hashimoto's. She's like, we're gonna get an ultrasound, you know, just to check things, but Here's a pill. So I left her office, I was all pumped up cuz now I had the name, I had the description, and I had a pill that was gonna fix me, right? I thought this was it.

Yeah.

I gave it 5 months. That pill was T4, it was levothyroxine, Synthroid, and it did nothing. Nothing. I mean, not one single pound on the scale dropped. So I go back to Dr. Google.. And I start doctor Googling. We didn't have ChatGPT at the time, so I start doctor Googling and I come back to this doctor who diagnosed me finally. And I said, you know, you, you, you gave me this inactive thyroid hormone pill and, uh, it's not working. And it turns out there's this active thyroid hormone called T3. There's another one called T2. Like, why aren't, why aren't we throwing these in? And she goes, that's not standard of care. I don't do that. Oh my gosh. And I said, well, I'm gonna find someone who does. It was that moment. It was that pain. It was that frustration. And even in my twenties, it was that, that knowledge, that aha moment that, oh my gosh, I am a 20-something-year-old woman in a major medical system. I mean, this wasn't, you know, podunk nowhere. I was in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is the equivalent medical system as Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, you know, the big ones, the top. And I was misdiagnosed 6 times. And I thought, how many women out there are suffering from being dismissed and misdiagnosed? Many, many. And so that's where it, I, I made it my mission. I changed careers. I said, I am going to be able to help women in every single state. And that's how we built the clinic that we have now where we can prescribe to all 50 states. That's where the book came from. It was all birthed outta pain. Pain to purpose all day long.

It's wild, right?

Yeah.

That we have to go through that. The blessing and the gift is incredible, but my gosh, my jaw is kind of open in awe because there are millions of people suffering from this. The amount of clients that I've taken on who are on levothyroxine also, but this is— the symptoms still persist. Oh yeah.

Yeah.

So I guess the story is The lesson in that: find a doctor who is your partner in healing. Finding a doctor who will actually take the time with you and walk you through until you get to the root cause. And really being an advocate for your own health when you go in, right? I think a lot of doctors today are probably a little fearful with the Dr. Google pages coming in and perhaps understanding a little bit more than they do because they were never taught to put the pieces of the puzzle together. They were taught to fix a certain area, insert medication and the Band-Aid solution, and then that was it.

Right, right, exactly.

Now, your weight gain is pretty profound, right? You're so— you have such a small figure also. I can imagine how terrible that probably felt for you. I felt the same with the weight gain that I had, and doctors are just like, huh, it's not that bad, you're still within range. And now this is something like— there's two parts of the story now. One, we're being told that when we go through perimenopause, just expect the weight gain. Here it is, you're going to start gaining weight from this day moving forward, and you're probably never going to lose it, right? Then we've got the Ozempic prescriptions, which have surged dramatically. Yeah. And the amount of women— men also, but women especially— who are going through this dysmorphia of what it feels like to look thin and be thin. Why can someone who's on Ozempic— can they perhaps still not lose weight if their thyroid isn't functioning? And I'm asking this for a client, actually. This is a client who— she's had weight issues her entire life. She's been on thyroid medication for 20 years. And, um, I just started working with her and she's barely losing any weight on Ozempic.

Classic. Yep. So I have a patient that I talk about in the book as well, classic story. I tell this all the time because it was so impactful for me as well. Barbara came in, she was a type 2— was, I say was— a type 2 diabetic. Her A1C was an 11.9. She was on Ozempic for a year and a half. She was about about 150 pounds overweight and nothing was working. Nothing was working. She also was diagnosed with Hashimoto's for 15 years. She was on T4 only. And when we tested her and we looked at her, her thyroid and hormone profile, yes, she needed hormone replacement. But over here with her thyroid, her reverse T3 was elevated and no one was paying attention. She wasn't converting that T4 to T3 properly. Her free T3, the active thyroid hormone, was low. So it was literally her non-optimized thyroid that was keeping the GLP from working. We optimized her thyroid and then all of a sudden her A1C drops to a 5.4, basically reverses her diabetes. She lost 150 pounds. So anytime someone is— that I hear that someone's on a GLP and it's not working, That is huge. Check your thyroid all day long. That's where it's coming from. Because if your thyroid is low and slow, you are just go out and burn money. Like just burn the money that you're gonna spend on your GLP-1, cuz that's what it's gonna do.

Wow.

Yeah.

In your practice, are you doing any type of genetic test also? Like there's so many genetic testing companies that are also emerging where we can understand more about a biology, which is beautiful. Is that something that people should start considering also?

We're bringing it into the practice actually, because now it used to be that you had to go to Europe to test the D101 and D102 gene.

Right.

And this is a marker. This is what I have. This is the SNP that I have.

Okay.

That, that it, it gives you the, the possibility that you won't convert T4 to T3. And as we know with genes, it's all, it's all that probability, you know, it's the potential.

Yeah.

And will that gene express itself? Well, for me it does. I cannot take T4 whatsoever. I'm T3 only. But it gives us good insight into the treatment program that we need to do with each person. So we are starting to bring in the genetic component.

So good to know. Yeah, because once you know, you know. And I think as women, the more steps that you can take to try going down multiple rabbit holes to figure out whether something is right for you or not. But I think moral of the story is also, let's just say, not always to jump into Ozempic. Right. Right. Exactly. What about peptides? Are you a fan of peptides?

I am. Certain peptides.

Yeah.

When, when used appropriately, I think the peptide story is two-sided nowadays. We see a lot of people and I don't know if you get clients like this too, who are taking every peptide under the sun and they have no idea why and they don't know what it does. And or they think like, oh, I'm taking BPC-157 to lose weight. I'm like, um, that's not a weight loss peptide. You don't even know what you're taking. But they do. Hold such potential. So we'll use thymosin alpha, mm-hmm, uh, for autoimmunity, for bolstering the immune system. Of course, we'll use BPC for lowering inflammation, for improving any kind of injury post-surgery. It's magical. GHK-CU is great for hair and skin because my thyroid people all, yeah, they all have the hair loss and the hair thinning and the dry skin and the wrinkles. And so yes, I, I do like peptides, but it's all about using them appropriately.

Mm-hmm. Are you seeing a demographic or age range where the metabolic factor is more relevant than others? Is it happening earlier?

I think it is, because right now we have that stat: 93% of all Americans are insulin resistant. I mean, that is crazy. And then we know now much more than we did even 20 years ago how hormones play a role with our metabolism. So for instance, you have PCOS, I have PCOS. That lower progesterone that occurs with PCOS sets us up for insulin resistance. Low progesterone also hinders that T4 to T3 conversion. So now we can see this, this tie-in to the thyroid and hormones and control over our, our metabolism. Basically, the thyroid also dictates whether you're going to be insulin resistant or insulin sensitive. I mean, you could be on a carnivore diet eating zero carbs and you could still be insulin resistant if your thyroid's in the toilet. So it all plays together. So to answer your question, yes, we're seeing metabolic dysfunction much earlier because of, of everything from the toxins then hitting our hormones earlier, the PCOS, the thyroid. I mean, it all ties together.

In 15 years, I don't think I've worked with so many people than ever before who are doing all of the right things on paper and still waking up not getting the results that they want or even feeling their best, right? And there's a fine line I'm finding because a lot of people are overtesting. But even with the knowing, we're still going back into a world where if we're not making any lifestyle changes or changing the environment that started all of this to begin with, then we're still constantly chasing Band-Aid solutions.

Yeah. Yeah.

So for someone who's coming to you who's got that 3-2-4, and you don't want that to be too high or too low. Like, how do you find that sweet spot, or what are some of the initial recommendations that you make?

First of all, I have to say, I love you for saying the overtesting thing. Again, that's something that we both say too much. It drives me bananas when these people come in with thousands of dollars of functional tests, and I'm like, you really didn't need all of that. Like, it's bonus material for us to look at. Yeah. Yeah, but you probably could have saved some money. Um, so to answer your question, you know, it's, it's just this nuanced art. It's like when you are working with someone that knows what they're doing with the thyroid, it's this beautiful dance. It's a nuanced art. So what I actually built into the book for the reader, because we can't help everybody, is almost like this. And I don't know, you might be too young for this, Mona Sharma, but do you remember The Choose Your Own Adventure books?

Of course.

Okay. All right. I love those books.

Like, they're my favorite.

So I kind of built this like those Choose Your Own Adventure books where a woman can— or a reader will— we won't leave out the guys, but reality is women get hit harder with thyroid problems. So the reader can go through and first interpret their labs. So we'll give the optimal ranges and you can actually see where you are. Then we move down the pipe. And then we can say, okay, are you on medication? So let's just take Susie Q, who's on the typical 100 micrograms of Synthroid, T4 only. Okay, well, Susie, your reverse T3 is falling between a 16 and a 22, and you are on T4 only. So then next column, this is what you have to do. We need to lower your T4 and we need to bring in some T3. Or we can change you over to natural desiccated thyroid medication, which gives you some T3 and maybe sprinkle in a little bit more T3 to change the ratio. But then what about Jane Doe down here who's not on thyroid medication? Okay, we have a path for you as well. So it's about learning what you need to do for your body. And it, it is nuanced. It's an art form, but it can be taught. And, and you As the listener, as a strong, powerful woman, I promise you, you can learn. You can learn this. You do not need a medical degree to understand your own body and to understand what your body needs. And when you really, when you learn the head knowledge that I teach in the book, and then you tune inward and you listen to your body and you listen to those symptoms that are gifts given to you just to say, hey, pay attention to me, please pay attention. You can do this and you can absolutely learn what your body needs.

I think you just said my favorite words, that all of our healing journeys should be personalized, especially as women where we're still looking for the cookie-cutter solution of what to do, what to go on, and how to fix ourselves. And then instead of understanding how like intuitively bio-individual we all are. So What are some things that you initially start with in terms of like some, some foundational? So we talked about black seed, cumin seed oil. Where does iodine fit in the picture?

Oh, I love iodine. It's so controversial though. It's so controversial. No, I love iodine. Iodine is— it's on the periodic table. So if we go back to like 7th grade chemistry and we look at the periodic table, we see iodine in this category of halides or halogens. It's right next to fluoride, bromide, chlorine. Now what it does in the body is it actually kicks out those toxic halogens. So it competes at a receptor site on our cell against fluoride, bromine, and chloride— chlorine, chloride. If we don't have enough iodine in our body, those toxic halogens that are detrimental to the thyroid but also carcinogenic and increase our risk of cancer those are gonna win.

Mm-hmm.

And the only way to push them off the cell is by taking iodine. In addition, iodine is needed by your thyroid gland to produce T4 and T3.

Mm-hmm.

It is needed to convert T4 to T3. So one of the biggest reasons for elevated reverse T3 is low iodine. So it's like, why aren't we, why are we bastardizing iodine? I don't, I don't get it. It's all about using it. In the right amount. I think it got a bad reputation years ago when practitioners were starting patients and clients out with too high of a dose, right? And sending them into a thyroid storm. But when it's used the right way, I mean, we have patients that are like, before we even get them optimized with their thyroid, they're like, well, I started taking iodine and wow, the brain fog lifted and I'm already feeling better. You got it.

Good.

Yeah.

Good. And it's not taking a lot. Yeah. Iodine. I love it as a spray. Yeah, just one little spray, a drop. It's like a—

right, yeah.

Um, a lot of us aren't getting iodine-rich foods also anymore, right, the way that we used to, or iodized salt even.

Yeah, yeah, not the right form, right, in the iodized salt. And then in the food, you know, I do hear people saying, well, I do kelp, I do seaweed. You really have to look at the source because there's a lot of heavy metals, there's arsenic that can be found in. So where are they sourcing the seaweed from, you know? Is it from like Chernobyl, you know, you really want to be— you want to be careful.

I just saw a video for how, like, how it's made, those seaweed sheets that my kids absolutely love. But look at how it's made. Like, we don't question how things are made and where they come from, so it's important. I want to understand, where do thyroid antibodies fit into this picture?

And that's part of the testing too. I forgot to mention those. So TPO and TGA antibodies. So if you're writing this down, grab your pen and paper back out. On the list of labs, you also want to put thyroperoxidase and thyroglobulin. So TPO and TGA for short. These are the markers for Hashimoto's. And ultimately, well, number one, you have to have them both tested. I don't know if you've ever looked at a panel and there's one, there's always one, and not two. I'm like, there's two. Why aren't you testing both? So you need both of them tested and we want those at zero, zero, zero, zero. Because I know there's gonna be a listener out there that goes, Well, I had them tested and I was told I don't have Hashimoto's. But then she looks at her paper and I'm like, oh, you know, how many do you have? Well, there's 15 TPO. It's like, okay, it didn't get flagged high, but you still have 15 antibodies. Yeah. That are beating up your thyroid. Like that's, that's a lot.

I'm seeing a lot of functional practitioners test for, uh, ANA screen now, right? Which is coming back positive and that isn't going hand in hand with the full thyroid panel. Also, do you often see a correlation between the two?

Yes and no. I mean, you can have Hashimoto's without a positive ANA. Okay. Um, and you could have a, a negative ANA and still have Hashimoto's. So it's great to test, I guess, if you're looking for other autoimmune conditions, because we know when we have one, we're gonna have more than one.

Mm-hmm.

So you can check it for others, but it's not gonna be diagnostic for Hashi.

Right. For listeners then who are in this season of noticing all of these changes, we now know what to make the request for the labs that we need to get done. If a doctor says no, we're finding a new practitioner, right? Are you in practice then— we use the word integration before— are you working hand in hand with optimizing gut function and digestion at the same time?

We do everything at the same time. So I always say both and, meaning there's so many clinics out there that will people, let's say, just focus on the thyroid or just do hormones or just do gut. It's like you have to do it all together. So we look at your thyroid function, we look at your hormone balance. Of course we're gonna look at your insulin and your cortisol and your gut because it all goes together. You can't throw beautiful thyroid hormones, beautiful bioidentical hormone replacement therapy onto a dumpster fire and think that it's gonna work. I mean, if you're treating your body like a circus, the hormones aren't going to work. So we need that foundation of, of the gut, of balancing our adrenals and our stress resilience, which fixing your thyroid and your hormones will build up that stress resilience too and will help your adrenals work better. But you have to, you have to build that foundation or it's not gonna work.

Let's get into this. HRT is being prescribed left, right, and center. Without doing this investigation. And what I just heard you say is that it's literally putting a band-aid over a problem, and it might feel like it can support you, but it's still not the full picture, right? Yeah, right. Do you think that a lot of practitioners are rushing into prescribing HRT for women in perimenopause?

Yes, yes. And, you know, I think we're seeing it more and more too with these these pop-up online clinics that, you know, yeah, they're prescribing the GLPs, but they're also doing hormones. And it's an algorithm. It's a one-size-fits-all because there is no way that a 5-minute visit with, with a national telehealth company is going to be able to look at you as that unique individual. And what they end up doing is they ship everyone the same hormones in the same container. So you'll get, you know, 3 creams combined into 1, or you'll get 2 creams and a pill and everybody gets the same thing. It's a cookie cutter program. And they're not— number 1, yes, they're— some of them aren't even testing. Some of them are not even testing hormones before they prescribe them. And they're certainly not getting into the nutrition, the lifestyle, the gut healing, the sleep, the stress. They don't have time. This is a, this is a $149 a month hormone deal. You know, they don't have time to look at you as an individual.

Mm-hmm. And then there's the biohacking aspect of this as well. I have a feeling you and I would probably love to dabble into those things, and sometimes they feel really, really good. But I wanna hover on this for a second because I think it falls in line for a lot of women into the fixing category. I'm gonna do this to fix myself. And yet it tends to be just another thing added to the wellness protocol list that feels a little bit more intensive. So is there a time and a place where you ask people to pull back on modalities like sauna and cold plunge and all of that?

You are my sister from another mother, aren't you? Dang, girl. Okay, I'm right in line. I think we are over biohacking. Yeah, it's actual stress and I feel it. I mean, I feel it too. I have a sauna, I have a cold plunge, I have an H-bod because I went through uterine cancer last year. So it's like That's another kind of layer of pressure to do this anti-cancer protocol. And I find myself stopping often going, I'm literally adding more stress to my body, pushing myself to get in all of this biohacking. So I literally say in the book, I said, you do not have to be Bryan Johnson and, and have every biohacking piece of equipment. Pick one.

Yeah.

Pick one thing that you're gonna do to just is, like you said, just push it a little bit, uplevel your health. Maybe it's just red light. Maybe you're just shining a red light on your face. It's going to help with your collagen, it's going to help with your thyroid, it's going to decrease inflammation. Boom, done. That's all you have to do. Because I think the added pressure to take all the supplements, to do all the biohacking, to do all the things, that's actually more detrimental.

That's increasing our stress, that's increasing our cortisol, that's hurting our thyroid instead of helping Especially if it's something that we don't even know if we need it or not.

Right.

And it's funny, I have— we're talking about my Mona AI platform and we can see common questions that come up a lot. And what's beautiful about AI, I think it's an opportunity for people to really be incredibly vulnerable the way that they wouldn't be with someone face to face. And one of the most common things or common questions that I, that I see asked is I just don't know how to do it anymore. Like, I just don't know how to stay consistent. I'm so overwhelmed. I'm being told different things by different practitioners, and everyone has got their way. I just don't know what to do. So in that intuitive aspect of it, and maybe this will guide us back into that ancient wisdom a little bit more, but when I think about the thyroid, it's a butterfly gland, right? It's beautiful. It's about transformation. It's about harmony, and it's about beauty. And here we are again going into that languaging of fix, fix, fix, fix, fix. Do you have any advice for listeners then? What assessment would you want to look into in terms of their environment to make sure that they're not going into the environment that caused whatever the imbalance could be? Hmm.

Yeah, that's a good one. Okay. So what comes to mind when you say that is, is twofold. There's the, we'll call it kind of the physical environment. So are you living in a moldy home? Um, are you, you know, maybe living in a, in a in a home that doesn't have clean air, doesn't necessarily have to be mold. It could be where you live. Like, I live in Iowa and we have farmers all around us spraying glyphosate, right? So I have like 5 jaspers through my home scrubbing the air all the time. That's the physical environment that you're in. Then there's the emotional and spiritual environment that you're in. Are you in a toxic relationship? Are you going to a job that you absolutely spies, you get this pit in your stomach every time you have to log onto the computer or drive to the office. Um, do you have a, a friendship that is, that is not going so well and it means a lot to you? I mean, you have to look at your emotional environment too, because I would argue that that plays a bigger role in your thyroid health, especially as a woman, than does the physical. I mean, if we I have found that if we optimize someone's thyroid and let's say they're exposed to mold, they don't react. They're not one of those people that are like, oh yeah, I have chronic mold. I have to do this mold protocol, all the things. Their, their body is more resilient, right? And it can handle it. But if you'd have a woman that's living in a toxic marriage, that, that's gonna hit her health 100% of the time.

I often go back to this old school, it's like coaching 101. It's a wheel of life. And in that wheel of life, I'm asking my clients to kind of give themselves a grade on a scale of 1 to 10. Relationships, social environment, finances, love life, personal health, recreation, and you name it. And it's eye-opening for a lot of people because they don't recognize it because we're caught in the rat race every single day, right? And I can imagine that when you bring up those things with your patients, it's going to drive the need to change. And how many of us are afraid to take change or weren't taught how to embrace change and just recognizing that in the same way that you said about our symptoms, like if we just loved on the fact that our body is communicating with us, that's the guidance within us to tell us what direction to go into and just to trust that and trust that it's all happening for a reason too, which I think is really key. I don't want to go over the fact that you mentioned uterine cancer. As a doctor with this intuitiveness that you have with your body now, how do you give that meaning or do you give it any meaning?

You know, it was tough because I was doing all the things, mm-hmm. You know, and it was that moment where you realize like, oh my gosh, cancer doesn't discriminate. And, and we can be doing all of the things and the prevention and, and it can still hit us. So I think for me, the, the, the transformational moment going through that was more the realization that, that I need to take a little bit better care of myself. Not from the biohacking standpoint, not from the supplement standpoint, not more exercise, but, but less stuff, actually. So backing off just a little bit from my Type A driver personality, that entrepreneur mindset of go, go, go. You know, when there's downtime, it's uncomfortable. You got to find the next I've become more grounded in that downtime. I've appreciated it more. I respect it more. I hold my dog walking and my coffee time with my husband as sacred. And just like we were joking before we went on air, "No" is a full sentence. I'm starting to use "no" as a full sentence now and not feeling the need to explain why I'm declining this or, "No, I'm sorry, I can't meet you at 2:00." at 9:00 AM because that's when I'm walking my dog and working out. And, and I think that's the big lesson for me that I really needed from this journey, is to be more compassionate to myself. Because if I don't find that compassion, that's when the big C can pop back up.

Thank you for sharing. You are obviously, you know, you can speak from experience. Nothing matters when you don't have your health. Life stops. Everything stops. Every priority that you thought was way too important to cancel doesn't matter anymore. And I don't want anyone listening to ever experience that, which is why we have to take our health into our own hands these days. And I'm saying this with a mirror back to myself also, right? I'm sure we get to our ones— I love the hypervigilant overdrive. I love it when there's a lot going on. And for some reason, when I got to 44, life just seemed to speed up. Yeah, got really, really fast. And do you know that earlier this year I didn't want to make any resolutions, but I wanted to see if I could spend 1 hour a day doing nothing.

Oh my goodness. How's that going?

I failed. Okay.

I think I would too.

I immediately failed. 20 minutes was a big deal. Now, if I can get out for a walk with my dog, I'm looking at that as a win. But it's funny as we laugh, but also so sad. I'll say to my husband sometimes, like, I need to be extracted from life.

Yeah.

In order to go decompress. And I didn't realize in my 20s when I was in my corporate world, whenever I would go to the ashram, this was in the Bahamas, I was doing that. I was extracting myself from life and going somewhere where the stage was set, not an all-inclusive, not where I could go and binge or be part of hardcore challenges, just like somewhere where the stage was set to rest. And the gift, like you said, in having to go there now makes me an advocate for prescribing that. Right? Instead of prescribing a protocol, yeah, or a diet or something to do, just go where you can just be in space with yourself, in communication with yourself, which is so powerful.

So powerful.

So for women who are listening right now who are like, okay, Dr. Amy, before I can go get my labs done, what are 3 things that I can start doing this week to optimize my thyroid health? What would you say?

So just from a natural standpoint, I would say number one, let's, let's get the nutrients in, right? Just those core basic— I call them the no duh supplements. Like, of course, duh, you're going to take them every day. That's from the '80s. That's dating myself. This is going to be your vitamin D, which is a hormone. I mean, it's needed for your immune system. It helps with autoimmunity. It helps with T4 to T3 conversion. It supports energy, everything. Vitamin D. Magnesium. Most of us are deficient in, and I like more than Mag Citrate. Mag Citrate will help you poop. You really need all the different magnesiums. So magnesium, selenium, but in the proper amount. I like 100 micrograms a day. A lot of thyroid patients think that more is better and more is not better in the supplement area. So just 100 micrograms of selenium a day. Beautiful. Eat a couple Brazil nuts. Yeah, exactly. Get it naturally. Get it naturally. And then iodine, just a little bit, just a little bit, a spray, a drop, liquid. Don't, don't buy a pill, don't buy a capsule. You can't control that dose. You know, buy it in some type of a liquid form where you can go titrating up and down. Little bit of iodine. L-tyrosine, I mentioned earlier, that actually is an amino acid that helps your thyroid gland produce more T4 and T3. And then I love T2. That's an over-the-counter supplement as well. It's a thyroid hormone. But it does help with T4 to T3 conversion. It helps bump up your T3 a little bit, increases your metabolism, decreases inflammation. So that's beautiful. That's that, that supplemental foundation. Then I would say from the eating standpoint, it's everything that you talk about. We have— we got to get rid of the processed foods. I mean, I'm not saying to go keto. I'm not saying to pull out all the carbohydrates. That's not what I'm saying at all. But if we don't focus on high quality, if we don't focus on protein first, especially as women, then getting in that good— the good fat for our cells, for our membranes, for our hair, for our skin, for our nails, and then adding in carbohydrates. But how about just in the real form? I mean, are we going to avoid every box and can? No, that's unrealistic. But 80/20 rule. I talk about the 80/20 rule all through that book. 80/20 rule when it comes to eliminating toxins and what you put on your body. 80/20 rule, what you put in your body. 20% you're not going to be able to control. You know, when I'm at the airport, I got to buy the plastic water bottle if they don't have, you know, the— my Liquid Death aluminum can or whatever. And then, you know, if you're out, I'm not going to be the person that's asking if they're cooking my steak with seed oil. I'm just going to get the damn steak. But if you live by that 80/20 rule, I think that is enough to build that basic foundation where you could actually improve your thyroid right now without anything else. And then once you get that foundation in place, then you can take that next step.

So instead of saying, I just have to look at a bowl of pasta and gain weight, or look at a piece of cake and gain weight, just say, oh, my thyroid needs some love right now. There's some room for optimization.

I like that spin.

I like that. Do you know that every single morning on my kids' breakfast plates and all of us, I literally just put 2 Brazil nuts and I'll always try to go food first for medicine. Yeah, but just get it in, incorporate it as a ritual every single day. Yeah. And what I like with the iodine too is like, if you forget it, it's fine. It's just, it's something that you keep out and— exactly— when you have it, you remember it. That's great. Yep. And, uh, are you— when you go to dieting, everyone's going to want to know this— on a therapeutic protocol, are you going more keto or paleo to support people in healing first? Do you make any recommendations, or do you just say, hey, trust in nature, if it has less processed ingredients in it, you're good to go. Just focus on protein, carbs, and fats.

Well, I would say your, your labs tell us how you should eat. So if you are insulin resistant, if your insulin's high, if your A1C is, is out of whack, which obviously we have to mention the optimal— so if insulin is above a 6, so we're not talking about the standard lab value range with insulin either. If insulin's above a 6, you're insulin resistant. I like A1C 4.8 to max 5.2. And if you're outside of that range, then that's telling us maybe you gotta pull back on the carbohydrates. I mean, obviously eliminate the processed, but you might have to pull back on the grams of carbohydrates that you're eating and rely more heavily on protein and fat. I mean, that's, that's what your body is telling us. Um, I know you interviewed a dear friend of mine, Shivani.

Yeah.

She loves you too. And, uh, love her. She became a patient of mine and I had to have a hard talk with her and tell her, the way that you are eating, yeah, is actually killing you. And, and that's hard when someone's even cultural diet is heavier in carbohydrates. It's like, we had to make that shift because according to your labs, you are walking a fine line, and basically you have one foot in type 2 diabetes right now.

Wow. Yeah, so Dr. Shivani, she's South Asian, and with a lot of our Eastern diets, they're just not made the same way that our ancestors made them, and we're not getting the same ratios of protein, carb, fat, or fiber, which is so essential. Like, a lot of these diets are now void of those when that was the foundation to begin with, right? Yeah. Oh, that's a really great story to know. And again, like, our body can heal itself. It's not to say that eating that way therapeutically is a forever thing. You do it to heal, and then you come back to that 80/20 where you can enjoy. What does it feel like to have an optimized thyroid?

I love this question because I always talk about join me in optimization land. It's a beautiful place to be.

But what does that feel like? What does it feel like?

Number 1, you don't gain weight looking sideways at a brownie or a plate of pasta or a piece of pizza. And, and what I mean by that is literally, you know, when you're in this non-optimized state, you fear going out. So this is really where, you know, we talk about the, the aesthetic part of hypothyroidism. We talk about the hair, we talk about the weight, we talk about that. But, but there's also the, the impact that has on your life, on your relationships, and, and how you actually feel day to day. Meaning the woman that's suffering is going, I have to decline the invitation to go out with my friends for happy hour or for dinner because I know, you know, they're going to get an appetizer and they're going to— I'm going to have a glass of wine and then I'm going to pay the price and all my clothes are going to be tight, you know, tomorrow. And, and I'm going to avoid booking that vacation with my family because I know if I go on vacation, I'm 10 pounds heavier when I get home and I don't want to put on a bikini and I don't want to put on shorts and I just don't have the energy to even enjoy. So it really starts affecting other areas of, of her life, of your life. And, and I think that that is— that's the key that we really need to talk about, because if a woman isn't confident enough to enjoy her friends enjoy her family on vacation. I mean, that's so much deeper than just, you know, weight and hair loss. I mean, of course the weight and the hair loss are the drivers, but there's, there's a deeper effect that a non-optimized thyroid has. So optimization land means you can enjoy all of that. You can have abundant energy through the day. You can sleep well. You know, you, you, you just love life and that Really is how our bodies were made. I mean, we were beautifully and wonderfully made. Our creator did not make us to be fat, foggy, and fatigued and drag through life. We, we were created to be vibrant, to enjoy life till we're 100, to be that badass until we're 100 years old. But it takes listening to your body and doing some things on your part. You can't just go along for the ride and expect your body to be vital and, and and vibrant, you have to participate too in your own health.

So good. Yeah, what a great reminder. Like, we weren't meant to be overconsumed by health and wellness and diets and what to do and how to resolve feeling poorly all the time. We're meant to actually be here to live and feel great in this amazing body that we have that's constantly serving us, right? Which is beautiful. This is pretty revolutionary, the work that you're doing, um, and the timing of it I think is just so perfect with what's happening in women's health in the world. So Dr. Amy's book is The Thyroid Fix: The No-Nonsense Guide to Fix Fatigue, Fogginess, and Fat That Won't Budge. You also have a supplement brand, uh, which I was checking out, which I'm very impressed by. Yeah, um, tell us where people can connect with you.

Absolutely. So they can go to dramie.com, D-R-A-M-I-E, and that's where you can connect anywhere. You can book a call, to become a patient. You can click the link to buy the book. The book is sold everywhere books are sold— Amazon, Barnes Noble, Target, the whole deal. And then if you do purchase the book before May 16th, go to thyroidfixbook.com to purchase, because that's how you are going to get a VIP ticket to our all-day live launch events. And you're going to be in the VIP room where you can ask me questions. We're going to do lab reads. We're giving over $10,000 in prizes, including a package to work one-on-one with me. So just go to thyroidfixbook.com, buy a copy, and then join me on May 16th. That's the best way to connect with me.

Amazing. Congratulations. Thank you. We'll link out everything below. I guess to wrap things off, one, I can't wait to have you back on and talk about Soul Sister. Such a joy connecting with you.

So good. It's so good.

Tell me something that you are most excited about when it comes to the future of women's health.

I am excited about this whole AI technology. Like, I think— and we were talking about it earlier— I think right now I wouldn't recommend a woman go to ChatGPT.

Yeah.

And ask about her thyroid and you'll find everything. Please don't do that. It still is based— I think ChatGPT is still based in, in conventional thought.

Yeah.

And conventional training. But when you have a platform that is built by someone like yourself, who has that functional knowledge, who thinks outside of the box. That's really where I think we're going to see expansions in, in healthcare, specifically in the area of women's health. Because when you build those models, even the conventional docs that are standing on their standard of care— no, I won't give you more than T4— they have— it's like they're going to be forced to move. Yeah, they're going to be forced to move their needle. They're going to be forced to learn because now they have AI combating them. It's no longer Dr. Google. It's a little bit stronger because it's pulling from every source. It's pulling from your knowledge, from my knowledge, from, you know, our top-of-the-line functional docs all put into a bucket. And now, is your conventional doctor actually going to be able to stand there 10 years from now and go, well, T4 only is all you need? Really? I can give you 5,000 reasons why it's not. I think there's a movement here and it's gonna— and we're gonna see a shift.

It's a great resource but not a solution. And by the way, ChatGPT did not even mention free T4 for lab testing.

Yeah, yeah, don't use ChatGPT. Just please, just wait a little bit longer. It needs more training.

It needs more training. Use it for inspiration when to go to your doctor. But I couldn't agree more, it's going to be something eventually that can complement the way that we work. Or if foundationally it's just giving people the courage to ask more questions to their doctors, then That's what it's going to be.

Exactly.

All right. We will link all of this up below. Thank you so much for being here.

My pleasure.

I love you to death. Thank you. Me too.