Test Don’t Guess for Thyroid
Understanding Your Thyroid: A Comprehensive Guide
Transcript Below Blog Post
Resources: Balancing Naturally Membership
In today's fast-paced world, it's easy to overlook the importance of thyroid health. However, the thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland located in your neck, plays a crucial role in regulating your metabolism, mood, and overall well-being.
Let’s delve into the intricacies of thyroid health, exploring symptoms, testing, and strategies for optimizing your thyroid function.
Understanding the Thyroid
The thyroid gland produces hormones that control your metabolism, which affects how your body burns calories and regulates temperature. When your thyroid is not functioning properly, it can lead to a range of health issues.
Common Thyroid Symptoms
Fatigue
Weight gain or loss
Cold intolerance
Hair loss
Dry skin
Constipation
Menstrual irregularities
The Importance of Testing
If you're experiencing any of these symptoms, it's essential to consult with a healthcare professional for a comprehensive thyroid evaluation. Traditional blood tests often only assess two components of thyroid function. However, a functional approach involves testing six key components to gain a more accurate picture of your thyroid health.
Key Thyroid Tests
Free T3
Free T4
Reverse T3
TSH
TPO (Thyroid Peroxidase Antibody)
ATA (Thyroglobulin Antibody)
Risk Factors for Thyroid Issues
Age: The risk of thyroid problems increases with age.
Gender: Women are more likely to develop thyroid disorders than men.
Genetics: A family history of thyroid conditions can increase your risk.
Pregnancy and Perimenopause: Hormonal changes during these periods can affect thyroid function.
Optimizing Your Thyroid Health
Manage Stress: Chronic stress can negatively impact thyroid health. Practice stress-reduction techniques like meditation, yoga, or deep breathing.
Prioritize Sleep: Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep each night.
Nourish Your Body: Consume a diet rich in whole, unprocessed foods. Include plenty of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and healthy fats.
Taking care of your thyroid health is essential for maintaining overall well-being. By understanding the signs and symptoms of thyroid dysfunction, seeking appropriate testing, and making lifestyle adjustments, you can support your thyroid's optimal function and improve your quality of life.
Transcript for Podcast Episode 6
[00:00:00] Hi, welcome to hormone heaven. This is Dr. Angel and I'm a thyroid and perimenopause expert. This podcast is for women who are struggling with thyroid and or perimenopause and are looking for natural solutions. It's a micro pod because I like to give quick bite sized information that you can implement immediately in your daily life.
Please keep in mind, I'm a doctor, but I'm not your doctor, so please check with your health care provider before beginning or ending any supplements or medications. Today's podcast is being brought to you by my Naturally Balancing Membership, just 50 a month and includes functional blood chemistry analysis and text coaching.
Check the show notes for details. Let's get started. I have a confession to make. This is like the 10th time I've started recording this. I really want my podcast to be actionable. And for the first time around, I just wasn't feeling it either the second or the third. I don't know what round this is, but we're fixing to talk about thyroid.
Let's go. When we're talking about the thyroid, I really like to talk about testing and not guessing. And we're going to get to that as we go through this episode. But I want to
[00:01:00] mention that thyroid is so interwoven when we're talking about hormones and perimenopause that every episode that I do will probably reference thyroid in some way.
But the thyroid is a butterfly shaped hormonal gland that sits right at your throat. And it's responsible for the speed of metabolic and chemical processes in your body. So think like weight management, heart rate, Body temperature, fertility, digestion, menstrual cycles, and even blood sugar. So how can you know if your thyroid is not working right, right?
Some of the symptoms of having thyroid issues are being cold all the time, fatigued, your hair thinning or your eyebrows are thinning, you're either gaining weight or you can't lose weight, you can have dry skin, and even constipation. And there's a whole nother fertility and menstrual cycle things that can go on here as well.
And many women have these symptoms and they tell me they go to the doctor and their doctor says your thyroid's fine, there's nothing wrong with you.
[00:02:00] Well that's because conventional doctors are typically only looking at two components of your blood work instead of six. And they are looking at it through a disease model.
Which means they are looking at your blood work asking themselves, are you in a disease state? But when a functional or an alternative doctor like myself looks at thyroid, we're looking at six components and we use functional ranges or ranges that show where the thyroid feels the best. And because the goal is, right, to feel better and stay away from disease.
We want to feel better, not just stay away from disease, right? If your conventional doctor looks at you and says you have thyroid issues, that is typically considered conventional hypothyroidism. If a functional or alternative doctor looks at you and says you are not in the optimal range, but you don't show disease, that is considered subclinical hypothyroidism.
You don't feel good when you have subclinical hypothyroidism, but conventional doctors say you're fine because the numbers look good to them. This is where alternative
[00:03:00] medicine really can help. But by the way, 60 percent of females in the United States have subclinical hypothyroidism, and they don't even know it.
They know they're having symptoms, but they don't know what's causing it, because they've gone to the doctors and the doctors have said, it's not your thyroid. Now, out of those 60 percent of the women, 90 percent of those women are estimated to have an autoimmune issue as well. That's called Hashimoto's along with that thyroid issue.
So this is why we need to be extremely educated about our thyroid, since it affects so many women. I'd like to talk about the risk factors of getting it. Age is one. The older we are, the higher the risk. That's just the way it goes for that. Now, women definitely get it more than men.
And women also get Hashimoto's. Now, more than men do. I just wanted to mention that women just are on the short end of the stick of both of this. Now, genetics definitely play a role. So if you know someone in your family that's had thyroid issues, the odds are you will.
The interesting thing
[00:04:00] about genetics when it comes to this is I have found that men a lot of times may be genetically inclined to it, but they don't show symptoms, but they'll pass it on. So you may not think anyone in your family has thyroid issues but what's really happening is they just didn't show any symptoms.
Now, pregnancy is actually a risk factor because the thyroid is extremely susceptible to hormones changes, and anytime there's a big hormonal adjustment, for instance, pregnancy or perimenopause, then we're going to see the thyroid get out of balance.
So these are big times that I have always seen this, particularly like three months after pregnancy, you know, if you had the baby, we'll really see this happen and definitely during perimenopause for sure. Now, I mentioned testing earlier in that you really want to test six components and everybody's always asking me what those six components are.
So I'm going to give those to you real quickly here. So if you want to pause and write them down so you have them. If not, you can get in the show notes and find a way to get a hold of me there and I will send them to
[00:05:00] you. But it's free T3, free T4, reverse T3, TSH, That's usually, the TSH is usually what your doctor will recommend, your conventional doctor.
Thyroid Paradoxase Antibody, which goes by TPO, that is to check for any autoimmune issues. And then another autoimmune is Thyroglobulin Antibody, which goes by the name ATA. So free T3, free T4, reverse T3, TSH. TPO, and ATA. This is considered a comprehensive thyroid panel. Instead of just looking for disease, we are looking for optimal health when we're using this full panel here.
Now I will tell you in the original iterations of this podcast, I was explaining what each of those components were and it got so in the weeds that I just, Decided that probably nobody cares about that. If you do care about that, please get in touch with me and I will send you a sheet that talks all about them.
But I know that you are looking for short, quick bites in this
[00:06:00] podcast. So I'm not going to get into the weeds of that. Now, I want to say that my personal recommendation is that all women start with a complete comprehensive panel at age 20. So comprehensive with all six of those thyroid components. And then do it every five years after that.
Sooner if you're showing symptoms or you go through a major hormonal change like pregnancy or perimenopause. So every five years, unless you're showing symptoms, we want to start that at 20. So say you're 50 but you have a 20 year old daughter. Get your 20 year old daughter tested. I'm starting to see more and more young people with these issues.
Now, do you want to get these tests run, but you want to have somebody else look at them, right? So you can have your conventional doctor run them if they will, but then have a functional or alternative doctor like myself look at them so that they can use those functional ranges to see if you're at optimal health rather in that disease state.
So we really want you to get healthy through this, right? We want you to look at it and see where are these problems coming from as I've mentioned in past episodes
[00:07:00] We know that cortisol is the stress hormone and cortisol comes from the adrenal glands The adrenals are right on top of the kidneys just to remind you and what we know is that cortisol and thyroid are intimately linked together.
So stress increases cortisol Which is the stress hormone, cortisol increases thyroid hormone, giving us hypothyroidism. So one of the things that you can do for your thyroid is to really work on that stress. And I know I say that all the time, and it is something that I am trying to work on. It's really difficult.
All right, let's all take a breath.
Okay, I try to do that every time I go to the bathroom . I know everybody thinks I'm crazy, but it's something we all do. So that's a way that we can get the breath to go in and I have had clients really tell me that that's helped them. So I hope that helps you too. Now, when people ask me about thyroid, one of the first things they say is, what food should I do for thyroid?
So think always, we all, no matter what kind of issue you have, want to do whole foods that are non processed, right?
[00:08:00] We all want to do that. We want to think about what our ancestors have eaten. They would have eaten meat, fish, Fruits, seasonal vegetables and nuts and seeds.
So I kept saying seasonal because they weren't eating all kinds of fruits, all kinds of vegetables, all times of the year. They were eating what was in seasons. That's really good for us to do as well. We tend to not overeat as much when we eat in season. I know what they wouldn't have eaten. Our ancestors would not have eaten out of a window or food in a package.
So we really need to look at that kind of thing. We really need to think about, can we cook more at home? What can we do more at home? Now, if you have Hashimoto's, which is that autoimmune component to the thyroid that we talked about, then that is an area that you really need to look at glowing gluten free.
, gluten actually. is very comparable to our thyroid gland when you look at the molecules and it actually will cause more Hashimoto's or more autoimmune issues. So that is something that I actually help my clients with, whether or not you have
[00:09:00] Hashimoto's, we discuss nutrition and I'm able to give you recipes and things like that in my programs.
Some other things around food you want to keep in mind is, for all thyroid, you may want to cook your cruciferous vegetables. Things like broccoli and cauliflower are considered cruciferous vegetables. You're going to want to cook those rather than eat them raw. Because there's been research that shows, raw cruciferous vegetables can actually interfere with thyroid function.
Now that's not all the time. Say you're out somewhere and, you know, there's raw broccoli or raw cauliflower sitting there and, you know, with a dip or something and you want to have it. You can do that. It's just not something you want to do every day. It's something you want to be a little bit cautious about.
Now two other things that you want to be cautious about, and these are pretty easy, so these may be your actionable steps, are keeping your caffeine consumption to 16 ounces or less a day. That's two true cups of coffee. That is really helpful to keep that caffeine down. And reducing your sugar intake to less than 60 grams a day.
Both of these have been shown really good to be helpful for the thyroid. So to wrap it
[00:10:00] up, the thyroid is something that all women should be aware of. We need to start testing. And it's extremely important that we test and we need to start testing at age 20 and every five years after unless there's a hormonal event like pregnancy or perimenopause.
And maybe your actionable item in today is to work on getting that sugar intake to less than 30 grams a day to optimize all those hormones, not just your thyroid. As a reminder, this podcast is brought to you by my balancing natural membership. Check it out in the show notes. Thanks for listening to hormone heaven.
Please subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you can get the podcast as soon as they are available. If you have questions, please go to alternative health with angel. com or check out the show notes link in the description. And remember, do not make any changes with medications or supplements without speaking to your healthcare provider.
These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This is not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure disease. Thank you