Chronic Fatigue, Low Thyroid, and Eczema

Hormones affect and influence how your cells function. They do it in a variety of different ways, but really they're like light switches. So you turn the thyroid hormone light switch on and all of a sudden the light goes on and your energy goes up. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the light switch is the light. It's not. Welcome to Dr. Stillman Uncensored, where we talk about the most controversial topics in natural medicine, politics, and religion. If you enjoy this podcast, book an evaluation with a member of my team and find out how we can help you to achieve optimal health. Thanks for listening and welcome to today's episode. Good morning, everyone. Dr. Stillman here. Today we are piloting a new live show that we are planning on doing weekly. These lives are going to be based on questions that you all submit to us. When we don't have questions from you, the audience, we will be covering questions that frequently come up in consultations with my real patients in our practice. So there's a link below if you want to ask me a question, be featured on the next live stream. Can't promise I'm gonna answer all of them, but I will do my best. The link to ask the question is below along with a link to order a copy of my book or book an evaluation with a member of my team to join our medical practice where we help tired, foggy, inflamed people reclaim their health. Alright. Without further ado, let's jump in. Today's episode is chronic fatigue, low thyroid, and eczema. So I have a bunch of different questions about each of these that I'm gonna answer today. These are 3 things that I see all the time, and we're gonna start with fatigue. So I get this question regularly. Just saw multiple patients this week. Fatigue was the number one thing they were complaining of. And their question is, why am I so tired all the time? Who tends to ask me this question? Who tends to get fatigue? They usually are very high-achieving, conscientious, driven people who really are used to being high energy. And over time, their energy has disappeared. Sometimes it's a sudden crash. I mean, I've had patients literally tell me, one day I just all of a sudden crashed and my energy hasn't come back since. Most of the time though, it is a slow, steady, gradual winnowing away of energy until finally they're taking an afternoon nap and dragging in the morning and needing the extra or the 4th or the 5th cup of coffee. And then they're maybe glued to the couch after dinner and they just can't get up and about and on with their life. They've usually tried a bunch of different things before I see them. So they've usually tried basic supplementation, everything from vitamin C and vitamin D to ashwagandha and astragalus. Uh-huh. They've tried different types of integrative natural medicine from Acupuncture to Chinese herbs to, you know, whatever. Many of them have tried stimulants and often they've had negative experiences with that, or they have this sneaking suspicion that taking stimulants for fatigue is like a tire patch. It's not actually dealing with the real reason the tire wore out in the first place, and they're nervous about that. And what they're worried about really at the end of the day is not having the energy to fulfill their daily tasks and their purpose in life. People who care about their energy and who get tired of being tired, They have things they want to do and we love helping them get back to life. And they're worried that it's gonna get worse or that if they're not able to get up the amount of energy they need to fulfill their purpose, that they are gonna wind up feeling unfulfilled and really disappointed in what they're able to accomplish in life. For them, success looks like— and this is my goal for each of them— waking up full of energy, not needing a bunch of stimulants in the day at all in order to keep going and perform at a high level. Not needing an afternoon nap, not needing to sit down or lay down on the couch after dinner, before bed, and being able to get through all the day's tasks and responsibilities in a timely fashion. Okay? So, when I think about this problem that I solve for people, I ask the simple question to start with, which is, what is energy? Right? Why do we need to start with what is energy? I need you to understand that fatigue is a really interesting symptom. Fatigue is— is this whole system total body phenomenon. When you ask someone, where is your fatigue? Uh-huh. You would never ask them that, right? Because it's never even occurred to you. Where is my fatigue? It's not like your kidneys are tired or your muscles are tired or whatever is tired. It's your whole body that's tired. And yes, I understand there are times when your muscles literally get tired and burned out. But for the most part, people describe fatigue as this whole body process. When I look at this process, I think to myself that what is going on in the system is that the entire system has a lack of energy production at a cellular level. When you look at a disease like, say, chronic fatigue syndrome, which might be the best case study in a lack of energy production, that's Exactly what you'll see. You'll see that the mitochondria, which are the powerhouses of the cell and make energy, do not have the ability to make energy. What you'll find if you do a deeper dive in these cases with the right labs and the right history and the right interventions is that some combination of lack of nutrition, toxins, and stressors, or infections have basically hamstrung the system's ability to create that energy, and that is why the person is tired. And this is why you're gonna see that this person tries that and this other person tries that and that person over there tries another thing, and they all get different results. And that's why patients often with chronic fatigue, I find, you know, we're sort of pulling levers therapeutically, so to speak, until finally we find the one that really works for them. And it's really just a process of elimination while also supplying and making sure we've got the foundations in play, 'cause that's what really leads to long-term success. More on that in a minute. So the next question is, 'cause I mentioned this in the earlier answer, how do nutrients create energy in the cell? So nutrients are basically taken by the cell, specifically the mitochondria, And they're transformed biophysically, biochemically into light and other chemicals or molecules. So, take a sugar molecule, for example. The mitochondria and the cell in general reverse the process of photosynthesis by which that nutrient was created in order to create light, water, and CO2. And that's the basics of cellular respiration right there. Now, you gotta understand that there are all these different nutrients that play a role in that. So, you have magnesium and you have thiamine and you have riboflavin and you You have niacin. You have all these different things that are derived from those, like niacin might get turned into NAD, and it might be NADH. It might be NADPH. You have things like the pentose phosphate. You have a lot of different pathways, and I don't want to overwhelm you with these because it's not the point. But what I need you to understand is it is a little bit like a car, okay? So imagine your car has all of the necessary ingredients in order to turn on and run the engine and move down the street. Except the spark plug. Okay. And this is where I think people get confused. They're like, I'm doing all these things. I'm taking all this stuff. I saw all these doctors. I'm taking all these drugs, and I don't have any more energy. You might just be missing one single ingredient. And that's why when I talk to patients about, you know, how are you feeling? How are you doing? And they're saying, I'm better. Okay, great. What gets the credit for your improvement? They'll say something like the supplements. Well, our supplement protocols might have 10, 20, 30, 40 ingredients. Uh-huh. You don't have to worry about that. I have to figure that out. And then you just have to follow the step-by-step process and take the supplements at the right doses and times of day, right? So that's how nutrients create energy, and that's why it's really important to understand and work with somebody who actually understands all these different nutrients and knows how to use them and when they may be applicable to you. Alright. Next question. How do toxins and stress reduce energy production? So basically toxins and stress either wear out and destroy nutrients, and by that, they hamstring and prevent this production of energy. Why is this so important? I will routinely see people who are taking significant quantities of supplemental nutrition, and yet they still tell me that they are exhausted. Why might this be? Yes, they may be missing the critical nutrient that they actually need, but you will observe in clinical practice that high exposures to toxins or stress will make it sort of irrelevant how much nutrition you have on board. Largely because they cause excess loss. This is, I think, not as well studied as it should be, but, you know, for example, I'm fond of citing this study where they took study participants and they exposed them to 100-decibel noise for, I think it was 4 hours. And for days after that exposure, they actually had increased losses of magnesium in their urine. I'm telling you, I wish I had 100 or 1,000 studies like this on every kind of stress and, you know, and stimuli, but I don't. So here's what I do know, and I'm quite sure of. My patients who are under the most stress, who have the worst sleep, who have the least regenerative time, they respond the most poorly to supplemental nutrition, sometimes to the point that it does not matter what nutrients you put in. And so you can get these scenarios where someone is taking everything and doing everything and doing all the right things, but what they actually need is better sleep, less stress, potentially some source of toxins and toxic exposure needs to be eliminated in their environment. See it all the time. Mold, EMF, you name it. Okay, next question. How do infections reduce energy production? So you've probably seen headlines recently about things like EBV, Epstein-Barr virus, being associated with different illnesses. And if you look in the literature, you will see that practically every immune or autoimmune disease, which is what we focus on in my practice, all of them are associated with, in some degree in the literature, infections. The most common things I hear or see from patients are Epstein-Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, sometimes it'll be a herpes virus. You'll also I also hear and see people talking about Candida and mold and Lyme and all kinds of other things. And what I found in practice is that many of these people do well with drugs that treat these things. Now, I came to this very reluctantly because I have a great humility about just trying to, you know, kill things in the human body and get patients better. But I gotta tell you, in some cases, it is the thing that people need. Now, I will also say that I often don't have to resort to that. Why? Because guess what? When you optimize nutrition and you reduce stress and you help to eliminate total toxic burden, then guess what happens? The immune system kicks in and these infections disappear. And, you know, I call this the farmer's paradox. I will work with and I take care of farmers and I've got lots of friends who are farmers and they're always out in the fields and they're often picking ticks off their bodies by the dozen, particularly if they're breaking in a new field that they're pasturing. Well, how is it that they get dozens of tick bites in a day and yet they're never calling me to say, hey, I need doxycycline for Lyme disease, but I'll get these super healthy, super fastidious, conscientious people who only eat non-GMO, dairy-free, gluten-free, soy-free, fair trade, organic, cruelty-free, you know, whatever oatmeal, and they never touch anything bad, and they're very— I mean, they're almost like OCD about their health, right? And yet they will come in and say like, I have this, you know, chronic Lyme disease, or I have this chronic infection. I can't clear it. I don't know why. What do I conclude based on this? If you are in a low-stress environment and you're properly nourished and you do not have a significant toxic burden, your immune system can do what it is supposed to do, which is destroy things that invade your body and seek to colonize, co-opt, and otherwise live within it. It does not, by the way, mean that there's not a role for these drugs and medications and herbs as well. In people who are living that very close-to-nature life, I've seen them benefit as well. But that has to be worked out with a clinician on a one-on-one basis, which is why these are education and not obviously medical advice. Quick pause. If you're tired, foggy, and inflamed, if you have an autoimmune disease or worry you might have one, then you're in the right place. My team and I specialize in helping people like you reclaim their health. Go to stillmanmd.com to book an evaluation with a member of my team to find out how we can help you. But I want you guys to understand this. I've seen this happen where someone's energy doesn't come back until you deal with some kind of infection, even though you fix their nutrition and their toxic burden and their stress. So, that's that. Alright. Next question. I get this question all the time. Why did my thyroid quit and why am I still so tired despite taking medications? So, I get this question all the time from people all walks of life, practically all ages. And what they've found or what's happened is basically they— they became tired and they had some combination of the following symptoms: loss of outer third of their eyebrows, loss or thinning of their hair, their hair, skin, and nails became brittle, Or rough, or they started to feel swollen and puffy, particularly around their fingers. They start to gain weight. They have constipation. They may have depression. They may have severe brain fog. They lose their motivation, their enthusiasm, their drive. They just feel bad. And this is sort of the picture of hypothyroidism. I probably missed a few symptoms, but, you know, you can go look them up if you're curious to learn more. What ends up happening is they present to a doctor, they test the thyroid gland in some combination of ways, and they say, you have hypothyroidism. But what does that mean? You have low thyroid hormone function. The thyroid hormone is really sort of like the regulator on your metabolism. Think about it, you know, as if your car, the fuel line were clogged and you stepped on the gas and nothing happened or very little happened, that would be the equivalent of having hypothyroidism. You just, no matter what you do, you can't get your energy back, you can't feel right. Now, who does this tend to affect and who tends to ask me about it? People who care about their energy, right? They have things they wanna do and they don't wanna feel tired all the time. They usually try some combination of thyroid hormone products. Some of these are glandulars. They may be herbs or supplements designed to boost thyroid activity. They may be actual medications or prescriptions. But if they're coming to me and we're talking about their thyroid and why they're tired, chances are they're either unhappy with the amount of thyroid support that they have to take, like handfuls of pills or, you know, really high doses of medications, or they just wanna make sure that there's nothing causing this problem. That they haven't addressed. In other words, the root cause has been eliminated and resolved. What they're worried about is that their thyroid's gonna get worse and worse and worse. They're gonna need more and more and more medication, and they wonder, what does this mean about me and my health and my physiology? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my environment or my diet? And is that why I'm having this problem? For them, success looks like being on what I call the exquisite dose of thyroid hormone, if they even need it, which sometimes they don't. More on that later. What do I mean by the exquisite dose? It's the amount that they need in order to have optimal energy levels that allow them to get everything they need to get done in the day without creating or causing any danger to their health or well-being long-term. So you'll see that some people take too much thyroid hormone. This can create problems. Some people take too little thyroid hormone. And if you're taking too much, right, you may have side effects of excess. I've seen that. You may have long-term problems due to excess thyroid hormone. Which can be things like extreme weight loss and nutritional deficiencies can be driven by that as well. If you're under-replaced, guess what? Life is just a drag. You're not the fullest, most vibrant expression of you. And who wants that? So success for them looks like being on a dose that gives them stable, sustained day-to-day energy so that they can get on with life and fulfilling their purpose. So first of all, what's the thyroid gland? I talked about what thyroid hormone is. The thyroid gland Sits at the base of the neck, right around the thoracic inlet. It lies on both sides of your— your trachea, and it produces the thyroid hormone. Why does the thyroid gland quit? This is an important concept that I covered in more detail in my podcast recently with Amy Horneman, The Thyroid Fixer. It was a really good podcast. I got a lot of compliments on that from patients who listened to it and— and found it very informative. So if you're worried about your thyroid, you wanna know more about it, I encourage you to check it out. But one of the key things that I wanna talk about today is why does the thyroid gland quit? Because I have seen patients, and this is just across the board, you know, for some reason their thyroid gland has quit and we don't know why. And we can always ask why. Is it some kind of— like I said before, is it an infection? Some weird thing affecting their thyroid gland? And you'll see that thyroid hormone disorders have all these associations with different viruses. Is it a toxin? Is it stress? Is it a nutritional deficiency? What caused it to quit? You know, if you want, you can do all the testing, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of testing. You can find toxin levels. You can find nutritional Nutritional deficiencies, you can find infections, you can find all of it, but there is no smoking gun. You are not, as far as I know, going to be able to arrive at some conclusion of, aha, it was the cytomegalovirus in the thyroid gland, you know, with the changes in DNA expression. It's not that simple. You can come up with hypotheses, but at the end of the day, that doesn't matter as much as what are we going to do today in order to get the thyroid working as much as we possibly can. And this is where it gets interesting, right? So you will find modifiable factors in your diet and lifestyle and daily routine that will affect thyroid gland function. Like for example, it's very consistent in the practice for us to find that people who have low thyroid hormone levels don't eat enough protein. What does protein contain? Not only all of the micronutrients, minerals, and vitamins necessary in order to make thyroid hormone, and I'm talking about animal protein. So fish, shellfish, Meat, poultry, etc. Not only does it contain the micronutrients they need, but it also contains the amino acids, specifically tyrosine. What is tyrosine? Tyrosine is an amino acid that gets turned into not only thyroid hormone, but dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. What are those 3 hormones? They're the hormones produced by the adrenal gland that allow us to function and focus. Guess what drugs manipulate these? ADHD meds. So you'll find people who are on thyroid hormone for their fatigue, And they're on, you know, insert your ADHD medication here for ADHD, right? And lo and behold, what do you find? They're not getting enough tyrosine. So does it not make sense that the body has reduced the production of thyroid hormone and dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine because of a lack of supply of the amino acid that gets turned into these things? Yeah, it does. And guess what happens when you give these people back tyrosine? They have more energy and you don't necessarily need to dose them on more meds. That's one of the things that we can do and one of the things that we look at when we're saying, okay, is there a— Problem with the diet and the lifestyle and the nutrition driving the thyroid gland— lack of thyroid gland function. And you will routinely see really significant shifts, not just in thyroid hormone levels, but more importantly in how people feel. And this actually gives me another— or leads me to another really important point that I wanna make to you all, which is it's not just about hormone levels. I get this a lot from patients. Can we check my hormone levels? First of all, it's a snapshot in time, so the labs can vary from day to day. But secondly, the level is not as important as the function. So 2 people, and vitamin D is a great example of this, 2 people may have the same level of vitamin D in their blood, but whether or not the vitamin D is acting at the end of its metabolic pathway, right? Let's say it's the genome, is actually dependent upon a whole bunch of other factors. So I sometimes tell patients hormones are to your symptoms and your energy and your vitality and your health the same way that light switches are to light. People say things like hormones do this, hormones do that. Hormones affect and influence how your cells function. They do it in a variety of different ways, but really they're like light switches. So like you turn the thyroid hormone light switch on and all of a sudden the light goes on and your energy goes up and maybe you start to lose weight, you have more mental clarity and focus and drive and you have better sleep and all sorts of things are better. But don't make the mistake of thinking that the light switch is the light. It's not. Because guess what you need in order for the light to come on? You need energy in the electrical grid. You need the breakers at the house at the street level to be flipped on. You need there to be an operational electrical grid without trees that are down and power lines that are destroyed or whatever. And so, it's not just as simple as give hormone, get result. And you'll see this in clinical practice when people take hormones, they take DHEA, they take testosterone, they take thyroid, they take estrogen, they take progesterone, and they don't respond logically. They don't feel better. So, what do I believe is happening here? Well, number one, I sometimes believe that what's happening is they don't have the raw materials to respond, right? That would be like you flip the light switch on and there's no power in the grid, and so the light doesn't come on. You keep flipping the light switch, but it doesn't matter. Right? Or there's resistance. There's some problem downstream, or there's some problem with the body responding to the hormone, and so it doesn't respond, right? Because you have to have micronutrients, and you have to have, you know, functioning cells. You have to have lots of other things in the body going right in order for hormones to actually take effect and have an effect on the system. And this gets lost in the whole discussion. And this is one reason why I don't spend less than 25 minutes with patients in a consultation, because I may need to unpack all of this and explain, well, How's your diet? How's your lifestyle? How do we know you're getting enough protein to make this thing before I prescribe you the thing, right? Not that I leave patients feeling poorly. I prescribe appropriately. But if they don't ever get this context and it's just a 5-minute visit where it's like, your thyroid's low, take thyroid hormone, they just end up on 20 different pills for things that we maybe may have been able to solve if we had time to do the work to figure out diet and lifestyle, etc. Okay. But I— I wanna come back to the point, why does the thyroid gland quit? Let's talk about that. So the thyroid gland can frankly just quit, and I shouldn't say it like that 'cause it isn't usually sudden, but its production of thyroid hormone will decline over time. And why does it decline over time? The thyroid gland or thyroid hormone production declines over time because all of our cells and tissues decline in their function over time. And what this means is that as my patients get to particularly to their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, what they're finding is that in order to maintain the same level of Physiologic function that they are used to at 20, 30, whatever. They either have to live this very, very, very tightly controlled life, very strict bedtimes, very strict diets, really focusing on making sure that their nutrition is just right every single day. They may need a bunch of different diet, lifestyle, environmental hacks that help them to— to compensate, help them to remain feeling good and feeling at a high level. And then at a certain point, they're like, I just wanna live my life. And sure, you know, I've tried everything I can to naturally bring my thyroid online, to naturally optimize my levels, but at this point, I am fed up. up with being tired and overweight and dragging through the day and having poor sleep and whatever. So I just want relief from my symptoms. And that's when we add thyroid hormone. Okay? So what medications work best? I usually start patients on thyroid glandulars, which is like Armour and NP Thyroid. And the reason why is most people respond really well. And I find that they're much better tolerated than what most docs use, which is levothyroxine, which I think is quite frankly, for the most part, a horrible medication that really only works for a I don't know if it's a small proportion or if it's a majority of people, but most people coming to me for management of their thyroid have been on levothyroxine and other related meds, and they haven't found that it helps them with their symptoms. And there's many reasons for this. Again, I would refer you to my Thyroid Hormone Podcast with Amy Horneman. But I really feel that— I feel strongly, in fact, that it's better in general for us to start people on the glandulars. And more on that if people want. Just ask a question in the links below. Okay. Next question. What can I do about stubborn eczema? I get this question a lot, particularly from young people, which eczema tends to affect most of all. I get it from moms about their kids. I get it from people in their teens, their 20s, who are tired of these skin issues. So, what have they usually already tried? They've usually already tried over-the-counter creams, lotions, potions. They've usually already seen a dermatologist or an allergist. They've tried Everything from, you know, wet wraps to drugs to whatever. They may have tried dietary modifications and they're frustrated they haven't seen the relief that they were hoping for. They're worried that this is gonna get worse and worse and eventually their whole body's gonna look like this sort of scaly, scary thing. And they're worried about its effect even of small patches on their appearance, cuz it can be on very important cosmetic parts of the body, like the neck, in women, the décolletage, or on hands and arms. So people are very worried about that. And one of the main reasons people want to get it under control is their appearance. But under that, they're also concerned, well, what does it mean? about my health and my wellbeing and my body that I have this issue that's expressing itself in the skin, right? So for them, success looks like getting rid of the rash or at least minimizing it, particularly with regards to the amount of like actual medical effort and intervention needed to keep it at bay day to day. So what can people do to help control eczema? We spend a lot of time figuring this out in one-on-one consults and I'm running out of time in this show. Again, this is the pilot, so we're figuring out how many questions we can do in 30 minutes. So I'm just gonna leave it at this. I look at inhalant allergies. In the environment. I look at food triggers in the diet, and then I look at their overall nutrition, toxins, stress, diet, lifestyle, sometimes infections that may be driving this. And we try one thing at a time, or sometimes many things at a time. And generally speaking, I see good results. Sometimes we need beds, sometimes we don't. And we'll all expand on that. Ask me anything for the next stream. The link is below. Order my new book. The link is below. And if you're tired, foggy, or inflamed and would like our help reclaiming your health, book an evaluation with a member of our team and find out how we can help you. Thank you. If you have thoughts, feedback, questions about this, drop it in the comments. We're gonna be doing this once a week. It's gonna turn into a podcast. I look forward to answering your questions in the future. Take care everyone and have a great day. If you enjoyed this episode and you're ready to achieve optimal health, book an evaluation with a member of my team at stillmanmd.com. We specialize in helping tired, foggy, inflamed people reclaim their health. Thanks again for listening and have a great day.